Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Unlocking the Mysteries of Sacred Contracts with Caroline Myss

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Have you ever wondered about the deeper meaning of life or the purpose behind our existence and the journey of our souls? If so, you're not alone. Many of us ponder these, seeking guidance and understanding. Caroline Myss, renowned author, speaker, and spiritual teacher sat down with me during this week’s Language of Love Conversation to discuss the intriguing concept of sacred contracts, the different levels of consciousness, and the unexpected power that can be found in love and integrity.  During our conversation, Caroline and I dive into: The concept of sacred contracts and its relation to different levels of consciousness The role of archetypes in our lives and how they influence our choices and manifestations The cosmic dynamic of life and the predetermined nature of our entry and exit points The transformative power of love and the need for a bio-spiritual ecological evolution Why collective participation in awakening and supporting others is crucial through Global events we’ve all been experiencing  The stages of inner self-development and the importance of moving beyond narcissism The wounded healer journey and the significance of discernment in personal growth The power of intuition and the consequences of ignoring it The importance of integrity and the normalization of lying in society The impact of honesty and the consequences of not being truthful in relationships    Please feel free to access Caroline's workshops by downloading them or exploring her upcoming autumn schedule on her website. Additionally, you can find her books, "The Anatomy of Spirit" "Sacred Contracts," and others available for purchase on Amazon. 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 life carolyn miss is a five-time new york times best-selling author internationally renowned

speaker in the fields of human consciousness spirituality mysticism health energy medicine science of medical intuition she is a powerhouse and actually established her own educational Institute in 2003, which has all sorts of programs around personal development. She's written so many amazing books. Two of my favorites are The Anatomy of Spirit and Sacred Contracts, but there are many of them. We are getting into it with Carolyn this episode. She puts me in my place a little bit when she thinks I'm off base in some of the interpretations or assumptions I'm making, which I really appreciated. And we dive into what is consciousness really? What is your sacred contract? Do you agree or not agree to it?

Or can you even agree to it? Or is it just yours to carry out? And how do you build, listen to your intuition? And she also shares a fascinating theory she has behind the mass awakening and consciousness in the world right now. It wasn't anything I really expected, but it actually makes a lot of sense. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Language of Love. Carolyn, Miss, thank you so much. I'm so excited to have you join us on The Language of Love. My pleasure. My pleasure to be here. So I was saying to you before we started recording that I remember, boy, my book, Quantum Love, had just come out. And so this must have been like 2008.

2015 or 16. But it was around 2016, 17 that you and I met in the green room at a Hay House conference. And at that point, I was like, I interviewed you. And here we are several years later. I finally have my act together. So I'm I'm so glad that we have this chance to connect. And you have such a legacy of amazing resources and bestselling books and courses and teaching. It was hard when I was thinking about this conversation. I couldn't even really, I had a hard time choosing what I wanted to talk to you about because I could talk to you for 20 hours and still not be done. But one of the places I think that I'd really like to start because I feel like it resonates

most with my peeps or will resonate most with them is this idea of purpose. I know it's bigger than purpose, but this concept of our sacred contract and that each of us has one. I know you say that a sacred contract is like a spiritual contract or a spiritual document that our soul recognizes. I've heard you say that before, but dive a little deeper for us. Let's talk about what a sacred contract is and then we'll get into how to explore. I'm going to start with what it's not. Okay. Start with what it's not. I'm going to start with what it's not because what I, after having taught the subject, introduced it and taught it for so many years. No, I'm going to do it this way. How I begin my workshops is I give people the image of a 12 story building. Okay.

And that building is you. When you're born, you're that building, you're that structure. so that the, and a structure can't move, can't move. So there are certain elements about you that are immovable from the time you're born. I can't change the time you were born. So that's one of the bricks in your building. I can't change the place you were born. I can't change the country you were born. So there are certain immovable forces and that forms your building. So the journey of your life is actually a journey up the floors of your building. Not out of your building because you're the building. No, it's up the floors and the vista from which you will decide to see your life. What floor you're going to view the life you have

and all the elements of your life. So we start out on the first floor and on the first floor, it's the very physicalness of our life and we only can see across the street. And that's where our five senses are most active. That's where we can smell the earth and taste the earth. And that's where we are most seduced by the earth. So when you ask what's a sacred contract from the first floor, a sacred contract looks to be how much of this earth can I get? How much can I have? what is mine? Okay. So you're going to interpret sacred contract to be something to support your survival. Okay. So you're going to think it's occupational. So when you talk about the sense I'm getting, and I'm sure we'll keep going up the floors, is that the floors of these 12 floors

