JL. Please tell me where you found
the children who participated in your documentary "The Sixth Sense
of Children".
LB. We did not really go out and
handpick children because we had a very limited budget and very
limited time, so we gathered children that were around the Nyack
vicinity with the cooperation of their parents. We just asked them
if they had any intuitive stories or experiences. And the kids were
really honest. The interesting thing for me in this is that I had
already basically written the script and, after interviewing the
children, I did not have to change a thing- or alter it to what they
were saying. It just worked.
JL. How is that you wrote the script
prior to the interviews?
LB. I wrote the script because I had
the different segments in mind, and knew how I wanted it to be seen,
and everything they said exactly fit. So it was kind of amazing.
JL. What were the age groups of the
children interviewed?
LB. The ages were 5 through 17.
JL. Was there a particular child
(children) that stood out as having greater intuitive abilities?
LB. Some of them seemed more talented
and more verbal than others, and humorous, but I think each one of
the children saw things differently and had his own experience, so I
couldn't really grade them. Some of them were more sensational, but
that wasn't exactly what I was after, although that's what people
want to see or hear. These are deep children and the more you
scratch the surface, they come up with more stories.
JL. Do you think there is any kind of
pattern with children who have ADHD and are also extremely
intuitive?
LB. There are many children who have
learning disabilities that are physiological in origin and that need
medical assistance. That said, there are many children who are
talented intuitive children living in a western culture with a
mental mindset that has no room to look at these children in any
other way. So they are just categorized as learning disabled because
they behave differently. I was recently told that a government
prerequisite now for foster children that show ADHD-type behavior,
is to give them Ritalin. And I see so many parents putting their
kids on prescription drugs because someone is telling them it’s
their only solution. This is why I think this work is so pioneering,
to give people alternative ways of seeing their children. In our
culture, the only focus or explanation of behavior is psychological
simply because that is what is mentally acceptable.
JL. What about the coincidences with
Albert Einstein and Emily Dickinson? In your documentary you state
that Albert Einstein did not learn to talk until he was 4 and he had
trouble with math and other learning disabilities, as did Emily
Dickinson.
LB. The interesting thing is that
Albert Einstein was such an innovative thinker and Emily Dickinson
was so creative without worldly experience. They would not have done
well in American schools today. Emily Dickinson was a recluse and
depressive. Albert Einstein already failed math! I will give you an
everyday example of Emily Dickinson: A lot of teachers come to me
and show me class pictures. I read each student and explain to the
teacher how to best deal with him or her. In this fourth grade
teacher’s class picture I saw this one girl and said, “You know, she
is very creative.” And the teacher said that the girl had been
tested since she was two, and was found to be borderline mentally
challenged. She never did homework and never handed in anything. I
didn’t see that. She seemed like such a bright, creative child. Well
this teacher, because she believes in trying things, gave the kids a
poetry assignment. She called me up months later and said that this
little girl wrote the most beautiful, mature poem. It was the first
time she ever handed in any homework. So this is a child that falls
between the cracks. Other children who are economically deprived
and use their intuitive talents just to physically survive on the
street fall through the cracks too. None of these special talents
are recognized as possible learning tools. We are from a fast food,
fast fix culture that just wants to solve the symptoms and not the
problem. There are so many other parts to children we can appreciate
and nurture to help them cope and grow. My questions is “So why
aren't we listening?” This is why I wanted to make this film.
JL. How long did you work on "The
Sixth Sense of Children”?
LB. I wanted to do this documentary
for about ten years, but I've been working with intuitive children
for over 30 years. I taught my first class to children in the early
70s.
JL. Didn’t you have a school that you
ran?
LB. At that time nobody would allow an
intuitive school, so I just taught private classes. Now I've been
invited to teach a three credit graduate course for NY State
teachers using my book as the text. So that's a huge step. After
one of my first classes in the 70’s, a mother of one ten- year-old
student called me up and said, “What are you doing? Are you starting
some kind of kid’s revolution?” I said, "Why?" And she said,
"Because I yelled at my kid and he turned to me and he read me, and
said ‘You're not mad at me, you're mad because dad's not home.’ He
was right, and I didn’t know what to say to him.”
