My series of seven books, called Real.Clear., includes 100 of the 250 or so lectures that were given in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by a woman named Eva Pierrakos. That body of work is collectively referred to as the Pathwork and all of the lectures are available on the Pathwork Foundation’s website for free: www.pathwork.org.

There is another body of material provided by Eva and the Guide, the spirit being she claimed was speaking through her, and that’s the Q&As. Over the course of 22 years, Eva would gather with a group of people, mostly in either New York City or upstate New York, and she would deliver a lecture. Afterward, people were invited to ask questions of the Guide. These might relate to the lecture just given, or to people’s personal work with the teachings. Folks could also just ask random questions about life.

After a time, special Q&A sessions were offered monthly, two weeks after the lecture sessions, in which the entire time was dedicated to answering questions. Eva had created a mailing list and would send the written transcripts of lectures to interested people. Sometimes when she went on vacation, Eva would substitute transcripts from a Q&A session for her mailing, and that’s why 14 of the 258 lectures are actually Q&As.

I had been curious about the Q&As and had a copy of all 100, which were provided on a CD sold by the Pathwork Foundation. But the unmarked PDFs—no titles, just numbers—were a jumble of topics, making it almost impossible to find your way back if you found something good. Beyond that, they were hard to wade through. Although they had been edited more than once already, they were still a cacophony of run-on sentences, questionable grammar and inaudible sections. After all, they had originated as spoken conversations and therefore needed some cleanup for the printed format. The same was true for the lectures, but for the most part, they had been well-edited and were easier to read.

In the fall of 2013, I felt inspired to dig into those Q&As, and as I began reading them, two things started to happen. First, I had to clean them up because in the fiber of my being, I am a writer. As I’ve heard it jokingly said, for a copywriter, our greatest need is not for food, or water or clothing, but to edit someone else’s copy. In this case, when I say I edited the Q&As, I mean I made them easier to read.

Second, I started to organize them by topic. This was my version of breadcrumbs, creating a system so that if I ever wanted to find my way back to a particular one, I would have a chance. As this project rolled along, the energy flowing through me was tremendous. In hindsight, I had received a task from the spirit world, and I did it extremely well.

Unfortunately, when I shared my excitement about what I had done with the Pathwork Foundation, they were not thrilled. Their fundamental issue was the fact that I had “edited the material.” In my defense, a) I had indeed done so; they were improved greatly by my efforts, and b) someone else—more than once—had already done so, they just hadn’t done a very thorough job.

I had hoped the cleaned-up Q&As would be made widely available so everyone could have access to the wisdom they offer. In the end, however, after much ado that led nowhere, I created a website (www.theguidespeaks.org) and uploaded all those thousands of Q&As, organized by topic. Keep in mind, most of the Q&As are actually back-and-forth conversations with the Guide, so they sometimes managed to cover a lot of territory. I did my best to slot each into the topic that seemed like the best fit. That means as you read them, you will find a lot of Easter eggs.

The website I used was actually one I had created a few years previous, in 2011, when a noteworthy series of events unfolded in my life. Pursuant to the ending of a short-lived but very promising relationship late in 2010, I found myself sad and blue during the peak of the holiday season. Then I got an email announcing another Beyond Words poetry retreat in Hawaii, and I signed up to go. I needed a lift.

I had been to this same retreat in 2008 and had done some deep work while, at the same time, steeping in some amazing poetry. The leader was a longtime Pathwork Helper who, back in the day, had actually lived at Eva’s Pathwork center in Phoenicia, New York. In her way of working, Kim and her cello-playing compatriot Jamie, would create a healing atmosphere that was intimate, profound and transformative. All in a setting that was nourishing and heavenly. It was there that I heard Jamie speak the words, “…there is no road, walker, you make the road by walking…” as she read a poem that resonated through to my core.

During the months leading up to the retreat in February 2011, several of my spiritual paths intersected. For one, we had a wicked ice storm hit Atlanta that shut down the city for a week. My driveway, which essentially was like a switchback on a treacherous mountain road, was tricky on a good day. That week, I couldn’t even walk up it. Stranded in my house, I uncovered an interview that Eva had given when she was alive and I read the entire thing. It was included in a booklet of remembrances that had been collected in 1979 after Eva passed, written by those who loved her.

