James Redfield - The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight

The Celestine Prophecy

The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

The Celestine Vision: Living the New Spiritual Awareness

By James Redfield and Carol Adrienne

The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide

The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision: An Experiential Guide

James Redfields Web site:
www.celestinevision.com

THE SECRET OF SHAMBHALA. Copyright 1999 by James Redfield. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books,

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2290-9

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by Warner Books.

First eBook Edition: April 2001

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

For Megan and Kelly,
whose generation must evolve consciously.

In the evolution of spiritual awareness, there are many heroes. A special thanks is in order to Larry Dossey, for his pioneering popularization of the scientific research on prayer and intention; also to Marilyn Schlitz, who continues to push the development of new studies on human intentionality for the Institute of Noetic Sciences. In nutrition, recognition must be given to the acid/alkaline work of Theodore A. Baroody and Robert Young.

Personally, I must thank Albert Gaulden, John Winthrop Austin, John Diamond, and Claire Zion, who all continue to make special contributions to this work. And most of all, a special thanks to Salle Merrill Redfield, whose intuition and faith-power serve as a constant reminder of the mystery.

When I wrote The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight, I was firmly convinced that human culture was evolving through a series of insights into life and spirituality, insights that could be described and documented. All that has occurred since has only deepened this belief.

We are becoming fully conscious of a higher spiritual process operating behind the scenes in life, and in doing so, we are leaving behind a materialistic worldview that reduces life to survival, gives a pittance to Sunday religion, and uses toys and distractions to push away the true awe of being alive.

What we want instead is a life filled with mysterious coincidences and sudden intuitions that allude to a special path for ourselves in this existence, to a particular pursuit of information and expertiseas though some intended destiny is pushing to emerge. This kind of life is like a detective story into ourselves, and the clues soon lead us forward through one insight after another.

We discover that a real experience of the divine within awaits us, and if we can find this connection, our lives are infused with even more clarity and intuition. We begin to catch visions of our destiny, of some mission that we can accomplish, provided we work through our distracting habits, treat others with a certain ethic, and stay true to our heart.

In fact, with the Tenth Insight, this perspective expands even more to include the full scope of history and culture. At some level, all of us know that we come from another heavenly place into this earthly dimension to participate in one overall goal: to slowly, generation by generation, create a completely spiritual culture on this planet.

Yet even as we grasp this invigorating insight, a new one, the Eleventh, is arriving. Our thoughts and attitudes count in making our dreams come true. In fact, I believe we are on the verge of understanding, finally, the way our mental intentions, our prayers, even our secret opinions and assumptions influence not only our own success in life but the success of others as well.

Based on my own experience, and on what is happening around us, this book is offered as an illustration of this next step in awareness. It is my belief that this insight is already emerging out them, swirling among thousands of late-night spiritual discussions, and hidden just below the hatred and fear that still mark our era. As before, our only responsibility is to live up to what we know, and then to reach out and spread the word.

James Redfield
Summer 1999

CONTENTS

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished,
and rose up in haste and spake

Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?

Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire,
and they have no hurt, and the form
of the fourth is like the son of God

Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants
that trusted in him.

Book of Daniel

T he phone rang and I just stared at it. The last thing I needed now was another distraction. I tried to push it from my mind, gazing out the window at the trees and wildflowers, hoping to lose myself in the array of fall colors in the woods around my house.

It rang again, and I got a vague but stirring image in my minds eye of a person needing to talk with me. Quickly I reached over and answered it.

Hello.

Its Bill, a familiar voice said. Bill was an agronomy expert who had been helping me with my garden. He lived down the ridge only a few hundred yards.

Listen, Bill, can I call you back later? I said. Ive got this deadline.

You havent met my daughter, Natalie, yet, have you?

Excuse me?

No reply.

Bill?

Listen, he finally answered, my daughter wants to talk with you. I think it might be important. Im not quite sure how she knows, but she seems to be familiar with your work. She says she has some information about a place youd be interested in. Some location in the north of Tibet? She says the people there have some important information.

How old is she? I asked.

Bill chuckled on the other end of the line. Shes only fourteen, but shes been saying some really interesting things lately. She was hoping she could talk with you this afternoon, before her soccer game. Any chance?

I started to put him off, but the earlier image expanded and started to become clear in my mind. It seemed to be of the young girl and me talking somewhere near the big spring just up from her house.

Yeah, okay, I said. How about two p.m.?

Thats perfect, Bill said.

On the walk over I caught sight of a new house across the valley on the north ridge. That makes almost forty, I thought. All in the last two years. I knew the word was out about the beauty of this bowl-shaped valley, but I really wasnt worried that the place would become overcrowded or that the amazing natural vistas would be destroyed. Nestled right up next to a national forest, we were ten miles from the closest towntoo far away for most people. And the family who owned this land and was now selling selected house sites on the outer ridges seemed determined to keep the serenity of the place unspoiled. Each house had to be low-slung and hidden amid the pines and sweet gums that defined the skyline.

What bothered me more was the preference for isolation exhibited by my neighbors. From what I could tell, most were characters of a sort, refugees from careers in various professions, who had carved out unique vocational niches that allowed them to now operate on flextime or travel on their own schedules as consultantsa freedom that was necessary if one was to live this far out in the wilderness.

The common bonds among all of us seemed to be a persistent idealism and the need to stretch our particular professions by an infusion of spiritual vision, all in the best Tenth Insight tradition. Yet almost everyone in this valley stayed to themselves, content to focus on their diverse fields without much attention to community or the need to build on our common vision. This was especially true among those of different religious persuasions. For some reason, the valley had attracted people holding a wide range of beliefs, including Buddhism, Judaism, both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, and Islam. And while there was no hostility of any kind by one religious group toward another, there wasnt a feeling of affinity either.