After almost 50 years of cultivating self-awareness in order to answer those pesky, perennial questions about life, I stumbled into an oasis of clarity and simplicity that settled matters as never before.

Even before I was consciously aware of doing so, I was living and speaking and working from these 5 Principles. From them, my life and work poured out of me in a profoundly improvisational, often magical, way; always sudden and unexpected, but always practical and relevant to the matter at hand.

Within these 5 Principles I found the fulfillment of my search for self-knowledge, for meaning and truth, for my place in the world. From the time I was 11 years old, I have wondered “Who am I?” and “How shall I live?” These 5 Principles revealed the answers, and they continue to illuminate my path, moment by moment, effortlessly and flawlessly. I am never lost or confused. I always know where to go and what to do, just as I know when to be still and do nothing.

With these 5 Principles as my mentors, I know how to live authentically. I am able to remain awake and alert and keenly aware of life from the inside out, and from the outside in. I know how to tap into and touch the very core of my inner creative consciousness and power, and I know how to express the many facets of that core in unique and enlivening ways.

In 2010, I realized that all of the many effects I have experienced in my life — the inner expansion and the outer productivity — have come from a single cause: The 5 Principles of Authentic Living. From these 5 Principles, I have received the clarity, energy, and confidence to do what I didn’t know I knew how to do. In a flash of recognition, I knew it was time to speak about and teach the cause, rather than continuing to offer effects.

I’m delighted to share these 5 Principles with you, because I know in my heart that you can use them to the same great good that I have. I’ve field-tested them for many years, in more circumstances and conditions than I can remember, while traveling throughout the world. They work. They take you straight to the wellspring of revelation, profound insight, and magical action.

The tremendous and immediate efficacy of these 5 Principles, however, owes everything to embodiment; that is, these 5 Principles must be lived. They must be absorbed into your being where they can speak to you, guide you, free you, inspire you — as they will.

Here is my conversation with Sandie Sedgbeer about The 5 Principles of Authentic Living, taped in Las Vegas on May 28, 2011. I had just flown in from Melbourne, Australia, and was both jet-lagged and in terrific pain. While I had not yet been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer — that was still six months away —  the metastasis was already raging and raising hell in my spine and pelvis, causing constant muscle spasms. I had taken four pain killers an hour before this interview and I had an ice pack strapped to my lower back. But, the show must go on.