Sense of Soul - Awakening the Soul of Power

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have with us, Christian de la Huerta,  he is an author, public figure, LGBTQ leader, personal transformation and relationship coach and breathwork practitioner. Christian joins us today to chat about his NEW book, Awakening the Soul of Power, endorsed by none other than music icon Gloria Estefan, the first book of his Calling All Heroes series. This book explores how we can step into POWER in a different way that's not about hierarchy, control, fear, force and domination. Transforming the relationship to power so that we can stop selling out on our personal power and free ourselves from self-sabotaging behaviors. Christian is internationally recognized as teacher and speaker, including on the TEDx stage and is the author of another amazing book, “Coming Out Spiritually.” You can learn more about Christian at his website www.soulfulpower.com Follow Christian’s journey on IG Please rate this episode 5 stars and leave us a comment and review!  Visit our website to learn more about us www.mysenseofsoul.com On Sense of Soul Patreon is community of seekers and lightworkers who want exclusive workshops, live events like sacred circles, ad free episodes, you can also listen to Shanna’s mini-series about her ancestral journey, “Untangled Roots” and Mande’s mini series about her two NDE’s, Sign up now! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul NEW!! SENSE OF SOUL’S NETWORK OF LIGHTWORKERS! Go check out our Affliates page, adding new amazing programs each month. Check it out! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Christian de la Herta. He is a author, public figure, spiritual coach, and an LGBTQ leader. He joins us today to chat about his book, Awakening the Soul of Power, in his Calling All Heroes series. This award-winning book is about authentic self-expression and personal empowerment, and we are super excited to have Christian join us today. Where are you joining us from? Well, as we speak, I'm in Quito, Ecuador. Up until a month ago, I was based in Miami, Florida.

I was there for 10 years. I was in the Bay Area in California for 20 years before that. But now I'm kind of in a nomadic phase. Yeah, we're over in Colorado. Where in Colorado are you? So we're in Aurora. Shanna's been here most of her life. She was born in New Orleans.

I was born here. I left Aurora. She was born in New Orleans. I was born here. I left Aurora, said I'd never come back. And I always do. I've come back about eight times. Yeah. I went to school in New Orleans. I love New Orleans. You did? Tulane. Yeah, that's where my family is from. My mom's one of seven. Big, big family. I love it. I love New Orleans. My soul belongs there. I'm one of nine kids, so another Catholic family.

So where are you at in the nine order? I'm the second oldest. I don't even know what I would do if I had that many siblings. Are you guys all, like, close? We are close. And, you know, we're all close in age. There's only 12 years from the oldest to the youngest. Your poor mother, she was pregnant forever. She was pregnant for 12 years, basically.

I have a friend who has 11 children. That's crazy. And they are so, like, happy and everyone helps each other. It's like a community. No, it is great. I'm so grateful. I can't imagine. Like, I'm grateful when i don't kill my plants i'm a mass murderer plant oh my god that's hilarious you know i have a hard enough time

like being able to keep in touch with my brother that i still have living i mean what a blessing but at the same time life is busy i'm one of my brother's place in Ecuador right now. How long are you there visiting? A couple of months. What's the weather like? It's the second highest capital in the world. So it's high elevations, like 9,300 feet. So higher even than the mile high city. But because it's right on the equator, the equator is only like 12 miles north of the city. It doesn't get that cold. So it's sort of like San Francisco weather, 40, 45 to 65 year round, because it was so close to the equator, I thought it was going to be drier and so high up. It's really beautiful. Well, we cannot wait. We have been extremely excited. And I will tell you the title of your book just grabbed me right away. And our listeners

are going to love it because one of our top episodes that had the most listens has to do with awakening to the soul. And as you see sense of soul, and we're going to talk about not only just soul, but power. And that's a word right now. That's got a lot of meaning behind it. And I actually kind of wrote down what the word power means to me. And I have to be honest with you, when I say it, I use some discernment around that word. And instead of thinking of it, I tried to feel what that word felt like for me. And it wasn't particularly a good feeling, which is interesting because for some reason right now, I'm sitting in this space where I feel like power. I think of what our world is going through and how it's

been misused. And so it was kind of sad to me because I was like, why do I think of the word power so negatively? Exactly. And that's the whole message behind the book. Yeah. So talk about that. Where did that motivation and this idea for this book come from and that word power? I'll tell you a couple of things that inspired it. One of them was my older sister, you know, who as a kid, when we were kids, she was like a natural born leader. Like she would boss around not only the nine of us, the nine kids in the family, but the entire neighborhood, so like 15, 20 kids. And not in a bossy way. She would just say, hey, let's go do that. And we would all say, yeah, great. Let's all go do that. When she hit puberty, she turned that off. Like, I don't know what happened, whether somebody said something to her or whether she just picked up from osmosis that women didn't behave that way,

but she turned it off and she assumed this kind of, you know, mother Teresa persona. So I always thought that was kind of tragic that she turned off her natural innate leadership qualities. And then the other thing that inspired it was maybe 10 years ago, I was sitting in meditation and for only the second time in my life, well, actually now it's happened three times, but this is the second time that I actually heard audible words. And the words were the soul of power.

