TrueLife - Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester D.DIV. - The Circle of Wholeness #6

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

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/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.https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/ 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, fear. Fearist 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 Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining. The birds are singing and the wind is at your back. I got an incredible show for you back on the True Life podcast is the one and only Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester.

She is the Madrina and president of the Sue de Montreal, Asanto Dimei, Ayahuasca church that she founded in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. She's a transpersonal counselor. She trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Asagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof. She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve a successful. Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo Dimey Sacrament. She's an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity. From 1986 to 2018, she has been a workshop leader, a teacher, and in private practice. She's the author of Ayahuasca Awakening, A Self Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volumes 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. I'm excited to bring it back to the show. Reverend Dr. Jessica, how are you today? Well, I'm happy to see you. It's always a joy to hang out with you for a while and talk about topics of mutual interest and hope that other people find it interesting too. And so we've been walking around the circle of wholeness now

for this last few months. And just in case people drop in today or listen to this later and don't know what we're talking about. The Circle of Holiness, first of all, it's from my two books. It's a volume one, volume two. So it's a set of books intended to be read one by one. And the first book is self-discovery and self-mastering. The second book is self-care. And so in part two of the second book, that section is called the Circle of Holiness. And what it is, there's a diagram and includes all the different aspects that are influential in our life

and that affect our wellness, our quality of life, our sense of well-being, how we feel about ourselves and in the world and around the world in general. And so there's everything from nutrition to modern science, to ancient traditions, to exercise, to work, to studies, our relationship with all of these important things. Okay? And, you know, how important all of these things are to us and what we can do to understand our own personal way of being with them

because we're all a little bit different. And so we can say nutrition, but what does that mean for one person versus what does it mean for someone else? We can talk about modern science and people can run screaming from it and other people can say, well, it's wonderful and embrace it, right? Ancient editions, oh, nothing, don't want to know. Other people again, where's the nearest powwow can I go? And so we're all different.

We find our way on our journey and how things unfold is always hand in hand with what I refer to and I give a nod to indigenous people, the Great Mystery. I think the Great Mystery is probably one of the best ways to describe the unknown, the great unknown. That includes what we believe about the divine, divinity realms, God, all the different names that we give to these, you know, extraordinary experiences. What are you laughing at? Oh, our friend Thomas Hutchison asked me a similar question that you did.

George, are you serving time 60 days in the pen? Exactly. Yeah, it does look like it. He said, George, where are you? This is a new place. And so he's just trying to pull a leg. He's explained to me that the joke is on us. And so we're still going to do our session today.

And the rest of you can try and figure out where he is. And he will tell you at the end of today's time. So you get to wait and surprise. part of the great mystery. Well, well done. Yeah. Okay. So today, having talked, we've been walking the circle for a while, okay?

We've come up to something that is so profound and so important to our quality of life. And, you know, I love two things together, which kind of belong together and sort of are their own separate things, but they go together. meditation and prayer. And so the role that meditation and all the different types of meditating, okay, so let's just take a moment and look into kind of the cross-cultural worldwide experience with meditation and prayer. Where does it go back to? How far does it go back? I mean, we can look at the earliest records of human. experience and cultural experience.

Okay, we will see that ritual was an essential part of community life. And that some of those traditions, thousands, if not, tens of thousands of years later, are still in existence. Okay? And, okay, so I'll give you a little hint on one that has to do with prayer. Okay, so, and again, I want to really give a shout to Dr. Larry Dossi, whose books on prayer, what he did is he gathered up all of the egot curies about prayer and gathered up all the research and ended up publishing a couple of books on prayer including dark prayer and curses and what's all

that about you know anyway we'll talk more about that afterwards so i'm just going to choose one ritual which was forever cross-culturing around the world the shaman the priest the elder the people would come and they would pray over the fields either just before they planted, before they're harvesting. Okay. And it was something so deep, this relationship, this understanding that older cultures and indigenous people have

with our relationship with nature, that they would have this respectful, honorary regard, a way of showing gratitude, a way of showing honor and respect. Okay? And so we need to kind of start, way back then to be able to bring it forward to what happened through the years so we see these things

so differently. And so we can see that individual prayer meditation, communal prayer and meditation has had a long experience in the human experience of existence. I don't know what when we were the former creatures that we were modern humans, but I have a feeling that there was some kind of communion going on in too, okay? No evidence of it. And so if we look at this, we see how importance is to human existence. First of all, this relationship with nature. And what that was about is being confirmed by modern science. For example, if you look at the science on prayer, you will see that if you have seeds and if you have people to non-directive prayer overseas, Now, let's take a moment and stop and define directive prayer and non-directive prayer.

