Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - The Wisdom of Jacob’s Ladder with Jacob Cooper

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

What if our worst moments are actually an opportunity to shift into a deeper connection with ourselves and everyone and everything around us?  In this episode of Language of Love Conversation, I sit down with Jacob Cooper—author, therapist, and someone who’s experienced a life-changing near-death experience (NDE)—to explore how we can maintain this connection beyond the physical. Jacob’s story is incredible. At just three years old, he experienced an NDE due to whooping cough (Pertussis), and it completely reshaped his understanding of life, death, and the eternal nature of the soul. Through his experience, Jacob has come to realize that our loved ones who have crossed over are still with us—watching over us, guiding us, and helping us grow. There’s no true separation between us and them; the bond remains, even in the afterlife. Jacob shares how, through surrender, we can tap into the spiritual wisdom and love that our departed loved ones send us from beyond. In this conversation, Jacob also explores the role of past lives, the deep soul contracts we share with those we love, and how we can recognize and nurture relationships with our soul family—both here and on the other side. We also dive into the importance of living in the present moment, remembering that we’re eternally connected to love. Here’s a preview of what we talk about: How Jacob’s NDE at three years old opened his eyes to the eternal nature of the soul How our departed loved ones continue to watch over us and send us messages from the other side The role of past lives and soul contracts in our current relationships How to feel the presence of your soul family and deepen these connections Why embracing the present moment helps us align with the boundless love of spirit If you’re looking for more on this journey, Jacob’s books The Wisdom of Jacob’s Ladder and Life After Breath take you on a powerful exploration of his NDE and the wisdom he uncovered. It’s a beautiful reminder that death isn’t the end, and our loved ones are never really gone. For more guidance and resources on your own spiritual journey, be sure to visit my website—it’s packed with tools to help you stay connected to the love and wisdom of the other side! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love jacob cooper is a clinical social worker reiki master certified hypnotherapist and

best-selling author his most recent book is the wisdom of jacob's ladder the ladder being a metaphor of the spiritual journey that he has been on and teaches others about, starting with a near-death experience that happened when he was three years old. In this episode of The Language of Love, we are getting into Jacob's story, how he remembers the near-death experience, what happened, and how it shaped the rest of his life, as well as some of the profound spiritual teachings that he learned on the other side and has been integrating ever since, now helping others on their spiritual journeys.

If you have ever wondered about soul contracts, soul families, past lives, near-death experiences, you're gonna find this fascinating conversation totally hits home. I'm so happy to have you join us on The Language of Love. Jacob Cooper, thank you so much for joining us on The Language of Love. What an honor it is, Dr. Berman, to be your guest.

I'm a big fan and it was a big honor to meet you at the Helping Parents Heal conference out in Phoenix, you know, a couple months ago. Yeah, we met there. It's funny because we also had a mutual friend, Stephanie Arnold, who had sent your stuff to me and then it got lost in translation. And then I met you at the Helping Parents Heal. I've told these guys about that conference that I didn't really understand what it was about.

I just kind of went blind with my friend Anita Morjani, and it was 1,200 parents who had lost children in attendance, which was really beautiful. I mean, it was just a beautiful event. And you were speaking there too, right? You were one of the speakers? Yes, yes. I was one of the featured presenters there, and it was just profound to see. I think people went in there with a certain degree of emotional pain or status, and it's

seemed like there was, you know, a trajectory of release and they were, there was a lot of healing involved and connections made. So that was just a beautiful program to be a part of. Yeah, I think so too. What I liked about, what I thought was really interesting is that the entire lineup and you included, and we're going to get to your story in a second, were mediums, primarily mediums. I mean, there were a few others, but mostly mediums and people who had had near-death experiences. And, and so to me, what was, cause I was watching the healing happening, you know, and I can kind of feel it and sense it both in myself and watching it around me. And so I always say that, like, there are all these different elements of healing. You know, I talk about the

six pillars of grief healing, but one of them is this spiritual piece, this awareness that you can come to and that you play into this as well. We'll get to this in a second, that there is no real death, that energy can't be created or destroyed. It just changes form. In this case, our children at this conference, these 1200 parents sort of watching them over the weekend, there were two key things that were part of the healing. One is that they had the experience again and again, either for themselves or with some of the other parents they were watching, have readings or have these realizations or hear stories like yours that help them understand that their children are right there beyond the veil and that you can continue a relationship with them. And they

haven't, you know, while they have been lost, quote unquote, in physical form, that they haven't really been lost in energetic form. And so I always say that's like 30%, 20 to 30% of the healing is just that. And then there's a lot of other stuff that goes into it that we didn't get into at this conference, but I know Helping Parents Heal does attend to a lot of those other things like body work and cognitive stuff and community stuff and guilt and shame and all those things. The other piece that I think was really important was the community piece, the ability to be in the presence of people who intimately understand your pain and relax into that. I think automatically, I didn't realize until I was going through it myself, how much that plays

role in the healing. So those two things I think were, I'm digressing from your topic, but I just think it's interesting because you mentioned the healing that happened. And I've been thinking a lot about what creates healing. And so for someone like you, right, you've written this, a couple of books, but your most recent book is Jacob's Ladder. And you had a near death experience. I think your talk was before I got there. So I didn't get to see it, although I did read the book And I know some about your story, but what I think is really fascinating about, or part of what's fascinating about your story is that your near-death experience that you had was when you were really little, when you were three years old.

