This month, our cover interview is with one of the greatest feminine forerunners in the promotion of the New Age and spiritual movement, Arielle Ford. In 1987, Arielle founded The Ford Group, and over the past twenty-something years she has created public relations brilliance and mega-marketing excellence for her stellar clientele, including the likes of Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson. As the author of seven books, Arielle has now joined the ranks of her clients as one of the most sought after authors in America. For our Valentine issue, we are so very proud and delighted to spend time with Arielle Ford, to discuss her latest book, The Soulmate Secret: Manifesting the Love of You Life with the Law of Attraction.

KB: Hi Arielle! Thank you so much for making time for this interview. I want to begin by letting you know how very much I enjoyed reading your book, from cover to cover! I have recommended it to all of my friends, both single and married because the advice you give is priceless to those already in relationships as well as those seeking them. Don’t you agree?

AF: You know, Kathryn, I’ve been having a hard time seeing that although I’ve been hearing that from a lot of people. But, my focus wasn’t meant to be that. Yet, if that’s what’s happening, then it is a really nice, unintentional consequence.

KB: How very interesting! Well, you’ve done such a fabulous job in every detail. From the quotes on love that you chose to put in the book, to the intimate and heartwarming stories you included, it all dovetails beautifully with the body of work and wisdom you so brilliantly designed as, The Soulmate Secret.

AF: I was really happy with the way it all turned out. It met all my highest wishes, and I am very thrilled with it.

KB: Well, it is a small book, but it packs a powerful punch in helping us all to understand the spiritual nature of true love in the 21st century. This book will become a classic. I visited your website last night and I viewed the clips of you on The Today Show, and KTLA. What struck me, almost as much as your grace and eloquence was, when they asked your husband, Brian, to join you. To have him there with you added another wonderful dimension to this incredible story.

AF: Yeah that was so great because we didn’t know that was going to happen until the last minute. We were just so excited about it. It worked out perfectly. I was so comfortable just knowing he was five feet away from me, but having him come out. to be with me on the set was heaven!

KB: Arielle, back in 1997 I met your beloved, Brian, when he was helping Nick Bunick to promote his book, The Messengers. They came to Las Vegas, and I interviewed Nick here. It turned out to be a long day with several interruptions so, Brian and I had time to chat. He had been caring and cordial all day, but when the conversation turned to you, I swear, Arielle, Brian levitated two inches off the ground. It was like someone flicked a switch and he began to glow. I was so impressed with that, and I’ve never forgotten that. And then, I saw the two of you together last November, and I was just giddy to see that you are still floating on the wings of love.

AF: Yes, that is true. We are so blessed that way. And so you know, Brian and I met in 1997 because I was the one handling that book tour for Nick Bunick.

KB: How very interesting, the way life has comes full circle here. So, let me ask you how you met Brian, and for our readers edification, how you know when you’ve got a soulmate connection with someone.

AF: Well, I’ll start with how we met, and then I’ll answer your second question because they do go together. In the mid-1980’s a learned a lot of different manifestation techniques; visualizations, prayers and rituals, but I always used them for my career. They all worked extremely well and I became a super-manifestor. It was more than magnificent. Although I didn’t know specifically what I wanted, but I had decided that my life would be dedicated to representing people, places and things that were good for the planet. I really wasn’t more specific, that was just it. However, shortly afterwards, all these incredible people starting choosing me to work with them. Then when I entered my early forties, I started to wonder whether these same techniques would work on my love life. So, I began to use all of them. The truth is, at forty-three I’d never been married, but I was still optimistic. I knew, on some level, that Brian was out there. Well, at least most of the time I believed he was. Sometimes I thought maybe he wasn’t out there or maybe he’s just really late! Then, I turned on Oprah’s show one day, to see her interviewing Barbara Streisand, who had just become engaged to James Brolin. I remember noting that Barbara was a woman in her mid-fifties, notoriously known as a “super-Diva”, wealthy, isolated and not an easy person to find. It was at that moment I realized that if God had the perfect man for her, I was going to be a piece of cake! You know, I was a good ten years younger, not a diva, not wealthy, etc. It was just proof to me that it could really happen! Of course, at the time, I didn’t know I was going to write a book. I didn’t even know if they would work. I just decided to use every prayer, ritual, and project I’d ever employed in order to find new love. I performed Feng Shui on my house, made my vision board, cut all energetic cords to the past and so on.