represent different states of consciousness, basically. Well, it's bigger than that, actually. Each floor represents your capacity to shed all the illusions, more illusions, so that you eventually are ascending into an impersonal relationship with yourself and more of a cosmic timeless. You're entering timelessness. You're entering more of an impersonal timeless construct of what life is and what your life is and you have that meta perspective that bird's eye view that you get from the 12th floor or the 11th or 10th floor so instead of looking that thinking that this is the only life you're going to have you have this idea that this is just one more life added to and from every floor you're going

to ask that question from a different perspective. And so when you say, what's a contract? How you understand that depends on the floor that you are living on. And I'm saying that most people start from the first floor, from asking from the point of view of survival, what's my job? What's for me? What am I meant to do? And they think it's one thing. And so the first thing I have to do is tell people what it's not, which is none of those things. It's not occupational driven, because if it was, all these people that don't have occupations wouldn't have a contract now, would they? And by the way, let's just clarify that. Every single one of us has a sacred contract. Right. Contracts have to do with the obligations that we are under and assignments that we are

under that initiate our growth in whatever form that takes. And they include our karmic patterns and that includes whatever we have to balance in ways of lives yet to come and lives lived and what we owe others and what we owe ourselves. So there's all of that. It's a big deal. Right. So it's not when we talk about, you know, it's much more than your purpose, which a lot of people think of, like, what's my sole purpose? It is partly your purpose. And understanding your sacred contract will unveil in many ways your soul's purpose, your true, you know, what you came to do, basically. But this need to reduce it to one thing is what I'm saying is no, that's what I'm starting to say is that it's there's that piece of it. Right. Your purpose. I'm agreeing with you. But it's also much more than that. Right. It sounds like from what you're describing, it's really your soul path. Yes. It's a soul path. And it's recognizing what actually is part of your soul's path and what is not. What is a part of your soul's path and what is not part of your soul's path. And this is where like an archetypal pattern comes in. And how many times I've done readings on people and I can see

that their ambitions are not matched by archetypal patterns in other words so let's talk about art because people don't necessarily i know what you're talking about when you talk about and you talk about and the archetypes by the way guys are part of understanding your sacred contract and this is how carolyn teaches it and unpacks this for us and there are 10 different archetypes that maybe we can get into some of those but just to kind of set the background right you described No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There are a cosmos is filled with archetypal patterns, but every single person has a configuration of 12 primary archetypes. Oh, 12. Okay. I thought in your book there were 10, but there are 12.

Yeah. Okay. Pardon me. 12 primary archetypal patterns that really govern the organization of your life. They are power patterns and even though we oftentimes touch into other archetypal patterns there are 12 that really influence your life constantly constantly constantly and here's and here's the thing about a contract you can have you can be attracted to something like you may want to be an actress but you don't have that archetype that doesn't stop you from imagining or wanting to be that or even pursuing it, moving out to Hollywood and trying to pursue that.

But what it does stop is that you can't animate the laws of cause and effect. You can't animate the laws of attraction because you don't have the archetypal pattern that will accommodate the laws. Okay. So in order to manifest what you want, you have to be an archetype that matches what you're trying to manifest in order for it to manifest. It's part of the whole understanding of a contract. What a contract does is it provides patterns.

And within those patterns, it animates the laws of creation. And the idea is that we create this soul or this sacred contract before we even come here. Now, we'll take it easy here. You're giving us too much credit. I think we don't stop there. You speak from the ego. You are giving. Well, I'm thinking about my soul saying I have this shit to learn.

I don't think any of us has that kind of authority, not even our souls. I think we are assigned. Ah, okay. We are assigned. And we choose to agree because we're sentient beings, right? We do get to agree or not agree to the contract. We do not. We don't?

Well, then why is it a contract? A contract requires, that's what I've been trying to understand. That's right. It's a contract. I'm assigned and it's a contract. I don't really think we have that kind of ego to sit there and say, I don't want to do this and you're forced. I don't think the cosmos works like that.

I think once we're out of this horrible human consciousness that is so ego-driven, there's a much more benevolence to how creation works. Yeah, that makes sense. Is that the interference of the human being? That makes sense. so you're saying then if i'm understanding you correctly that on a soul level we are assigned a contract given a contract that in our benevolence we accept and that is what is driving all aspects of our life now help me unpack the archetypes as they fit into the contract

Well, a contract is not a random spiritual cosmic document, so to speak. Life is not random. Laura, it's not random. We're not apples that fall from trees. And if you speak, for example, to someone who's had a near-death experience, one of the common comments that they make is that they were told, it's not your time. Yeah. Your contract has not come to an end. It's not your time. Get back there. But when it is your time, we'll come for you. Yeah. So it is very clearly like the Greeks would know the time when your fate is over.

