TrueLife - Rev. Dr. Jessica (Madrinha Jessica) Rochester - Ayahuasca Awakenings # 1

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is the Madrinha and President of Céu do Montréal, a Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Church she founded in 1997 in Montréal, Canada.She is a transpersonal counselor, she trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof.She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve an Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo DaimeSacrament (Ayahuasca).She is an ordained Interfaith Minister with a Doctorate in Divinity.From 1986 to 2018 she has been a workshop leader, teacher, and in private practice.She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volume One and Two.She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being and personal transformation. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome back to the True Life podcast.

We live in an incredible time, a time of acceleration, a time of profound change, a time of rebirth. Today we are here with an incredible guest. Reverend Dr. Rochester, some may know her as Madrina Jessica. She's an author, a lecturer, a interfaith minister, a transpersonal counselor, the madrina of, am I going to save this right, Sue de Montreal, Richard. See you.

Thank you. Seo. Seo de Montreal. And she has written an incredible two-volume set of books called Ayahuas. Awakening's Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery, and Self-Care. Today we're going to be talking about book one, to self-discovery and self-mastery. So Dr. Jessica, how are you today? Did I leave anything out there?

I think you did really well. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. And it's great to be back on your show. Thank you for your generosity and sharing your time and your audience with me. And giving me an opportunity to talk about some things that. I see are really missing in the conversation. A lot of them are just missing in the conversation regarding antigenes and psychedelics. You know, there's this huge international movement.

Everything's opening. And so be it, you know, this is what needs to be happening. But a lot of us are concerned where the focus, you know, the spotlight on the stage is on a few things. and I was compelled to write these books. And what's really interesting about it, can I share the story a little bit? Please, please do. I'm sitting in the Santo Dami. It's 26 years now.

I'm Diamista and 25-year anniversary of our church. So we're celebrating this year 25 years and five years of our legalization, which I worked 17 years on. And I have this long-term relationship with the OCS. Office of Control Substances for you Americans, that's the equivalent of your, I think it's your DEA, or a branch of your DEA. And I just want to give a shout out to the staff, to the, from the Director General on down, all those years, and still to this day a relationship, respectful, well-educated, willing to look at the research and the science, I can only say thank you to all the different, I guess up nine different Director-General's that I

I got to know in the process, but I really want to say that for those of you who want to see movement, who want to see good policy, work with your government, be a little bit more patient rather than working against. Okay, if you know that you, there's intelligent people everywhere, and there's reasonable and fair people everywhere. And if you show up with your credentials and with good science, then you will be taken seriously. You know, it may not be instant, that be willing to plow the, plow the field and plant the seeds and do that. Anyway, so here it is, you know, all along I've known I was going to write books.

So it's like a 40 years ago. And, but I didn't know when. I wasn't sure what it was going to be bowed. And at any rate, so I'm sitting in a Santo Daini work in our church. And I feel like something opens above me and those those of you who are accustomed to non-ardinary state of consciousness work will understand what I'm saying those who don't will think of a bit cuckoo I something opens above me and this flood of information light intelligence starts to pour through my seventh chakra crown chakra and in that moment I feel like I am a dry little river bank that's just being flooded by the monsoon and that was the experience of it this is how a river feels when the monsoon comes which is kind of like just open to it it's going to flood your banks and all you need

to do is to kind of allow surrender try to move in the stream of consciousness of it for sure don't try to block it you know and from that work on it was like all the little notes and things and in all my books on my bookshelves all the little post-it notes and notes in it and it's okay, get cracking. You have to write all of this out, and then it wouldn't let me publish it. I wrote it, and it was all finished by 2011, and it wouldn't let me publish it. And it's like, okay, when am I going to publish this? And you're not going to publish it now.

Don't even bother trying to open doors. You know, I submitted it to a very well-known publisher, American publisher, who publish this kind of work. He says, it's excellent, it's amazing, it's wonderful. But I can't publish a 600-page book from a new author. going to help me he knows. So it's like, okay. The spirit told me it's not going to be now, and now I have my answer, not now. And it was only after our legalization. After we put on, I was shown that it had to do this conference that we did in 2019, the first conference on

Awaska in Canada. And it's on our website. You can access it through mine. For those of you who are interested, a shout out to the wonderful people who came and spoke. Paul Groff, dear friend, Brian Rush, from Cam H. Kent Tupper, people who are involved in policy know very well. You know, dear friends, Mark Blaney, you know, they packed up and came in and did their thing, and anybody who's interested can see those videos. And then there was this other little project that had to happen, Anthogyns and Psychedelics in Canada, proposal for a new paradigm,

where we talk about education, credentialing. Who's going to be credentialed to do this? What kind of education do they need? So for a year and a half, we, you know, rambled about across the nation with 20 plus contributors making remarks to this and then we published in the Journal of Canadian, Canadian Journal of Psychology. And then Spirit said to me, oh, by the way, now you can publish your books. Now you've laid the ground, you know. And it's like, okay, so here we are. And so that's the story of how these books came to be.

And what's really funny is I have some people in the field say, who are you? I never heard of you before. And now all of a sudden you're kind of talking about this and that. And it's like, no, that's what Spirit wanted me to do. It wanted me to get legal to put all my energy into that and building a strong foundation, hopefully here in Canada. And, you know, step by step by step and being willing to follow that. Which brings us to the opening chapters in the book.

Do you want to ask some questions? jumped in there George's I'm in going on it's it's fascinating to me and I I am content to learn and listen but it's it's fascinating to me to see or hear the way

in which you were inspired or brought about to do it it almost sounds like you could write a book about how you wrote the book and it's weird as you were talking as you were telling that story it makes me seem as if had you gone against the wishes of the spirit and tried to do it earlier you would have

got in your own way and it wouldn't have been what it was and there's lessons you had to learn along the way and I feel like there's a lot of lessons in in everything that we do. So when you told that story, it's it's fun for me to listen to and I think that there's a lot of learning that can be done in there. So yeah, I think we can jump into the to the book and I'm thankful to get to hear that intro about it. We talked in the beginning about maybe starting with karma and meaning. Is that what you wanted to move into first or is something you wanted to maybe That's separate into what is the self and karma and those are the opening chapters in the book is what is the self?

This is something that we can think of Victor Frankel, you know, when we come to meaning in a little bit. But these questions, he's asking existentialism. Who am I? Why am I here? So that's where we need to start. He's like, who am I? What do I believe about myself?

Who do I think I am? You know? And, you know, a shout out to. Roberto Sagioli, the Italian psychiatrist, who I think his work does some of the best groundwork of exploring the self with a much larger map. More about that later. So we all ask these questions. And depending on the environment around us, the culture, the political level, our family environment,

all of these are factors. And people don't get that. It's like, we were born. What's your birthday? October 29th, 1975. 1975. Okay, well, guess what? You were born into a story that had been written millions of years ago.

But the thing is, we all seem to think it started when we arrived. I'm saying, I mean, yeah, there's history, but it's kind of, I don't know. There's this kind of disconnect from the understanding that we're born into this. It's like walking onto stage in a play in its act three, scene five. You know, the play's been running for a while, and the characters have been developing, and the story's been unfolding. And we have to get up to speed with that, you know.

And we all have this kind of narcissistic view of ourselves and the world, and that's why there's actually, in psychology, there's actually, like, the narcissistic stage, me, I'm the center of the universe. However, that's around the age of three. And by the age of six, through those magic years, we really should have come to grips when things are larger than just me and what I want. You know, want doggy now, want candy now, and all of this stuff.