And I was like, oh, what an interesting concept. I'd never thought of that. Because like you, I had negative associations with that word. And so I forgot about it. I went and got the URL and then I forgot about it. And then a couple of days later, I had been working with an agent, literary agent in New York, but on a different book,

on a different theme. And she said, yeah, I want to work with you. But I want to see some of these marketing ideas implemented before we actually pitch it to a publisher. And it would have taken me a year to implement those marketing ideas. So it was like, you know, putting on the brakes. And then I thought, if this was not going to work out, what do I really want to write about? And it took me three days being in that question. And then it hit me, you know, it's like, I've been saying for years that the single most important thing that needs to happen in the world is the empowerment of women and not to idealize women, not to put women up on a pedestal, not to give women more crap that they have to do and clean up more of a mess to clean up in this world. But it's because as a world, as a species, we've been running so off balance

between the masculine and the feminine energies. And I believe that when women are in 50% of power in this world, that we're going to have a very different relationship to everything, to war and poverty and hunger and how we treat the environment, everything. When I think strategically about what needs to happen in this world, that how do we dig ourselves out of this hole that we have dug ourselves into, to me, it begins with that, with balancing the masculine and the feminine and with the empowerment of women. And so women's empowerment, the soul of power, it was like one of those duh moments. Like, of course, well, how do we do that? How do we step into power in a different way? In a way that is not this hierarchical, patriarchal power over, you know, like my way or the highway.

So how do we step into power in a way that's not about hierarchy, control, fear, force, domination, all these negative expressions of power that we associate power with? How do we do it in a different way that doesn't mean that we have to squelch anybody, step on them, push them down in order for us to feel powerful? Yeah, yeah. Speak. Yes, I just want to like chant. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Speaking of power though, I was reading a little bit about you personally and it seemed, and correct me if I'm wrong, that maybe you struggled also as a man with this sense of power. What awakened your power of your soul? Yeah, I mean, I'd say that I'm really an unlikely person to be speaking about empowerment and what it means to live a heroic life because I was morbidly, painfully shy as a

teenager. I think I was intrinsically that way, just introverted. But when we came to the States, when I was 10, when we came from immigrated from Cuba, I didn't even speak a word of English. So I think I became even more withdrawn into myself. And I had a very difficult adolescence. I was, you know, my adolescence was one long depression as I tried to figure out who I was and where I fit in. And I know depression, I know self-doubt, I know self-hatred, but the power of this book is that no matter what happened to us, no matter where we come from and the circumstances that helped to form who we are. So these days, like all that stuff can be overwritten, can be transcended, can be overcome. Like flash forward to today, like no matter what happens in my life, no matter the details, the circumstances, whether a relationship works out or it doesn't, whether a project succeeds or it fails, never, ever do I question my sense of

self-worth. And that is intrinsically connected to our sense of personal empowerment. To answer your question, I think it was a matter of survival. Like I had to figure this out. So I have a question about that because, you know, obviously, so these are the things that you had to work out and to awaken to, to kind of move on and be more open to your soul, which is, I feel like exactly what an awakening is. You had a lot of stuff from when you were a child then that you had to confront. But, you know, like my daughter, Shai, she came into this world that way. Your mom had nine kids. I have four kids are also different. And I, and yet I am a different

mom. I actually am a better mom in my eyes to her since I have some experience of what not to do. Sorry to my older ones. And, but you know what I mean like I worry about that I try to encourage her but this is how she came into the world so this is her experiences I think that are meant for her yeah and being introverted is not a bad thing it's not in fact there's there's a book written you know called the introvert advantage I understand it now being introverted we tend to process things internally. We figure out what we believe and what we're thinking before we say it. Whereas an introvert is like speaking. And as they're speaking, they're figuring out what they mean

and what they believe. So it's just a different style. But so that's why I'm asking you, but you said that you knew depression and stuff like that. Was that because the world didn't accept that about you? No, no. It's not because of the introversion. I think what I was struggling with is feeling different. When we lived in Cuba, as soon as you apply for a visa to leave the country, you were immediately branded a traitor to the revolution.

So you were called actually gusano, which means worm. And I remember being a kid in third, fourth grade and being called out by teachers, you know, kind of mean. I know. And my sister and I used to be always at the top, the head of the class. We were good students. But as soon as the school got found out that we were leaving, like never again, did we get an award? Never again. We wouldn't even get cookies at break when all the other kids did. Then we came to the states in a small town in georgia completely different and and you know how we all struggle with belonging and so i went through this phase where i tried to deny and i've you know at that age you learn the language pretty quickly

so within a couple of years i was speaking well but then i went through this phase of denying my latino heritage in that desire, that longing to belong. And then my family moves to Florida and I went to an all boy Jesuit Catholic high school that was probably 95 percent Cuban-American. So now I stuck out again all over because I sounded like a Georgia peach. So I think I was destined to always feel different and not to mention the real unmentionable, which is that even at that age already in the beginning of high school, I knew that I was gay. And so, you know, trying to reconcile that part of me in a religion that told me that I was going to burn in hell for eternity.