KB: And after doing all this, you manifested Brian?

AF: Yes, within a very short amount of time I met him through work. I’d set up a thirty-city book tour for Nick Bunick, and one day I had to fly to Portland to organize a national television interview for him. His business partner, Brian, picked me up at the airport. As soon as I saw him, something inside me went off. Well, the same thing happened to him and three weeks later we were engaged.

KB: Oh, you have to tell me how he proposed! It must have been very romantic…

AF: Actually, I think it was an accident.

KB: Oh, my gosh! How do you accidentally do something so major?

AF: I don’t think he was intending to propose because he didn’t have a ring. I’d just picked him up at the airport, and we drove the Gaslamp Quarter District for dinner. It was a beautiful, warm summer evening in San Diego, and we were dining outside at the restaurant. Suddenly, Brian said, “I would marry you today.” I looked at him and asked, “Brian, is that a proposal?” And he said, “Yes, but I don’t have a ring.” So he put an imaginary ring on my finger and told me that it would have to do until we figured it out. We didn’t really talk about too much after that. But my sister, Debbie, figured it out rather quickly, and I remember confiding in Deepak and Rita Chopra. But one day Brian asked why I hadn’t told my mother. So, I explained to him that once I told her it would be real! So, he insisted I call her that instant! Then, we had our first engagement party about nine weeks after we met.

KB: And when did you two marry?

AF: We had three weddings, actually. We were married the following June by Amma, the hugging Saint from India. She married us in a Hindu ceremony and that was not a legal wedding. At the time I was doing PR for Kenny Loggins, and I was talking to him about the wedding one day. He told me he’d always wanted to be ordained as a minister and when he was, he’d perform our legal wedding. At the time, I thought to myself, “Yea, right…he’s never going to do this!” Well, the very next day he left a message at my office saying, “I’ll do it!” So, I called him back to ask what the heck he was going to do and he told me Gay Hendricks was going to get him ordained, and he was going to perform my ceremony! A month later, we had our legal wedding in Santa Barbara. Then, a few weeks after that, a good friend of mine, who is the Manhattan High Priestess of Wicca, performed a pagan hand fasting for us.

KB: So you and Brian are sealed on every level of your being. AF: Right, Brian said our DNA is interwoven all eternity. KB: Absolutely, he’s right. But it was that way from the start. Before there was time, and long after it ceases to exist, the two of you will be one. You are blessed with such a rare and precious gift to share with one another.

AF: I know, it’s true.

KB: So, the second half of my question is, how do you know when you’ve met your soulmate. Many times we meet someone and fall head over heels in love only to discover that this person is definitely not “the one”.

AF: For starters, I think we can get more than one soulmate. Sometimes, people just complete their karma with each other, and move on. If you spent 25 years with someone, and most of those years were great, why would you say it didn’t work? And maybe the next one is the next thing you need to fulfill your sacred contracts. This idea that there’s only one true love or that you only get one chance, is kind of a silly idea for most of us.

KB: Unfortunately, there are many people who doubt that even one true love is meant to be theirs. So, if they don’t believe in it, it could pass them by in life.

AF: If they don’t believe, they get to be right. They can either put their attention on love not working for them, and spend the rest of their lives being angry, depressed and right. Or they can read my book, The Soulmate Secret, with twelve real people stories of people who manifested love. I think most of them did so over the age of 40. In fact, my mother-in-laws story is in the book. She manifested her second soulmate at the age of 80, after enjoying a 55-year marriage. So, you can choose to put your attention on what’s possible, or you can wallow in misery and have a lifelong pity party. It’s all up to you!