But we can look around and we see, hmm, there's still a lot of that. You know, a whole other conversation is, you know, spiritual narcissism. That's for another day, perhaps. Back to the self. Who am I? Why am I here to have a larger cartography or sense of self, the maps that we work with. Do we think this is a one lifetime thing? So we have to start looking at beliefs. What do I believe? Do I believe what I've been taught in my family of origin, in my local religion and the local culture and the environment, what's on TV on the radio and songs and movies in books? What do I believe about me in my life and why I I'm here and what it's about and who I am and where did I come from before I was here. You know, a lot of people say, you know, big focus on where to go when we die. You ever notice there's big focus on that, right? And that's important.

We all want to understand that. But very few people are very few people are researching, where was I before I was born? What state of being was I in? Did I exist in some form? And so the few researchers and writers who've addressed that deserve again, a chapeau, for talking about the continuum. Is it just this? Well, yes, we can agree.

This is George Life. Not going to change lives midstream. You may change your name legally. You may make all other kinds of changes. You know, dot your hair pink and get a tattoo. There's all kinds of things we can do. even surgery and all kinds of options, you're still George. Inside of you, you're still you.

Whatever that you, you come to think of as being the authentic you. And finding the authentic you, of course, is the journey. That's the hero's journey. And that's the core of what these books are about. Who am I? Why am I here? How do I grow me? How do I develop me?

How do I find my potential? How do I transform my karma that I've brought into this lifetime? And then the baggage, the biographical, the autobiography, the story of my life. How do I transform that? So I take the good from it. And I transform and or forgive and or grieve and or whatever needs to be done with the painful aspects of what I experienced in my family of origin, in the schoolyard, on the street, in my culture, in my society.

Because there's a lot of wounding that happens, you know. And sometimes these are small little things like a paper cup, and they're pretty easy to transform and change. And sometimes it's more like broken legs and broken arms, and it takes sometimes a lifetime, if not more, to come to some transformational resolution and a sense of greater completeness about this. Did you have any questions about karma or?

I do. Okay. I first wanted to say the first part of that particular talk about the self reminds me of a thought experiment that people can do. And that thought experiment is what happens if you close your eyes and you never wake up? And I think if you think about that for a long time, you begin to understand that that which was never born can never die. What's it like to go to sleep and never wake up? What's it like to wake up and never go to sleep? That would be birth in some ways. And so I was thinking about that thought exercise when you had said that. And when we began talking about karma and coming into this world,

my question is, do you think that maybe the karma that we have is, is that related to the tragedies we can see in other people? Do you know what I mean about that? Sometimes you can see the tragedy in other people. You may not even know them. Is that maybe related to your karma somehow? I believe so. First of all, we all have empathy. Now, some people have, here is. about boundaries, about healthy boundaries. There's a beautiful prayer by Chief Yellow Lark that talks about not having too much empathy that it overwhelms you. So he's talking, he's in his prayer, he's asking to have a heart of compassion without

everything flooding into him. And so next week when we're talking about that stuff, remind me and we'll come back to that about healthy boundaries and how to, you know, how to understand this is the world of me. This is my little me world. And now you know, again, how do we open doors? You know, we all have the wall, the great wall

of George and the great wall of Jessica. Okay, we all have walls and some people have tiny little picket fences and other people have great big stainless things up. So with barking dogs and, you know, sort of Berlin wall, you know, that I visited in 1971.

It really did exist, you know. Thank God they door down. you know, the guard dogs and the machine guns and the barbed wire and some people have walls like that. But how does the me that I think of as being me, how do I relate to others? And what do I open to and what do I learn to close to? And what does that look like? How is it at its most healthy so that I can go through my life, feeling a sense of well-being? And here, this is very Buddhist, with the right thought, the right word, and the right action.

And when we have those three simple things in mind, it makes the path easier most of the time. People think it'll be harder, but actually it gets more simple. And the only thing that strains up again is it is our ego. Okay. Okay, so karma, let's, you know, what is a, what's a, what's a, a karmic mission? What's a karmic agreement? These are conversations that are had

with all different kinds of versions and impressions of them. What does a karmic agreement look like? So there's a lot of people who in their lifetime feel like there's a calling, there's something inside of me that is calling me into this

path of study, something that's calling me into this way of working. So creative people have that a little bit closer to the service they can't help but start picking up instruments or pick up pencils and colored pencils and start doodling and drawing and stuff like that the rest of us have to struggle through okay and pay attention okay and so there's some people who are and I'm not talking about the the adorable little under six-year-olds who say I want to be a firefighter I want to be a

doctor and stuff because that's all to be encouraged and say well honey that's a possibility let's see how it unfolds, okay? And then let them go through all the changes they need to go through. But how do we honor those feelings, those callings inside of us? You know, and I'm going to use a very famous film, you know, Star Wars. Here we have Luke Skywalker. If there's anybody listening who doesn't know, go watch the movies. And here he is, and he's staring up into space, and he feels it. But he can't identify it. He doesn't know what he doesn't know what it is. He just knows that there's this deep longing inside of him to get somewhere, to go somewhere, to do something. And then he has to follow the synchronicities and the little openings that happen,

like the trail that starts to lead him. And that requires awareness. We need to pay attention to all the the book that comes to our hand or the friend that we meet somewhere who mentions something and something sparks, you know? If we start paying attention to those things, always, of course, making sure they're grounded. You need to be grounded. Okay, I'm not talking about this following fantasy here. There's a difference between fantasy,

of which there's far too much in our culture, far too much fantasy. It should be enjoyed the way you enjoy, I don't know, an ice cream or, you know, it should be like a fun movie or a fun fantasy book. You know it's fantasy. Okay. But there's this kind of, let's call it new age stuff, which isn't transpersonal stuff,

which got very confused with that has too much fantasy in it, you know? Come to that again later. So, karma, you had a question. So when it comes to karma, is it the, we talked about a story earlier. you're born into this book or stage, you're born into Act 3, Stage 5. How is it that you can become more aware of maybe scene two when you're on stage three? Like how do you build a relationship with, you know, maybe potentially your soul's past

incarnation or maybe your soul's future incarnation, or is that even possible? Yes, it's absolutely possible. And in the transpersonal and work that I do, mainly, you know, in psychosynthesis, the work of Rivera Satioli and then training with Dr. Stanislav Groff and in his work of transpersonal psychology and holy trouble breath work. What we really learn is about what's called body memories. The body remembers. Now, is it actually the physical body that remembers? I don't think so. But since the soul is kind of immersed in the body, it's not like water and a glass, right? Then it becomes known as body memories. Why? Because body workers, really good body workers,

massage therapists, anybody who works on your body, can feel those places where the energy is blocked, where the tension is tight. And this is classic is how we hold our bodies, where the tension is, where it feels blocked and stuck. I mean, there's a lot of people walking around who kind of live fifth chakra up. Do you know what I'm saying? live in their head, they look from here up and they're very disconnected from what's happening in their body. And that's usually because of, there's usually a reason for that that needs to be explored. Why did everything stop here? Is because I was too scared to express myself. I didn't know how to express myself. There wasn't space where I could allow my feelings or

thoughts or ideas or enthusiasms or if I did, I got punished or, you know, whatever. So it stops there. You know, other people, and they're kind of living, you know, lower down, you know, they've disowned or rejected versus second chakra issues. You know, a big chunk of their emotional life is held there, their survival instincts and things like that. And so that's why, you know, in this first volume, we do a quick study, a brief overview of the chakra system so that we can understand where, what's going on in the various parts of my body and what are the longings that are. there and what are the challenges that are there. So let's bring it along to meaning now. Meaning is something that we add to everything. Okay. We start with associative meaning. Those are the ads that we put on. Okay, if you, for example, if you had a little dog, did you ever have a

dog or a cat or an egg? Yeah, okay. So tell me about your dog. Tell me. What was your dog's name? What kind of dog was it? I had a little cat. I have two cats now that I can tell you, but I have Freddie and Harold. And we got them as little kittens from the shelter, and they were feral cats.