Oh my God. Yes. I get it now it now yeah because i was just thinking because when i you said that like i was like i do accept her but i'm trying to get her to be okay with who she is but it does seem like the world doesn't like that she's inside so i would say the other kids are like she's fine the way she is but the adults are like trying to pull out her and she's like why are they not comfortable with me like why do they have a problem with me seriously yeah she says that often to me and she has also said many of the things you're saying so that's why I was like and of course she speaks English but then yet there's still that similarity because she said stuff like there's no one really else like me you know stuff like that how was she there is no one like you there's no one like she's nine well it certainly sounds like like even at that age she's got a good sense of herself

one of the benefits by the way of being different from being gay or for whatever reason is that we get to learn at an earlier age that because we don't fit in, because we don't belong, we're not like normal, quote unquote, we get to make up the rules. So that's the upside of that. I actually told my daughter, I made up some bedtime story last night. Sometimes I don't know where they come from. And when I'm done, I'm like, damn, that was good. I should write children's books. Seriously, you should, Mandy. But then I can't remember them. I don't know. My character's name was Winkle and she was being made fun of because her name was weird and all the kids were laughing at her.

But then she found out that it was because when she was born, she came out and she winked at her mom and had a beautiful twinkle in her eye. And so they named her Winkle. And so she went back and told all the kids at the park that her name was special and that their names were just Tom and Jeff and Adam. And then they all were like, wow, you're right. Your name is special. Now I'm sad because my name is not.

And she's like, no, all of us are special. And then my daughter was snoring and I left. Another thing that you said is that how you had to deny your culture. You know, I've been going through that with my ancestry. They deny their culture. And a lot of this is because the quiet generation, this is how an American is going to look like. So fit in. Come on, join in. You gotta, this is what you're going to do. You know, men you work and you have a wife

barefoot and pregnant we'll have cookie cutter houses and suburban areas and work nine to five and yes but they say in 2055 there won't even be a race like there'll be no majority that's the way things are going yeah it's interesting but like whose business is it of anybody's? You know, what my nationality is, who my ancestors were, and what's my sex, who I'm having sex with. And this plays right into your book. It's about the soul and the power of the soul, right? It's about seeing each other as souls instead of this, you know, as everyone calls it, a meat suit. And awakening that soul and not being afraid to use the power of that soul. That's where we're going. And it's a beautiful thing to see, correct? That's so beautiful. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting that we identify each other by race because if we, if we look at our DNA, it's 99.9999% the same, regardless of how much melanin we have on our skin. So we talk about different races but but it doesn't even cut it

we're not different enough to be considered a different race so we're like really one race one human race what's funny too is that we share 98.6 of our dna with chimps and 50 of our dna is identical to bananas so that so really so like we talk about the interconnectedness of all life on this planet. I did not know that. And it's true. It is. Yeah. And you know what?

I awakened to very early on in my journey through meditation. I realized this soul has no gender. It has no political view. It doesn't give a fuck about what color you are. It doesn't have any of this. It just doesn't care what you believe or where you came from or what color you are. It doesn't have any of this. It just doesn't care what you believe or where you came from or what language you speak. It's all of that is irrelevant. Whom we love and how we express that love, all of it irrelevant. Okay. So I have a question. How do we

use your book to help us to stay in that place? First third of the book, quarter of the book is about understanding the mind, the ego mind, and why we do the things we do. Why do we sabotage ourselves and our dreams and our relationships? You know, because sometimes we get caught in these patterns of relationships that feel like, you know, like I've been here before. I've seen this movie before. It might be with a different lead actor, but it's the same.

Same boring stuff with the same crap coming up all the time. So at some point, we've got to get real and understand ourselves and why we do the things we do. Because the one common denominator in every one of those relationships, in every conflict in our lives, is us. So we've got to understand ourselves and why we do the things we do. And we don't have time to dive deeply into what the ego mind is because there's a lot of confusion around it. You know, most of us, you know, hear the word, the ones who know the words, and we think, you know, arrogance, inflated sense of self. And it is that, but it's so much more than that. And here's just a simple visual to help us understand what the ego is. If you put a baseball in the center of a stadium,

that's what the ego is. It's a small part of the mind that kind of makes sense of sensory information. It synthesizes sensory information. It reaches into the past. It can project into the future and somehow weaves all of that into like an individual personality. This is Christian, that's Shana, that's Mandy. It's ultimately illusions because who we are is actually the stadium. And we've allowed this tiny, tiny, tiny part of ourselves to think that it is all of who we are and to make choices like significant, consequential, important life choices from its very small and always fear-based perspective. So, so to me, that's step one, understanding who we really