So directive prayer looks like, God, go convince my neighbor Sam that he should accept the Lord as his Savior. Okay, that's true. That's only God what to do, okay? Assuming in the same prayer that you know what's best for Sam, okay? Now, so that's directive prayer. And directed prayer doesn't really work in research. It doesn't work, okay?

What does work is non-directed prayer, which is just sending gratitude, good wishes, good vibrations, healing thoughts, not telling any being instantly what to do. Just basically, do we have a little feedback somewhere? Is that just me? Am I hearing it? Let me see me if I meet my mic. I don't hear you now. Does that work with the feedback? I don't hear anything on my side.

Oh, okay, so excellent. Maybe it's just a little something that's happening. Okay. Anyway, so non-directive prayer is when we're not telling anything or anybody what to do. We're not telling our immune system to go up and do a certain thing or somebody's health condition to change. Okay. What we're doing is we're sending gratitude and good vibrations and loving thoughts. Okay.

And all the research shows, even the double blind nobody knew who was praying for somebody else. All of it shows incredible results. And so just simply what they would call in old-fashioned ways the laying on of hands or the sending good vibrations, what have you. We do that in research with no directive thoughts. The seeds grow faster. The plants are healthier. I mean, there's tons of research on this. And so we see that everything that people have in eight we've been doing, not having science on it, but just knowing this inside of.

them, that this honoring the cycle of life, honoring the change of seasons, honoring whatever their belief systems about, were about. However they discerned, let's call it the creed or the great mystery, that being in a place of gratitude, respect, and honoring was always a more favorable place to be. Now, if we take that as a piece and put it painted on one side, we're going to swing around for a moment. We'll come back to prayer, the middle of the meditation. So I'm a week bit older than you. So I was a girl of the 60s and the 70s and the East and the West and all of the things that were happening and how, you know, the fulfillment of this extraordinary kind of Buddhist. It's attributed to Buddhism about when the Iron Bird flies, then Buddhism will, you know, arrive in the West.

And so that's the plane. And indeed, the Iron Bird flew. And so it's fascinating how some people, and Hinduism. So all the Eastern teachings, which all include a larger sense of divinity, including divinity female figures, which Western culture with its patriarchal religions, did not include. And it was a male God, a male son of God, and a male Holy Spirit. Don't get me started on that line.

There's a lot to say about that. Okay, another time. But here you have all of a sudden these divinity realms where there's lots of extraordinary female figures, whether it's on Yin, that it's goddess of compassion in Buddhism and these extraordinary female figures. And some of them are destroyers and some of them are creators.

And so we have this entirely different worldview coming and meeting with Western civilization. And with it came the gift of meditation techniques. Now, very different meditation techniques came from different sources and with different teachers. And at first, you had all of us young hippies who were reaching out and embracing it because we all thought it was wonderful. But then you had science that laughed up its sleeve and said there's nothing to this. some of you might remember

Dr. Herbert Benson when he did research on meditation he couldn't even call it meditation because his colleagues were laughing at him so he called it the relaxation response and a lot of the modern relaxation techniques grew from his original work

because what he saw was that people who meditated that their blood pressure went down and their pulse slowed down and their breathing relaxed, and they managed their stress better, and their perspective on life was more positive. So he saw all these benefits, these health benefits, from meditation. But isn't it funny that his colleagues in his profession refused to accept it?

The same way, when I believe it was Dr. Bernie Siegel, an oncologist, he was impressed with the, and it also might have been her, Benson to turn around at the same time. He was so impressed with the results of prayer that he tried posting it. The results, scientific results, not just, you know, layman's comments. Okay. He tried putting it up on the postports and people would scrawl rude things on it and take it down. So what was so threatening?

Can you answer? What was so threatening in Western civilization to meditation and these older forms? of prayer kind of making their way into Western civilization. What was threatening? It seems to me what was threatening from the limited amount that I've read and talked to is this idea of boundary dissolution and being unable to quantify or measure something. In the West, it seems to me that we have decided that if you can't measure it, it's not worth talking about.