So let's just start there. And also I'm curious, I want you to tell the story a little bit about what happened to you at three and what you experienced. But also I'm curious about how the heck you remember it. Like, I don't remember. I remember very, I mean, that's technically, and I know you're a clinician, a therapist too, so you understand this, like it's considered pre-conscious until three, you know, right around three years old. We don't remember a lot then. I mean, sometimes we remember if we had

something big and huge happen to us, like, I guess this would fall into that, but I'm amazed that you remember it too. So tell us about that. It was September of 1993 and was right around the time of the high holidays in the Jewish tradition, where in our Jewish tradition, you're preparing yourself to meet the Creator to wipe off all your sins in the Day of Atonement. But little did I know that I was about to meet the Creator, but it wasn't in a synagogue. It was in a very much direct way. I had a profound near-death experience due to a condition called pertussis, otherwise known as whipping cough, which for children, infants, and even adults, you know, could lead to fatalities. And I went to a playground, you know, and I just got into this coughing spree,

you know, at the playground and just everything began to shut down. But the last thing that I just remembered that I was able to feel was my own brain. And it's kind of like if you're in a basement of a home and you shut off every power breaker and everyone goes off. The last switch to go off was my brain. And I literally felt my brain just kind of like snap in half due to the deprivation of oxygen. And there was this large crack that I felt. And we have a lot of these euphemisms in our language, such as my brain cracked open and God came in. But I directly experienced that. And I felt myself ascending on this beautiful tunnel, which a lot of near-death experiencers have and felt myself rising above my body. And I just felt incredible euphoria.

And this experience allowed me to have a full crossing over experience in which I encountered my spirit guides, soul family members on the other side that were there. I was aware of past lives and particularly a last lifetime that I lived that I think ties in closely to my near-death experience, which we could get into a little bit if the show permits regarding past lives and their significance, but it was profound. I was given a choice as to what I would do as well, where, you know, would I stay or would I go? And which is, you know, probably more rare, you know, most near-death experiencers are told, hey, there's someone that you're tied into, or there's more work to be done in this earth school. But I was given that choice and

I had a lot of premonitions of the work that I did. And it was just profound where I was able to see you know all these things that are always there but sometimes we have our blinders to you know my angels spirit guides and i was just aware of god and you know everything on the other side was there front and center and it was profound uh so it's something that could never ever leave me to this day but obviously i decided to stay over here otherwise it would be uh you know probably come through over there i've come through it helping parents heal in another way probably through a medium, but not as a speaker. Yeah. And I think you have a lot of profound insight just to preface that a lot of people will hear someone like your colleague, Anita

Morjani, who had a fasting near-death experience, probably more so in her adult years. But children and infants do have these experiences. And based on the research, it usually is able to not only be remembered. But it takes around two to three decades to really integrate. And for me, that was kind of spot on because my early 20s was the first time that I ever became public with it. It was something that I held very close to my heart. But I do believe that I'm able to remember it, I would say, from a traumatic standpoint. This was a pure suffocation experience. And it was just, I don't mean to sugarcoat it, it was the scariest, single scariest moment in my life. I mean, you imagine that you feel like you're drowning and there's nothing to hold on to. You're trying

to grasp onto a log, nothing. And so I was trying, I was trying it, nothing was there. And so I think for viewers to understand this, it's like you would ask me, hey, Jacob, September 11, 2001, where were you? I could tell you exactly where I was because that was a profound traumatic moment. You ask me a week later, I would have no idea. So the combination of trauma as well as this experience going beyond the linear brain and consciousness that goes beyond the linear brain had me have the ability to remember it. But I think if I was supposed to forget it, I probably would have. Yeah. It's just fascinating. And also, do you remember at age three this? Because it's also fascinating to me that you made the decision to come back

because I do hear from a lot of people who were given that decision. And you're right. I would agree that all majority of people I meet who've, and I tend to meet many people who've had near death experiences. We're not necessarily, we're just told they had to go back, but, but they all say, if I had been given the choice, I would have stayed because it was so freaking amazing and so much better than coming back. And it was actually kind of painful to come. It was painful to come back, especially because you're coming back to a body that just died. So there's shit going on, you know, not to mention, I don't know if you remember this happening to you, but this report, I often hear that when we come, when people come back

into their bodies after being out of them in a near death experience, it's even if it's a healthy body and otherwise healthy body, it's a tremendous feeling of constriction and heaviness and density compared to what it's like on the other side. So I'm just wondering what you remember. Do you remember making that decision and why you made the decision to come back? Absolutely. I mean, if it was just about me, I probably would have hung out there. But I just asked, you know, why?

Basically, like, what is my life going to look like? What am I going to look like? You know, why am I here, essentially? And I just started to get these lashing premonitions as a work that I would be doing. And it was helping other people. I saw myself speaking in front of crowds like I've been doing throughout the years. And I just saw that, wow, that heaven, the other side is always there, but the ability to help people remember that is, to me, more profound than just a crossing over experience. It's part of what we're all doing here, creating a heaven on earth. So it was about service and uplifting other people's lives that to me, that was the most profound God realization that I had.

You know, a lot of people want to know God or intellectualize God, but it's about the embodiment, which is about making a dent in this life, making a ripple effect and being our brothers and sisters keeper. And, you know, I had my near-death experience in the playground and there's a lot of allegory of it, but I was just a child in a playground. And you think of it, that is who we are in a nutshell. We are all just children in the eternal playground of God here as our brothers and sisters keepers. So it was for service that I, sad to say, but my mother told me that I got furious a couple of days later at the doctor where I literally kicked the doctor, ran around the room. And I think it was because I was just having all these overwhelming emotions and I couldn't process, I couldn't, you know, my parents just couldn't understand this. And my father, who's also a therapist, told me that, you know, a couple of years later, I came up to him and I said, hey, dad, remember when I was rushed to the ambulance, something profound happened. It's not going to make sense to you right now, but one day you'll understand.