are. That was some good shit because that's going to so resonate with like my sports husband and my sporty son who only think in like sport mind. There you go. We're the freaking stadium. We're not the little baseball. That was one of the very first episodes that we did because it was one of the biggest things that we had discovered. If you listen, is this coming from my ego or from my soul? It's actually very clear because usually it's 90% fear-based and that's ego. Yeah. And here are a couple of really good ways to know who's talking inside of our heads because sometimes it's hard to tell. So whenever we find ourselves building a case to prove that we're right, and we're pulling big words from here and big concepts from there

and building a case to like, yeah, I'm right. Ego, like a hundred percent of the times that voice of the ego is loud and it has a need to be right. And it takes everything personally. And it's very defensive. So whenever we're coming from any of those places, and it's also very victiming. So it's stuck in victim what they did to me, if it only wasn't for that, for mom did, or dad didn't do, or the minister, or the system, or homophobia, or sexism, or racism, not to deny that those things don't exist, they do. And it's not to minimize anybody's behaviors or what they did or didn't do. But it's saying that if anybody's behaviors or what they did or didn't do. But it's saying that if we want to be free, we've got to own the powers inside of us. Only we can let ourselves free. Holding somebody else or some system responsible for our state of being,

for our happiness, we just gave our power away completely. And sometimes even to the perpetrator. But going back to the ego, right? So the ego is a victim me, it's stuck its language is very simple because it doesn't have anything to prove so it'll say things like yes or no or do this or i wouldn't go there when do we get into trouble when we overwrite that and we go there anyway every time so the thing is like how do we quiet that crazy chattering you, you know, what the Buddhists call the monkey mind? Because it's that craziness inside of our heads, because we jump from thought to thought in the same way that a monkey goes from branch to branch. And so we've got to learn how to quiet that through meditation or presence meditations or processing practices so that we can access that still voice inside, which is where the power and the truth live. I just have to say, I love that. Did you say sacred real estate? Oh my God. I love

that. You're like, you're like a realtor. You're, you're a realtor, but you're helping people find their own house and their own home, which is with inside. It's inside to yourself. I love that. You just took it to a whole other level. I know, there's your new thing. I'm a real estate agent. I'll take you home to yourself. I love that.

I'm a realtor of the soul. Yes, I'm gonna help you find your soul. Oh my gosh, I love that. And then like make a little dog house outside for the ego. How about that? Because you do need the ego and let's talk about that. I need my ego. And I'll tell you my story behind that is that when I discovered that I was

soul and I, and I, and I had an ego, I was like, Oh my God, I'm going to live up here like a Buddhist. And my family was like, can you freaking come down here because i need to eat right right yeah yeah right you know you're absolutely right um shana because there's there's confusion in spiritual circles around now in some um you know because it's some some teachings say you got to kill the ego. You got to get rid of it because it is the source of all conflict and the source of all suffering. And that's true. But, you know, my understanding of it is that the ego is not all bad. Like it's

not a bad thing to have a sense of personal identity, like a sense of self, which is what ego means literally in Latin. I am the problem comes only when we think that that's all who we are. When we identify with a baseball and we give away all of our power to the baseball in all its limited perspectives, the switching metaphors a little bit, you know, the ego has usurped the place as the sun. And so it thinks that it is the sun. And so what we're trying, what we're, what we're hoping for is not killing it, not getting rid of it, but taking it out of its place that it has taken.

And so that it's in orbit to, in orbit around and in service to the sun, which is the higher self or the soul or whatever you want to call it. Hey, Sense of Soul listeners, sorry for the interruption, but we have some exciting news to share. Shanna and I have decided to offer an affiliates page on our website to our guests that we have had on. Then it makes it easy for you, our listeners, to find programs and professionals that align with you. Yes, it's so easy. Just go to our website, mysenseofsoul.com, and on our homepage, click the Network of Lightworkers Affiliates. Then scroll and simply click on your favorite guest. From there, use the code under the guest that they have made particular to them and sign up or simply tell them that Sense of Soul has sent you. We have been so excited to announce our new ongoing partnerships

with some of our amazing guests. Sensesoul, Shanna and I will earn a commission for our endorsement and recommendation to their product or their service from this affiliates page. Your purchase will help support Sensesoul in our purpose, bringing amazing episodes twice a week to our listeners all around the

world. We want to take this opportunity to thank you, our participating affiliates and listeners for your support. Oh, and don't forget that we have a Patreon. Patreon is a platform where we have special exclusive content for Patreon members. Just download the free Patreon app and search Sense of Soul. Then pick your tier that resonates best with you. Unlocking exclusive content, like Mandy and I's exclusive mini-series only on Patreon. Our monthly Sense of Soul Sacred Circles. Patreon also has exclusive merch. We have polls on fun topics, bloopers, workshops, and even early releases of episodes.

It is also an amazing way to build our community and interact intimately with our listeners. Check it out. We love and appreciate you all so much. Now back to our amazing guest. I had to experience death. You know, I have a mini series out right now on Patreon that's called, you know, I had to die to awaken. And in my near-death experience, I actually was a soul that got to see my physical body being worked on in an ambulance. The reason I bring this up is because that was my awakening of my soul.

