Seminars get you in touch with an angel

Stacy J. Willis

Sunday, Jan. 16, 2000 | 9:37 a.m.

Inner angel

The ad said "Contact Your Angels."

It pitched a seminar that promised -- additionally -- to teach people the necessary skills to "find their life purpose" and "unfold their spiritual gifts."

For $26.

The two dozen people who responded found themselves in a small conference room at the Hampton Inn, where their search for spiritual answers eclipsed Bible verses and sermons and landed them instead in an aura-cleansing circle.

"There is an intense interest in inner peace around the world," said Howard Wimer, the Inner Peace Movement seminar leader, who said he had arrived in Las Vegas after a five-month seminar stint in Australia and New Zealand.

Wimer is a full-time speaker for Inner Peace, a spirituality/self-help organization based in Washington, D.C. and started in 1964 by Dr. Francisco Coll. Today the organization boasts "study groups" in more than 38 countries.

In today's billion-dollar spiritual marketplace where old-style religions compete with well-packaged hybrids of psychotherapy, entertainment, and a vast array of self-help regimens, Coll's pitch is: The road to inner peace is cobbled with messages from angels.

"In reality, we each have a team of angels, or helpers," Wimer told seminar participants -- a mix of men and women of all ages who had come for a variety of reasons -- some of whom believed they already had been contacted by angels, others who felt it was high time to hunt them down.

"Angels are pure energy, pure spirit ... Do you ever get tingles on your arms or chills down your spine? That's your helpers," Wimer said. "What we teach people are the practical ways to communicate with angels, to listen to the angels."

Groups of Inner Peace enthusiasts have been meeting in Las Vegas for more than two decades -- in fact, Las Vegas is considered "a pivot for Inner Peace communication in the West," Wimer said.

The organization offered five introductory angel-communicating seminars here this fall and will continue the offerings through the spring.

"Las Vegas is a beautiful place for us because it is growing, and wherever people are searching to find out who they are and where they are going, we think is a key place for us," Wimer said.

"And there are a lot of people in Las Vegas who have had a tremendous amount of experience working with angels. We've shown more than 100,000 people how to communicate with their angels."

To wit: Las Vegan Vicki Ann Warfield, a charismatic senior citizen whose pink-and-purple-tinted eyeglasses matched her pink-and-purple dress and coat, stood in the seminar and said that she has been in communication with her angels for the last five years and that, as a result, she has "found (her)self and (her) balance."

One of the first steps in learning how to communicate with your angels is to find out which of four spiritual gifts is one's forte: prophecy, vision, intuition, or feeling -- a one-on-one session that costs $50.

Wimer's main gift is prophecy.

"I get an inner knowing that most people don't listen to," said Wimer, who, upon entering the hallway outside the conference room and encountering a reporter, said, "My angels told me to come out here for some reason. Now I know why. There are no coincidences."

While the nonprofit Inner Peace Movement prides itself on offering participants complete autonomy -- "If you want to come to more courses, fine. If you don't, fine. We don't tell you what to believe or what to do," Wimer said -- the structure of the organization is less haphazard.

Coll, who was in his 70s when he died last month, created a hierarchy of spiritual development that begins with the "spiritual awakening stage" and ends -- several seminars and a distinctly capitalist mindset later -- with the "master merchandiser" stage.

"The master merchandiser is anyone following the structure moving through the IPM program and passing on the available services and materials of the IPM program ... You are a merchandiser of spiritual awareness," the organization's website said.

"Not everyone pursues that, though," Wimer said. "Some people just go to the group meetings and that's fine."

For those who do plan to rise through the Inner Peace ranks, Coll established a college to guide them.

Courses taken through the Americana Leadership College, Inc., range from $20 to $150. Other advanced seminars in Inner Peace may cost as much as $1,000, depending on the location.

"People have an intense desire to learn about themselves," Wimer said. "It is important to us to share these spiritual tools."

Before one recent seminar, participant Betty Gamez said she had " been looking for something like this all of my life, and now (she) found it in Las Vegas.

"I want to learn to be more close to the angels."

Gamez, 48, from Dumas, Tex., said that she has contacted her angels before, but wants to hone her communication skills. "I believe it can really help your life. I have had many miracles in my life, so why not come here and see if this can help bring more?"

After a half-day seminar that started with an energy channeling experiment in which an audience member is hoisted into the air by Inner Peace leaders, followed by aura-reading and angel-listening exercises, Gamez said it was a well-spent $26.

"It was beautiful," she said. "I feel like a new person."