And so it was torturous to live with that in many ways. I don't want to sugarcoat it. It was a double edged sword. How do you come back? Like, did you come back and say, hey, I met God, I met angels, or were you just like, I mean, because you're not even that, you're relatively verbal at three, but it's not like you can have long, you know, philosophical conversations. So, like, did you talk about it when you came back? it was so sacred to myself that I kept it very close within, which I think is a misunderstanding with near-death experiences. I mean, I know some people see that movie like heaven is for real with the boy who had his experience and tells everyone that does happen. But a lot of times it's a very sensitive, sacred topic. And also intuitively, you just know that it's not the

right timing. You know, people would not be able to process it the right way. Maybe it's used against you. So I kept it close to thin, but you know, after this incredible experience, my brain was very much changed, which I learned was just the filter and not the creator between the two worlds. And so I just had all this premonitions and intuition that would follow me through all of my life. And I just remember in preschool, I don't remember very much, but other than these profound experiences where I just looked at a classmate and I was seeing all these spirits around the room. And I just asked the classmate, do you see what I'm seeing? And the classmate just gave me this incredible bewildered look. And again, that suffocating feeling that I had in my

NDE, that followed me through a lot of my childhood where I just felt like I was alone in this. And the world that I thought that I knew was, I just felt very much disenfranchised and outcasted from in many ways. And I just felt like I was on my own planet and everyone else is kind of doing their thing, you know? Yeah. I mean, I can imagine being a little kid trying to make sense of that, even if on a soul level, you understood operating in a 3D world while you, you know, are experiencing 5D basically. And I've heard this again, I mean, universally from people who have had near-death experiences and come back that your brain is different. Your filter, I think that's a beautiful way to put it.

Your filter is different. So your sixth sense comes really strongly online. We all have a sixth sense, but it seems to be a universal thing with near-death experiencers that theirs gets like that channel gets opened and stays open when you come back. So I can imagine as a little kid, how did you walk around? And I know you were just a little kid and you remember probably as much as the rest of us remember about our earlier childhood. But as you grew in early childhood and into pre-adolescence and adolescence, from what I read of your story, it's not like you were walking around like a sage Buddha who was attuned to the

upper echelons, you were struggling like the rest of us and maybe even more so because you'd experienced a different reality. And we're trying to be like a, you know, a round peg fitting in a square hole. You know, you didn't really fit with the rest of the 3D world. That must have been really difficult. So like, how did you hold that awareness of the truth with a capital T of what love and life is really about. How did you hold that in conjunction with the way the world operates and the way your peers were acting and everything else? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Hereafter with Matt Damon. It's just basically about this negligent medium who has these gifts,

but just wants to be a regular guy. And, you know, for most kids, that's a trajectory where we come from the other side, we're very spiritually oriented, but we fall into a world that at least, you know, where we are over here in the States, it's more in love with regurgitation than imagination. And it just wants you to live under these fluorescent lights and be very much left brain oriented. And if you're daydreaming or, you know, not paying attention, you're medicated, you're sedated, and you're taught, you're told that you're weird, you know, and what does every kid ascribed to do is just to be normal, you know, to fit in. And so I was having all these experiences and I just tried to push them down as much as I could, like, you know, a beach ball

that you try to push down. But eventually it always just came back to me. And for a lot of my life, it was just a nuisance. I would see things, hear things, know things before they happen. I'm just like, I want to play basketball. I want to be a kid, like, leave me alone. Like, Like I don't like, and a lot of stuff that I did see like happened like timeline wise years later, you know? So it was just fascinating. Like I remember I was like playing basketball and a kid like teased me or something like that.

And I was like overweight at the time. And then I just saw him, a voice told me he's going to die early, like be nice, don't say anything. And years later, I'm on my morning commute to my job and I'm on this random road and it's closed. and it happened to be the site where unfortunately that boy got into a car crash and crossed over a couple of hours earlier. It was just like a random road in the middle of nowhere. And so, you know, these types of things just happened to me. And this voice was saying that I really

bogged down until, you know, later in life where I recognized that it was a blessing rather than a curse, but that took, you know, some time. And what led you to that point? How did you get to the point where you really, because I think for a lot of it, I mean, the same thing happened to me when I didn't have a near death experience, but when I was a little girl, I saw all kinds of things. I, and a lot of it, I blocked out and remembered later and confirmed with my parents who confirmed it with me, but I would see little nice entities and fairies and beings. And, and, and then it's, but everyone kind of treated me like a cute little silly imagination, nobody. And then it started getting

a little bit scary, especially at night, because I'd be trying to go to sleep and things would be like buzzing around. And I didn't know. And I was told that it was my imagination. So I didn't know how to work with it or make sense of it. So I became really scared. I remember just being petrified. And so I just like, nope, shut down the whole thing until maybe 20 years, 30 years later, when I went through a really horrible, painful time. You know, one of those AFGEs, that's like call them another fucking growth experience that kind of break you open. And then that led me as those experiences often do back down a spiritual path. I didn't have an experience like yours and I wasn't walking around in the world, just kind of like saying, stop giving me this information