I read the piece that you wrote about. You were in that paradisical place. It was very moving, very touching. And when you saw your brother. Yes. Thank you for reading that. It was very moving. Now, awakening the power of the soul is totally separate than just awakening the soul. Because of so much of the experiences I had in my life, my power was pushed down because I was like your sister. I was told that my leadership skills and that I have a big personality. And they told my mother when I was young that, you know, I was bossy or that I talked too much. And so I made myself small to fit in this box. And then that power was shoved down for a long time and became a very insecure

place within me. So my question to you is, what suggestion do you have for people that they've awakened their soul? How do they awaken their power? And how much of that is self-trust and self-love? Yeah. And it's all about self-trust and self-love. But before we can get to self-trust and self-love, we have to go first to self-awareness because we can't do anything about what we're not aware of. So that's what this book helps people do. It's like, all right, like, first of all, understanding why do we give our power away? Like you just deconstructed the conditioning and how it happens and how we learn like, Oh no, if I want to be accepted, if I want to be loved, I got to like pull myself down. I got to,

I got to like fit myself and stuff myself into this tiny little box. And because we don't want to rock the boat and, and coming up from that perspective, because at that, when we were kids, we were utterly dependent, like literally dependent on adults for survival. So whatever they say, whatever we hear and we overhear and sometimes misunderstand. Maybe one of our parents said something in a moment of exhaustion or reactivity and they were just overwhelmed and we took it personally.

Or maybe our parents got divorced. And at that point of our lives, we don't have a sense of who we are, really. So we make it about ourselves. We internalize it. And we don't have the perspective of who we are, really. So we make it about ourselves. We internalize it. And we don't have the perspective to think it's like, you know, what was going on with our parents? What was going on in their mindset? What was going on in their history?

How did they hold relationships? How did they get together? Were there substance abuse issues? What was going on in their brain biochemistry? We don't think about any of that. We take it on. It's like, well, mommy left or daddy left. How could they leave me? Don't they love me? And then the deeper layers, like, what does

that say about me? That they didn't love me enough, right? And then we take all that stuff personally. And we, of course, that stuff is too intense for any mind, especially a little kid to take on. So we suppress it and we stuff it, but it doesn't go away just because we can't deal with it. And then we go through our lives and that stuff that's been suppressed has been impacting every one of our relationships. And so that's why the first step is becoming aware of understanding the patterns that you just like, you saw it happen in your case. And so then realizing it's like, wait a minute, these were just misunderstandings of young minds that didn't know any better. So self-awareness is the first step.

And then understanding in relationship to power, why we've given our power away. And what situations do we tend to give our power away? Because most of us, and this is not just women, it's all of us give our power away. Like how many times have we said yes when inside we really felt no? How many times have we sold out on our true feelings or true beliefs or true desires to not rock the boat, right, or to avoid conflict? all do that and so it's important to know right so understand first of all our relationship to power like you started like you started to talk about we have such a negative associations with that word power and no wonder like you know we've been conditioned to believe that as bad like with quotes like power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely so what good hearted person wants to be corrupted but what they didn't tell us is that that quote by Lord Acton, he was speaking specifically about political power, not personal power.

So when you put all that stuff into a mix, the conditioning, the fear that we grew up with, the taking things on, the negative associations with the word power, the fact that we've also been conditioned to think that the emotions and feelings are bad and weakness. It's like, wait a minute, who made that up? You know what? I don't really agree so much with the school system so much what they teach, very honestly. I have considered homeschooling my child, but this is evolving because listen to what she came home with yesterday. She's in fourth grade. Lesson 10, introducing emotion management. Wow. Directions. Select and check off the strong emotion that you've experienced from the list below. Select and

check off the physical symptoms or signs that you felt when you experienced that emotion. Then describe a situation where you have felt or might feel the strong emotion pretty cool right yeah amazing so for instance my daughter the it says strong emotions anger frustrated irritation um nervous sad hurt jealous disrespected embarrassed she checked uh frustration and irritated. Physical symptoms are feeling hot, getting red in the face, head hurts, stomach hurts, palms sweats, heart races, can't think straight, muscle tightening, or breath getting faster. And she chose head hurts and then can't think straight. And then it has them describe, I really feel. And then when, when I feel that way, this is my sign or symptom. And it has like a little guy holding like breathing and thinking you know and then it says stop use your signal name your feeling calm down and breathe and use positive self-talk is that great that is amazing that actually gave me chills if you asked me when i was 30 what i was

feeling i couldn't have told you i had no idea what i was feeling because we've all been conditioned but especially men you know because we were because we were kids oh no little boys don't cry why because we have labeled mislabeled emotions as weakness and and mislabeled the feminine as weakness it's like wait a minute two completely faulty assumptions you want to talk about power and courage and strength and resilience let to talk about power and courage and strength and resilience. Let's talk about the power of creation that resides in a female body. It's the opposite, the opposite of weakness. You know, by the way, I love this quote. I don't know if it's, if it's real, but I heard somewhere that Betty White, she's unique. I love Betty White.