So they were a little bit wild and kind of nutty. But the more we got to spend time with them and get to know them and maybe cuddle them and make our home, their home, the more they became ours. And maybe not so much ours as our family. So I feel like we've got to build a relationship with them. And the more that I think about it, the more I felt they were part of my family, the more

meaning I gave to them. Like, they became more meaningful to me. Yes. Okay, so now I'm a cat person, too. I've had cats and I just love them. So I'm happy to hear about you guys. And so you've encapsulated meaning. Something comes into our life. We have an experience with it. And then we add meaning to it. And so what I'm hearing in your story is, is you liked cats, you got these two kittens in your family, and they were a bit feral, they needed some care. So you learned patience and, you know, awareness of them and things like that. So now you have this thing with cats. The meaning that you add to cats is, oh, wow, that's a great experience. I really loved it. And this is what I learned from it. So that's the meaning you add to cats.

Okay, somebody can have a terrible experience with something, maybe a dog bit them when they were three years old. And now that's the meaning that they add. Maybe they have a fear of telephones because they watch their mother, father, somebody receive a terrible, when they were young, a terrible phone call that brought them really, really difficult news. And so there's now this meaning that's connected to the object. So how do we recognize this? I think the example I use is, of course, in miracles, and this is probably the finest way of removing, of being able to say, you know, this is,

we're not going to get into the matrix. There is no glass, there is no water, but what will too say there is a glass and there is water, but what meaning does it have to me? It has no meaning other than the meaning that I add to it. So, of course, in miracles, you know, a shout out to that. For some of us, especially women, I have, I don't endorse it as as 100% because it's very patriarchal. It's difficult if it really filtered everything that the, you know, medium who received this information.

It got filtered in a very kind of tight patriarchal version of Christianity. and so, you know, anybody working with it, modify it to suit what works. But some of those, some of those, you know, some of those teachings are so beautifully designed to help us, help us understand the meaning and to remove the associative meaning, to deal with the original thing and let a telephone be a telephone and let a dog be a dog. and let everything, you know, to strip the associative meaning. The second type of meaning, as I refer to Victor Frankl, is the existential meaning. What meaning does life have?

Well, good luck with that one. You know, seriously, you come up with anything new, share it. You know, because that's, again, just stuff that our little brain is trying to figure out and it's trying to, you know, we can look at all the philosophers and everything that they've written about it. the bottom line is, you know what, I think you have to find this one for yourself. Yeah. I think that all those philosophies can be educational, can be very interesting, can awaken more thinking for us, definitely. But in the end, I think the who am I and why am I here, that has to be something that each person has to discover within themselves.

And on the root to do that, they'll understand more about their karma. Does this make sense? Yeah, it makes me wonder. Do you think maybe Victor Frankel's book should have been called A Man's Search for Meaning instead of Man's Search for Meaning? I think, yeah, that would be helpful, but we have to remember where he was and what he was. Without a doubt. And, you know, really honor. Yes. He was able to, you know, he's an example of rising up.

Unbelievable. In the midst of this, I will find my true self. And I will try and be a beacon of light in even this. You know, and that's kind of Gandhi and Victor Frankel and Martin Luther King and all those greats who, you know, who decided this is dreadful. And I want to be part of the solution. And to do so, I recognize that I have to be a beacon of light. Yeah. And all you listeners out there who think being a beacon of light is,

great. Be careful of fantasy thinking. Okay, this is not a Marvel comic movie. Okay, that's not how it goes. It's a much more serious and deep inner study and requires, you know, moment by moment, moment study of myself and my awareness and being here and a dedication to, you know, the path that you choose to follow that will allow this to happen. in your life. Does that make sense, George? A lot of things are attracted to the light. And, you know, I used to go to the desert quite a bit. And it's beautiful at the desert at nighttime.

And we would go out there and my family had, we would go camping all the time. And whenever there was a big light out there, everyone would go see it, whether it was a campfire or whether it was someone burning an engine or something like that. And there was a lot of unsavory things that happened because people burn those lights. And sometimes we burn warning lights. But everyone goes to the light and not just people that you want around you. I think that there's a lot of things that come with light that people aren't aware of. And that's really the first time I've heard someone say it like you did. So yeah, I think I'm beginning to understand it. Okay, great. So we'll move on to transpersonal meaning. What's your personal meaning? Transpersonal

meaning is, I'm not sure if it even, you know, it's just a phrase that I'm using. I'm not sure if it is legitimately a technical phrase, okay, but it's the phrase that I'm using to describe the kind of the meaning that things have in the larger. It's beyond the personal. It's way beyond the personal. And so what you will find is that certain things have certain meanings cross-culturally around the world, you know? And whatever culture you go into, you're going to find that there's almost always a similar meaning to something, that something has a similar meaning. And so to that, so it's big, it's different and bigger than existential, who am I, and why am I here. It's different from associative meaning, you know, a wonderful experience with

cats, terrible experience with a dog or an elevator or a car or a phone or whatever it is, okay, or a situation. And it's something that ripples through the collective human unconscious. And so when we find, for example, handprints on caves, and we find stick figures and we find, and then we look at ancient traditions, and we find, oh, the same symbols, the same symbols, the circle, the square, the star, all of these things.

You know, you find, for example, the star. You can see I've got some on my wall behind me. Okay, the star, if you look, the star is everywhere in every culture. Okay? And the meaning, if you look at, you know, a good dictionary of symbols, which I think anybody working in the transpersonal field will have one or two on their bookshelf, if you look at that, you'll see this universality with many symbols that goes much deeper than the personal experience as to what these shapes and forms and even colors.

you know, what red, how red speaks to us and how black, what black and pink and purple and green and all of these different colors, how they, how they kind of what they psychologically kind of represent to us and mean to us. And, of course, this is used in advertising and it's used. Always, you know, these symbols and colors and shapes and things are used in a subliminal way to speak to our, unconscious. And so was there anything you wanted to ask about that? Those are the three types of meaning. And it's for each of us to kind of do our homework and figure out, you know, what meaning does my life have for me? And what am I attaching?

For example. Yeah, go ahead. So on the topic of transpersonal meaning, it seems that, you know, when I've read young, a man in his symbols, and you can look back to archetypes and symbols in the way they're used. But one question I've always had is, you know, it seems to me that translation means interpretation. So when we're looking back at these symbols, how are we in, we're obviously translating what someone else meant by those. So is it possible? Like, how do we know that we're interpreting that accurately? Well, I don't know if we can. Other than to say, I think it's, here's where anthropology is really helpful. And

psychologists are really helpful. Because what they'll do is just gather. information and they'll say okay look all these cultures around the world when they put the circle that's what kind of the circle means right when you think of a circle you're probably thinking of good things right so a square square is a foundation that's what you build on you know so there's there's there's you know this is where certain um academic studies are extremely helpful in in helping us understand and these things because they're just gathering all the information and they're putting it together and they're trying to make sense of it and they see that all around the world, you know, these symbols are being used and this is what they represented in ancient Egypt and this is what

the Incas meant by it and this is what, you know what I'm saying? And so here it is guys, here's the information. And what we want to be careful is to not get too attached to things, especially interpretive things. And this is something I think I talk about a little bit, is, you know, lean into the Buddha's teachings. Anytime you have a doubt about attachment, the original voice on attachment and non-attachment

and the power of non-attachment. And so as we use these tools to help understand ourselves, and our place and are going forward in life, we don't want to get too attached to them, especially the ones that interpret. For example, I'll use astrology. Astrology can be extremely helpful.

