Multidimensional experience zero-zero-one-nine-nine-seven: the lighted panel before you flickers as your finger presses the red button, igniting the turbo thrusters. In a headlong rush, the mother ship speeds forward propelled at light speed into the darkness ahead. A yellow light on the panel begins to flash a menacing warning as you continue to accelerate, setting the controls for the heart of an undiscovered galaxy. The light turns from yellow to red, and the ship rumbles, feeling for a moment like it might split apart. Instead of playing it safe and easing up on the throttle, you continue hastening into the unknown, pushing the envelope with each thrust while blazing your own path into the future.

Streaming through the 1990's into the approaching millennium, people again find themselves at a crossroads of converging paths from which to choose. This crossroads is both on an individual level of making personal choices regarding lifestyle, and on a more global level as evolving humans. As with any crossroads demanding a choice, certain individuals, usually the artists, push the bounds or envelope of society, expanding the options for everyone. They create new concepts of "what is possible." Authors James Redfield and Neale Donald Walsch and music producer, Rick Rubin, all have selected paths not traditionally traveled, which reflects their individual personalities. These are three individuals who are influencing the overall direction of society, and in recent conversations with us, Redfield, Rubin and Walsch offered their insights into pushing the envelope in the nineties.

"What I'm doing is reporting insights which are already happening in the culture. The information in the books is recognizable because people are already having experiences they're calling spiritual, representing insights into a new world view." The insights James Redfield refers to are the ones contained in his books, The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight. Beginning from a vision, James wrote his original nine insights into fictional story, in which the main character journeys on a spiritual odyssey. Originally turned down by the publishers to whom he submitted the manuscript, Redfield self-published, and did his own marketing by touring bookstores with copies of his book in the trunk of his car. An avalanche of attention began escalating until Time-Warner, Inc. finally took notice, and now after two and half years, The Celestine Prophecy is still in the top ten on the national best sellers list. No other book presently on the list comes close to these sales figures, validating James' concept that people are "evolving from an old world view, characterized by seeing the world as dead or operating like a machine, to new world view where the universe has an intelligence. The mysterious coincidences or synchronicity happening in our lives are evidence of this intelligence, guiding us through life and leading us towards our higher destiny."

Running the business out of his dormitory at NYU, Rick Rubin started producing Rap records and co-founded Def Jam Records at a time when rap as an art form, was moving from the Black urban sub-culture into the cultural mainstream. Suddenly everybody was buying and playing Rap songs in ghetto blasters across the nation, and Def Jam Records became a million dollar business. Interestingly, timing and not being afraid to take chances, have continually contributed to the success of Rick Rubin, who is now a grammy-nominated producer and owner of American Recordings, an affiliate of WEA. With regards to his timing, Rick says, "I'm doing things that touch me personally, and that I feel, and am moved by. I don't plan or imagine what's going to be successful, but instead I try to be as pure and natural as I can, feeling what I feel, liking what I like, and being true to that." As far as taking chances and pushing the envelope, he told us, "Almost anytime I've had success doing a particular kind of music, I end up doing something different rather than staying with what I've had my success in. People say, `Why aren't you still doing Rap records? You had so much success doing them.' I'm not feeling Rap records now, where at the time I was doing them, it was an exciting movement and community to be part of. I still like Rap, but I don't have the same relationship to it I had before. As time goes on, I'm always trying to do new things, and trying not to get stuck with the label, `you do this.' I've never had that tag, and I've broken through enough times by not doing what was expected of me, that now luckily, people leave me alone and let me do what I want to do."

Early one morning, when Neale Donald Walsch sat down and wrote out his original questions to God, his frustrations were high and his life was plummeting to a new low. After finishing the questions, which basically asked why things were the way they were, he automatically began writing out the answers. Neale likens the process to "taking dictation," and said, "It feels like someone whispering into my right ear. A voiceless voice inside my head that says things to me, and I write down what's being said, literally one sentence at a time. It's as if I were listening to a voice that doesn't have a voice." Eventually these questions and answers became the book, Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, which as a paperback sold over 100,000 copies in non-traditional outlets, and is now being released in hardcover by Putnam Publishing, and as an audiotape by Audio Literature, with Ed Asner and Ellen Burstyn both reading the part of God. Being more than merely an exercise which produced a book, Neale's conversations with the divine changed his life as he became more connected to himself and his own intentions in life. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel compelled to run after success, something elusive, always leaving him feeling empty and unfulfilled. When we asked Neale about his own experiences pushing the envelope, and changing society, he answered, "On this planet we say one thing, then do another. When asked how can we close the gap between what we say we desire, and what we are doing with our actions, I answer, `We do it one person at a time.' It's a decision involving great bravery, enormous courage, and incredible individual commitment to take the higher road, or as some would say, the road less traveled."

