As with most magical events in life, a series of flirtations with synchronicity brought Rick Roberts to the door of Spirit of Change two months ago. Just as I typed in the last word for a classified ad seeking an office manager, the phone rings. It's Linda Roberts, Rick's wife, inquiring about employment. "Does Spirit of Change, by any chance, have any office positions open?" she asks. 

As one thing led to another, it quickly became apparent that Linda and Rick had the combined skills necessary to navigate Spirit of Change towards it's next level of growth. An accomplished flute player and crafter, Rick is also a high tech expert. Through a series of computer consultations which promptly turned into creative jam sessions, we soon realized this connection was about more than just computers. In fact, it seemed that Spirit of Change had been mysteriously swirling around in the background of Rick's creative path over the last three years as he established himself as a master craftsman and musician.

Rick's story plays out with the smoothness and resonance of a rich and soothing flute melody. His first CD of Native American flute music, "Spirit Wind" was just released this year.

Carol: I just think it's pretty amazing how we ended up doing this interview here today. I was surprised when I discovered that the person calling for an office position with Spirit of Change was the wife of "that flute player" I kept crossing paths with over the past several years. Why don't you talk a little bit about how all this came about.

Rick: Linda has this standing joke that whenever someone asks me a question, I always preface it with, "Well, when I was a young kid born in Whitinsville...," to try and explain the story. Seems all my paths lead back to my beginnings here.

But anyway, several years ago, both Linda and I had jobs in the area and for a vacation we took two weeks off and went out to Taos, New Mexico. We went out there with another couple to learn how to make houses out of used tires. While I was there, I went into these lovely little stores, and one of them had a Native American flute. I picked it up and I played it.

Carol: Had you ever played the flute before?

Rick: No. But as I played it, there was something about the quality of the sound that was really special. I had been carving little Santas and gnomes and things because I enjoyed working with wood, and I turned to Linda and said, "Linda I'm going to make flutes." She looked at me like, "Oh, that's nice dear."

I scoured Taos for some books or any literature on flute making but couldn't find anything except two pages in one book. I bought that and took it home. When I got home, I went down to the local hardware store and picked up a piece of clothes closet rod. Following the directions in the book, I made a flute and it played! I was so thrilled. It was just wonderful.

Every Saturday we have this ritual of going up to Harry's Pizza in Whitinsville. We've lived in Manhattan, and I can tell you this is the best pizza outside of Manhattan. They have Spirit of Change in Harry's Pizza, too, and we always pick up a copy there.

Linda and I were leafing through Spirit of Change and one of the ads was for Hollis Littlecreek, Native American elder and flutemaker giving a flute seminar in Vermont. Now this is like a week after I get back from Taos!

This has become so common, these types of magical occurrences around my journey with the flute, that it's like a confirmation of what's taking place. It's something that is both awesome and leaves me feeling a lot of gratitude. Like, yeah, I'm able to do something that I really enjoy and that really has meaning and impact for me.

So I went up to Vermont. This was the first time and the last time I think that he'd ever done such a publicly advertised seminar. Also, I met a whole community of people who have become like family. We've kept up contact since then and we've visit each other's houses.

So I started making flutes and they started migrating into other people's hands. Then I did another thing that reconnects back with Spirit of Change—the Celebrating the Artist Within Festival. I had my flutes at the Celebrating the Artist Within Festival, and one of the flutes won first prize. Then the local town paper did an article on me and then the local schools started calling up—"Could I come speak to the third grade or the fifth grade about the flute?"—and it all was growing. Then the job where I worked— 

Carol: What were you doing?

Rick: My business card said "Dealer Support Manager." It was for a company called Leaf Systems over in Southborough. That name has come to have some real significance throughout this whole thing, too. Remember that name. It was like a sales and marketing management position. It was a job that my mother was proud of, but not necessarily going in the direction that I wanted to go. At the time it was a really wonderful job, though.

Carol: What kind of products did you work with?

Rick: We made digital scanners and filmless cameras. Whenever you see Associated Press in the newspaper, those pictures have most likely been scanned by Leaf equipment and transmitted to satellite via Leaf equipment and very high tech stuff. A wonderful company to work with.

Carol: So you were in high tech? 

Rick: In high tech. Then the company was bought and part of it was being moved to Bedford. What was a 20 minute commute now was going to turn into an hour and a half commute. So we had a decision to make.

Linda and I pretended we were looking back on our life from 80 or 90 years old. What would we regret not having done and what would we really be glad that we did? When we looked at it from that perspective, it was really easy. OK, I'll leave the company and spend full time on the flutes.