However, taken too far, it's not useful. When people ask me about it, I will always say, you know, if you're interested in it, it can be extremely helpful. to understand the characteristics of your sign. For me, I was shown that, again, in Santo Dami works, that there is a moment in the, when we are being, when we are conceived, when our body is conceived,

why was it that month, not the month before, or the month after? Why was it then? And our birth, why are some births early, some laid and, you know, all of that jazz and when do they come? And it's a baby that releases a hormone that says I'm ready to be born. So, you know, I've always put astrology as one piece of the multifactoral environment in which the self exists. So we have, what I do have in my books is a lot of diagrams because I've found that diagrams really help people understand. I'm

visual. So diagrams help me. So I thought, okay, they're going to be diagrams. And so in the book, I have diagrams of the self and the factors that influence us, you know, during birth, in our mother's body, during birth and post birth, the factors that are influencing us and have a role to play. And we can say that astrology is one of them. It's not the only, it's not the biggest, but to ignore it like it doesn't exist doesn't make sense either. Okay? So you choose the good from it

and leave the rest. Don't use it as being too predictive. Don't use it as a daily thing. It's, you know, it's not the weather report. It is kind of the weather report. Check in once a year or a year

and get a oh, okay, so this is operating and this may give me an added booth to go forward with something. Oh, I see this is a challenge currently. Okay, so I understand that that's the challenge. It's not something weird and invisible inside of me, though I don't understand.

And why is everything so difficult and blocked? It's like, oh, okay, you know, I'm trying to have a picnic when there's a windstorm. So you can use it as a tool to contribute to your understanding of your daily life, But don't let it become the thing that directs your daily life. Does this make sense? It does. And it brings up another point in transpersonal meaning.

You had brought up David Bohm in his theory about matter and how matter is intertwined with meaning. I was wondering if maybe you could share some of that with the people. I thought it was fascinating. And I've never, I'm going to read more of it because I'm not, I wasn't familiar with it. Please, if you've got, if you're open to that page, please read the quote. It's such beautiful quote. So it's under the. the part of transpersonal meaning.

The physicist David Bohm developed a theory that states the manner, energy and meaning are mutually enfolding aspects of reality. He proposes that energy unfolds matter and meaning and that matter unfolds energy and meaning. Therefore, meaning unfolds matter and energy. His theory suggests that meaning is both an underlying link for body and mind and an inseparable aspect of the whole. He believes that meaning.

is an essential part of one's overall reality and not simply an abstract aspect of the mind. He suggests that, quote, we are the totality of our meanings. I had to set the book down after that. It's beautiful to think about and there's a lot in there. There's a lot in there. You know, physicists are always deep thinkers. And, you know, should you ever, you know, I'd love to have the British and particle physicist, Brian Cox, for dinner. If you're ever out there hearing me, you're invited. You know,

and why that physicist over, say, Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, who I totally respect and who's wonderful. But Ryan Cox includes spirituality, which Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't. And Carl Sagan, his mentor did not. As a matter of fact, a wonderful story, Stan Groff sat down with Carl Sagan once and tried to explain to him, you know, his understanding. of the unseen realms. And, you know, if you couldn't touch it, feel it and smell it. In Carl Sagan's world, it didn't exist. So, or it was yet to be proved or something is sort of like prove, prove, prove, prove.

Got it. Okay. And we need those people. They hold a balancing part. Okay? They're the string on the helium balloon. So that fills this to talk about spirituality in the unseen realms and how they meet and merge and that you can't in the end, you know, what we've recently in this last, what

decade or so discovered in visits, that there's the pulse and there's the wave and what's happening here. You know, so we've gone down into the microcosm at the same time we're going out into the macrocosm and we have, you know, incredible, well, the Hubble telescope and we have what the VLTs and these telescopes that are doing these extraordinary missions of, you know, going out into space, the original voyagers that went way out into space. And so we're exploring, but no one should think that we have the answers. We're in the adventure. We're in the adventure. And we have some of the answers based on what we've discovered.

and uncovered. But on another level, we are still in the adventure and we're still looking for a whole lot of things that we don't understand that seem to be way beyond us. And if I've shared this story before, George stopped me, I had an experience where I was ascending into the light. And as I reached what I felt was kind of the ceiling of heaven, and I don't know how else to describe it.

It felt like I ascended through the light and felt it was just light. There was nothing except this tiny little sense, green of sand, sense of me. And I asked the question, what lies beyond this? And the answer came back, as long as you're connected to your human form, you can't know. And that little tiny sense of me,

that was the string, okay, that was anchoring me into this lifetime. And as long as that is there, then there's things, I think we're not going to know. We may have touches of them and senses of them, but not know in the way that we think we want to know. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of a quote that Terrence McKenna said. And it was someone had asked him, why do you think we're allowed to catch a glimpse over the abyss? And he just, he had some elegant way of saying, why do we get to see a glimpse? That I don't know.

But, you know, just, just the elegant way in which he posed the question and the way that he had said, you know, we have a moment, a moment of clarity where we're allowed to see something bigger than ourselves that we're unable to describe. And, you know, it's, it is these moments of clarity. And I've been very fortunate to have some of these moments where, you know, I find myself seeing every. decision I've ever made and how it could play out momentarily, but seems to have lasted a lifetime. And it's just, it's, it's, it's these moments that you can dwell on and draw inspiration from or draw ideas from or it's almost like you're, you, you, you catch a glimpse of the, the creation that you yourself help play a part in creating. But it's, it's, it's, it's very difficult to find the proper words to describe it. But it's, I, I, I, I, I, I, I do believe I understand what you're saying about the string and the helium balloon and being connected.

And, you know, if history is any sort of barometer, one thing we know for sure is that we don't know and we always get it wrong. And so I find myself in debates with people sometimes that are telling me, well, if you can't taste it. George, no, no, no, there's lots of times we get it right. There's lots of times we get it right. science and medicine and and look at volunteer work helping others, you know, planting, planting trees, cleaning up the mountain, saving the whales. Come on. I don't know. Like, I think we're moving in the right direction, but it seems to me we always look back and then like, gosh, we could have done it better. Gosh, if we only knew this. And I do

think that we strive to get it right. And we have the light in our souls to become the best possible. And a lot of us think in that direction. But we're flawed in so many ways that we can't get it right. And it seems sometimes that we're here to learn how to get it right. But can you give me some more faith in how we do get it right? Because I struggle there. Well, you, your name is Legion. Read any biography of a saint, okay, who's on their face.

and how hard it is to just kind of follow the basic principles of the of their faith, whatever their faith is. Okay, it doesn't matter, you know, whatever their faith is, you know, that wonderful story of, I think it was Pope John II. I think it's as told by Jack Cornfield. And in one of his books, and apparently, you know, and here was a good man who did not have an easy job. I don't know why anybody would want that job, but it was a mission and he took it. And so apparently he's lying in bed one day and he'd fall on asleep the night before

and really troubled about a problem. Really, it was heavy on his mind, but he thought I'll sleep on it and I'll see how I feel in the morning. You know, with that moment when you're first waking up and kind of still in the dream world and not fully here yet. So apparently he's lying in bed and he's just waking up and he thinks, oh, okay, I'm going to go and speak to the Pope. Then there's a moment and he goes, oh, I am the Pope. And so that's where it goes, dear, and we have to speak to ourselves. Right. We have to find the heart of the matter within ourselves. And in that moment, all we can do is pray for grace. You know, the word prayer, prayer has so much baggage attached to it.