So apparently she was being interviewed in one of those group interview settings and somebody said something about having balls and she said wait a minute I don't know how we made this connection between having courage and strength and balls because you thought those little things and the guy collapses over in pain you want to talk strength let's talk vaginas those things take a pounding that sounds like some crap my grandma would have said yes i mean birth that's right and then we also label the emotions weakness wait a minute they're not strength they're not weakness they're not good they're not bad they're just energy what used to be spiritual teaching that everything is energy now we know from quantum physics that it's true everything is energy that means that this chair

i'm sitting on the the computer that i'm staring into the body the emotions all energy energy cannot be destroyed so and that's why we get into trouble with emotions as adults because we suppress them and we suppress them and we suppress them and that suppress them. And that stuff has to come out. That shit has to come out. That's going to change the future that they're teaching those things to kids. Oh my God. That's what you got chills. You gave me hope that these fourth graders are being taught mind, body, spirit. Yeah. And that's what your book is for, but for adults.

Exactly. Can you imagine if we had a generation who grew up with that? Seriously, it would change the world. It's going to happen. It's happening. It is happening in front of our eyes as your fourth grader is a witness to. Thank God. It gives me hope.

You know, I did a writing the other day and the thing that came out was willingness equals hope so if you're willing to take a look within if you're willing to change yourself if you're willing to do some work if you're willing to do different if you're willing to just be then there's always hope that's true hey christian i'll still do anything for you. Do you actually know Gloria? I don't know her personally, but I got to tell you, I'm still blown away that she endorsed my book. She can be such a great testimonial. Yeah. And there's a story behind that because I basically courted her for three

years to get that quote. I was living in Miami at the time where she lives. And she's like a local celebrity. I mean, she's an international celebrity. But especially in South Florida where she and Amelia, her husband, they're really good people, like real good-hearted, authentic people and have done a lot for a lot of people in the community. So I knew that her endorsement would mean a lot. So I knew she was, I heard she was speaking at some kind of gala and I got a ticket. I went to the gala and at the end of it, I met a beeline to make sure that I met her.

And so I said to her, you know, before Gloria was Gloria, when they were Miami sound machine, they used to play at our high school dances. So, you know, we bond. Yes. But before they were famous. And so we laughed about that and bonded. And then I told her about this book and had a message about women's empowerment and gave me her the name of her manager who, you know, doing his job and being a good guardian took me two years to get through, you know, multiple emails and nothing. And then I rethought this and I thought, wait a minute, this isn't working. Let me take a different approach. What is going to touch her heart? Because I'm sure she gets bombarded with requests like this all the time.

Yeah. So you stop the ego, switch to the soul. Yes, exactly. And so I put myself in her shoes. And one of the book, as you know, it's a series of three books on what it means to live heroically. What does it mean to live heroically in the 21st century? And so I did some research and I found out that, you know, so I wrote to her. I rewrote the email and I said, you know, the way that you overcame the bus accidents and your back injury was nothing short of heroic and has inspired countless people throughout the world. And then I read up on her and discovered that her father had been a counter-revolutionary. So he had actually fought to gain Cuba her freedom back,

as my parents had done too from Cuba when we lived there. And so I said, you know, the sacrifices that your father and our parents made for the sake of freedom, for the sake of a larger cause, are nothing short of heroic. And then I also acknowledge her for generosity because I found out that she's done so much for people. I said, you've helped so many other Latino and Latina artists break through and be known.

Like, won't you help me, this fellow Cuban-American, reach a broader audience? And maybe a couple of months, three months went by, and I had to go to press. And I said, all right, I was about to give up. So this is a message for resilience, and for trusting and to not giving up. So I said, I was about to give up. And I said, all right, you know what, just I heard that little voice inside, just said, send one more email out. I said, all right. And I sent it out. And this time I got heard back within the hour. And he said, wait, wait, wait, can you give us another week? Because she's about finished with your book. She's halfway through and she's loving it. And of course, I would have given them another month

to get that endorsement. But that's the message. I think with your belief, you know, like don't give up because sometimes we're giving up right at the last minute. Oh, I love that story. Good for Gloria. I realized, and this has actually been something I've been journaling a lot lately, that a lot of things that you see are not authentic. Like, for example, we get a lot of people that offer to buy us Instagram followers can give them money to up our reviews and our, you know, it's just a lot of things aren't what they seem. And so the reason I bring that up is I love that you were looking for people that were authentic. They were mentors to you that were true to you. And you went after them to endorse your book rather than just some famous person who, you know, just to make it sell.

Absolutely. And like you, I so resonate with what you just said, because like you have also been approached to get more followers by, you know, by buying them. And it just, that just doesn't feel right for me. It might take longer to reach the number of people that I want to reach, but at to get more followers by, you know, by buying them. And I just, that just doesn't feel right for me. It might take longer to reach the number of people that I want to reach, but at least it'll be done authentically. That's right. Okay. So let's talk about power right there, because you want to know where my mind went. My mind went, oh, if you have money and then money gives you power, and then you can be whoever you want. My mind relates power again with negativity. So how do I strip myself from that and start over?