and trying to block it out. So was it an AFGE for you or was it something else that led you to finally open up to and embrace with and start working with these channels that were opened for you when you were three? Well, first of all, I love that you shared your own transformation because I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding that they can't transform if they don't have some type of near-death experience or spiritual transformative experience. The trajectory is the same where it's just a shake-up period of your life. And either you could sit in that or you could be forced to migrate, adapt, to really look at life through a new lens. Comfort is never where growth occurs, as we know. It's hard to pinpoint one particular

situation, but yeah, there was a lot of pain that certainly influenced my greater sense of purpose and remembering who I was. But I would look back on, certainly I had in my own backyard things that I didn't feel were helpful, but ended up being helpful, where I had a great aunt of mine who ended up just giving me all these books and teachings that just allowed me to have universality of my experience, which is, you know, again, a great thing like we experienced in helping parents heal. We're able to have a sangha or a community or just understanding that you're not alone, which is so foreign to me. I didn't even walk around saying psychic near-death experience and all these books gave me a way to name it so I could tame it, as we say. So it gave me-

And understand it, understand what happened to you. It gave me a home, but I would say the biggest trigger was when I was a very defiant, rebellious kid for various different reasons. But that role ambiguity that I experienced in my near-death experience where I saw that my parents biologically created me, but were just kind of like these method actors in this play. And this life, yes, they were my parents, but on the soul level, I just saw them differently having my near-death experience. So that led to a lot of clashing. But my later teens, my early college years, I was told to just get out of the house. I probably deserved it at the time.

I was really just defiant. And I just walked around the block just sobbing uncontrollably. And I was just tired of feeling so disenfranchised, so disconnected for so many years. And then I found myself once again in a playground. And I looked at the playground and I just remembered, that's our eternal home. And it's not that I ever forgot my near-death experience, but it just penetrated my heart in a deeper level where I was more involved in the karma or the story of my near-death experience.

And a lot of pain allowed me to understand the dharma, the meaning, the essence of it. And then a couple of days later, I went to a yoga seminar. And then this woman who, sorry, I don't mean to say this woman, this person came in with purple hair and kind of like this biker look. And I just didn't, I was like, who is this person? And she just came up to me and she's like, you know, I see you speaking in front of a ton of people. You're going to be very well known one day. And at the time I'm like, leave me alone. I'm lucky if I'm like flipping burgers, you know, like me out of, you know, like, who am I? I just

got kicked out of my house. I was sitting with my grandparents, but she goes, no, you watch. I see you. Wow. There's a lot of people. You're going to be helping a lot of people. And that was like an earth angel to really validate what I saw as real and to trust, you know, that vision. I kept it to myself, as Stephen X would say. And now I just, I stopped to keep my visions to myself and I let it go. And that's when the near-death experience had its purpose is once I just let it go and stopped holding onto it.

And I've been sharing ever since. I've been sharing ever since. Letting your street flag fly. That's what we have to do. We have to let our, it's not really, actually, this is more of the truth than fitting into the mold, but it does feel scary. I remember when I wrote Quantum Love,

which was my coming out after what I call my spiritual reawakening when I had went through that dark time and opened the channels back up. And I was so nervous because I'm like this scientist, academic therapist. And I'm like, here I go. Let my freak flag fly. But once you do, that's when the magic starts to happen. And it sounds like that really changed once you accepted it, opened up to it, started talking about it. That's when the magic really started to integrate i've accomplished a lot in life but most of all being a mom of these three when i lost sammy grief cracked me open in ways i never imagined and yet with support and healing i've transformed in beautiful and unexpected ways now i'm sharing everything i've learned with you and

the grief healing collective none of us were meant to do this alone join me not only in healing but stepping into the beautiful metamorphosis that grief, when we're supported, can offer us. So let's talk, there were a couple of things you mentioned that I want to dig into a little bit, and I think these are concepts that come up sometimes on this show, but let's talk about them in the context of what you've experienced and your understanding of it. One is, you know, certainly the past life piece. And I know you talked in your book about how your life here now you learned in that near-death experience was actually kind of karma for lack of a better word or a way of working through a past life, which I want you to talk about that and also soul families.

Yeah. Those, those are some of my favorite areas, Laura. So thank you so much for bringing it up. But yeah, I mean, these days I work as a regressionist and I help people to access their past lives through hypnosis. And I'm also going to start soon what's called the Life Between Life Regression, which is a fascinating component that really allows people to remember their charting phase of their life and their purpose. And that there was an intelligence that allowed them to come into being that they just didn't fall from a coconut tree. You know, they're here for definitely a methodical, thought-out reason from a greater intelligence. But, you know, regarding past lives, I've really learned that messages are repeated until some of those lessons are embraced. And that's how we really accelerate. And I look at this earth as just a school for very evolved beings with you could look at it as painful or when you have, you know, spiritual lens, you could look at it in an opportunistic avenue.