KB: And exactly why do you think people don’t believe soulmate love is meant for them?

AF: I think there are a lot of different reasons. Some have evidence that it is not there for them because relationships have failed in the past. Therefore, they insist upon looking at a failed relationship as if it was wrong or a mistake as opposed to, that’s exactly what I needed to learn to get to the next relationship. So, they have this approach to love that tells them they’re too fat, too broke, too old, they live in the wrong place, they’re too damaged, all the good ones are taken, etc. Then they attach themselves to their stories and hold on really tight. I saw a great example of this over the weekend, as a matter of fact. We went to see the movie, Last Chance Harvey, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. It was adorable and it’s about two middle-aged folks who haven’t had any luck at love. There is a flirtation going on between them, but there are some problems. So, by the end of the movie, Harvey takes a stand. He says to her, I really want to try this; I really want to be in a relationship with you. And Kate (the other character) flips out and says to him,”… any day now you’re going to say you need your space, it’s just not working out, and I’m going to be hurt again. I’m not willing to be hurt again!” Then she said this line that simply knocked me out. She said to him, “I’m not willing to give up being disappointed!” That’s when I got it…there are so many men and women who would rather live in the comfort of known disappointment, than to reach out for something new.

KB: What a stunning statement!

AF: Well, the truth is, just like you would set goal and intentions, in the New Year, for your health, or fitness or career or any of that, it is really the same process. You’re just focusing your attention on your love life. There really is a simple step-by-step process, for manifesting love, that I lay out in, The Soulmate Secret.

KB: So, in finding your soulmate, Arielle, you employed a technique you refer to as, feelingizations. Explain what that is…

AF: Well, for years I’d known about visualizations. Yet, I always thought they were misnamed. For me, they don’t work unless there is an emotion behind them. So, I renamed them, feelingizations!

KB: I love that! I so agree that it is our emotions act to connect us directly to our spiritual level of manifestation.

AF: Yes, that just seemed more accurate for me. I wrote out a bunch of them because I knew before I could manifest new love I had to clear up the past. So, The Soulmate Secret starts with belief and moves into the forgiveness process. During this step, you forgive yourself, and you forgive those who have hurt you, before creating space for new love. Or as my sister, Debbie, says, “you don’t want to put ice cream on top of poop!” In other words, you simply release the pain and resentment left over from past relationships in order to give birth to an uncluttered emotional space within your heart that you want new love to occupy. It is not your job to know how, or when or where new love will come; it is your job to be ready, willing and available. If you do your job, love will find you!

KB: So, after doing that, the next step in the Soulmate Secret is feathering the nest.

AF: Yes, and feathering the nest is so much fun. You start with clearing the energy in your home. If you’ve lived there with an ex-husband or lover and even if they’ve often visited your home, you want to clear the energetic space. There are several ways to accomplish this. You can use the Native American way by smudging with sage, or you can simple wait for a nice sunny day to open every window and door. Then, just let the breeze blow through while you symbolically sweep their energy out of the house with a broom. That’s probably the easiest way to do it. In the Soulmate Secret, we also give various tips and techniques to Feng Shui your home, or you can hire a Feng Shui expert, if you’d prefer.

KB: I, too, am such an advocate of Feng Shui and I was happy to see, in the book, you recommend building an altar in the romance corner of the bedroom.

AF: Yes, along with your Treasure Map or vision board (see The Soulmate Secret for more information on creating a treasure map) an altar is one of the best ways to attract love. You can put two pink or red candles on it as well as a statue of great lovers. May personal favorite is Krishna and Radha. But you can also get a crystal or ceramic swans or doves, anything that mates for life – just so there’s a pair. On your altar you want to design a sacred space where you place things that most beautifully represent a daily, living reminder for the ‘world of love’ you want to create.

