I met Richard Parenti in October of
2014. He was seated next to me at The Great Valley Bookfest in Manteca,
California. We hit it off instantly. Richard is a mentor, a yoga instructor, a
teacher, an author and I consider him a friend. When I needed a traveling
companion for a book signing in Turlock in the summer of 2015, Richard put on
his publicist hat and went along for the ride. In life, I believe we are here to
teach one another life lessons. Richard has a wealth of experience in his
life and he is willing to share it. To me, that is what being a mentor all is
about. Richard is the author of: Emotional
Sobriety: Feel Good Secrets for Everyone, Balboa Press, 2013, and was a
contributing author in, Manifesting
Magnificence: A Personal Growth Workbook, Serendipity Press/Serendipity
Media Group, 2015.
What made
you decide that your life needed to change?
In 1974
my life was abruptly interrupted by my wife asking for a divorce, my car being
repossessed, getting fired, being locked out of my home and all my credit cards
canceled all in one big swoop. On top of that I realized I had enough of
drinking and drugs and that my life was going downhill in a hurry, so I quit.
Describe
for us, how was the process of writing for you.
I had a habit of
writing down on napkins my thoughts. My best friend one day said as we were
having dinner, “Why don’t you take all those napkins you have saved up and show
them to a published writer.”
I did just that. I
found an eighty-year old author who charged $5.00 an hour for his time. He had
authored 13 books, had owned his own ad agency and was still writing, but now
for the fun of it he loved helping new writers, and why he charged so little he
said, “I’ve made all the money I need. The five dollars is to buy myself some
wine that my wife keeps hiding from me.”
He reviewed my
napkins and told me to write a two to three page story of my experiences in
Europe when I was involved in the espionage business.
I told him I had no
idea of how to use grammar. He retorted, “That’s unimportant. That’s what
editors get paid for. I just want to feel your style.
After I completed my
first assignment, he said, “You got passion. You can write, but you’re right
you know nothing about grammar” We both got a good laugh. That was 1982. Since
then I have written many articles that were published, initially in all the
major restaurant magazines nationally when I was in the restaurant business and
then several articles in a prestigious international Yoga magazine over the
last 10 years.
When
did you know what your true calling would be?
In 1974
when I got divorced and fired I had an internal experience that revolutionized
my life. I went from being an international spy, jet setting around the world to
looking inward as to what I had experienced and within a very short time I
began looking for answers to what had happened to me. This led me to the
science of yoga. Not postures, but the inner science that would lead me to an
authentic path to God Realization within and being mentored by Swami’s from
India.
Then it
was in 2004 when I was in India on a 40-day silent retreat in the Himalaya’s
that I got my first inkling what my calling might be. Initially I thought it
was only for me to learn how to master my emotions, but after my return the
United States it was revealed to me that this inner work of yoga, mastering
emotions would be my life’s work, not only for me but for other people as well.
Up to this time I had fun teaching the yoga postures, mediation and in talking
about many of the other aspects of yoga that I knew about.
It wasn’t
until later that I began teaching “Emotional Mastery,” in a workshop after I
had tested it on myself for over 9 years. First, I offered it to the public,
who had little interest. Then, I was invited by a yoga center to teach it to
people who were training to become yoga teachers. That was when this work found
a home, as the interest was genuine and they were hungry. I realized they had
never heard of this in their yoga training before and were eager to learn more
about the inner science of yoga.
Richard Parenti can be reached at: 209-380-5955