And I deal with that volume to. And I'll have that next week. But it's got a lot of baggage, you know. And especially people who have suffered, they or their ancestors have suffered the hands of misguided, incorrect. And, you know, I don't know how many other ads. to use religions, okay? Where humans have taken control of, and mainly the patriarchy, sadly,

but humans have taken control of spiritual traditions and designed them to provide power, money, position, wealth, and whatever other agendas they had in the positions that they felt they were. were called to or wanted to take. And so I'm hoping that in part these books will bring people back to a true deep understanding of the power of whether we call it positive thinking, affirmations, prayer.

It's all part of the same thing, you know. And so what do we do when we get to that place where we know? Then we have to trust. We all can decide, do I have, what do I believe? we're back to beliefs. Do I want to believe that, you know, that there's something larger than me that I'm actually connected to? Another physicist Einstein said, this illusion of separateness, I think I've got his quote in my book somewhere, the solution of separateness. You know, it's an illusion. We're all connected. Everything is one. And again, this gets addressed in volume two.

All this oneness, oneness with nature, oneness with each other, oneness with the cosmos, with one oneness with, let's call it the divine or the great mystery, which is what indigenous people will often call it the great mystery. But we're one with that. Well, if I'm one with that, then, you know, and this comes into the kind of a key part of this first volume is the teachings on the will. Now, I believe the will power lives in our third chakra. What else is in third?

Third chakra is a busy chakra. It's got a lot of. on for it okay you think the heart's just you know doing that it's the heart thing you know it's either closed partially closed open grieving okay pretty straightforward hard stuff is that third chakra is a little bit more complicated because our will i believe our willpower lives in third chakra i believe it is there is our power center that's our power center it's that solar force in our body in the central place of our body that contains our sense of personal power. It contains our sense of self, our sense of responsibility. What am I responsible for? What am I not responsible for? And our

willpower. So that's why I believe willpower. I love Sarah is because that's where I experienced it. I really deeply. I know other cartographies of the chakra put it somewhere else. But if you think about it, where else would it be other than the power center? This is like putting the engine in the car on the roof. I know it needs to be where it's driving the wheels, dear. Okay. And so I write about, you know, using the chakra system and willpower and what those chakras represent and the longings with them and the thrust and the power that each one has. And when we get to third chakra, I open it all about the will and how the will becomes compromised by things, external things.

and then us internally deciding to shut ourselves down or frome it back up. You know, the conflicted will, especially that classic, you know, pleaser rebel dynamic. So a lot of our unresolved childhood issues of dependency and counter dependency are alive and well in living in third chakra, or at least acting out through third chakra. So we have that part of us that feels like they have to please and go along and act. we ask and do sort of ultra-responsible, hyper-responsibility versus the other part of us that is the rebel. Now that's very counter-dependency, teenage year energy in which we are dukes up fighting everything, justifying ourselves, defending ourselves, you know, in battle against anything that looks like it's not self and not an agreement with self.

And this stuff gets acted out all the time. And we can see it being acted out in politics and in business and in theogens and psychedelics. We can see it everywhere. So what do we do about that? How do we make an alignment with our willpower with our authentic self instead of unconscious, conflicted parts of ourselves having a go at it? How do we align that? How do we align our willpower? So our willpower is in alignment with our authentic self and our true, kind of our true path, you know? Do you think that there is some relationship to inner voices and origins with the will?

Absolutely. That's a whole chapter about inner origins. So I talk about, you know, the classic archetypal inner voices we have the judge. Right. Everyone, we have, there's a justice, it's an archetypal thing, we're connected to it, everybody. Now, is that inner judge, is it a wise servant or is it a cruel master? And if it's a cruel master inside of us, then it will be a cruel master usually outside of us. And so we become tight and judgmental and, you know, things that we don't want to do. Another, you know, kind of inner voice is the master's slave thing. Right.

And that's a whole conversation. What am I slave to? What I've been, you know, who's, you know, again, in archetypal and psychology and mythology, you have the inner king and queen. Now, you know that all of us doesn't matter what our body is in this lifetime male or female, but whatever we've got, all of us are connected to these archetypes and the inner king and queen. when they are in harmonious union within us. In other words, when we align and own our inner female and inner male,

understanding that we all have both, okay? And this is a biological thing as much as it is a spiritual reality, right? And so how do we align those and come to terms with the inner judge, the petty tyrant. Okay, that's a classic. It's a rite of passage. I think everybody who's on their spiritual journey has obliged to encounter a petty tyrant

and be in the worthy, worthy confrontation in battle with that. So inner voices can be, we all have voices in our head, right? And, you know, this is not, This is not a psychopathology that I'm talking about. That's something different. I'm not talking about those kind of voices.

I'm talking about the voices we all have. You know, oh, why did I do that? Oh, did I forget that? Oh, so and so this and that and all this chatter that goes on in our head. Well, we want to reduce the chatter, but at the same time, we want to learn to listen to the inner voice, the voice of inner wisdom, the authentic self, the one that says

no I don't say that right now the one that says pick up the phone and call that person and take ownership of what you have done or didn't do and clean it up the voice that says the best way forward is the very thing you don't want to do

that thing that you don't want to do that's often the best way forward if you listen to your inner wisdom Okay, your inner wisdom will also tell you, don't go there. Aha, I warned you, don't go there. Okay, weren't you, don't take that second and third piece of cake, drink, whatever it was. Okay, job, task on your plate. Your inner wisdom will be saying, told you, don't do that, don't do that.

So we all have to come to terms with that, you know. We also have our voices of instincts, of ancestral knowledge, you know, those are things that we have to listen to and we have to understand and we have to decide what kind of space we're going to give, you know, I think on some level we're all feral. You've talked about your feral last. We have an aspect of ourselves that is very old reptile brain and whether it's, whether it's DNA, okay, whether it's our, you know, neanderthal DNA or whether that's really hardwired into survival. And to survive, I need to do this. And how do we come to terms with those inner voices?

I think by acknowledging them, by listening to them, without necessarily giving them the power to make decisions. Yeah. Dr. Jessica, we're coming up on an hour. I want to be mindful of your time. I have some time set aside, but I want to make sure that you don't have any other engagements because I don't want to take any more time if you have stuff to do.

I'm good till 1.30. Okay. Perfect. We have more time. What I'd love to do is get into the self-mastery part. Yes. A lot there. I take the reader through the maps of the consciousness and the unconscious.

And so we talk about awakening consciousness. We talk about emerging paradigms. So I take the reader through from Freud. We have to mention Freud. He did. We have to. You know, people want to kick him out. Yeah, I certainly don't agree with a lot of the things that he was.

doing and teaching, but then, you know, medical doctors were bleeding people. So we have to make room for, in his era at his time, you know, that was then, this is now. So we bring forward and acknowledge that. And young and then from young, Satioli, because they were all colleagues. They all knew each other, you know, and then to Stan Groff and to his maps. and people who want to understand the power of their own unconscious need to take a look at the maps. You know, it's like I live in Montreal. You know, I understand that Montreal has a little mountain that's an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, which is in Canada, which is part of North America.

Okay, these are the maps. Can you imagine growing up and having no idea where your particular hometown was on the map? your relationship to the rest of the world. And so, you know, this is in part what we can do for those people who are interested in understanding themselves, then these maps of transversional psychology are kind of essential. So, you know, we had the meeting of East and West in the late 60s and early 70s. I had the privilege of being part of that. I was in the ashrams and, you know, embracing Hinduism and Buddhism and working in.

