Saying Goodbye to a ‘Mozart of Metaphysics’

Barbara Y. Martin, a spiritual teacher and author, passed away peacefully last month at her home in Encinitas, California, just a month short of her 95th birthday.

She passed away just as the spiritual community and non-profit organization she founded prepared to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the launch of her very first book, Change Your Aura, Change Your Life. 

The three-hour book launch event of the new, expanded edition took on another dimension, celebrating the life's work of a remarkable woman, teacher and mentor.

“Live your highest spiritual life that you can,” shared Dimitri Moraitis, Barbara’s co-founder and co-author, who has also served as her primary caretaker for years.

His words rang especially true about Barbara. There are plenty of gurus who speak the right words, and then there are true teachers who really exemplify the teachings. Barbara was the latter. Her ability to prioritize her mission and purpose in life was unlike anyone I've ever met. She had no problems saying no to financial rewards if they were a distraction, making personal sacrifices in her dedication to her spiritual work, the community she was building and the books she was writing.

I know my life would be very different now if I'd never discovered Barbara and Dimitri’s books over a decade ago. To this day, nobody had a greater impact on my life.

A daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest, a one-time journalist, a Hollywood variety show producer — Barbara lived the kind of life that’s overdue for a biopic. Long before she acquired a reputation in the spiritual circles as the “Mozart of Metaphysics”, Barbara was gifted with clairvoyant abilities and questioned figures of authority from a very young age. She later studied with metaphysical teachers like Inez Hurd who helped to develop her skills further. Eventually, Barbara started teaching and speaking about auras for decades before auras became “cool” and mainstream enough for Fortune 500 companies to offer aura readings at corporate retreats.

As a part of her spiritual mission, she started building out her spiritual school over two decades ago in Los Angeles, later settling in Encinitas, California, where it is now known as the Spiritual Arts Institute.

Without posting a single Instagram post in her lifetime about her wellness or productivity routine, she must have been one of the hardest-working spiritual leaders on the planet.

In fact, she was hard at work up until the last day of her life, even as she was going in and out of hospice care in the last few years of her life. She was also way ahead of her time. Her teachings still are. 

While her work has been mostly out of the public eye, I personally found her books, teachings and personal example transformative. 

Her latest book called Heaven and Your Spiritual Evolution: A Mystic's Guide to the Afterlife & Reaching Your Highest Potential is perhaps her most personal work, revealing incredible details of her own spiritual development and mastery over the years.

Without Barbara, I wouldn’t have embarked on the biggest, hardest educational journey of my life, a decade-long study of metaphysics and meditation, and still counting. Without Barbara’s influence and inspiration, I’m pretty sure I would not be inspired to put my journalism career in New York on hold and fly to California with one suitcase in January 2020. I would not meet my husband here and start a family–it’s hard to imagine what life would be like without her outsized influence, even when she spoke so little in the last years of her life.

It will probably take the rest of my life to contemplate all the lessons Barbara and her work brought into my life–and all the ways meditation continues to be a big blessing in my life.

Over the years, I’ve taken dozens of courses at the Institute, there was a poem Barbara liked and Dimitri often quoted from. It became a familiar refrain over the years, but now has acquired a new meaning since Barbara’s passing.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Nobody I’ve met has followed this advice and embodied the sense of urgency in staying true to their spiritual path and achieving that “highest spiritual life” despite all the obstacles and distractions that life throws at us. She has showed us so much strength, grace and love in her last few years especially, even as her physical body was struggling.

For everything you’ve taught us Barbara, thank you.