Guided by the Light - An Interview
An interview with Frank Coppieters
by Barbara McDaniel
Frank Coppieters has relied on guidance to chart the path of his life. Now he shares wisdom drawn from a universal source through regular Inspired Guidance sessions.
Twice a week, Frank Coppieters enters the studio at his Living Light Center in Portland, Oregon and prepares himself to receive what he calls “inspired guidance.” As he meditates, others come to join him. Most are Reiki students, but some are drawn through other connections. After about forty-five minutes of meditation, the guidance begins. “It’s like these words drop into my head out of nowhere, really, because I’m not thinking about any- thing,” Frank explains. He speaks the words and records them. After the session, he types them up in English and Dutch and sends them out over email. It’s part of the spiritual and healing work that Frank and his wife, Kathy, offer at the Living Light Center.
Inspired Guidance
October 29, 2004
Love is not blind to suffering.
It is patient though in its compassion and it will use your presence whenever you are available.
It is your inner teacher that leads you to an outer one.
In the joy of this recognition there is no more separation.
Both disappear as they bow respectfully to each other.
When you listen with your whole being
you will hear in the attack of the other a desperate cry for love.
Such listening eliminates much sorrow.
Who is speaking these teachings? Frank has theories but no hard answers. But then Frank doesn’t deal in the world of hard answers. He is quite comfortable shifting into different realms, then returning to this familiar reality. Reiki Master, shaman, counselor, and spiritual teacher, he is grateful to be offering his services to help others.
A Spiritual Journey
Frank Coppieters grew up in Belgium and found his way into academia, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Literature, but he was searching for something. “In my twenties and early thirties,” he recalls, “prior to Reiki, there was often this question: Am I ever going to find what I’m supposed to be doing? I had a tenured position at the university–it was a great job. But something inside kept saying, ‘I don’t think this it.’ I was always hoping that there was something else for me.”
At twenty-one, Frank learned to meditate, and meditation has remained the foundation of his spiritual practice. Then, as a young professor, he met the work of Polish theatre artist Jerzy Gro- towski. Grotowski was fascinated by the different manifestations of energy in the human body, especially the relationship between physical ener- gy and a higher, spiritual energy.
“I took workshops with the Grotowski people in Poland, and wonderful stuff happened to me,” Frank says. “There was definitely a mystical com- ponent to the work. Often we would work for three or four hours on end, and at some point, something would shift and I would be in a differ- ent realm altogether. And then afterwards, there was lots of energy.”
“Still, at the same time I was doing all this, “ he continues, “I didn’t find my own place within it. I was not an actor myself, but it was a strong passion. I was wondering, why am I doing this? What can I do with this?”
Inspired Guidance
November 10, 2004
During meditation ask yourself:
who am I really? who am I really?
Whatever you can think of is not it.
You are way beyond that.
Asking yourself this question deeply and continuously
will open the doors of perception.
A great sage offers you this insight:
The world is an illusion.
Only Brahman, only God is real.
Brahman is the world.
As Frank went deeper with the Grotowski work, the longing for something else intensified. He sought spiritual teachers and trained with Hungarian shaman Joska Soos. “It became increasingly difficult to be in the three-dimensional world, the world of the mind,” he remembers. “Then I became interested in Osho, so I was reading his books. I was reading Krishnamurti and I was visiting Krishnamurti. I had a grant to come to Boulder, Colorado where I studied with Chogyam Trungpa . . . I had this incredible opportunity to be with spiritual giants.”
Eventually he reached a kind of crisis that propelled him upward and outward. Frank left the university and started traveling. His path took him to spiritual leader Osho’s commune in Oregon, where he met his wife, Kathy, and decided to stay. “I was already in that period very much trusting for guidance to come,” Frank says, “and whatever the guidance would say, I would follow it.”
Inspired Guidance
November 5, 2004
The spiritual warrior knows of no defeat.
Your heart is your armor.
As it breaks into a thousand pieces
each part becomes a call for compassion
and this can save the world . . .
Your longing for a better world is legitimate.
It is based on knowledge and truth
and especially on knowing who you really are.
Guidance led Frank to massage school, and mas- sage school led him to Reiki in 1986. “The class was extremely profound for me, especially the initiations. I was on fire–literally was hot, on fire, for five or six weeks. I loved it, and I felt it was an answer. I had been searching for a long, long time.”
He goes on, “I remember Paul Mitchell saying in the class that this was his living, and I was thinking, ‘My God, how fortunate he is!’ Reiki was very much closer to what I was wanting to do.”
Frank had opportunities to practice Reiki on his massage clients, and the feedback was encouraging. “A whole intuitive part of me was coming out,” he says. “It was a new journey in my life to see myself as a potential healing channel.”