Buddhist retreats and studying it was for me it was with a Sautisana insight meditation that I started in the early 70s and that just really spoke to me and so embracing what the east had to offer and and then came the north and the south and so by you know 1996 I'm down in Brazil and hello I'm I'm part of that first that first wave that was a group of people who became an an imperative part and an essential part of the first wave of the ayahuasca religions coming out of Brazil and going internationally. And so we look at the union and the gifts of east and west and north and south and the ancient prophecies around them and how they came to pass. And then we go, okay, what do I need to learn here? What is in this story is here for me? And so I then take you on, you know, some of Joseph Campbell's work, the hero's journey,

and explain how the spiritual path is really. very, you know, Joseph Campbell really lit the torch for the rest of us to follow when it comes to understanding the stages in the hero's journey. So then we talk about the death rebirth cycle and I use cycles of change and I think we can all relate to kind of different transformative imagery in our transformation. So there's the three that I chose is caterpillar to butterfly, snake that sheds its skin and the phoenix and if people come to understand these things they will see that these are larger than us these are life processes okay imagine that you're innocently living your life in Ukraine and the next thing you know a year and a

bit ago there's this happening right this is a phoenix it's something that you have no control over that all you can do is say okay this is what's happening how do I manage me and myself in this what do I feel called to do I stay in fight do I leave do I protect my family do I help out what is what do I stand up do I speak against do I what do what do I what do what's my calling to do and if and if we each fit into the slot the piece of the puzzle of this is what I'm called to do. Then we find that everything will work itself in the way that it's a lot more largely meant to work. So that would be an example.

A Phoenix would be what happens when, you know, your whole life is upended five years ago. Five years ago, actually, anniversary near my birthday just a couple of weeks ago. My husband broke his neck. He was in an accident where he broke his neck. He's left with quadriplegia. and all the things that come with that. So he was five months in intensive care, in spinal cord injury specialist wing of the hospital,

Sacri Kerr here in Montreal. And then he lives in long-term assisted living since then. That was a phoenix. In one short period of time, in one afternoon, our entire lives changed. Seemingly out of everybody's hand, but it affected everybody around you. So that's a phoenix.

When something comes along and then all of a sudden, everything has to be changed. I had closed my private practice. We had to sell the house. I mean, everything changed. Everything changed. That's a phoenix. What's a caterpillar butterfly? Well, that's when you have the luxury of feeling with crawling

and going into this lovely little cocoon. People who go off and they go in the forest, They go in a retreat or, you know, and they're in this safe, secure place where the transformation can take its time to evolve. They then need to be willing to emerge in a completely different form. So snake, snake is a really interesting one. And those of us who have snake process in our lives need to know it and understand it. What a snake does when it's going to transform itself is, and I want to. I want to give a shout out to a book by Ted Andrews, who has written probably one of the best books on understanding in a shamanic way, animals in their meaning.

And the name of the book is Animal Speaks. So I show it to him and his beautiful work. And so snake is a process in which, you know, the snake has to find a rough patch of ground because it's wiggling out of its old. skin. You see? And so it starts splitting around the mouth. It gets too tight and feels really uncomfortable, we imagine. Okay. And it splits around the mouth and then it has to, the snake has to wiggle itself out and it needs a really rough patch of ground. And to do that, it's also very vulnerable because although it tries to choose a spot where it won't be preyed on, it's a very vulnerable. It's a very vulnerable state because it's kind of out in the open and kind of public. So those of us who have snake in a process, we don't get to go in a nice little comfy cocoon. We don't get to transform

ourselves by going off on a little retreat somewhere. We have to do it on rough ground, okay, which usually means snake process happens when there's something really difficult in life and you will feel tight and you will feel kind of pressured. But you will feel this need to emerge in a direction, in a new direction, that may feel extremely vulnerable. And do you understand? Does that make sense when I'm saying? There's obviously in the book a lot more explanation about this, but when we understand that there are processes,

it's sort of like giving birth. Yes, every woman's experience is a little different, but you can generally say some things that are common to all of it, or to the major percentage of them. And so you can say this about life, that there are passages and processes that we go through. And in more ancient traditions, we had rites of passages that had meaning and ritual and richness in which the whole tribe would honor the person who was in that rite of passage, whether it was going from a child to an adolescent or the right of passage of marriage and giving birth and then aging and becoming an elder and then dying. All of these were acknowledged, but we don't today. So it's a whole other cultural norm around these things.

And so how does that, how do we align that with our own life experience? Next in the book, we talk about encountering the shadow and the dark realms of the collective unconscious. This is something that I found is absolutely not part of a conversation. I mean, people will talk about, there was a whole lot of conversation about bad trips, you know, and actually I was interviewed for a master's level, graduate level program as part of their program. I was interviewed to talk about bad trips, and that was the first thing I took apart, which is, is the two things, it's a bad trip. Isn't there just a difficult passage? That's what we call it as a dynista. It's a difficult passage.

I know in the peyote tradition, Native American peyote church tradition, they don't never talk about getting ill. They talk about, you know, when you're purging, that's getting well. You're actually getting rid of that. You're clearing the things. And so this is, you know, what we learned in the holotropic breathwork, is Jan Groff, is when you go into those difficult passages, they're profoundly healing.

But in our culture and society and most of our biomedical models, what we're doing is we're trying to stop them, block them, go over them, go around them, you know, find in every other way of dealing with them other than actually going through the passage and learning what we need to learn about ourselves. Now does do support systems. All those things are positive, wonderful things to have. Good support systems, skilled professionals who understand the maps, who can support people, group support, family support.

whatever good sense of support is needed, but not as a replacement for or a way of bandating or masking. We can look at the movement that's happening for people with post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, people in the military, how many people now are looking at the power of using the non-ordinary state of consciousness? Because people are realizing what I need to do is I need to relive that body memory, that experience that I had when I was on the road and the bomb went off and my buddies got blown to bits and I kept to keep on going. And in the moment I couldn't sit down and cry about it because I had to keep moving and try and stay with the troops

and get them where they needed to do and manage this. So everything that we feel about things like this has to be put on one side, you know? But then the healing comes in revisiting that from a completely different perspective. Now there's a space being created where I can actually grieve these things that happen. Not in a way of trying to even still make sense of it, because who can make sense really? I mean, of why the human species feels compelled to keep making more. I mean, it is what it is.

The same way that great teacher, Jesus said, the four will always be amongst us. He might just as easily said there will always be some people who will want more. And we just have to say, yeah. In the meantime, let's keep working on love, harmony, truth, justice, peace. Let's ask those who want to work on that and develop that and build that, let's work on harmony and justice and peace, right? Yeah.

All of our energies into that. and those people who want to go make more well let's hope they eventually get on get on board with what we're trying to promote for the dark realms of the collective unconscious wow it's a big topic I go in depth on it I talk about the shadow and first of all the first question we need to ask is is this mine when we encounter difficult things in non-ordinary states of consciousness or in everyday life this is mine it's just my stuff that I'm projecting.

Okay, these my fears, my bugaboos, my unresolved, untransformed little bivots that I've had cluttered around since this lifetime and maybe past lifetimes. So is this mine? Is this something that I need to transform? And then there's the family shadow. This is classic Yungi Ann, by the way. Right. The family shadow, you know, stuff that happened in the family that I could feel all around me,

but I didn't know what it was and nobody ever spoke about it. And yet it somehow affected me, especially for the empathic, spiritually and in-tuned, sensitive people. They're going to pick up all that shadow material, but they won't know what it is and how to deal with it. Then there's the national shadow. All the things we've tried to kick under the carpet, right? We all want to look good. And so nations want to look good, too. It's the rare nation that says, wow, we really made a mess there.

and we need to help clean it up. That's kind of rare. A little bit more accountability is happening these days in certain areas, but there's still a lot of areas where feet are being dragged. The environment, nature, indigenous people, we can make a list, right?

