“I was born an agent for change, I’m radical in many ways, in that I do understand, and prove it every day, that each and every person has the ability to be a Saint.”

“Saint meaning the way of peace, the way of harmony inside. So what is a Saint? Someone who wears robes or someone who is out there preaching? Not necessarily. A saint is a person who understands their inner harmony, who understands the greatest gift in our human life - no matter what our ancestries are about and our privileges and non-privileges - that the gift is our preservation of inner peace.”

“When cultivating harmony, the change must first happen within us. It doesn’t start outside of us. First, to make a difference in our societies, in our personal lives, in our individual lives and in our family life, we need to look inside of ourselves and see what would create a more peaceful human being within us?”

“We are not individual entities separate from nature, but we are part of nature, we are not only part of nature we are absolutely the divine essence of everything. We are divinity - not all together alone, but individually as well.”

Her words appear to flow from our very source of being, as she acts as a filter for all that is good and wise.

But life has not always been this way for Mother Maya.

“I’ve had incredible teachers in my life, spiritual teachers, as well as other teachers, and have always been guided, but my greatest guru so to speak was Ovarian Cancer, because it taught me to come back to a place of purpose, a place of my own purpose.”

“I think like most young Americans I was racing after the American dream. I was there studying, and at an early and young age I became a very well known fashion designer, and then I was hit with cancer - the kind where you were told that you had six months to live after many surgeries and many invasive therapy’s.”

“I went away deciding I wanted to die with dignity, without drugs in my body… I didn’t embrace death, but I wasn’t afraid of it ether, and I think that what that did was that it gave me a better space in which to make my exit, which I thought I was going to do at that time.”

“And then I came back from sojourn, I had taken a secluded time in a place in Vermont… I came back 5 months later alive!”

“What was the process? Did I eat brown rice? Did I live on kale did do veganism? No. What I did was that I wept my grief with whatever I thought was my ancestral grief out of me and I asked to meet my maker in a way that had a sense of myself in it.”

“And so I have been walking a journey of service and learning how to become the best servant I can to the work of the divine.”

As a journalist lost for words following this interview, I only hope to hear yours below.

Mother Maya is in Adelaide this weekend, to hear her speak personally please see the following link http://mothermaya.com/tour_2012.php#ade

For more information on her work visit http://www.mothermaya.com/home.php