Gawain, Shakti - A00048
"The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be."
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Honoring the Life of Shakti Gawain (1948-2018)
New World Library cofounder and bestselling author Shakti Gawain passed away on Nov. 11, 2018. Originally named Carol Louise Gawain, she was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on September 30, 1948, to the late Theodore Gawain and Elizabeth Miller Gawain.
Shakti attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., for several years before transferring to the University of California-Irvine, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in dance in June 1971. Her first, and only, nine-to-five job after graduation was as a receptionist at the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., shortly before the end of the Vietnam War. After that, she spent two years living in Europe and traveling in a van to places like Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
When she returned home to the United States, she moved to San Francisco and began pursuing her passion for consciousness and metaphysical studies in earnest. That’s where her path first crossed with Marc Allen’s in 1974. He nicknamed her Shakti, which is the Sanskrit word for the divine feminine creative force. It was such a perfect representation of the way she showed up in the world that her new name stuck.
Marc and Shakti started leading workshops together and writing and producing educational booklets out of the kitchen of their small apartment in Oakland, Calif. It was a shoestring operation that started with very little capital and extremely minimal sales. All that changed with the publication of Shakti’s first book, Creative Visualization, which experienced strong word-of-mouth sales right from the start. And then, in the early 1980s, Oprah Winfrey invited Shakti to be a guest on her yet-to-be-syndicated television show.
When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” went national in 1986 and re-aired Shakti’s interview, Creative Visualization was on its way to the international bestseller status it enjoys today, with over seven million copies sold worldwide. New World Library, which was called Whatever Publishing at the time, was also on its way to becoming the widely recognized independent publisher that it is today.
Shakti went on to write several other books, including Living in the Light, Return to the Garden, The Path of Transformation, The Four Levels of Healing, Creating True Prosperity, and Developing Intuition. Her books have sold more than 10 million copies and have been translated into 38 languages.
Shakti met and fell in love with Jim Burns, her husband of 28 years, on a beach in Big Sur, Cali., in 1988 during a beautiful sunset. They were married in August 1990 at her home on the island of Kauai in Hawaii, which was one of Shakti’s favorite places on Earth.
Shakti left New World Library in 1992 to start a publishing company with Jim called Nataraj Publishing, and she also opened a healing center in Mill Valley, Calif. She spent the remainder of her career mentoring individuals, publishing books and offering workshops.
Shakti was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the late 1990s and later with Lewy body disease. She lived with the diagnosis with the amazing strength and grace that made her who she was. In 2015 Shakti made the hard decision to step back from her public life so that she could focus on her own healing and spend time with Jim. With him by her side, she passed away peacefully from complications following hip surgery.
Shakti was an extraordinary example of a life well lived, and she will be greatly missed. She is survived by her husband, Jim Burns, and was preceded in death by her parents, Elizabeth Miller Gawain and Theodore Gawain. We are grateful that her legacy will live on through her books, audios, and videos — and in the lives of so many people she not only touched emotionally but genuinely helped to have better, more fulfilling lives
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Shakti Gawain (30 September 1948 – 11 November 2018)[1] was an American New Age and personal development writer.[2] Her books have sold over 10 million copies.[3]
Early life and education
[edit]Born Carol Louisa Gawain, she graduated from the University of California with a degree in fine arts and dance in the mid 1970s.[4]
Career
[edit]Gawain is best known for her book Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Life (1978).[5] The book focuses primarily on making changes to visual mental imagery, and attributes to it the capacity for hindering or facilitating an individual's potential, citing vivid anecdotal stories drawn from her experience and that of others to support her thesis.[6]
The first line of the book reads "Creative Visualization is the technique of creating what you want in your life". The following paragraphs define imagination as the "creative energy of the universe", and introduces the book as a means by which to use the so-defined imagination to "create what you truly want — love, fulfillment, enjoyment, satisfying relationships, rewarding work, self-expression, health, beauty, prosperity, inner peace, and harmony."[6]
The book has been a bestseller for nearly 40 years.[7] Subsequent to the popularity of the book, the practice of creative visualization, remained a staple and stable feature within the New Age movement, self-help media, and popular psychology of the 1980s, 1990s, and first decade of the 21st century.[8]
New World Library
[edit]Gawain was the co-founder, with Marc Allen, of New World Library Publishing Company, and founder of Nataraj Publishing, a division of New World Library.[1]
- Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life (1978)
- Living in the Light: A Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation (1985)
- Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance for Daily Life (1987)
- Contacting Your Inner Guide: Step-By-Step Guided Meditations Designed to Help You Make Choices That Are Right for You (1989)
- Return to the Garden (1989)
- Awakening: A Daily Guide to Conscious Living (1991)
- Every Moment: A Journal with Affirmations (1992)
- Meditations: Creative Visualization and Meditation Exercises to Enrich Your Life (1992)
- The Path of Transformation: How Healing Ourselves Can Change the World (1993)
- The Four Levels of Healing: A Guide to Balancing the Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, and Physical Aspects of Life (1996)
- Creative Visualization Meditations (1996)
- Creating True Prosperity (1997)
- Creative Visualization and Transformation (1997)
- Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship (2000)
- Reflections in the Light: Daily Thoughts and Affirmations (2003)
- Create Your Own Affirmations: A Creative Visualization Kit (2003)
- The Millionaire Course: A Visionary Plan for Creating the Life of Your Dreams (2003)
- Living in the Light: Follow Your Inner Guidance to Create a New Life and a New World (2011)
References
[edit]- ^ a b Maher, John (November 16, 2018). "Shakti Gawain, New World Library Cofounder, Dies at 70". Publisher's Weekly. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
- ^ "About Shakti Gawain". Shaktigawain.com. Archived from the original on 2012-05-12.