So our entry point and our exit point are known, are known. Okay. That's a given. and how life fits together is just this extraordinary cosmic dynamic. We place all this importance because we were looking from the roots of the tree up, but we have no idea of what we look like through timelessness. Yeah. This is just a blink of an eye. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing

resources that I found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig.

We've got Catherine Woodward-Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us.

So there are probably innumerable reasons for this, but what's the benefit of knowing your soul contract? I think the benefit of knowing that you have reason for life, I think every single person wants to know that their life is more than just a life. That what they do matters, that they're not just an accident, that they have purpose in meeting

and that there is a power greater than themselves that just might, just might be watching over them. That maybe, just maybe, the invisible world, the sacred world, has a vested interest in the choices that you make, in the choices that you make. You know, one time I did this workshop. I have so many stories, oh my God, but I love this one. I did this workshop in England.

And it was one of the nuttiest things I've ever done. One of the craziest workshops full of, honestly, it was like a halfway house for the psychically afflicted. And when I was going back to my hotel at the end of this workshop, all I could think of was being alone in the room, getting a cup of tea and locking the door, right?

Yeah. And this woman said to me, at the end of the workshop, she said, I'm your driver to take you back to London. And I wanted to jump off the edge of a cliff. But I had to get into the car. So we get in the car and she says, you just sit there and I'll drive. But I'd like to tell you my story.

And I thought, oh, my God, one more story. Yeah. But I said, OK. And she said, you know, I was in this accident. And she said, and I had this near death experience. She said, and I found myself hovering over my car. And she said, and the amazing thing was, I could hear what everybody else was thinking and all the cars jammed up behind me.

She said, I could hear them. And I could hear them saying, well, this is just what I need. You know, I'm going to be late for work and blah, blah. She said, but out of the fifth car, I saw a beam of light come out. And she said, and then I saw that beam of light go directly into my body, my broken body.

And she said, and I felt what's going on there. And she said, as soon as I thought that, I was seated next to a person, a stranger who had gone into prayer for me. and I was watching the prayers get delivered to heaven and then to me. Oh, that makes me want to cry. And then, wait. And then she said, and then I thought, who is this person?

And then the next thing I know, I see the license plate of the car and then I hear her voice. No, no, no. It's time for you to get back in your body. You must get back in your body. And then that voice said to me, it's going to take you a long time to heal, but you will get better. Now go.

And she said, I kept reliving this story. She said the whole time. And she said, when I recovered, I looked up that person from the license plate. And then I went to her house and I gave her flowers. And I said, you prayed for me. I sat next to you and your prayers were delivered to me. Wow. I just got full body chills over that story. Now, that story is one of so many I can tell you. Yeah. It says from the moment we pray, from the moment we are so carefully monitored, so carefully monitored, Laura, so that it's incomprehensible for us. So what's the purpose of life to actually begin to comprehend? Yeah.

Every choice we make is actually watched. and it's just like when are you guys going to get it that it's the power of love that is going to transform everything and not your love of power yeah and we are living in times where the love of power is dry well i mean i'm sure these times have been around for millennia but it feels worse than ever for some reason it is worse than ever but it also feels like with the pandemic and the crisis. And even just when you look at the astrological, like all the different variables involved, it does feel like even though there's this huge kind of energy of love of power permeating everything in our society, there is this huge population of people ascending and

awakening and moving up those floors, even being yanked up those floors, whether they intended to ascend the floors in their building or not. It's sort of that forced awakening almost because of life's circumstances or hardships or crises or whatever. So there's almost, even though it feels darker than ever, it also feels like more people are waking up than ever. I'm just wondering what your experience of that is. I'm going to answer it like a mystic out of a monastery, okay? okay go ahead i think because i'm at that age now where i'm just going to talk the way i really am which is i think we all should i really do think that entering the nuclear age changed the rules of life okay because we now have what we did was we unleashed the power