And also, I think it speaks to the idea of authoritarianism in a way of it, the idea that we need a monotheistic person or authoritarian figure to look over us. So I think that that's one reason maybe why it was so fearful, because it broke down those ideas and it took away the power from the centralization. Those are all important parts of it, for sure. you know here's an interesting part of that is arrogance

well said yeah arrogance you know Western civilization of which you and I belong to it have this arrogance in our culture it's so deep we don't see it that we think we're you know how do we rank it first countries

and first civilizations and you know for us to admit that there were things that I don't know. Never mind that that's hard for people in the scientific community or in the medical community. It's sure we know it's hard for them. You know, hey, this thing's been around for 10,000 years. You never heard of it. I mean, they tried to, acupuncture, I mean, name it, okay.

All of those gifts from the East, you know, it took all decades for it to chisel through, you know, for enough scientists and researchers to say this is interesting, unless there's more research on it. And, you know, that wonderful story of the Dalai Lama's physician visiting a, was it in New York, I don't remember, a New York City hospital, you know, and is asked to make a diagnosis. And he goes in and he take, do you know this story? It's such a great story. Please do it. Yeah. And so, you know, a group of all the medical students and residents

and everybody's hanging around ballet llamas, you know, and everybody, you know, is divided into two camps. It's meaningless and it's a joke and it means nothing. And the other people saying, I think there's something really there. This is interesting. This is a very interesting man. And we have something to learn from him, you know. So there's always those two camps, you know.

The ones who hope he fails and the ones who hope he has the goods, you know. So he goes, and so they've already diagnosed the man. They already know what's wrong, but they ask him, whether he liked him give his impressions? And he says, yes, he's very happy to him. And so he goes and he sits very quietly. He goes into, he takes the man's hand, he holds his between his two hands and he holds it so he's feeling his pulse.

And he sits there for a long time in a deep meditation. And people are peeking at him. going around and peeping at him some more. Finally, he kind of comes out of his meditation, puts the man's hand down. First of all, he'd introduced himself, and he'd give him blessings, and he has permission. He did it that way.

I don't know if you've ever been in the hospital, but certainly if you're in the hospital and you're heavily pregnant, about to give birth, and you have some perfect stranger come in and whip up the crown and stick his hand in it and say, nah, you're only five sonomy just dilate. It'll see you in an hour or two. No introduction, no do you mind.

Okay. And so it's very different in our world than that world where you ask if you can touch someone. You ask if you could, you know, that reminds me of a great story. And I'll tell you afterwards about a tree at reminding you. And so he bows and he leaves and he goes and they say to him, well, what did you discern? he described exactly the man's heart condition. Described it exactly in his own terminology. Not in Western medical terminology.

The left bank of goal was doing this and no, no, no, no. He described that there is a rushing, there is a rushing through this side of the heart. And he used his own language. He described exactly the man's heart. condition. So everybody was done. Okay. Now, what does that say

about our ability to discern things? That if we look at how meditation is used, we have to come around and say, what is meditation? What is it?

What is it really? You know, it's a right. A lot of people think it means just sitting quietly and having a mantra in your head. That's fine, that's one form. And if that's the form, it helps you. One of my favorite mantras is, I have everything I need and all as well.

That's ancient, by the way. I think it's from one of the Teresa, Teresa de Villa or one of the St. Teresa's. I have everything I need and all as well. You know, it's one of the most peaceful, calming from Buddhism. May I be a peace, may my heart remain open? May I awaken to the light of my own true nature.

So these positive statements are part of, you know, who's that phase in America, I'm sorry, but North Americans are so gullible. And gurus would come over and, you know, they quickly learned that people would pay a lot of money, have a magic mantra, okay, their own personal magic mantra. Okay, and here you see, we have to take ownership of how our culture, wealthy, I want what I want, and I'll buy what I want. how our culture corrupts people from other cultures. We can't just say, oh, they come here and take advantage of us,

and they come here and assault us, and they come here and abuse us. It's like, yes, but I think we fling the door open and then put down the welcome mat with cash in our hand. Okay, so if we take responsibility for what we're doing, and if you want to pay, you know, $1,000 for a peacock feather on your forehead and a blessing from the guru, then that's all good for you, okay? But you really have to ask what you're doing.

What are you doing? Right? So, you know, the reality is, what is meditation? Is meditation as many, many things. As many things. But the essence, it will hold some things in common. You know, I happened to be a student of a former Buddhist meditation, the Pesonic Insight Meditation,

the type of Jack Cornfield teachers and practices. I'm grateful to him and to the other teachers that I had who taught this. They started me pretty early. I was in my early 20s in 2023 or something. I was in the nashroom every afternoon. I had the opportunity to do these three-week silent meditation retreats with a Buddha's monk. And I'm grateful for the good things I learned. We learned sitting meditation.