I've since been able to do that. But to get micro with my own specific near-death experience, it's not factual, but I think we could all play detectives and try to put things together. And it seems to me that my near-death experience is very much tied into a last life that I lived in which, again, this has been validated through evidential intuitives prior to me ever becoming public with my own near-death experience or me saying a word about it. And so, as a clinician, I don't criminalize mental health. I don't say commit suicide, much like I wouldn't say commit a heart attack or cancer. I just say a death by suicide, a crossing over experience by suicide. But even the term death doesn't exist in my vocabulary either. So, we're kind of short on words. You can use it, understanding that it's not death. I'm not opposed. I know Elizabeth tries to correct me from helping parents.

when I say the word death, don't say the word death. We use the fucking word death. Death is a word. It's not the end. Death doesn't mean the end. And death doesn't mean that the energy of which you're made doesn't continue. There is life after death, but I don't mind using the word death. I think we should reclaim the word death. Much like we've reclaimed C-U-N-T. I think we should reclaim D-E-A-T-H. I like your style. You know, two things could be true at the same time as well. It doesn't have to be, you know, all or nothing, but yeah, I have a friend of mine, Alison DuBois, who has a show called The Dead Life and I love it, you know? But again, I digress. So, yeah, well, I, I, yeah, I'm, I'm talking here too much, but you know, I saw that I had

this experience where I just felt my back was against the wall. There was nothing to hold on to In a past life. In this past life where everything just, the walls just came in and I just, you know, made this decision. And I just remembered a lot of students that I saw that I was involved with and a teacher and just everything came crashing down from not being able to see past, you know, the pain that I was experiencing. And then, you know, my near-death experience was kind of like a similar deal where I was suffocating. There was nothing possible to hold on to. But instead of trying to struggle that or to change that, I migrated and adapt to it by surrendering to the eternal light of God. And that, you know, was something that saved me through this experience and allowed me to transform from losing my breath to gaining an awareness of the breath of eternity. And so, you know, that is really a lot of the crux that I try to work with in my own clients, which I started in recovery orientation, which really emphasizes the power of surrender and leaning into a greater power that we're connected to. and not always trying to figure out all on our own and being able to tap into and surrender

to the greater power within. And it's often these dark nights of the soul that we find that infinite light and we start to reevaluate the world that we're living in. And so that I think was something that allowed me to remember that when you have nothing, it could allow you to have everything.

And it just reminds me of that poem by Albert Camus when he discusses when within the dead of the winter, we could find an eternal summer and there it is good. And I think that's really congruent with a lot of transformation when there's just absolutely nothing, we're able to regain a sense of everything in those moments. Sometimes through the pain of the nothing, we talk a lot about the pain of grief being a portal that brings you to that place if you allow it to kind of burn away everything else, but it is in the surrender. So, and just to be clear, guys, I know you kind of, if you listen to the show a lot, you know, I've talked about past lives, you know, but when we

talk about past lives as a context, just so you understand what we're talking about, the idea is, and maybe you can add to this Jake, but the idea is that our souls, you know, we are humans. We aren't humans having a spiritual experience. We're spirits or souls having a human experience. We get to come here and have this experience of what Jake is referring to as earth school. You know, I sometimes refer to as a video game, like we're having this kind of experience where we're working through aspects that our soul kind of signed up for. And we'll talk about soul groups and soul contracts in a minute, but that many of most of us have lived multiple lives. So once again, to the death, not being the end of the soul's life, that when we die, our bodies disintegrate.

we, you know, the form that we took disappears, but the energy of which we were made remains. And so, you know, we kind of, and when you were talking, you were alluding Jake to kind of the, I forget how you put it beautifully, but this kind of high level strategy, you know, that takes place. It's funny when my mother died, this was about 11 or 12 years before Sammy, my son died. And so he was like in third grade or something, fourth grade. And she was a really big loss, obviously she was the first person they were really close to who died. And also she was like my soulmate. She was the big, you know, AFGE that broke me open that led to my reawakening, which was ironic because she was also part of the reason it shut down. But my kids said,

what happens when we die? And I said, well, I'll tell you what I think. And I said, you know, I feel that I told them about how we, our souls live many lives. And I said, before we came here, when we were all souls, we made a plan. I was going to be the mommy. You were going to be the kids, anything that you needed to work on, like that, that I was going to help you maybe cause you pain or bother you or whatever. Like you kind of, you know, I was working and getting rid of my maternal guilt. You kind of, cause I would always say to them, I know, despite all my best efforts, I'm fucking you up. I wouldn't say it in those words, you know, but I'm doing the best I can. And then it's all coming from a place of love.

And your soul chose me as your mother. So tough luck. But I said, you know, you chose me and dad, not only for the nice things we were going to do, but also for some of the way mistakes we may make. And you chose this life just and we all work together to create this. And my youngest, Jackson, said, OK, so when you die, will you wait for me so that when I die, we can come back and be a family again? I didn't take bother to tell him there is no time on the other side and I wouldn't have

to wait, but I said, yes. And then sweet boy, Sammy said, and you know, I had no idea he was going to die at 16 at this point, but he said, you know, I don't think I had anything really big to learn or needed to be kind of learn hard lessons because I chose you as my parents. I was like, oh my God. So I think about that a lot when I feel guilty, but which we all do when we lose someone, but it's relevant to what we're talking about because this idea that we live multiple, multiple lives and we're constantly, if we want to, it's a choice as I understand it.

You tell me if that's your understanding that we choose to come back for our soul's evolution, for our soul's growth. And we kind of, not that there isn't free will, but we have kind of like a meta design plan. Right. And so you alluded to this when you said you saw that your parents were like part of the plan, that they were part of the players in this video game you had signed up for. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit, kind of from a sole contract perspective, and also the difference between like the family we're born into, which may or, you know, which is part of our soul family, but our soul family is a lot more than that. Yeah.

Well, I loved what you shared because certainly my near-death experience, one of the profound takeaways was that life is not random. Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes when you experience such chaos and disorder, it's very hard and impossible to find it from the angle that you're coming from. But having this near-death experience was very much in congruency with what Einstein referred to as the three most important angles that we could take to life. Is the universe an ambivalent place, a place of love and order, or is it working against us? And so we could find many different avenues to find solutions to this quandary, but certainly past lives and near-death experiences give a lot of people segue to that there is an order, there is a blueprint, things are not just random. And if we're able to have that, we can lean into trust and faith and a knowing that no matter what we're going through, it's there for a reason. And you don't play the victim mindset. You're able to lean into more so the victor mindset of your own life and really transform your greatest struggles through the power of trust and what is coming, what you walked into and what you're able to walk out of it.