To take this reference deeper, the poet Robert Frost, in his timeless prose, "The Road Not Taken," talks about two diverging paths coming together, and how the author regrets having to make a choice between the two, but none-the-less must choose in order to continue moving forward. As Frost, who was also one to push society's envelope, eloquently stated, "I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." In the case of James Redfield, Rick Rubin and Neale Donald Walsch, they have consciously and purposely selected less traveled paths, and in all three cases, the paths they have each chosen came from going with their feelings and intuition, especially when these paths strayed from conventional routes. The idea of following one's intuition is not new. In fact people often dance around it with terms like "playing a hunch" and "following one's heart," which are essentially allusions to people listening to their intuition and higher self, and if they become really good at it, becoming successful by pushing the envelope and following their own path.

In a recent interview, James Redfield elaborated on his own views of intuition by explaining, "People first start by seeing the mysterious coincidences before realizing these coincidences are leading them somewhere. If they listen, these synchronicities lead towards a transcended experience. Once we've had that experience, we raise our vibration up into connecting with the divine and our higher self. From the higher self comes what I call intuition. When we start to actually take the risk and follow our intuition, is when synchronicity really takes off. In my case, when I'm in the space where I can connect into my own highest intuitions, what I do is look out there in the world from my reading and my own exploration, and I get very firm intuitions about what's happening out there. It's not that I'm inventing or thinking something up, but instead all I'm doing is intuitively describing what's already occurring."

Rick Rubin described his intuitive process similarly, but in terms of his role as a music producer, when he said, "I have always been in touch with the intuitive part of myself, and knowing what I like, with my goal being to keep finding things that move me. Knowing what intuition is and how it works is really my main job as producer. An artist may can play a song fifty times, and one time it's magic, and everything comes together with all the emotion behind it. I can't always say why it happens, but when it happens I know it. I do things like meditating to stay open, and really listen to my intuition. Often in the production process, I don't feel like I really know what I'm saying, but when I hear it, it sounds right. We were working on a song for the new Johnny Cash album, and there seemed to be something missing. I said to one of the musicians, `Why don't we try a twelve string guitar through the Leslie (revolving speaker) for this part.' Now, I don't know what that sounds like because it's not a sound I've heard before, but something in me said that's what it's supposed to be. Afterwards we tried it, and it sounded great."

For Neale Donald Walsch, his intuition is his communications with God, which he calls "inspired writing." He elaborated by telling us, "It's like Bach or Beethoven, but instead of musical notes, my communications turned out to be words. Anyone who listens to their music knows they were directly inspired by God, and my communications are akin to that. Furthermore, the only answers that exist with any value, are the answers found inside. Most people have been taught not to trust those inner answers because in many cases they don't conform with the answers the outside world is giving us, or suggests we ought to be receiving. It is a rare person who can overcome those outer pressures from the world at large and the society in which they live, and become their own authority. Allow the physical world to take care of itself along with the laws of the physical universe, yet do not deny the God experience within each of us."

All of us are endowed with this intuitive connection to the divine, no matter what way we perceive God. James Redfield, Rick Rubin, and Neale Donald Walsch are three successful individuals who use their intuition to both chart their own course to the stars, as well as influencing the overall direction and evolution of humankind. James Redfield pushes the envelope by writing about alternate healing using our human energy systems, and how past lives and reincarnation fit into why we are each here, and our individual missions in life. Rick Rubin pushes it through his unorthodox and spiritual approach to the music industry, a business long known for a polarity and often thin separation between art and greed-head commercialism. Neale Donald Walsch pushes it with an uncommon dialogue with God, something society used to put you away for doing. By talking with God, he helps each of us become aware of own connection to the divine, of which we are all a part.

As we approach the 21st Century, signaling the beginning of the third millennium, and soon thereafter, the age of Aquarius, we as people seem to find ourselves aware of our own spirituality, and reassessing some of the traditionally held ideas regarding our world. James Redfield, who has also been active recently with "Save The Trees," terms this "a new world view," brought on by a move from the mechanistic views, prevalent since their inception by Rene Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton, to a more humanistic view, where everything is seen as connected into One. This will be the point where science and spirituality join hands, and agree on the make-up of the world around us, and our individual connections to the divine, including the timeless question, "Why are we here?" This is slowly happening, but still remains to be experienced in the future. In the movie "Mindwalk," a conversation between a scientist, poet and politician, the scientist answers the question in terms of modern science by saying, "The essence of life is self organization," maintaining the system. The poet responds later by asking, "Where are the other people in your system? The ones you love? The real people?"

Putting the people back into our systems needs to be a shared goal for all of us. This includes connecting to the divine, which is by virtue ourselves, particularly as we approach a new crossroads in human evolution. James Redfield, Rick Rubin and Neale Donald Walsch all show that by listening to our intuitions and not being afraid to follow the road less traveled, we can all push the envelope, evolving society into new dimensions of awareness and the infinite discovery of the 21st Century.

This article first appeared in Magical Blend Magazine

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