All of the reasons to stay at this wonderful job were by the standards of income and benefits and environment. They were not fear based, but they were negatives—like, what if this bad thing happens, then what will we do without that. All of the real positives—like, what did I, the bigger me, have in mind when it decided to be born in this body and time and place?—was that being fulfilled by my working at Leaf? Or would it be better fulfilled by working with the flutes?

With that in mind, we decided that, although it was happening sooner than we had planned, it was time to stop working for the company.

It was great! The shift was a little nerve wracking, but it was wonderful, and magical events continued to reinforce the decision. In the course of speaking at different schools, people said, "I really like the music. Do you have a tape?" So I said, I guess I have to do a tape. I found a little studio and I recorded some flute music—

Carol: Which by the way is wonderful. (We're playing it now.)

Rick: Thank you.

Carol: It's resonant. It goes to your heart—you feel it.

Rick: I think it has a lot to do with the flute. There is some technique to playing and yeah, you can learn to play it well. Nevertheless, there's something special about the way the flute is made. It's like smelling a campfire. It just speaks to something really deep inside. And the soothingness of it...for me, playing the flute is equal to a two hour walk in the woods or sitting down in meditation for a good length of time. There's a power in the sound, a gentle balancing in the sound that impacts not only the person playing the flute but the environment where you are on many levels.

So I did the album. Then somebody suggested distribution companies that sell to various new age and gift stores. So I sent my tapes away to various distributors. The biggest one in the new age market is called New Leaf. They said, "Yes, we love the album. We'd love to distribute it." Remember I had been working for Leaf? Well now I was working with New Leaf!

Carol: So now you have this cassette and CD, right?

Rick: Yes, it's just another neat little stream in the flow of events that feels perfectly normal and natural, you know. Sometimes when you read these transformational books, there's so many that leave you feeling, gee, if I don't have an incredible, Technicolor, wide screen, out-of-body experience, then I guess there's no magic in my life. So many people describe these...well I floated up to Mars and I saw the silver thread down to the Pacific Ocean and the dolphins came up and all this stuff.

But there are these things that occur that are so statistically impossible. They are couched in the ordinariness of life but are so totally magical. It's been really special and continues to be really special. In fact, just the whole path that we've traveled to having this conversation is another indication that when you step out and follow your passion and trust your instincts with a good intention, the magic takes place.

Carol: You have a book that goes along with this, too. What is the name of this book?

Rick: The name of the book is Gift to the People: The Native American Flute. One of the origin stories of the flute describes it as a gift to the people. As it was taught to me, gift to the people meant to all the people. It didn't mean to the people that were men or to the people that were women or to the people that lived in a particular place. The flute is a very valuable tool. It's a very personal tool.

The person who has been kind enough to share the information that he has about the flute is Hollis Littlecreek. In the community from which he grew up, the Anishinabe, one of their words for the flute translates most directly as "prayer stick." It was from this community's teachings that I have accumulated a lot of the stories that I share and basic things like fingerings and the care of the flute.

I found that when people would get a flute, they'd ask me what about this and what about that. Eventually I found I had compiled all these stories and pieces of information. So I put them together in book form so people could understand more of the context of the flute, how it was made and some of the traditions out of which it grew.

Carol: It looks like a simple and easy-reading book. I see there are illustrations of fingering and some stories in there. It looks like it would be a really nice introduction to go along with the flute.

Rick: Well, part of my intention is to sell the book separately, and when somebody acquires a flute, the book is included with it.

Carol: Is the book also available through New Leaf along with the CD? 

Rick: It's under review for distribution now, and it's available in many of the local stores.

Carol: I just marvel at the whole path, how you have grown out of the high tech and into the passion that you love, and part of that was facilitated through Spirit of Change. And then you're bringing some real essential computer skills right back into Spirit of Change. It just seems like a real coming home type of thing.

Rick: The elegance of the choreography of the work with the flutes and how Linda and I are working with Spirit of Change, highlights a common theme for me. This is an important time to have a lot of resources available for people to make choices and tools for people to develop faculties that perhaps have lain dormant for some time. Spirit of Change is a real focal point for making those available. The flute also seems to be. For many people, flute music is a real important tool for awakening and focusing and balancing a lot of the things that are important to deal with now. That's a whole other topic of conversation.

All of those things are knit together very elegantly in what's happening. It's magic. It's not that easy nowadays to have a five year plan and say, OK, in four and a half years we'll have x net worth and we'll have 2.3 kids and be doing this. But you can see at least up to the corner of the next block. I have some trust that with the magic that's taken me to this point with all these wonderful events, when I turn the corner at the next block there will be the same support and caressing magic. All of the choices will be there and if I have the right intentions and the trust and the calmness, then I'll have access to everything I need to choose the right directions at that point.

Carol: Sounds like a bit of cosmic philosophy. I understand you have an interesting spiritual background in an ashram. What was that about?