Second degree followed a year later, but that experience wasn’t as strong as first degree . . . at first. “That took some time, “ he says. “But about six or seven months after the class, I felt that I had become quite different in terms of being able to relate to . . . I guess you’d say ‘other dimensions.’”
Again, guidance led him to the next stage of his Reiki path–in the form of deep pain in his lower back. “I was in a lot of pain for four or five weeks and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.” Finally, Frank received four consecutive Reiki treatments. “In every single treatment something became clear about my process,” he says. “And the final piece was that I really wanted to become a master. I hadn’t allowed myself to go there, mostly because of the money. I couldn’t see myself spending that amount . . . well, I just didn’t have it. So I allowed myself to consider it and, within a couple of days, my back was better and so was my attitude.” Phil Morgan initiated Frank as a Reiki Master in 1989.
Inspired Guidance
November 3, 2004
Your earth body is susceptible to all events happening in the world.
Your cosmic body receives its light directly from the center of the universe.
It sustains you steadily through everything that comes and goes . . .
Your guides and teachers applaud you for your presence.
A planet without light workers is unlivable. You are the light that you are looking for. Look within . . .
Your heart is big enough to bless the whole world.
The foray into what you might call channeling was led by guidance as well. In 1991, he had a session with London medium, Eileen Dann. “She felt that one day I was going to bring through channeled material from a master.” When he returned to Portland, he decided to try it.
Frank says he dabbled for about nine years. As his web site tells it, he “would open himself up to receive verbal guidance and speak it into the silence of the meditation.” His web site further explains, “Shortly after the events of 9/11, he decided to record these and send them out over email in an attempt to share messages of light in a world that suddenly seemed to be even darker than before.”
Inspired Guidance
October 27, 2004
Service to the light is the connecting link between all dimensions.
While on earth do not run from your shadow. It contains your strengths and talents.
In your body millions of cells are serving you constantly.
What a miracle of creation!
Gratitude is the appropriate response for this service.
The light serves everyone and everything indiscriminately.
In your essence you are light.
To serve the light is your calling and your destiny. It is the reason you took form.
This will not change when your form changes.
Through your awakening the world may remember its purpose:
peace, happiness, rejoicing in sharing one’s love light.
You are the new people You are the old people You are the same people Deeper than before.
You are Love
What is the source of this intuitive wisdom? Frank says, “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. I think it could be a mixture of phenomena. Some- times I feel it could be the guidance of the people sitting there. It’s hard to know who the ‘I’ is-it does feel transpersonal. It doesn’t feel like I am in my regular mode of speaking. It’s broader than that. It doesn’t even seem to come out of the thinking part of me. There is a certain energetic impulse that looks for words within my files, so to speak, to see if it finds them. I feel I have to allow some time for the words to come out the way they’re supposed to. It doesn’t feel like it’s one master-more like a body of know- ledge that comes through according to the occasion.”
The messages have a common theme. “First of all, they encourage people to see who we really are, what is at the core of our being, which is always defined as love, that we are love already. And then they emphasize the importance of waking up-how critical that is for the whole planet. That is our biggest contribution to the world-just waking up and trusting that each one of us has some guidance inside as to how to do that, that we are not alone, that we are supported in that.”
Frank continues, “Also, because the form is a meditative form, it draws people into a deep silence; it draws me into a deep silence. And of course, being a channel for the Reiki energy is mostly silent, and so the inspired guidance gives the words that come with it.” Someday Frank would like to compile the Inner Guidance material into a book.
Inspired Guidance
October 22, 2004
Surrender to love.
This is the one decision you will never regret.
With love as your teacher
life flows in unexpected ways and brings you to the home
where Divine Mother and Divine Father
are always holding you in a tender embrace.
Once you know that love exists even on earth and that you belong to it
a path of initiation opens up
where all illusions are seen for what they are.
This path you do not walk alone.
Friends, teachers and even some difficult people share this journey until you realize all is one.
Steeped in unity consciousness you can deeply relax
knowing that the world is not so real as compared to the reign of love
which is eternal and invincible.
Love’s temple stands untouched amidst lies, corruption and injustice.
Here the initiate finds strength to move about in a world hungry for harmony.
The bodhisattvas are returning to the world until the light is shared with all.
When these words touch your minds or your hearts you are surrendering to the flow of love.
Kuan Yin “bodhisattva of compassion” avatar of the age
is pouring her essence into you and into the world
so all may live in decency, without poverty,
in love, in peace
Guidance has led Frank Coppieters exactly to the life work that fulfills him. “I consider myself very happy in many regards,” he says, “but especially that I have found professionally what I came here to do . . . and that the time is right for that.” Frank’s courageous example opens the door for others to trust their own inspired guidance to find their true path.