KB: After feathering the nest, according to the Soulmate Secret, the next step in manifesting the love of your life is to start, living as if.

AF: Living as if can also be called, fake it to you make it! This step is all about choosing your thoughts and actions as if you really believe, in every cell of your body, that your soulmate is on the way. You could even go so far as to say: imagine your future soulmate has a live webcam on you 24/7. How would be, do and have differently, if they were always observing you? How would you change? Would you be kinder, and nicer, to yourself and others, for starters? Would you stop having casual sex with somebody you know is not the one? Would be happier? If I told you, with certainty that your soulmate is showing up in 72 hours, wouldn’t you be exuding joy? So, living as if is trusting that you’ve done the preparation and now you know this person is on their way to you. Now you just get to savor the waiting. You can do this by buying two tickets to a concert you really want to see three to six months in the future. Or if your at the card store getting a friend a birthday card, just go over to the romance section and purchase a few cards that you’d like to give your soulmate after you meet.

KB: What great ideas! I can see where this kind of anticipatory excitement generates a vibrational frequency that accelerates a soulmate’s arrival into your life.

AF: Exactly! That’s why I call it living as if because it creates trust in yourself and in the universe. Until they are actually in your life, you want to savor the waiting. One of my favorite story’s in the book is about a woman who loved to cook. So, each night she would prepare a wonderful meal and set the table for two. She’d light the candles, play music and pour the wine, as if she was expecting her lover to arrive momentarily. Well, within three months her soulmate was sitting there with her!

KB: Wow, that story gave me chills. That is simply wonderful. Arielle, was she doing this during the last step of the Soulmate Secret that you call, savoring the waiting?

AF: That’s right. Until they are in your life, you do want to savor the waiting. There are lots of ways to do that. First, you want to appreciate just how great your life is, and all the things you can do as a single person that you may not be able to do once you’re a couple. Truly, a great relationship takes love, nurturing and time. So, you may want to spend your time in waiting doing things just for you. You know, if any of your readers are like me, dessert is our favorite part of the meal. So, although I completely enjoy dinner, I’m always savoring the waiting for dessert!

KB: Isn’t that great. In the book you write that all of this helps us to fall in love with ourselves. And that the commitment to love ourselves draws the opportunities for love and connection into our lives.

AF: That’s so true. Dr. Christiane Northrup and I were talking about this just the other day. I told her that people are always asking me how they can fall in love with themselves, and she said to me, “It’s easy, this is how I do it; everyday when I walk past a mirror, I blow myself a kiss!” And why wouldn’t you do that?

KB: The only reason I can think of to answer why we wouldn’t do that is because we’ve been raised to believe that kind of behavior is narcissistic.

AF: But look, imagine you meet some guy, and he seems like a pretty good person. Then you get to his home, and it’s a pigsty. He’s got teeth that need looking after, and he could stand to lose 30 pounds…you’re probably not going to stick around very long. If he said to you, “well, I’d rather take care of somebody else so, I don’t really have time to take care of myself.” Why would you want to be with that person? So, you’re actually going to be more attracted to the person you are seeking when they can see how much you love and care for yourself. That gives them an idea of how you are going to love and care for them.

KB: Arielle, that is so wise and so valid. We all need to really think about that in regards to the way we nurture ourselves. I also love the phrase in your book, “we must make our hearts and our homes a soft place to land”. Please tell me what that means to you.

AF: Oh…I think we all do need a soft place to land because the world can be a trying place at times, especially with the way things are right now. So, I really love that phrase, too, because a soulmate can definitely be your soft place to land. They’re the person whose arms you look forward to falling into at the end of a long and difficult day. Nothing says love quite like a soulmate.

KB: Yes, I certainly can say from personal experience that you are absolutely right about that. Arielle, I thank you so much for sharing your heart and wisdom with me today. May you and Brian always be blessed…