JL. How do you think the
children acquire these intuitive abilities?
LB. I think some children are
intuitively gifted. But all children just came from the other side
and are still in touch with the voices of their souls. You can see
it when you look into the eyes of a little infant. We all have
these abilities. The youngest children in the film talk about angels
and imaginary friends. The older ones talk about their problems.
Children start learning very early that this culture rewards
intellect not sensitivity, not even wisdom. And so they learn very
quickly that in order to belong, in order to be loved, they must
move away from their imaginary friends and angels and soul
connections and get very mentally focused.
JL. At what point do you think
these children lose that sense?
LB. I would say, it used to be around
the age of 7, but now I would say it is around 4 or 5. They focus
away from it. They don’t want to remember it.
JL. Why wouldn't they want to?
LB. A lot kids also remember their
early impressions but they don’t talk about them. They suffer for
these sensitivities and impressions. They keep it quiet to fit in.
We are taught to value intelligence not intuition. It’s still taboo
to talk about a psychic experience although everyone has them. Once
someone talks about it, everybody starts talking about his or her
own experiences, usually with excitement.
JL. Why do you think it's still taboo
in this country?
LB. I think it's because we are
afraid of what we don’t mentally know. Lack of education and
information, organized thinking, religious dogma that sometimes has
little to do with spirituality.
JL. Are you familiar with the quote
that Einstein made about the importance of intuition?
LB. Yes, and he is a good example of
that. The sad thing is that by squelching this sense of wonder and
gift of intuition in children, we squelch a society. We silence the
potential Einstein's that create and invent and dream outside of the
box. Most intuitive children are sensitive, and conform or suffer
for their talents. In other societies these same talents are
recognized at birth and children are cultivated to become potential
leaders or healers or holy people of tribes and societies. In our
culture these same talents categorize children as being learning
disabled. What's wrong with this picture?
JL. Do you think that some people feel
safer using the intellectual part of their mind?
LB. I think they've been trained to
feel safe that way, because they ‘think’ there’s no other way. Once
people get in touch with that balance inside them of the physical,
which is the intellect, and the spiritual, which is the intuitive,
they find they compliment rather than compensate for each other.
Your body can try to be a great visionary but you can't see anything
without your soul, and if you have great vision, you can’t make
anything happen without your body.
JL. What I am hearing from you is
that there is a real imbalance and the imbalance has to be shifted
somehow.
LB. Yes. Why not use the talents of
the soul along with the talents of the body to benefit your life,
the world? That is why I am making this film, to remind people of
this natural connection we find in children and to maintain it, to
help change the current state of affairs. After teaching one of my
first psychic development classes I gave questionnaires out to the
parents. They really weren’t scientific per se, but I wanted to know
if they noticed any changes in the children. At first they didn't
really notice much. After about 3 to 6 months, they saw that the
children were more in touch with feelings of family members, they
were communicating better; they were more comfortable in school,
even the hyperactive ones- and I had three ten- year-old boys this
way. A year later, they said that even those boys improved
communication with their siblings and they behaved better in
school. The children had more empathy for family members and better
understanding of what was going on around them and in the world.
JL. Do you have any other ideas of
using this film to implement this?
LB. I would like to show “The Sixth
Sense of Children” in public forums- to the general public and also
selectively with lectures to teachers and parent/family groups. All
of us were children and we need to see that we are all still
spiritual beings inhabiting this earth in a real way. I want this to
be a film that opens people’s minds in realistic and social ways.
JL. What about traveling, would that
be an issue?
LB. Not for me. I would love to visit
other cultures and compare how differently intuitive children are
seen and treated.
JL. What about the time and money?
LB. We are looking for more money to
expand the project. I would love to direct the whole film. I think
that it would be a worthy investment. I would want it to be made
with integrity and respect and, as with all my work, in a way that
everyone could understand.
JL. What about television?