But certainly in my regressions, in my near-death experience, I do experience that there is soul groups that we reincarnate with. I have a profound story that I love to share always where I had my great aunt, who was my spiritual guide and mentor in this life. And as she was about to go, she was having all these lucid visions and deathbed visions that she was having that a lot of people have, which, you know, unfortunately, a lot of family members get excited when they're having this because they think that they're turning the corner, but really, you know, they usually do cross over, which again, works very similar to

near-death experience in that their brainwaves are very low, but the consciousness is higher. Again, showing you that mind-brain dichotomy, that the brain and mind are not one and the same. So she was just telling me that if you look at a family, if you look at a portrait of a family, And if you look at the eyes of each member, there's something that connects each member to one another that goes beyond this lifetime. And that was the last lesson that she said to me. I thought, you know, cool, that's a nice kind of lesson, her references on picture. And a couple years later, about a year or two later, I was in a mediumship reading with this medium who's since crossed over, and she's celebrating her continuation day. But she said, I'm connecting to your aunt.

And why is she telling me the word picture, picture, picture? And I knew it was her way of validating the eternal connection that we have and the different roles and method actors that we play within each lifetime. But we all, on a macro level, are a part of a soul group and a soul family. But there's more of these nuclear soul pods, just soul groups that we reincarnate with. And I experienced that in my NDE. And subsequently, I think we could all experience this where we look at someone maybe for the first time and just feel like, you know, that's a familiarity. I never spoke one word to you. I know you. I see you. There's a connection that is impossible that could be created when we just met. So it is very real. And we do play out our different roles to balance out our different karma with each other. And sometimes if we might have been not nice to someone, we could do that. Whatever it is, it's all about balancing out our different roles in this theater of life, that eternal theater of life that we're all a part of. but yes, I certainly do believe in that. And to me, it's kind of like a ray of God where

this kind of energy that comes from, you know, day one is connected to each other. And it's just to me, like an expression of the divine that we are all a part of throughout different lifetimes. Yeah. And we have different roles. Like I also said to my kids when I was telling them, in this lifetime, I was the mommy and you were the kids, but in another lifetime, one of you was my sibling and one of you was my sister and another one was my father. And, you know, we take on these different roles with each other too. And I know what you're talking about. I asked Spirit, there was a point in my life where I realized like, I really need to up

my friendship game. This was probably 10 years ago. Not that I didn't love the friends I had, but many of them I had had from elementary school and college and whatnot. And many of them I'm still very close to today, but many of them were just beautiful, kind, loving, hot messes. And I was spending so much of my time supporting them. And I had gotten to a place, especially after I had breast cancer,

I was like, I'm ready. I've had this spiritual reawakening. I'm trying to navigate this. I want to call in a tribe of soul friends who can help me and teach me. I don't want to be the teacher and healer of all my friends. I want friends who can teach me. I want soul aligned friends. I want to find my soul family beyond the family I have.

And please show me when I meet someone. And ever since then, I swear to you, people light up. There's like a glimmer that shoots up around someone. And it has happened in like a store once where the store clerk, you know, this woman that was working in like this kind of antique store, I didn't know she lights up. And I'm like, okay, I made a promise. Also, when I asked for that, I will acknowledge it and reach out. And so I just marched up to her and I just, this is when I started embracing waving my freak flag. And I was like, I asked spirit to light up people that are supposed to be soul friends and spirit lit you up. So we're supposed to be like, okay, but she got it because she lit up and she was like a secret freak herself,

you know? And so we ended up having a beautiful friendship and it happens often with colleagues, with people. I meet at a party the other night it happened. And I just say, we're going to be friends. Like I just get my chutzpah up and, and make it happen. And I really do feel like these people are souls that I have had a long history with. I know that. And that, you know, people say, have you created this network of such amazing friends? That's one of the key ways besides just doing my own work to evolve my own heart and soul and my emotional intelligence. That has been a huge part of it too. So I feel like the soul family piece is something that we can all tap into when you welcome that in. And when you start to really allow yourself to pursue that feeling of

like, there you are, when you meet someone. Yeah. I love that. And I think you just illustrated a lot of manifestation, magneticism, in a sense of you had your intentions towards the intention and you chose it rather than just having, you know, friendships of a comfort or things that you're used to. You actively declared, you know, what you wanted. And when you get specific, you can get it back in return. So, and it shows with, I know Anita's a good friend and you can't find better quality than that. You can't find better quality than that. So that's, I think, for listeners. I have wonderful friends because of that.

You do. I really do. And I feel very blessed by that. But I say high tides rises all boats. So you're really surrounding yourself with these good people and you're elevating each other. Yeah, we definitely do. And I think you wrote about this in your book that before the whole law, and you mentioned it, which is why I'm mentioning it now, this whole law of attraction thing or the power of manifesting, which I talk a lot about the science behind and quantum love, how to access the science of it.