So that's the national shadow. And then there's the collective shadow. Look at all the stuff that's down in the basement and up in the attic. All those are half broken. things that are just cluttering up, you know? How do we say, that's not mine, but what can I do? I can send it light.

Yes, we can't open the door and let it back up into us. How does that help? And that's a lot of what's happening. If we look at, at least this is my thought, okay, that a lot of what's happening, especially with, you know, everything that's currently happening, and never mind COVID and wars and unrest and the economy and nature and everything. And we're talking about collective grief and we're talking about prolonged grief.

And we're talking about all of these things. Okay, well, what is actually happening here? Is the sensitive person is taking a look at the planet and going, oh, my God. What is happening here? And then it backs into them. And they have no tools to stop it from backing into them. Because we are connected to, we're back to, we're all one. So we're connected to everything in the clock, you're unconscious.

And yet we are, you know, we aren't the wave, we're the pulse, and we're the way, we're the pulse. And so how do we identify with the beauty of me? This is what's mine. I cannot fix or change that. What I can do is I can just simply send it light. And because being connected and vibrating with it does not help the individual. and it does not help the culture. It doesn't help Mother Nature.

It doesn't help anything. Us just gnashing our teeth and pulling our hair and, you know, worrying and worrying and worrying does not help anybody or anything. Choose the course of action. Whatever it is, donate to a charity, participate in some kind of action that will help you feel, okay, I'm doing this. This is my piece that I'm doing. I'm doing this to further education or to help save the whales or clean the river or

I'm donating money, time, energy, I'm doing this towards that. Choose a charity. Anyone that your heart feels close to. Put some time and energy there. You know what? Put your phone down. Get out of social media. Stop endlessly binge eating and watching Netflix or whatever you're doing.

Okay? That everybody seemed to have been doing while COVID was on. No. Find a way of support. putting your good energy into these things. Now, obviously, you know, one of the tricky things is disowning and projecting the shadow. You bad, me good. You wrong.

Now, we can see this everywhere. Okay, and that's disowning and projecting the shadow. And how do we stop doing that, George? I think that if you can see the shadow, as yourself as a mirror, then you can begin to change your ways and change the world around you. But I don't have the answers,

but that's a technique I try to use. Does that seem like a good technique to use? Yes. It's the absolute ABC of it. Wait a second. You know, I had a wonderful, dear friend, recently deceased you. You always say every time you point,

you figure you have. Three more pointing out to you. pointing back at you an indigenous creamian elder and um and it's like if we get okay i'm doing this but i got three fingers i need to look at that before i can do this i need to look at what what do i own in this what's my piece and if i work with my piece then i'm going to be in a much better place with that it doesn't mean that we don't address things that require dressing We just address them from a different place. Is that straightforward?

Yeah. Yeah. I'll say, oh, well, I can't judge anything, so therefore I don't. No, we still have to be mindful of healthy boundaries and justice and fairness and authenticity and truth telling. And sometimes it's very challenging to have to deal with things and work and business and relationships and everyday life. And at the same time, we must to have harmony. We don't have, you know, in our tradition, those are the four principles of foundation, which is love, harmony, truth, and justice.

And you know what? If you notice that it doesn't say anything about liking, just don't get it, you know. And you don't have to like someone or something to create a speech. if we can agree quick definition of love, a space that we create for other people to grow in. That's a summary of Scott Peck from the road less travels. He has one of the best definitions of love, which I credit and add my own thoughts on in volume 2. But if we can have no harmony if there's no justice,

if there's no fear of it, how can we possibly have harmony? Because somebody standing there saying, you got three and I got none. Or you got four and I got a half. How's that fair? How can we be in harmony if there's no justice? Truth. If there's no truth-telling. So for basic principles that are really difficult to live in,

but they are worth living in. you know you never regret it when you live in those principles that's really well said i you know i you know i just want for people that are watching i want to show the books people can see what it looks like and it's it's iawasca awakening this is volume one and you know one thing that i've like i've been through it i gave it a cursory read and i've only begun to go back and start putting my sticky notes in and getting my highlighter out and you know i really in enjoy it for a lot of different reasons. And one of the reasons is that it has such a depth to it. Another reason is that you can pick up and look at the chapter and each chapter will speak to you.

So, you know, it need not be a book you read straight through the first time. It may be something you pick up and you look at this chapter or this one grabs me today. And it's something that as I'm going back through it, I'm finding more and more things. It's a really meaningful. and there's a lot in there and there's a lot of footnotes and there's a lot of other things that you point to where people can go and find the information if they're willing to do it. And those type of books don't come around too often. I'm really, I don't think satisfied is the right word to explain how I feel about it because it's a lot more than that, although it is very satisfying.

It's really well done. And I hope that people that are listening to this go and check it out and give it. both volumes, it's ayahuasca awakenings, a guide to self-discovery, self-mastery, and self-care. We've covered a lot, Dr. Jessica, but we've only scratched the very surface. That's right. Thank you. And, you know, I appreciate what you're saying about it because this has been essential for me to include the resources and the references and to point the direction is you want

to know more about this. And there's a lot of quotations in the books. There's diagrams in the books to make it as simple and as well-rounded. I can't read books that have kind of stolen from here and borrowed from there and stolen from here and borrowed from somewhere else. And then they jam it all in with some couple of personal experiences as if they are the source of these teachings. For me, maybe it's how I was raised or maybe it's the wonderful teachers that I have had that have set the role model for doing that. is I really want people to get the larger understanding this. And yes, absolutely, the books are guide books.

Yes. Guide. So it's not a Stephen King novel. You're not going to pick it up and read through it like that. These are the kind of books you have on your shelf. And, you know, some people, they tell me the first thing they did when they got the books was they read through my personal story. then I skipped through where's all the Madrina stuff and just read that, okay, all my personal encounters with things.

And then they went back and started to read about all the theories and the foundations and the cartography, you know. And so, yes, these are kind of like reference books so people can read them however they want to read them. And if there's a particular chapter that jumps out at people, then yes, absolutely start there. So it's not a who done it. time. So people will find the value in the books in whatever way they do. I just want to say a few words, you know, before we start to wrap up. We were talking about the shadow.

And teachers, I read about teachers and tests appear in many different forms. And this is really important to understand. We get that we get tested on. every level of our life. Okay? We're in school for, you know, some of us forever. It feels like, okay, so, you know, with school, we get tests and presentations and papers and it goes on and on.

And the longer you're in academia, the more you're doing that. And we take that as a given that we go to school and we have to write tests. We want to learn to drive. We have to pass tests. We want to learn to scuba dive. We have to pass tests. And it's not just a written test. It's an open water test.

And we're driving. It's a driving test and a written test. And there's all these tests. You want to learn to fly plane. Guess what? There's tests. Okay. And you want to go to business school.

There's going to be tests. Okay. We're in a business world and we are tested. We get annual reviews. The report card isn't very good. Okay. So we have this. Why do people not get that we're going to get spiritually tested?

I'm not clear on that. Why don't people understand that a lot of things that happen in our everyday life are a form of spiritual task as to the degree of authenticity that we are going to bring into the moment. With what integrity do I face this situation? Do I bring the best of myself? And if in the moment we find like, uh-oh, flooded, I can't do it, then at least let's own that. You know what? I'm not able to do this right now. Give me a little bit of time to think about it and consider it and then I'm happy to meet with you next week or tomorrow or something. I need to reflect on some things concerning this issue.

So we can learn to set limits. We can learn to defer if we realize, wait a minute, I'm not in my best place right now. I'm reacting to something that's coming at me or I'm reacting to a situation or I'm realizing that I don't have all the information they need to deal with this. And so having that, understanding that a lot of things are tests and being willing, it's a test of our faith. It's a test of our confidence. It's a test of our, you know, our worldview. Do we really believe that?