LB. Certainly, I am open to doing
something for television as well.
JL. Are there any particular parts of
the world that you would like to focus on?
LB. I would like to also focus on
Tibet, India, China, South America, Africa.
JL. Why those countries in
particular? Because of their culture?
LB. Because of their way of dealing
with children and spirituality. In Brazil, children attend séances
with channelers as a normal part of their lives. In Africa and Asia
they openly worship ancestors on the other side. In Tibet and India
they daily discuss dreams and past life experiences. Native American
and Siberian children go on vision quests and apprentice with
leaders and healers based on their natural intuitive talents.
JL. What about someone like the Dalai Lama?
LB. He would be wonderful, as he is a
spiritual and world leader. He is so in touch with what we are
talking about - he was also an intuitive child and still comfortable
with it. It is very normal in the Tibetan culture. It is how they
find their spiritual leaders.
JL. What about people that are
really well known for their intuitive or Parapsychological
abilities?
LB. I think I would much rather film
the extraordinary experiences of ordinary children. Of course
including professionals who have worked with intuitive children will
give additional information. But I don’t want to interview
professional psychics. There are only a few people in the Parapsychological field who have worked with children. Some are from
the Rhine Research Center at Duke University and I am in touch with
several who have already agreed to be included in the film.
JL. Do you think there are scientific tests for measuring someone's ability?
LB. They are devising new ways of
testing brain waves of psychics, but science has not developed the
tools to test this energy. They use tests that are boring and
repetitive, that test only two abilities- clairvoyance and
telepathy. Recently science finally discovered that there finally is
something that holds the whole universe together. You can’t see it
but they know it’s there. So they named it dark matter. A strange
name.
JL. Like Qi
energy.
LB. Yes, it is life energy. I am a channeler, if you communicate with any spirit, they don't refer to
dark and light or good and evil, they refer to learning and
growing. There's no hierarchy or levels of spirituality. To me that
is just a mental construct.
JL. What about unlearning? How long
do you think that it would take for someone to unlearn what they have accumulated throughout the years?
LB. I don't think that it takes a
long time. I think that it takes willingness. If you are mentally
trying to let go of psychological baggage, you will find yourself
going in mental circles. If you are willing to look at it outside
the mental box, it takes on a different perspective. No continual
baggage. It’s like when you reach an answer after you’ve been
struggling with a problem for a while. It’s just a little voice
inside you that says a few words where you go, “Oh that's right, I
forgot that.” It's very simple. We ‘think’ it should be
complicated.
JL. I know that you've talked about an
exercise that you do that focuses on the solar plexus - what the
Taoists call the dan tien.
LB. That's right, it is something I
teach every client and student. Many believe this intuitive center
was our first ‘evolutionary brain’. When our lives became more
complex and we developed our mental brain we began to overcompensate
and ignored this intuitive part of ourselves. But everybody still
feels it. They have a gut feeling, a hunch, or butterflies in the
solar plexus. We ignore it because we are taught to focus only on
thinking. I sometimes visualize Western culture as a bunch of people
with big heads atop little feet with nothing in between except a lot
of stomachaches.
JL. Right, a lot of stomachaches and
mental illness.
LB. All the mental stress we endure by
using only a small part of ourselves to guide us and not our whole
being.
JL. And in order to tap into that,
as you suggest in your book, to do those exercises.
LB. Yes, sitting in your solar plexus,
in your gut. It is not hard to know the feelings inside you, this
simple, visceral feelings- the voice of the body and soul talking to
you. It is a response not a reaction- the voice of the moment and
the future, the voice of wisdom and of thought combined. It's also
the voice of intuition along with physical knowledge, so it’s a
wonderful combination. When you're in your head you're stuck in the
moment with all of your mental and emotional baggage and reactions.
When you are in your gut you have inner balance, the best of both
worlds of self and the addition of wisdom, perspective and
intuition.
JL. Peace of mind - How difficult do
you think it is to maintain that balance in this day and age
especially, in a place like NYC?
LB. I would say that because we are
so trained to live in our brains, we would ‘think’ it is impossible.
