All About Betty Bethards
Betty Bethards was a prominent Bay Area meditation teacher, psychic/mystic counselor, spiritual healer, and author. She was known as the Common Sense Guru. She was born in 1933 (September 23, to be exact) and passed on July 30, 2002. Her publications, lectures (now available for download), and media appearances have helped millions of people in their search for self-knowledge.
Betty started the Inner Light Foundation in 1969 promoting the development of individual spirituality and was actively teaching, lecturing and writing books until her death in 2002.
Betty offered no crash course guarantees and no overnight solutions to help people see their inner insights. Instead, she taught a new attitude of living and being, rooted in the daily practice of meditation.
Before becoming the innovative, approachable teacher that she was, Betty Bethards was a housewife and professional bowler.
At age 32, Betty was a middle class mother of 3 boys and a daughter when she experienced a transformative near death experience. She describes her near death experience in the book, There is No Death. Her dramatic death experience in the 1960’s shattered her Baptist upbringing, belief system and values. That dramatic death experience led to her discovery of her mystical and psychic abilities. Because her main aspiration in life was to help others, she wrote and talked about death and dying in addition to teaching how meditation, using prayer and interpreting your dreams can help to comfort the bereaved and ailing in addition to helping people become better individuals.
Betty Bethards and the Inner Light Foundation teach three basic tools to receive insight and becoming aware of your higher consciousness:
In one of her books, Be Your Own Guru, Betty Bethards teaches self-responsibility. In her folksy, down-to-earth way, Betty emphasizes over and over again that the only place to look for answers is within. Or, to put it another way, sitting on mountain tops and running after gurus is not what this life is all about. It is time, she would say, for us to get our personal acts together and be actively involved in working with our fellows to create a world that works. If we don’t, we just won’t have a world to worry about.
We are far too gullible, she would say, to believe everyone else’s ready-made answers, buying packages of truth and salvation. As a society we sometimes give our personal power away, our free will and responsibility whenever we have the chance. The bottom line is that no one can save us but ourselves.
The publication, “There is No Death,” was especially powerful because it came from Betty’s dramatic experience of her surviving apparent physical “death” and her continuing communications with supposedly deceased souls, including her two eldest sons who later died; one in Viet Nam and one in a California motorcycle accident. The book also recounts inspiring true stories about how people who consulted Betty transcended their fear of death.
For many years, Betty spoke all over the country but mostly in Northern California, teaching and lecturing on many subjects. She also gave readings with mystic counseling at her North Bay Inner Light Foundation office. Raised as fundamentalist Baptist she ultimately gave universal spiritual teachings encompassing most religions. In addition, she became an exemplary channel teaching the path of Love.
Rather than promoting herself as a leader, Betty taught others to develop their own spiritual potential and thus one of her many books was titled: Be Your Own Guru.
Other books Betty wrote included:
- Techniques for Health and Wholeness – small and yet concise book on understanding yourself along with step-by-step suggestions on how to raise your energy and therefore help yourself
- Seven Steps to Developing Your Intuitive Powers – step-by-step guide on figuring out your best life
- The Dream Book – (her most popular) which interprets thousands of dream symbols, and explains to readers how to remember, find guidance and find inspiration and understanding from their dreams
Betty was so renowned and admired that she once received as a gift – apparently from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, whom she’d never met – a beautiful Tibetan hand crafted mandala scroll or thangka.
Betty was humble and without self-aggrandizement. She was lovingly dedicated to helping all people from all walks of life into developing their spiritual potentials. Her energy field was so palpably powerful that many people often felt uplifted just being in her presence. In fact, you can still feel her energy when she is speaking on her audio downloads.
Long before it was common place to meditate, Betty was a lone voice, showing people the many healthful rewards of the practice. In our humble opinion, Betty started it all – she broke the ice in the 1960’s.
Since Betty’s July 2002 transition to the other side (she passed), her teachings still bless this world and we hope you learn from them and enjoy them.
Betty began lecturing and giving seminars in the 1960’s and 1970’s. She spoke quite a often on dreams when she realized that “dreams are our greatest tool for understanding yourself and your life.” But most people neglect this free inner resource of guidance. Then, as she continued to teach and give seminars, she realized that she could help in so many other areas of life – but she always focused on the three basic premises listed above.
Betty would point out that it is “not necessary to accept her teachings or philosophies.” You may be an atheist, agnostic, a Catholic, a Protestant, Jewish or have just some sense of a universal mind or higher power – it doesn’t matter what you believe. Her teachings help all faiths. She would also say, “Take what you like from what I have to share and if it feels right, keep it, and toss out the rest.” If you listen to any of her seminar recordings you’ll hear her say those exact words!
Betty said over and over again that we use only a small percentage of the mind. Learning to work with dreams, affirmations and visualizations (prayer) and doing meditation enables you to develop more of your own mental potential.”