Okay, believe that. Then this is a consequence of believing that. And so all of these things that I'm calling spiritual tests are part of our everyday life. Another thing that's really interesting is I have a chapter on or in as part of this. It's called Open Doors and the doorknob is on the inside. And there's quite a bit about mediumship for people who understand what I'm talking about. I mean, that's a whole other conversation. That's going to be another book.

Just on mediumship. And what people don't seem to understand is people who have the world view of this was done to me. It's not mine and it's not my fault. Okay. Can be a little bit hypo responsible. Lots of things do happen in our lives that we are not the source of. Yes, there's a lot of other things we've co-created. Okay.

We get in a fight with someone, right? It's their fault they started to fight. Have we noticed how we justify and defend whenever there's an issue? And we want to be the right one. We want to look good. I call this impression management, okay? We're managing everybody's impression of us. Okay, am I looking good today?

So, and this leads to a lot of trouble because then we're not being authentic. We're not trusting our inner wisdom. Whatever we're doing isn't going to be for our higher good or the higher good of the situation. When we get that the doorknob is on the inside, we open the door. This returns our power, but it also gives us the responsibility. I tell a story that I'm going to share briefly here. One of my encounters with a petty tyrant included some very interesting, exchanges.

One was in which he, and I read about it in the book, in which he completely had lost his temper over some things and displayed what I can only describe having children and grandchildren as being a two-year-old tantrum in a 60-year-old

body. Okay? Almost complete with lying on the floor and banging heels and your hands, but not quite, okay? And so once the other five or six people who were with me in this meeting, and we were able to help calm the person down and help the person see reason.

Okay. Afterwards, I chose a moment to go and ask if I could speak to him. And I said to him, you're a psychologist. Do you recognize that you need help with anger management? Do you not see that, you know, that you've got an issue here? And he looked at me and he smiled. a great big juicy smile and he said

I have a door inside of me that when I open it two dark beings come through and I looked at him and I said why do you open the door? Didn't answer me so he gets a gold star for recognizing that he opens the door

so some people are very aware that they open the door there's that moment of choosing you know you were saying earlier how time is an illusion and I'm starting to lose my voice sorry how time is an illusion and how a minute can feel like 100 years and this is this is classic a day is this is a thousand years of years is a day that's in the Old Testament

and so people have written about it Larry Dawsey writes about it beautifully I write about it time in volume 2 I write about in the circle of wholeness all the things that are in our life that we can make decisions about and educate ourselves about. And so there is that moment. It's just a moment. It's sort of like you're on the highway and there's an exit coming up and you have that short period of time in which you can choose to take that exit. But once you pass the exit, you pass the exit. Well, it's kind of the same thing inside of us. There's a knowingness.

I'm at the exit now. I can take the exit here. I can have to go down that same old road and do the same old thing and act out the same old stuff, the same old, tired old story. Yeah, I see laughing and nodding, so I guess ringing a bell, yes. Of course, of course. And it's, it's one thing to think about it. It's another thing to have somebody tell you about it. But it's another third thing to combine those things and actually see it. That's what you're seeing is this dawning. I mean, like, I know that. I know where the exit, I know where the exit is.

And I know when I passed it. And I made a choice to pass it. Yes. Yeah, but then your next step of awareness is which part of me, exactly the question I asked him, why do you open the door? Which part of me is choosing? Like, what does it look like the payoff is? Now, this is very 70s language that I'm going to use.

It's very asked. Okay, what's that? that payoff here. Okay. What does it look like you're going to get by doing this? And I'll bet it involves impression management. I look good. I have the power.

I have the last say. I get what I want. Yeah, it's ego, I think. It's the ego keeping itself alive or it's, that's what it is. It's, it's, you must do this to survive, but you actually,

you're doing the exact wrong thing. You're driving off the road, buddy. And I talk about rumble strips, by the way. Beautiful, beautiful. Everybody knows what a rumble strip is. It's that kind of jaggedy strip on the edge of a highway, main highways, that what they did was science was simply to discover that if they had that strip there,

it would wake up people who were falling asleep in their car because it needs the car to jiggle jiggle and it wakes you up. before you just clean off the road into the woods. So I let people know that there's spiritual rumble strips beside the highway that let you know, rumble, rumble, rumble, wake up, okay? And that they're actually in our tradition, that there's a phalanche. There's like a legion of beings whose job it is to be the rumble strip to say, hello, okay, waking you up, you may not like how I'm waiting.

waking you up. I had a really good friend in high school and how that friend was woken up every morning because there was trouble getting him out of bed. Okay, his mother would send in the German Shepherd. And the German Shepherd would go, yeah, I get to wake him up and, you know, like a hundred pounds of dog on the bed. So, you know, do we need the German Shepherd to wake us up? You start to listen to that voice inside of us. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's such a pleasure to talk to you, Dr. Jessica, and I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to talk with you. It's a wonderful time. I know I've got to head off on another trail right now, but it's been a wonderful time sharing with you. I hope that, you know, I look forward to next week, Those of you who are listening or watching this, whether it's today or later or tomorrow or something, please join us. And we're going to talk about volume two.

And that's all about self-care and the circle of wholeness and the four basic principles of self-awareness, self-awareness, self-love, self-respect, and self-responsibility. And how we need those four pillars within us. And so we're going to talk about boundaries and house cooperating. they can get and how unclear they can get and the battles that happen on the boundaries. So plus other things. And so where can people find you and where can they find your books at? They can find me on my website, which is www.w. or just what you see on your screen, Rev. Doctor Without the Medrina, so Rev. Dr. Jessica

Rochester is my website. And if people are looking for our church, they need to understand, And don't come to me. I don't have a back door to get you in the church. I apologize, but that's how it is. And so people who are looking for sedimentary all the Santo Dami in our church, we have our own website. That's website is www.w. Santodiami.coma.

And everybody who's interested needs to be patient. If people want to visit, they need to understand that we go through a very rigorous screening process that we want to assure the health and well-being of our visitors and we are a small church because true spiritual paths are not easy and so although we welcome everybody we cannot serve everybody people who have medical contraindications or medications that are contraindicated it is with love and and all the best wishes that we have to acknowledge that according to brazilian regulations and Canadian regulations and the deep heart of our tradition we can't serve certain situations.

The other thing people need to understand is my private practice is closed. Sorry, getting older now, all the changes in my life necessitated. I do have all the videos and various presentations are available free on my website. And this is for educational purposes. This is just me trying to return to the community what I can to share. the things that I've learned along the way. And also that our church is a spiritual center, eclectic center for the universal flowing light. It's a spiritual center.

It is not a therapeutic clinic. So this is a very important thing for people to understand. People might read something somewhere and think that Awaskan might heal them of something. And much as they have our love and our prayers and our best wishes for their journey, people can't come to our church thinking that we are going to be a therapeutic clinic and that they're going to be able to be treated in a clinical therapeutic way. We're not. This would be like going to the ashram and expecting that or going to the synagogue or going, you know,

it's for a spiritual tradition. so people who are truly spiritually feeling called and and we hope in the future we hope in the future to be able to be connected to a clinic whereby we would be able to but we just need to be patient and let the government catch up and and the people in the clinics get their training that they need so that they understand people's experiences that they've had in non-ordinary states of consciousness And so, you know, it's awful asking people to be patient when they could be in spiritual emergency. But there is no choice right now is be patient and do all the good things. So that's my encouragement to the listeners, get the books.

I hope they help you. And in the meantime, take care of yourself. Thank you so much, Dr. Jessica. I really appreciate it to the audience listening today. Thank you. That's what we got for today. Aloha.