Once you get in touch with those visceral gut responses - it's
really where we all live- you want to stay there more and more. It
just feels good and directs you in the outside world, so it doesn’t
matter where you are. The idea of using this ‘living meditation’ is
to be able to call on it on the subway during rush hour to make
quick decisions. If being directed by your brain was so right,
people wouldn't be so stressed, have so many psychosomatic illness,
they would feel more capable and less helpless. When you sit in your
gut and use your inner balance, that simple visceral voice, you feel
whole, and the outside world doesn’t influence you as much.
JL. When you actually lose that sense
in yourself, I'm talking about you personally; how do you then get
it back? How often can you maintain that state throughout the
day?
LB: Pretty much throughout the day.
It is your natural state so my body likes feeling this way. I can
sense when I am losing my inner balance without thinking, and can
come back to it easily again. It takes much more effort to painfully
stay in my head where I’m immediately uncomfortable and emotional.
Anyone can do it. You don’t have to be a professional psychic.
JL. Then you feel a sense of ---
how
would you describe it?
LB. I would say a sense of active
detachment, natural timing. Being very present but sitting back in
myself just feeling safe and comfortable facing any situation, an
inner peace while I’m actively engaging in my life.
JL. Do you think that anxiety in
general is a trigger - an indication that somebody has lost his or
her balance?
LB. What happens to a body is when we
lose that inner balance the body immediately responds- it gets
scared, fearful, it feels helpless, out of control, it doesn't know
what is missing, but it knows something is wrong. So it goes into
its head to figure it out. Except all those fears and thinking keep
promoting the fear. When you come back to balance, anxiety is
immediately gone and you have a better sense about what was going
on. Once you experience this natural way once or twice it's where
you want to be. It’s better than any drugs, because you don't have
any side affects.
JL. The children in your film seem to
be able to do that naturally.
LB. That is the importance of the
film. To help children retain their inner balance so that they have
self esteem and use all of their potential. Peaceful, creative
children grow to become peaceful and creative cooperative adults.
That can change the world. But right now, I'll tell you most kids
have problems, they see shrinks, and some have been put on drugs for
years. The more intuitively talented a child, the greater trouble he
has fitting in a defensive society.
JL. So, already, society has given up
on them.
LB. Most intuitive children are
labeled as problem children, hyperactive children, moody children,
depressive children - yet, if you speak with them with greater
sensitivity, they are incredible people. Older than their years in
their insights, but they are still growing children, so they’re
frustrated. Some have cut themselves, even been institutionalized
for depression or suicide attempts because no one understands what
they are feeling, not even themselves anymore.
JL. You mean cutting as in borderline
personality disorder?
LB. Again, my sense about cutting
that is increasingly popular among teens- the time when so much of
these sensitivities are openly rejected- and borderline personality
is just a form of labeling. Many of these children are out of
balance, they are taught not to listen to their souls and they feel
greatly disconnected. I know some children have a chemical imbalance
and need psychological help, but what about the others who do not
have this condition? I’ll give you a good early example of this. It
happened and I put it in my book. I read for a mother who was having
serious problems with her belligerent three- year- old daughter. I
could tell she was really intuitive without having met her. I
suggested the mother take her for play therapy at first. She began
seeing a therapist next to my office. One day, I saw the girl and
her mother in his office and stopped to say hello. Well, this girl
was so angry, she refused to acknowledge me and became more and more
hostile when I tried to say hello to her. I walked away, for some
reason turned at the last minute, and asked her if she would like to
see my office. She instantly slid from her mother’s lap and as soon
as she placed one foot in my office, she became calm, happy, and
sweet. It was like she was a different child. She sat on my couch,
watered my plants, talked to me and didn’t want to leave. I knew
this sudden change was not about me, so I asked the therapist, what
happened in his office just before her visit. He couldn’t think of
anything different. He said he saw a client who was a stockbroker
that was very angry about his work situation. This child was
reacting to the energy in the room and as soon as that environment
changed, she changed. This child would be put on medication rather
than explore any possibility of the potential talent in this child.