to destroy ourselves. And we lack the moral capability to stop that. Okay. We are not conscious enough or moral enough to offset the destructive appetite we have. And that's a fact. And I think that that fact has caused the two fundamental archetypal forces that have always driven the human being, the capacity to create and the capacity to survive. It has derailed those within human beings because there's nothing we can create that can now guarantee our survival. Yeah. So the only thing that the only option we have, Laura, is to become incapable as a species of using the power of destruction that we now know we have, which requires our own evolution. And I do think that that has brought about a need for a bio-spiritual ecological evolution. Okay? Okay. So you're tracking how this all evolved. So you're thinking this all started with the nuclear thing. It did. I'm absolutely convinced of it. Okay. And then the powers that be or whatever have been cultivated, like, holy shit, you guys got to wake up because this is,

yeah, you're going to blow yourself up. I don't think, you know, God is law. The nature of God is law. There is no off-planet God that's going to come in and rescue us. The nature of God is law. and by law it's the natural laws it's the mystical laws it's the law of creation is the law of biology the nature of god is law and laws cause and effect action reaction whatever choices we make we have to live the consequences yeah and that is how we come to know creation and our own power and i think that has is what has accelerated the consciousness era right there so when you say Are people becoming more conscious? I think we're being drafted into consciousness.

That's what it feels like. It feels like we're being yanked. And we're being really, we're being drafted into consciousness by pandemics, by things that have holism marked all over them. Yeah. But pandemics by climate change, by catastrophic events.

Right. All of it. All. Yes. All of which are substitutes for nuclear war. They are global events that we can survive, but we can't survive global nuclear war. That's fascinating. I never thought of it that way.

You have to think of it this way. These are global events that we must all participate in to heal, that we have to get that we're all in this together, but we can survive these. Right. What we can't survive is what's being threatened in Ukraine. Yes. Yes. We can't survive that. Yeah. And yeah, the first part you said about how we're being called to awaken and how I didn't really understand. I hadn't thought of it in terms of the nuclear option being the catalyst. Think about that, that you've grown numb to the fact that we are living under a moment to moment nuclear threat because you think that the impossible can't and the unthinkable can't happen and it won't happen. But yes, Laura. Oh, no, I know it can happen the way that I look at it, which isn't probably any better. Not that I'm not aware of it and that I don't think it'll happen. I'm sort of surrendered to it. Like I just like, OK, it's it's probably going to happen.

You can't surrender to this. I know, but I'm sort of like if it takes me out, I can do my part. But what happens when I think and I'm I'm really curious what you have to say about this, but I'll be honest, when I start thinking about how to stop it, then I think about all the way you would put it, those who love power. Right. And don't live from the love of power, not from the power of love, who are in all of these positions of power. And it's so deeply embedded and it's so deep and wide and heavy and huge. It feels like it's a train that is left. That's right. It's a train wreck. Yeah. And I can't stop the train wreck. And I start to get anxious and freaked out and scared and upset. And then I'm like, OK, all I can do is live from love and do my best to process my awakening and facilitate in any way I can support the awakening of others. And that is doing everything.

And you have no idea how powerful that is. So you cannot say that's all I can do. I'm just saying inside myself to assuage my anxiety over it, I get surrendering to it. I'm like, OK, this is all I can do. And I think if I'm honest, I appreciate what you're saying. But there is that part of me is like, and I'm a drop in the ocean. But I understand I have ripple effects. And in the end, I can't do anything.

Like if I get taken out, I get taken out. Trump and Putin and these monsters, they're only one person, too. Yeah. OK, there's only one person to and like Buddha says, things can change in the blink of an eye. That's right. And if enough people became conscious enough, look how fast the Berlin Wall came down when enough people finally said enough. Right. Enough. Enough. Right. And that's what Buddha means by this is all an illusion. If you got to enough consciousness, it's over. boom we found the vaccine for polio the moment we stopped thinking of ourselves as a crippled

nation financially after world war ii before we had the depression and how did we speak about ourselves so we're crippled financially crippled boom polio epidemic wow right i'm telling you all these years these decades 75 years of learning the the truth about consciousness and we don't use it yeah we don't use it the only time we ever use is when we're personally sick and to go well I wonder what's wrong with me and what thought form, but we don't ever collectively unite, pray together, put it together, work together and realize we're all in this together, that all life breathes together. Yes. What do you think the message of pandemics are climate change is that you're all in this together. You can change it together. Yes. Yeah. So what would

you have us do? What does that look like? I think that, you know, if I look at this from, I think the inner self is a hybrid ego, okay? It's the hybrid that never existed before. It's kind of this survival hybrid ego that emerged in the nuclear age. And it kind of emerged as this sort of inner vessel to get people into consciousness. Nobody before the nuclear age ever said, well, I have to get on the inner. Nobody ever spoke that way. And now everybody speaks that way. But think about the stages of how the inner self develops. And it develops exactly the way like in the 60s like the first thing that happened was the revolution of the 60s and this is how consciousness evolved yeah we had the revolution of the 60s and during the revolution