But one of the things I think I remember reading in your book is that you kind of had learned this from spirit. This was one of the teachings through your near, I think it was during your near death experience that you understood, but that you had never kind of articulated and put into words. And then when you started seeing all of the law of attraction stuff, you're like, oh, this is what spirit was saying to me. Right. And part of it has to do, I don't know what your thoughts about this, part of it has to do with belief. I mean, belief influences so much of our behaviors. And if we're walking around with the ego, the small box of ourselves, then we're going to attract that small box. But if we say, damn it, I'm limitless, I'm eternal, I'm expansive,

I deserve this, I am this, we don't attract what we want. We attract what we really think we are. And so I think that allows us a more expansive life. Once we let go of those self-limiting belief systems and living small, Anita, I think, made a post the other day that the soul didn't come here to play it small. You know, the soul is a big thing. We're here to, you know, have a full-fledged experience and it's to let go of a lot of these false identifications of self-beliefs that are getting in our own way. So I love that you live by that and I try to follow suit.

as you started to really embrace it, it sounds like you were going through your own dark night of the soul and you sort of surrendered. One of the things that I talk a lot about in just grief healing and the power of the portal of grief, the power of something coming into your world that cracks you, breaks you, just like destroys you is that it's, you know, it's like the metaphor of the butterfly, which I honestly didn't know until I, I missed this in biology class as a kid, but you know, I didn't really understand until my late thirties that a caterpillar doesn't go into the cocoon and grow wings and become a butterfly. It actually has the what's called imaginal cells, the DNA of the butterfly within it, but it literally melts down into green mush

inside the butterfly, I mean, inside the cocoon. So it's in it, which is such a beautiful metaphor because this is what happens when heart, you know, when we have these big events, it turns to mush. And then it's slowly, because it's in the DNA to be the butterfly, it slowly reconfigures into the, and metamorphosizes, alchemizes into the butterfly. And when it's ready, it comes out and then it has to rest and integrate. And then it begins to fly and have its life as a butterfly. And so I do feel like these, not that we have to have a near-death experience or that we have to have our child die or some other tragedy happen to us. Although I do think that is an option in our soul contract. If we don't get there, otherwise our souls will take

us to these things that will get us to where we're supposed to go to become the butterfly we're supposed to become. But I'm wondering, cause I know you speak to this in your book that it's hard for people to, they don't really say this to me because my kid died and they feel bad, but if my kid didn't die, they'd be saying, F you, are you saying that it was my kid's choice to get cancer? I had a kid with cancer too, by the way, or are you saying it was, you know, those children's Holocaust fault, you know, that they're, that they wanted and signed up to be burned alive or what, you know, like how can they get really mad about it? And I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit. Yeah. Well, I'd say two things could be true at the same time.

I think from the human angle, none of this makes sense. You know, pain is just contradictory to the soul and who we are. And, but I think we also through our lives have a different reference that humanity could utilize. And I think some people sign up for that, you know, as a lesson for humanity. I'm kind of learning what to do, what not to do in a way. And it's all more so of a greater collective lesson that they're a part of rather than a specific individualized choice. And, you know, that's the kind of way that I find it where there's a human angle to look at this, but there's also a deeper soul lens to look at pain. And pain, you know, always really has a segue to purpose. But I think if you're looking at life through the first floor of an apartment,

you're going to see the bushes and the streets, and that's what you're going to see. And you get up to the 10th or 15th floor, things start to make sense a little bit. So it all is dependent and predicated on the vantage point of reality of which you view it. And so that's what I'll say. When you're looking at life through the soul's lens, things start to add up and you're able to see a flow even in the most chaotic, lowest abysses of humanity. And I referenced someone like Viktor Frankl, who was one of the more transformative individuals who came from the ashes of the Holocaust. And Viktor found the utmost freedom when that was taken away from him. And if you look at any of the most influential books of modern time, his book is always at the

top of the list in Man's Search for Meaning. But he found that freedom had very little to do with what was happening to him and more to do with the inner dialogue and the inner processing, that space between the stimuli and the response. And so I think in all of life, what we walked into was not our fault. It's not your fault, kind of like that scene from Good Will Hunting with Robin Williams and Matt Damon. But what we walk out of it, how we perceive it, that, you know, is in our control. And I'm sure that really influences our work in therapists. We're always trying to help people to honor where they're at, but also generate the hope, the faith, and the ability to see things in a greater context from which, you know, it's

perceived as. But yeah, it's very hard. And I don't particularly try to pretend that it's okay to shake someone down who's going through pain. I think the most important thing that we could do and someone's going through some pain, it's to not talk over them, but to listen under them and to understand them and to just not say a word. That's what I found to be helpful. I've been as a therapist for several years and some of the biggest compliments that I've gotten was when I didn't say one word, which I think the less Jacob is better. So I don't know why I do these interviews. I should just do the Charlie Chaplin silent movies and the cant gestures. And, you know, but yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's definitely true when people are in an extreme pain, the last thing they want is for you to be like, you're going to find purpose in this and you're going to know what's happening for a reason. You're like, fuck you. It's all happening for a reason. But I do think, you know, I think about back to Anita, right? Her in her book, she has this beautiful metaphor in Dying to Be Me of trying to articulate,

you know, which you did too. It's so hard to articulate the inarticulatable of being on the other side and what you experienced. But she describes this tap like the equivalent of seeing a tapestry, the most beautiful, intricate, huge, immense, gorgeous, multicolored, woven tapestry of life. And she could see her thread weaving through as part of the picture and all the other threads. It wove with and around and through, and it's that 20th floor meta view of those things that we can't really see or understand necessarily the purpose of, either the collective purpose or our soul's individual purpose of those things that happen to us. And it's true that on a certain level, it's the highest call of faith, I think.