Also in January, I traveled to Sevenoaks to attend a weekend teaching on being a Helper that was taught by my longtime teacher, Cynthia. Further, around that time, I had also been attending weekly gatherings in which we worked with sacred Peruvian rites called Munay Ki. Each of the levels was represented by a different animal—serpent, hummingbird, jaguar, and so on—and I had just received the final rites.

In addition, at that time, I was three years into studying Kabbalah with a teacher name Kimberly. Over the four years that that class convened, we learned to do hands-on healing by cleaving to the divine energies embodied in the tree of life. Then we moved on to studying the symbolic and energetic meaning of the Hebrew letters.

In January, we were studying the three Mother Letters: Aleph, Mem and Shin. These letters, according to these ancient, sacred teachings, are the foundation of all creation. The Bible says, “In the beginning was the word.” But before the word, came the letters.

All this came together one night in early 2011 when I was lying in bed and my arm began to move, all by itself. The first time that happened, I must admit, I was a bit freaked out. The next day, as I practiced sitting with the Mother Letters, it happened again. My whole body moved. I called my teacher on the phone.

 “Kimberly, every time I breathe in the Mother Letters, my body moves!” I said.

“Cool!” she said.

After talking a bit more, she suggested that maybe I needed to slow down. I’ve written about this in greater detail in The Guide Speaks: A Summary from My Journal, so won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say, things got weird. The upshot of it all was that during my time in Hawaii at the 2011 poetry retreat, some exciting potential started opening up in me regarding my own abilities to channel.

The more remarkable aspect of all this was the possibility I would become the next person to channel teachings from the Guide. This news landed with quite a loud thud within the Pathwork community, but inside of me, doors began swinging open in ways I could have only imagined.

One of the biggest indicators that something was seriously shifting in me was that after that time, I have never needed to visit a chiropractor again. Everyone carries tension in their body, and this isn’t to say I was now loose as a noodle. I have had numerous massages over the years to unwad the muscles in my neck and shoulders.

In fact, when I was first managing the marcom group in 2006, and still continuing as training manager for another year, while also going through Helpership training and caring for my kids half the week, the stress caused by the sheer magnitude of the workload made the tendons in the back of my neck click as they moved over the bone. That was not good.

I’ve also had some issues with my teeth, which my dentist said resulted from clenching them in my sleep. I was at a lunch with four or five women from work once when this topic of dental issues came up. One by one, the women went around and shared about their cracked molars or the dental appliances they were using to avoid grinding their teeth. So yes, while it’s true I was an over-achiever, it wasn’t just me.

When I first came out of college in the mid-1980s, the women’s movement was making a resurgence. The big question was: “Can women have it all?” The unspoken part of that question, in my opinion, was: “…like the men do?” The next iteration of this concept was: “You can have it all, just not at the same time.”

But what if we want to, just like the husbands and dads of the world do? Yet more than once in my life, when my visions of what I could accomplish piled up on top of each other—instead of showing up sequentially—I have thought, ‘Wow. This really is not sustainable.’

Back when my boys were little, I had become aware that sometimes, some things needed to give, or I would give out. I was trying to keep all the plates spinning, but when one started to wobble, I would sometimes make the call to punt it. Like Christmas cards. One year, I just couldn’t get them out. And you know what? The world kept turning. I haven’t sent a mass mailing of Christmas cards since, and I’m pretty sure no one has noticed.

At work, we had an initiative called 80/20. The premise was that 20% of your efforts result in 80% of the outcome. We were all overloaded on a regular basis, so the idea was to pick the priorities that mattered most. We were also encouraged to 80/20 our entire life. I was way ahead of them.

For me, my kids were always in the 20%. While I didn’t make it to every swim meet, lacrosse practice and soccer game, I was there for the vast majority of them. When Jackson was little, probably 5 or 6, and I had an unavoidable conflict for one of his soccer games, he said, “I guess it’s OK. I really only need one of you there to tell me ‘good game’ at the end.”

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