JL. I recently read this quote by Krishnamurti about fear and he says that ultimately fear is about
control - about people wanting to dominate other people and the
ultimate fear being death.
LB. I agree with that, but I also
think that the fear that we feel in a very daily way is when we lose
that connection to our soul. It is like losing your way, your
compass and then we try to control everything because we feel out of
control. We wouldn't have fear of death if we felt that connection –
that balance. The body innately feels something is missing, and
doesn't mentally know what it is, so it gets scared of its own
existence. But when you feel that whole sense of you, then you're
rooted. You are like a tree, and when the winds blow any way they
want, you can’t be moved. If you are attached to a mental concept or
the outside world that changes every minute, you lose your inner
stability. I think it’s what everyone is looking for, that natural
root inside them. All these motivational speakers, and New Age, and
Eastern teachers talk a lot of talk to allay these fears telling you
to follow them or you need years of practice and training to find
this root. It just blows my mind. It’s there for everybody and easy
to feel. People are just shelling out their money. It’s like a
carnival.
JL. Yes, it is a carnival.
LB. Everyone has all of these
gazillion techniques and answers and it is so simple and accessible.
That is why I feel this film is important. For children and families
to come back to themselves and live fruitful lives.
The Healer”
an independent motion picture, Screenplay and original story by
Litany Burns.
JL. Please tell me about your film
“The Healer”?
The Healer is a film with many
levels. It's an original East /West production. I'm American and my
co-producer is Chinese from Hong Kong. She had an idea and I created
the story, so it has an interesting sensibility, a universal one. It
is basically a genuine love story that spans lifetimes. I loved
writing it because it was so visually layered. I don’t know if
there’s anything out there like it.
JL. What locations are you
considering?
LB. The locations will depend, of
course, on financing, which we are getting. I would like to film in
China, Peru and maybe Canada. It's a fictional story, but involves
three interwoven stories that revolve around several characters. We
are now looking for a leading male actor or a director.
JL. What actors are in your wish list?
LB. My wish list - for actors would be
someone who could handle such a character- driven action drama:
Richard Gere, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day Lewis, Ralph Fiennes, Jeff
Bridges. These are actors that I feel would have the depth to
express the evolution of the main character. As far as directors,
of course, Ang Lee, Lasse Hallstrom, Sam Mendes, some of the Latin
directors from South America. Someone who deals well with layered
visuals and different cultures. It was probably the most difficult
film I've written.
JL. Yes, I just can imagine it from
how you describe it. I bet it will be really beautiful.
LB. Visually, the images are quite
amazing, and it's a passionate love story- very geared toward the
masses, but with a many-layered message. The fun of writing “The
Healer” was that it just kept taking these turns and twists without
my knowing. It has three stories involved in three different time
periods. It questions many things. We can lie on the psychologist's
couch and recount why we play this behavior or that behavior, but
what if there is a whole other time before this life that generated
certain behavior. Once some of this information is revealed, would
it make sense? Why was it revealed? And should anyone believe it?
Being a clairvoyant, I love writing for film. I see the scenes and
the characters and I hear their voices. It’s a unique experience.
The challenge, of course is putting it into physical words and
direction for others.
JL. The main issue at this point is
finding the right director or actor or a really good producer who has
a track record?
LB. For this film, we really want to find
the right people. We want to do it as an independent film because
that way we don't lose control. Otherwise the story will be
sanitized.
JL. Do you think this film hasn't
happened because the time hasn't been right for it?
LB. Absolutely, I think the time is
coming. This film is meant to be made. It is meant to happen. This
is an important film, an opening for a lot of other films that deal
with adventure in a different way in the commercial venue.
JL. It sounds amazing.
LB. To me, I love the story, the
characters and the idea of peeking around the corners of life. These
are just ordinary people and yet their lives are not what they seem.
That’s the essence of “The Healer.”
JL. I THINK THAT YOU WILL SHAKE A LOT OF
"BUSHES" WITH THIS!!!!!!!