Well, I mean, and that's a really good question because that's how we tend to associate power with, with externals, you know, people with, we tend to think people with money or famous people or people who are high up in some kind of hierarchy, whether it's a corporate ladder or some kind of institution thing. That's who we tend to think has power. But the thing about that kind of power, which I called worldly power or ego power, it's fickle, right? Because all these things are outside of us. They're here today, gone tomorrow. And how many people do we know who lost money or who lost a job or lost a company because of the pandemic, which has been a great reality check? And how many more people do we need to see?

How many politicians or celebrities who could have all the money and all the power in the world and they are freaking miserable? And the slightest tweet sends them to a tailspin. So it's so evident to everybody to see how thin skinned and what poor self-esteem they have, that their self-esteem depends on what somebody else, a tweet from somebody they don't even know. And how many of them do we know with all the money who have taken their life or got caught in addictions?. So what you're saying is Mandy needs to find the power within her vagina. Is that what I got? That's funny.

That's funny. That's what I call soulful powers. It's the power that comes from within. That doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. So, you know, I think of soulful power. I think of a Gandhi. Or a Gandalf if you're into the Lord of the Rings, you know, in their simple monastic robe, their sandal feet, you would never know how much power they have until it's needed. And then get out of

the way. Like Gandhi brought the British empire to its knees when it was when it was at its highest point in terms of global reach without ever shooting a gun or landing a single punch that is power the story of jesus i mean man made the story of jesus something whatever but his story i mean he was just a common man right that's how he connected with people that was his power i like how you say use your inner hero that inner power it comes from inside use your inner hero, that inner power, it comes from inside. Yeah. And the thing about that inner power, that soulful power, is that nobody can give it to us. Nobody can take it away, right? We are the only ones who tragically, sadly, give it away for all those reasons that we were talking about before.

Can you help other people find their power or do they have to do it solely on their own? I mean, we can help for sure. The book, the book is, it will walk them by the hand to do that. We can support them, but we can't do it for them. Okay. So let's talk about some of the things that are in your book, like some bullet points on, I know I saw that it'll help you negotiate power struggles. How, like, do you, do you give step-by-step tangible ways for them to work through those struggles? Sure, sure. Because, I mean, how many times have we gotten caught up in power struggles? And because we don't know, we don't realize that it's just egos, you know, trying to be right and trying to defend. And so once we understand the ego mind, once we understand

authentic power, not the illusion of power that we tend to associate power with, it changes everything. So then we can keep the higher road. We can maintain the higher road. And so when we get into an argument, it's not about becoming a doormat. Of course not. We're talking about a journey of empowerment. But how do we step into our power in a way that is different, that we can be courageous. We can communicate our feelings, our desires, our preferences, our dreams, our beliefs in a way that's courageous because it is courageous to do that. People may, other people may not like it. And, but in a way that it's also compassionate and graceful, which means that in a way that the other person can hear it. And feel it. I mean, that empathy piece too.

You know, I feel like, you know, just sometimes we don't just pause enough to see the light from someone else's eyes. You know what I mean? And how they live. One of the things that stuck out with me is that you're a smart guy, obviously. And I guess that's one of the things that triggered me thinking about my daughter. I've seen her miss opportunities, like willingly agree to not do certain things that is in her right because she's lacking that confidence. Or maybe it's not even confidence, but doesn't care to get up in front of a group of people and you had done that for me to know that you actually avoided giving a valedictorian speech yeah like a b and seven a or something right yeah i don't know that it was purposely at the time because i think it was subconscious it wasn't it wasn't like something i

intended to do right Right, okay. Yeah, but the story is I had a 4.0 in high school, except for that one B my last semester, which I knew would knock me out of the running for valedictorian because there's no way that I could have gotten up in front of a room of hundreds and hundreds of people to deliver a speech. There's no way at that point in my life.

But the upside of the story is like flash forward now, I'm speaking at dozens and dozens of universities, although I'm speaking all over the world, I've given a TEDx stage. So the hopeful message for your daughter is that all those fears, all that stuff that we allow to hold us back from being all of who we are, that can all be healed, it can all be transformed. What we're talking about is how we empower ourselves is like, all right, we see the pattern, like we understood, all right, I name it, I named this fear rather than running away from it. What heroes do is like, we look at it, we name it, we feel the fear, and I hear it, and I'm not going to give my power away to it. I'm going to go ahead and say yes to that opportunity anyway, no matter

what happens, because that's how we reclaim our fearful that we've given given away to our own power and our own conditioning our own fears and that's how we transcend and free ourselves from the ego it's like all right because we've gotten this misunderstanding that to be fearless means that we don't feel fear it's like no that's not what fearlessness is fearlessness means we feel the fear like you've you faced, you looked at it, you felt it, and you said, you know what, I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, because you're just a baseball and I'm a freaking stadium. That's right. That's right.