Rick: When I grew up in Whitinsville, I was always interested in esoteric stuff. I'd enjoy hanging out on Friday nights with my high school teachers and sitting at the kitchen table talking about the meaning of life and stuff like that. I read Autobiography of a Yogi (me and a few million other people) and that was a real pivotal book because all of a sudden there was this idea that perhaps there are other ways of understanding divinity and the purpose of life, etc. So the Cliff's Notes version is I went away to school, then left school to follow a guru and went to India.

Carol: Who was the guru?

Rick: The 13 year old perfect master Guru Maharaj Ji, a fairly popular figure at this time. Most of the hairs on my mother's and father's heads are due to that abrupt left turn.

Guru Maharaj Ji was the youngest of four sons and at some point, the mother and the two elder sons disowned Guru Maharaj Ji and his next older brother because of what they considered a profligate lifestyle. The mother and two oldest sons set up a separate organization called the Spiritual Life Society and moved it out of L.A. to New York City. I became the president of the new organization. 

I had also learned Hindi since the mother of the guru, as well as a lot of other people from India, didn't speak English. I thought, well, if I want to understand what they're saying, without the filter of somebody else translating, then I would learn Hindi. I did a lot of translations when people came here that didn't speak English.

I was in the ashram for 17 years and that's where I met Linda. We became best friends. Since it was also a monastery, that meant no sex, no drugs, no meat, the whole nine yards. Eventually, Linda and I became close because we would be the people that would look at each other when things began not fitting just right. We'd look at each other and say, what's wrong with this picture—-

Carol: And other people around you weren't questioning those things?

Rick: Right. So, radical as it was, and following the same yearnings as self-actualization which lead me into that scenario, I found myself leaving that scenario, or it just falling away. It was like a divorce of sorts. I was in this monastery for 17 years, so it was a very deep event.

It's very seductive to go into a situation where somebody says, OK, here's a list of x items; believe these things and do this list of y items that I tell you and you're all taken care of. You don't have to worry about the hereafter, you don't have to think about these things and make difficult decisions. It's all been laid out by people much wiser than you.

And that's really seductive and appealing and it certainly was seductive and appealing to me. It took a lot of personal work that both Linda and I did to go through the process of regaining or taking back that power that we had so casually given away. The pivotal books, the ones that actually helped a lot were Jane Roberts' Seth series. They were really powerful at that time to help me regain a sense of responsibility over my life and to move out of the stance of victim or devotee in need of master. It helped me understand that these are choices that I make and this is a life that I'm designing whether by conscious intent or just by neglect.

Carol: So then you and Linda got married?

Rick: Yes, we got married. Basically I went to the guru and said, you know, here I am standing up on stage giving these lectures and if somebody asked me what's it like to be celibate, I'm not going to have a good answer for them. So not wanting to misrepresent the situation, we just said, this is what's happening.

That created its own event and we got married. It's been a most incredible partnership, playground, learning experience. It's just absolutely fantastic. Each of us is who we are because of the other and we're real happy with where we are and where we're going.

Carol: This is what you call magical. James Redfield in Celestine Prophecy calls that synchronicity, the events lining up perfectly with amazing timing. I believe that is around us all the time but we are so focused with blinders on our security, income, job, etc. that we don't see the magic that's happening all around us.

Rick: There's so much talk about the New Age and this great millennia is coming or whatever, but we each have the opportunity, I believe, to live in that New Age right now by making certain choices and deciding to create a world in which we wish to live. That also is a responsibility that we can take on, to be able to see that there are other people who are aware that this is a possibility too, make the connection and begin to collaborate.

Carol: There's a lot of popularity around drums, and not so much around the flutes. Any ideas about that?

Rick: Well, I guess a few ideas come to mind. The drum has been given a lot of exposure historically. It's something that resonates very deeply, a heartbeat. It's something that perhaps people also perceive as easier to play. Perhaps a person might look at drums and say, well, I can keep a rhythm and I can beat on this but then they make a judgment and say I can't play a flute.

But there's a tremendous amount of music available out there now. R. Carlos Nakai blazed the trail for the flute. I remember turning on the radio and hearing Carlos Nakai playing and I was so pleased with the air-time this music is now getting. There's a large library of flute music out there now and it certainly seems to me that it's growing and spreading. Perhaps part of that's due to my focus—that's the world that I'm traveling in now so of course I'm going to see more of it. The response that I get from people is just incredible. I'd like to think that I'm a really great player but I also have to acknowledge that there's something else going on—something special about this type of flute.

When I play in a school, let's say a third grade class, what I like to do is be playing when the kids come into the classroom. So I'm playing and these kids are coming in from recess, and they're like, cranked. They're screaming when they come into the room and all of a sudden they become really quiet and to each other they're going, ssshhh, ssshhh. The teachers are sitting in the back of the room like, wow, check this out! And then the kids sit down and that's it. It's really miraculous to watch that take place.