that stage of our consciousness is all about and that to the answer your question is about identifying what we don't want the revolution i'm not going to put up with this anymore that anymore the church telling me what to do sexual right after the revolution what do people do they involute after you tell me what you don't want the second thing you're going to do is go away and figure out what you do want right so you're going to involute and that was the 1970s okay okay there was the involution right because they were done with it vietnam protests done with the feminist movement everything civil rights and then how does that integrate into who I am yes well then you have to emerge and tell me what you want and that's narcissism okay now you're

going to present yourself with a brand new inner self ego okay and this is where people rename themselves they do a makeover now I'm sunshine meditation wearing urge old pants right right I'm wearing orange. I'm sunshine, meditation, karma. I'm now a vegan. I have to announce this and blah, blah, blah, blah. This stage of narcissism is essential because the tribe will try and grab you in and say, who do you think you are? La, la, la, la, la. It's time to break away and birth your consciousness. But nobody got out of this stage. And the next stage is I'm not here to just heal myself, indulge myself, blah, blah, blah, blah. After I form myself, I now have to go into service of the whole. And that's where we jammed.

That's where we're jammed. That's where we're jammed. We didn't pursue the next stage, which is from narcissism. We evolved. The whole reason we are healing and becoming whole and self-discovery so that I can now become someone who, instead of being threatened by someone else's talent, I now think, what's the best way I can serve you? What have I got that I could help you with? Instead of thinking, oh my, you might be so much smarter than me. Instead of thinking, isn't it grace that we're here together yeah yeah what can i do has a unique contribution well let me ask you this because i meet so many people and you know my whole mantra in my whole life has been he'll learn teach healer like everything i'm integrating it i'm healing it

and then it's just an impulse to share it and to and to be that sort of i'm not saying it's a perfect system or that i somehow have it down but i've always tried to live by that and i meet so many people who have gone through these hardships or chronic illness or disease or abuse, and they get to a point where they're healing and, or maybe they're even just starting their healing. But part of what adds to the momentum of their healing is like, and, and I can even see it in them. Like I can see, oh, this person who's struggling to move beyond sexual abuse. I can almost see the edges of her actually supporting other women through like when she, once she's on the other side of this, she'll be in such a beautiful position to support other women. And so I was talking to a friend of

mine the other day who I really respect and who I see as a very evolved, altruistic, beautiful soul has all these psychic capacities. And she was talking about how annoyed by, she's like, everybody wants to be a healer and everybody thinks they're a healer and everybody's telling me that they want to learn to be a healer. And it like offends her, which I didn't understand. I was thinking, okay, am I naive or Pollyanna that I think that's amazing and I support that or is it an extension? Because it felt like what she was saying is kind of what you're saying is there's this altruistic narcissism that's pervasive.

So I'm just curious what you, which is the right answer or maybe it's both and it depends on the circumstance. Bingo. See, I don't think everybody can be a healer just by saying I want to be a healer. Yeah. that's a real calling. Okay. Yeah. And I think there's the skill and there's the calling. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people that want the skill, but there are a few people that have a calling to be a healer. Yeah. And I think some people, they can say, I want to be a healer,

but that doesn't mean, I think they would be better served by saying, I'd like to help people in the field of healing, which is very different than to say, I am a healer, which is a genuine calling. Yeah. And how do you know if you have the calling? How could she help some of these people? Because I don't think they're intentional. I think they're just misguided and they feel some sort of calling and they also want to make purpose from their pain, which I support. Well, there you go. I mean, the few healers I know and I have known, one in particular who passed away, I'm still traumatized over that, were not motivated by their pain. Okay? They weren't motivated by their personal story to tell. They simply had a gift to give. They simply had a skill and a gift to give. Now think about another archetypal pattern.

That would be like saying, I'm motivated to teach because I couldn't learn. And then I finally had to make my way through that. I'm motivated to teach because of my love of knowledge, not because I was traumatized. Okay. I mean, and I think in some cases, the wounded healer journey is very authentic. Yeah. The Wounded Healer journey is a genuine journey. David Chet Lahey Paladin, no one was more wounded than him at a German prison camp.