- ^ Bond, Gwenda (4 April 2014). "Inspirational and Spirituality Books 2014: Getting Centered". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
- ^ Shakti Gawain personal website
- ^ Hughes, Dennis and Janice. "Shakti Gawain Interview". www.shareguide.com. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
- ^ a b Gawain, Shakti (2008). Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create what You Want in Your Life. Nataraj Publishing. ISBN 978-1577316367.
- ^ Callahan, Maggie (20 November 2015). "Visualization: The Power Of Positive Thought". Yahoo! News. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
- ^ Rindfleish, J. (2005). "Consuming the self: New Age spirituality as 'social product' in consumer society". Consumption Markets & Culture. 8 (4): 343–360. doi:10.1080/10253860500241930. S2CID 144285623.
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Shakti Gawain, co-founder of New World Library and a New Age seeker who became a pioneer in the Mill Valley self-help movement of the 1970s with her breakthrough book “Creative Visualization,” died Nov. 11 of complications following hip surgery. She was 70.
Gawain had long dealt with Parkinson’s disease, and her health deteriorated after she fell at her home in Mill Valley. She died at Marin General Hospital.
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ACT NOWShe had been an international name in the world of personal growth and consciousness after she appeared as a guest on one of the first episodes of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” when it went national in 1986. After that, Gawain became a national brand in her own right, as a consciousness teacher, workshop leader, publisher and author, with more than 10 million copies sold of 12 books in 38 languages.
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“So many people have said that ‘Creative Visualization’ was the first book they read to start their journey of self-discovery,” said Kim Corbin, social media manager of New World Library, based in Novato. As evidence, Corbin noted that a posting of her death on Gawain’s Facebook page reached more than 200,000 people.
In a 1993 interview with The Chronicle, Gawain described the impetus for “Creative Visualization,” published in 1978.
“I thought I was just going to write a little booklet that I could pass out to the people who came to my workshops,” she said. “I published it with a friend, and we didn’t know anything about what we were doing. ... We were just following our creative energy.”
That energy led to the growth of New World Library, which she had co-founded with another metaphysical explorer, Marc Allen, in 1977. The first location was in the kitchen of the Oakland apartment they shared. Back then, she went by her given name, Carol Louise Gawain. Allen nicknamed her “Shakti,” which is a Sanskrit for “the divine feminine creative force.”
Now in its 41st year, New World Library publishes 35 titles a year and does $10 million in annual sales. Last year, it published a special 40th anniversary edition of “Creative Visualization.” Her other bestselling titles include “Living in the Light,” “Developing Intuition” and “Creating True Prosperity.”
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In 1992, Gawain left New World Library to form her own publishing company, Nataraj, and to open the Shakti Center, where she conducted classes and workshops in Marin. She ended up closing it, and Nataraj became an imprint of New World Library.
In the late 1990s, Gawain was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and slowly withdrew from the big public events for which she was known. But she still gave intimate workshops at her waterfront apartment in Tiburon. About five years ago, Gawain received an additional diagnosis of Lewy body disease, and she made the decision to stop teaching in 2015.
“She had a wealth of spiritual tools in her toolbox,” Corbin said. “She stayed positive and in love with life despite her diagnosis.”
Gawain is survived by her husband, Jim Burns, of Mill Valley. Services are pending. Contributions in her name can be made to the Lewy Body Dementia Association, 912 Killian Hill Road SW, Lilburn, Ga. 30047.
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Shakti Gawain, author and co-founder of New World Library, dead at 70 (sfchronicle.com)
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