There are many ways in which we're called to faith, but when something really horrible has happened or when you're really in pain and struggling and, you know, to lean into faith is a kind of surrender. And it requires a kind of trust. Like I don't see the whole picture of the tapestry, but I am willing to trust that my thread is there and, and that this is all going to make sense at some point, maybe not even in this lifetime, but when I get to the other side, it well. Yeah. And as we drive through these roads of life, some of these twists and turns could be tumultuous, but we trust that there is no ending, that all is well, was well, will be well. It becomes easier to start to navigate them because recognize what is real versus what is

a temporary experience. And so I experienced that in my NDE where I just had this moment of timeless awareness where I was just in this field of awareness that there was no time. It's like going up into air and just trying to chop up air. We try to do this as humans, but I just saw my near-death experience, the eternity of time. There is no linear time. Not only that, all was well, is well, would be well in that moment. I love what Lao Tzu speaks about where a lot of our anxiety is predicated on the future orientations or sadness on the past. And that really is really what a lot of spiritual teachers are about is Jerusalem and the now, which is in the present. I think you could have a lot of droplets of near-death experiences in eternity from connecting

to the eternal now. And that's what the other side is. It's a peaceful now and understanding All these roads are just temporary experiences, you know, that you go through for transformative value and you trust in the eternal now versus a temporary experience. And can you go back to that? I'm sure you can. I know you teach others, but can you easily shift into that now, into that state that you went into in your NDE? Because I love that too.

Anita can do that too. I love, and my friend, Susan Graf, both of whom had near-death experiences. they can shift themselves into that frequency and experience the somatic experience of being there. I do. I can't say it's as ever as euphoric or profound as it is, but I think what they're finding now is they're doing a lot of EMDR to help people who have had these transformative of experiences. It's called spiritual activation. And through eye movement, that kind of thing, they're able to have that same type of feeling they had in their NDs, which I didn't go through that saying that I'm interested in, but I'm able to have that same degree of peacefulness and

awareness. And at times that leads to a pivot where I'm just, I remembered one time I was like talking in my baseball mitt and my principal rabbi at the time had a megaphone. He said, whoever's talking, I'm going to call you out. And he screamed my name in front of the whole school. And I felt such a degree of shame and embarrassment. And moments later, I just felt my guides with me. And they told me, let it go. You're not going to think anything of this. It's just going to pass like ocean waves coming on the shoreline. He met with me. I was as calm as anything. I wasn't angry. I wasn't combative. I was out of that reality. I just knew that was temporary. And so I think having a spiritual mindset is, yes, honoring that pain, the weight

of the light is going through it, but just your premise of reality, what's real, is that trust, that knowing that no matter what you go through, it will all be okay. It always was okay, will be okay. But I'm able to have that realization, those moments. But there is a homesickness that that sometimes could happen through near-death experiencers, where this reality could be tough and not everyone understands it and people criticize you and you're not good enough. And we fall in a love that is in love with your doing rather than your being. And so from day one, you get the good grade on the test, you're a great person. You screw up, you're bad. And so we internalize that. And we all are guilty of that. And I think what's important is to look at

yourself through the eyes of spirit, which looks up at you through awe, respect, admiration, empathy, care, and sees the real you versus just this temporary construct changing minute to minute, which is even more amplified with social media these days. That's quite unstable. So again, that sense of identity is very important. And that premise of the belief of reality that we have is pivotal. Yeah. That's really the only source I learned long ago. I spent most of my life life looking for love in all the wrong places until I finally realized that the only place to find the true, sustaining, unchanging, dependable, soul-filling love is through my heart in connection to spirit. Not that I can't experience love with my friends and my husband

and my children, but it's not nearly the same kind of love. And it's relegated by all of our 3D shit, which is fine and it's beautiful. But what we're really looking for, I feel, when we come here into these bodies is that. And so I feel like in one flavor or another, all of us, I guess like Ram Dass would say, we're all just walking each other home. All of us trying to get to that place of remembering. Yeah. Yeah. Even like the Michelangelo quote, I wasn't crazy of a lot of the stuff that he did for various different reasons. I'm not going to get into that, but he talked about how we just have, you know, he asked him, like, how does he do his portraits or sculptures? He says, I just chip away at the masterpiece that's already there. And that's

all we have to do. I mean, self-love is not self-abandonment or escapism. It's embracing what is. And radical acceptance to those, you know, that duality that we do have and not running away from, but honoring that. And so much of our life, we're just running away from ourselves and trying to be someone that we're really not inside. It's honoring that little but big voice within. That's very important. Amen. Well, this has been a beautiful conversation. We're going to put your book link and anything else, your socials, your website in the show notes. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you think is important to share or anything you want to leave us with? You've asked all wonderful questions, and I certainly hope that viewers

came into this conversation with a certain level of consciousness, may decide to leave something behind, and hopefully they could take something with them that's going to be helpful on their path. As you said, we're all just walking each other home, and near-death experiences are a way of reminders of that ultimate home. And I hope that people could really look at this and maybe reevaluate the lives that they live and ultimately that's how new worlds are found you know the current planet that we're on people were daring enough to challenge the premise of reality they saw it and they traveled and they journeyed and they found different worlds and so you can't find it through boxing yourself in or your comfort zone you have to be daring enough to explore

another pathway another viewpoint and your channel you know illustrates this beautifully So thank you for giving that option. I'm just honored to be in lockstep with the work that you're doing each and every day. So thank you, Dr. Berman, for the work that you do. Thanks. Beautiful. out your arms around me. I guess I'm falling in love. Baby, you're my rock star, smashing all my guitars.