So are you a hero? Yes. Being willing to go into those deep existential questions, the conditioning, deciding morality for myself, deciding what's right and what's wrong for myself. That was nothing less than a heroic journey. Because, you know, am I going to decide what's right and what's wrong about something that was written 2000 or longer years ago, moral teachings that were taken out of the social and historical context at a time where women were not even human, when were property it's like am i gonna base my sense of right and wrong on that nope no i'm not no but then the journey we gotta figure that

out for ourselves and it's work it's heroic it's heroic that you shared it and wrote this book too well and you've written other books you wrote um coming out spiritually i mean that had to have been incredibly heroic you are a gay man and you have stood up and wrote this book and you also have spoke on it in in in places of worship yeah oh my god countless churches and organizations and conferences and yeah absolutely as an introvert i didn't want to be in the public eye. You are a freaking badass hero. I'm most comfortable by myself in nature. And yet I had the sense of mission. I felt like I had to do this. And I felt like I was being anointed, you know, like kind of sword to the shoulder kind of thing. And I knew that it was going to help a lot of people. And I know both books have made a lot

of difference. And it was that sense of mission that sense of service of wanting to to make a difference to help other people get free because I figured out how to get free and and that's what drives me and that's what gave me the the courage the determination to to be in the public eye because it's not something that by nature I wanted to do oh I'm so glad you freed your soul. I mean, it's almost like the chains come off, right? And the soul just is so free. I used to call Mandy and say, oh my God, I just can't explain it. I just feel so free.

Like, and nobody can ever take this feeling from me. Nobody. It's not undone. Once you are free, you are so free. It's amazing. Oh, personal freedom is the best. That's what got me sober 11 years. And I think back to what is it really? And it was being able to let go of that shame. Yes. And being able to tap into that power, which led me into a place of so much integrity, because I was able to align my ego and soul together. Yes. To tap into that power to know that I'm here for a purpose and to let go of that.

That's heroic, Mandy. That's a heroic journey. It is. You really raised my vibe. I have a feeling you do that naturally with anyone who's around you and in the universe. And that's what you're doing with your work. So thank you. Thank you. Where can everybody find your book's what you're doing with your work. So thank you.

Thank you. Where can everybody find your book? Oh, thank you for asking that. A book is available wherever books are sold. In terms of reaching me, probably my website is best. And that's soulfulpower.com. From there, they can access my social media.

And for your listeners, for your audience, if they will go to soulfulpower.com and get on my email list, then we know how easy it is to click on subscribe if it doesn't work for you down the road. But if you do that now, we'll send you a sample chapter from the book. And it's the one that talks about what it means to live heroically in the 21st century. They'll get some power practices that are designed to apply the teachings to our lives so that it doesn't stay at the level of information. We don't need more information. We've got information overload. What we need is transformation. And that comes from applying these concepts and these teachings that we're talking about

to our lives by integrating them into our lives. And that's what those practices will help do. And then they'll also get a guided meditation, a short teaching and a guided meditation about trust that i created last year in the middle of the pandemic and and that with the hope and the intention of helping people you know move out of fear which is what we're living in and these times of chaos and uncertainty and we don't know what's going to happen and systems are imploding in front of our eyes and so it's like how do we move into trust, which is part of the realm of the stadium. Fear lives in the baseball. The stadium is all about trust.

It's like we're establishing trust. No matter what happens in the outer world, we remain centered like the eye of the storm. We know that the storm will pass. So how do we maintain that sense of self, that sense of trust, of knowing, of inner peace, while everybody's judgments and perceptions and the fear of society is just rolling around us and we stay centered. That's what that meditation is guided to help people do. When are the other two books coming out? I'm about halfway done with the relationships with second one, which is on relationships, how we do relationships consciously.

Before that, I'm translating this one into Spanish, which is part of the reason I'm here in Ecuador, is to expand my vocabulary because I've been in the States since age 10. So, yeah, it's my first language, but I don't have the vocabulary to really express myself. So I hired somebody to translate it, but in reading it, it's just a lot gets lost in translation. It's because they translate things literally, and it's not what i really want to describe okay yeah yeah seriously how many times has that been translated and re-translated

and translated again and stuff put in and stuff taken out and with all due respect with the sacredness that is in it there's a lot of it that is not to be taken literally. It's myths that we find in other sacred texts all over the world. We've gone down that rabbit hole. I can't believe we did that. I can't believe we did that. And now it's time for Break That Shit Down. There are two things that come to mind. One is take a breath.

It's all about the breath. If you want to be able how to be that buffalo or how to be the eye of the storm, it all begins with breath and with awareness of who we are. And to wrap it up one more time, there is a way that we can step into power that is a match with who we are. And that doesn't require that we push anybody down or push anybody down or step on them or abuse power or cause harm. There is a way that we can do this. Thank you so much. You are amazing. Thank you. Me too. Much love. Thank you for helping me shift my perspective around the word power. Oh, good, good.

Yeah, thank you. And thank you so much for doing your work and for having the show. You know, just your willingness to go back to the word that you used, your willingness to do this show. It's making a difference in so many lives. So thank you so much for that willingness. And thanks for having me. So I have one more for

you. One, two, three, four. Come on, baby. Say you love me. You crack me up. She's so funny. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.