Right. And that's a calling. That Wounded Healer is a calling. People who carry that wound transcend it and decide, I don't want other people to suffer like that. That's how I look at it. But yeah, that's how I think of it. So that makes sense to you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, but you have to be very discerning here, Laura, because that wounded healer has got to have really transcended and healed themselves. Yeah. I was just talking to someone about this earlier today about someone who's like, it got a big following and just went through a tremendous loss, the death of someone. And And about a month later, she's on social media saying that she's writing a book about it. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

But I see that all the time in all and so many of these personal empowerment teachers or whatever in the spiritual teaching, Hay House world, whatever, that all of these individuals who are like, oh, my partner just told me they want a divorce. OK, I'm going to write a book about divorce or I'm going to teach you how to move through divorce. I'm like, you haven't even been through the divorce yet. You haven't. And not only have you not been through it, you haven't integrated what you've been through. So if you can't integrate it, you can't articulate it, really. I mean, but they do. And then it just, they're on to the next thing.

So I feel like there's like a rash of that happening. And I'm not sure, maybe that's like the edges of this mass awakening you're talking about, where the ego. The narcissism. Yeah. It's the narcissism. All my pain is so significant. Yes. Yes. It's so significant. My pain is so significant. And they're turning their pain

into power. It's a form of love of power, right? They're turning their profit. Yes. Yes. That's what it is that annoys me. Thank you. So I was like, why do I care? But yeah. And that's woundology to me. It's you have no intention of healing because it's earning you money. Yeah. Talk about woundology. I know you get into that a lot. One of my favorite books of yours and huge bestseller, the anatomy of spirit. And why people don't heal. Yeah. That was the context that I first read about woundology. So let's talk about that since that's where we went. That's now a real word, woundology. Is it in the dictionary? I'll help you. Isn't that great? You know, when I started out as a medical intuitive and then early on in my healing career, my career

in healing, I should say, I made assumptions, all of which were wrong, all of which I eventually learned were naive. And one of which was that I assumed everybody who was ill wanted to be completely healthy and made that assumption. And in keeping within that assumption was, and they would do anything to recover their health. It never occurred to me, never, it never occurred to me that people were afraid to be healthy or that their illness served as a way of getting attention or punishing other people or because I never witnessed that in my own childhood or growing up because that's just not the kind of household I grew up in.

But when I saw that in people as I was working with them, I realized you have no intention of getting better. Your health being whole is more threatening to you than all the pain you're in, than using your pain to control others, to punish others. And that is wound allergy. Interesting. I spoke, I don't know, you probably, yeah, I think you do know Anita Morjani who wrote dying to be me. She had a near death experience and we have talked before. And when we were having really honest conversations, cause I'm a breast cancer survivor. And we were talking about when

we were first told we had cancer. Now her cancer was mine was, it was not technically life threatening, although it was aggressive. Hers obviously was very life threatening, but we were both talking about how in that second, just for a second. And, you know, it's not something many people say out loud, but for a split second, when the doctor said you have cancer, there was a minute sigh of relief inside ourselves because, because I can finally stop. I can finally rest. I'm sick. So I have to rest. And for both of us, because we're both tend to be people pleasers and overextenders and work on- How old you are?

I am, how old am I? I'm 55 almost, but this was one of my forties when I was a young mother working all the time and career on steroids and three kids at home and exhausted. And Robert Ohado, who's a mutual friend of ours was saying to me, yeah, Laurie, you got to land your plane. And I was like, and I interpreted that to mean, yeah, I just got to do a little more yoga or meditation. I got to kind of take some time. Got to work harder at landing that plane. Yeah, yeah, right.

And the plane was landed for me, right, with cancer. I had no choice but to stop my life. And there was a millisecond of relief that I was forced. It was beyond my control. I didn't have to choose it. I was being forced to stop my life. And Anita was saying she had the same feeling. and both of us got better right but there was a way in which being ill inside ourselves felt like

a pass a free pass that we somehow didn't get free otherwise who go figure to stop our lives and rest when you really need rest yeah so is that a kind of woundology or is that something different i think it's self-inflicted wounds yeah where you just and it's insecurity that you think oh, my God, if I stop this, then I won't get this. And I want my career. And I'll lose. I'll lose. And that's the love of power. Yeah. Oh, no, I was definitely in a love of power back then, for sure. I was not. Yeah. Yeah. Cancer was what led to the understanding of the power of love. That was the beginning of the reverse of the train or whatever it was that I was on. But I do know many people who, and I don't think that the woundology piece for many people is even conscious, which is why I think it's so important, right?