I've played in churches and at festivals. Recently I played at a retirement community in the area and someone in the audience asked "how did you get involved with this?" So I told the story about looking back and making that decision. When I finished with the story, saying I decided to leave work and go out and do this, everyone in the place just started clapping spontaneously, really exuberantly. Wow, I thought, what a confirmation! I didn't know how to take it. These people who have seen their life from a totally different perspective were saying "you made the right choice, go for it, you're doing good, I know what it's like." And then I thought, maybe they're also saying, "boy, I wish I had done that as well."

Another direction I see this taking is that perhaps people are beginning to understand the impact that music has. Music has power over our state of mind, and our state of mind impacts our day-to-day life and things as basic as our health, recuperation and things like that. I'm currently involved in planning with one of New England's major medical facilities to put together a healthcare services program for its patients.

Carol: Is this a regular hospital?

Rick: Yes, it's a regular, mainstream hospital and I'm working with the head of all these various departments. What's really wonderful to experience is the conversations I'm having with these mainstream healthcare providers. These are conversations that wouldn't be odd at all with alternative care providers, but this is a regular major medical facility interested in using the flute in all phases of healthcare—from pre-surgery to recovery to relaxation and entertainment...

Carol: So you would stand there during an operation playing the flute or...

Rick: They might have the flute music playing or do evening programs that people would come to. This is what we're in the middle of exploring right now. I have a meeting coming up in the next couple of weeks with the heads of all the departments of the hospital and I'm going to play for them and we're just going to kick around all of the ways, as a tool, can be used—

Carol: So how did you connect up with this?

Rick: It's another one of those magical little serendipity things. When I did the album, I had an idea of what the album cover should look like. I had heard that there was this calligrapher in town—a place called Pendragon—Maria Thomas is the woman's name. So I went up to this house and knocked on the door and this lady comes to answer. It turns out that this is the same lady that I've often seen with her husband in the local restaurant and I always think, gee, these look like really neat people; we should get to know them.

It turns out that she is one of the top calligraphers in the country. Then I discovered she was just two years ahead of me in high school, we had the same art teacher, we both did calligraphy, we both knew all the same people, and so it was this really wonderful connection. She did the album cover and it came out really beautiful.

Also, her husband Bruce is a massage therapist, and he's very good friends with the chief of surgery at this hospital. Without me even knowing it, he had given one of my business cards to the chief of surgery. One day I got a call from the secretary at the hospital saying, "this is so-and-so from such- and-such hospital" and I'm saying, wait a minute, who died, what is this about? She said "I'm holding this card here. It says Circle Flutes, and I don't know why I'm calling you but they want you to come in for an appointment." I said OK.

Carol: Wow, that's exciting! So it has been many circle events or serendipitous events that keep furthering your path and more magical things are coming your way.

Rick: And they come wrapped in packages of totally pedestrian paper. It's just these wonderful little things for which I'm really grateful and the more time goes by, the more I feel this is not the exception. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is the way life is intended to be. Perhaps by limiting what we believe is possible and by getting into a routine so we needn't be responsible on a moment to moment basis, we cut out many of these possibilities from happening.

I'm not quite sure what the formula is, but it feels like what we might have had in mind when we decided "let's go have bodies." When we were kids we used to play these games and say, "OK, I'll be the robber and you be the policeman and you be this and we'll do that" and then we'd all go off and play that game out.

Maybe it's like you and I met in some cosmic green room someplace and said, "OK, now you go start a magazine and I'll go make flutes and then we'll meet over here and do this and this and this." But we forgot our meeting in the green room and we forgot the context which is so much bigger than we've been taught to believe. It's this wonderful little event that we get to play with each other and have fun.

I have a sense of this faculty that is awakening within us that's beginning to comprehend ourselves as facets of a larger self or energy crystallized here in time and space. For me and for other people I've met, the flute is a tool that enables those faculties to blink their eyes and wake up and start to function in ways that we're just beginning to grasp. Some nights when we're sitting around a campfire and someone's playing a heartbeat on a drum and there's me and another person playing flute melodies chasing around in the sky, it's just totally magical. The Native American style flute can be a wonderful companion for self exploration and a magical assistant for creating your new world.

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Carol Bedrosian is the Publisher and Editor of Spirit of Change Magazine which is located in Grafton, MA. To contact Carol call 508-839-2228 or fax 508-839-1173.

RESOURCES

For information on handmade Native American style flutes, tapes, books, talks and performances, please contact Rick Roberts at PO Box 145, Whitinsville, MA 01588 or call 508-234-4126 or email him at starseed@kersur.net. Visit his website at www.starseedcreations.com.