I feel like a lot of people consciously are really trying to get better, but there's a way in which being ill serves them that they're not even really conscious of in their conscious minds beneath the surface. when probed or given the right prompts, they might become conscious, but otherwise they're not. Am I wrong in that? Because I certainly feel that way from people. I can think of some people like that. Or do you think they secretly know? I think actually both are true. I think they know exactly what they're doing because they know exactly when to bring it up and they know exactly when to use it. Yeah, that's a good point. So I'm sorry, that is far too conscious a tactic. Okay, okay, that makes sense.

No, no, no, no, no, it's far too conscious a tactic. The martyr in people and the suffering and the manipulating is far too conscious. And the use of, I've had a bad day, so I get to come home and abuse you. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, but that's far too conscious a tactic. that is don't you dare let people off the hook by saying they're not conscious of it where are you coming from how could you even think that they're totally conscious of it yeah yeah no that i totally get i'm thinking about a few people who but maybe they really are conscious totally

a few people who aren't being abusive but are just very martyred and they feel like why has everyone forsaken me but they exhaust and burn the bridges because they kind of suck all the energy out of the room. And here is where other people need to tell them exactly what they're doing. Yeah, I did. I just lost a friend of 30 years doing that, but I did it. And that's where, you know, how you have to say is, you know what, this is going to stop. I can't let you feed off my energy anymore. And I'm going to do you a favor and it's not going to feel like a favor. Yeah. Hopefully one day you'll get that it is a favor and it's coming from love. yeah well so along these lines let's talk about intuition because i know you you say that our

we're and i agree with you that we're all born with intuition we're all naturally intuitive but you also talk about how our intuition is often the source of our greatest suffering because we know when we are betraying ourselves right so talk about that because it sort of feels like a segue from this idea. I have never believed being intuitive is a gift. I believe that we are wired. We are wired to read the energetic system of information. We're just wired. I mean, that's how we're wired. We're wired to pick up on energetic data. That's how we're intuitive from our gut instinct to divine organics, the way it works through our system, our bio-spiritual intelligence, we're just wired. And so we can jam that circuit.

And we suffer when we jam the circuit. So what does that look like when we jam it? Well, we jam it when we negotiate our conscience, not consciousness, our conscience. So like when we make excuses to override our intuition? Well, you don't even have to get that sophisticated. sophisticated. I said, conscience, lower your bar. And that's when you tell yourself something's when you lie. Okay. Don't be so sophisticated here. Get on the ground level. All right. Let me get on the ground level. Simply decide. I'm not going to tell the truth here. I'm going to bullshit someone. Ah, okay. Right there. Listen, I almost, I have to confess and I am so committed

It's integrity that I didn't do it, but I almost bullshat you today because I intended to review all my materials of all your books and everything and get really prepared for this interview, but I'm in the middle of moving houses and I didn't have time. And I was looking at my schedule today and I was like, fuck, I don't have time. Okay, maybe I should just tell her that I can't come up with an excuse for why I can't do it today and reschedule it, which I totally could have done and you could have been none the wiser. But I caught myself and I was like, no, you are committed to integrity and telling the truth.

So either you have to reach out to her and say you suck and aren't prepared and need to or like I've never been there or just do the interview and do your best and take some time to write some notes beforehand. And so that's what I did. But there's a perfect example of the way in which we aren't in integrity and bypass. That's what I'm saying. Never mind the word. See, the word consciousness has allowed the word conscience to evaporate. Yeah. And you have to go lower and realize people negotiate their conscience.

And that's where they've turned off that inner metronome that says, this is right. This is wrong. This is a lie. Yeah. I am lying to this person. And because we've turned that off individually and collectively, we now have a society where lying full time in all our politics and everywhere we look is something we just, you wonder what gave us Trump? That's what gave us Trump and everybody in the field that's like that, because we have turned off our own conscience and negotiated with truth and said, it's totally okay. I don't mind.

And let me tell you something. The soul is a vessel that cannot absorb lies. Okay. So what happens? We lie to ourselves and others. And what happens is it eventually causes depression, anxiety, because you can't trust your own intuition then. You can't read your own signals because you have so negotiated your conscience. You don't go for your consciousness if you're negotiating your conscience.

Oh, Dr. Mike. It won't work for consciousness if you have dropped your conscience. Yeah, it won't work. Yeah. And by the way, I see this all the time with parents of kids. I mean, I was conscious of this with my kids, like, oh, let's just tell the teacher you're sick when you want to take a personal day. No, Johnny's tired and exhausted and needs a day off. Or they watch you on the phone, not wanting to go to the neighbor's barbecue and saying, I'm so sorry, junior has a stomach ache or something came up, right? Like that we model that lack of integrity for our kids. We normalize

it. Society normalizes it. But what about when you're ignoring the intuition? Like obviously a lot of this show is about love and relationships. And for so many of us, not only are we not in integrity and honest with our partners in our day-to-day life about what we're really thinking and feeling and doing, but when we're getting those intuitive knowings that maybe this isn't the right relationship for me, or maybe I don't, this isn't, I'm not in integrity with how my partner is treating me or how this relationship is going how you're treating your partner how you're treating your partner but there's so much fear around the consequences of perhaps ending the relationship or having to if you accept the truth of what your intuition is telling you

it's going to be messy or uncomfortable or scary right what happens what do you say to those people Cause I think that is really common. You know what? It's kind of like, here's a knife. You're going to have to pick it up. You either grab the blade or the handle. Okay. So the handle is truth and the blade is a lie, but you're going to pick up the knife.

Either way. It's either way. You're going to pick up the knife. Yeah. So if you think that by lying, you're going to get away with it. All you're going to do is a slow bleed. And what happens eventually? Because I feel like lots of people do get away with it for a long time. They don't. They don't get away with it because they pay for it because they become liars and they start living very deceit, deceptive lives and including themselves.

and eventually it catches up because biography becomes biology. And as you start lying to yourself, it starts collecting in your tissue. And then what happens? Every kind of illness can happen, including madness, including depression and anxiety,

including aging faster, all kinds of things. Yeah, yeah. I've definitely seen, that's true. I have seen that because there's been many people in my life who are just toxic and very successful liars. And they lie to themselves. They lie to everyone around them. Nobody suspects anything. But it's true that eventually you can tell that either

the anxiety is at an all-time high or they're having to rely on substances to soothe it. Or yeah, or like my ex-husband who had to age, who did age really quickly. But yeah, that makes sense to me. And I think that's an important thing because for many of us, it's hard. It's hard to watch narcissists or people who are really in these toxic energies and places seeming, at least for all intents and purposes, to come out of it unscathed while, you know, watching that. And there's no recourse and there doesn't seem to be any quote unquote karma or whatever for them. But sometimes that's beyond what we can see or what they're showing on social media or whatever else. Yeah. That makes sense to me. So if someone is, cause you know, a lot of my peeps are just

entering awakening or are really just thinking about how to move more consciously in their love lives or in their relationships or even in their relationship with themselves. If they feel are intuition is our birthright. We all have it, but we're not, maybe they don't feel like they can really hear it. Obviously step one is to stop lying to yourself and any, anyone else go on an integrity cleanse. Right. But beyond that, what else can they do? Well, you know what? I think that the journey into the soul often needs an escort. Right. And I think that the therapist is not necessarily the only escort. I think a spiritual director is someone that could help someone build integrity, the courage to be integrous, the courage to be honest. It's not

necessarily a psychological crisis that requires a therapist. I think it requires a spiritual director to realize I can't tell the truth. I find truth to be intimidating. And that's a spiritual crisis, Laura. That's not a psychological one. Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's sometimes psychological underpinnings. Like for me as a recovering codependent, that's a big part of the reason I'm at my impulse to sugarcoat things or make up excuses that aren't real or whatever. But the people pleaser. But I agree with you. So and how do you how would you recommend someone find a spiritual coach or director? Well, you can, you can Google spiritual directors and see what you find. That's a job title. I didn't know that. Oh yeah. I have, I have close

friends that are spiritual directors. You could Richard Rohr. He's a spiritual director. I've only heard the term spiritual coach, but I like that idea. No, no, no, no, no. Spiritual director. Andrew Harvey is a spiritual director. I have a number of close friends that are spiritual directors okay good all right so google spiritual director yeah no it's a it's a genuine bona fide profession okay and read carolyn missus books there's the sacred contracts there's many bestsellers the sacred contract the anatomy of spirit and go to my website go to her website mace.com because we've just put up a lot of my workshops are there gratis you just download any workshop that you want or check out my autumn schedule. Yeah, we're going to put the links to

all of that in the show notes. Thank you. Is there anything I left out or anything that you want to leave us with? Well, I just want to say it's been a blast chatting with you with an unrehearsed interview. You are a pleasure to chat with. Thank you. So are you. And we so appreciate you taking the time and all the contributions you have made. And even though you didn't have to or needed to or could accept your sacred contract, I am very glad you are here executing it. Oh, thank you. Take care, honey. Have a good rest of the summer. You too. And if you come my way to see our mutual friend, let me know. I totally will. I totally will. Thank you so much for the time. You're welcome.