Oh, we learned walking meditation. this very slow, calm, meditative walk, connecting to nature, feeling your breath, eyes open. Okay, so there's different types of meditation, and one type may not suit, you know, very zen, completely still, not moving your body, may not suit everybody. You know, walking slowly and breathing in nature when you're bare feet on the earth, you might be more meaningful. and more nourishing for some people. Sitting in a guru might be more nourishing and supportive. And then there's meditations where you chant into silence. For some people, that's more helpful. You clear the mind through the chanting. You relax your body. Physician of the body is important too. You have those teachers who walk around with a stick.

If you want straight enough, I'm serious. I'm serious. you know, hard teachers and, you know, your posture and everything so that your breathing is perfect. So unfortunately, because of our, the way our culture is, a lot of the physical aspect of it was grasped onto, and the spiritual universalist aspects were lost. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, it does make sense. Okay. So how do you see that happening here in our culture? What I'm saying. It almost sounds like we have become incoherent or unable to listen to meaningful conversation.

And it seems to me when you're explaining meditation in that way or we listen to the story, that we're in communication with something greater than us. But we've almost been cut off from it because we have been, we've had these blinders put on to us, whether it's through arrogance or whether it's through maybe just wanting to believe in something and not knowing how to connect to it, but it seems that we have lost our way to receive the information that's abundantly around us trying to help us. Yes, well put, well put. And then, so if we look at, you know, the gift, You know, the Western civilization definitely has a gift to offer the east the same way North and the South does. But if are we blowing to the gift, we're just grabbing what we can because it suits us,

or we grab it because we see some ways we can make money out of this, we can get power out of this. We can. And so that is the feeling is we can take these techniques and instead of teaching them, for the reality of the experience, for example, when I started, I don't know, age 21 or something, going to the ashran, I was really lucky. She was a great teacher. She was known as a Kobach guru at the time. It was, you know, in 171 or something.

So I was really fortunate. She taught us to chant. She taught us to meditate. She taught us to do half the yoga. she taught us that there were some people who couldn't do quiet meditation because they had stuff emerging from inside of them. So she had what she called, I think, the noisy room where people who were crying and banging around got to go in the noisy room. And this was a huge awakening because it's like, oh, whatever is inside of you does need to come out. And if it's a shaking or a crying or whatever it is, this is what meditation is.

So Dalai Lama said, if you haven't grieved your life, you have not begun to meditate. And so the true meditation paths or the past that include meditation as part of their whole embraced practice will understand that tears may come, laughter may come, movement may come, liberation may come, understanding may come. And this is all part of what we call meditation. So meditation can be many things. And it's simply a question of finding what suits us. Now what it can also do is it can become kind of spiritual bypass. Well, that's Thomas Hutchison.

That's a nice thought. Yes. We are so focused on outside of us, in part, validating us. that we are scared to listen to inside us. Because of what we're going to find there. We may find things that we don't like that we're scared of, but we don't want other people to see that we are long since dusty in the back closets of our psyche, so to speak,

in the basement in the attic, you know. And, you know, we were going to talk about monsters in the bed. Okay, well, here you go, is meditation. and what we're going to talk about about prayer, has this ability, you know, if we work with it, not as a bypass, but if we work with it as a tool to deepen our understanding, and just simply learning to be quiet, learning to be still. You don't have to have a magic mantra or a secret way of doing it. Go and sit in your garden or a local park if you're in a condo or on your balcony

or in your favorite place, your happy place in your house, with your cat. And just be quiet and be aware, preferably in nature if you can. And just be quiet and breathe and relax and listen to nature and the wind. Pay attention to everything that's around you, your body, how your body feels and how your feelings are. and that there's nothing wrong. I have everything I need and all as well. River is going to arise, it's going to arise. Anything you want to add to that?

Why is it that you, you know, when you speak about how you got to learn at an early age, maybe you could talk to what it was like to integrate that. I think a lot of people are trying to do that here. A lot of people are learning for the first time. like, oh yeah, I am getting something. I'm receiving something here. What does that mean? How do I act to that?

Like, is there sort of a way in which you can, maybe integrate is not the right word, but it's the best one I can come up with right now. Okay. So it's a good word. It's a fine word. It's a popular word right now. It's like integrate.

Okay. And it's like some other words that have evolving. I just found out in local slang. I don't know if you have it there, But my daughter tells me that tea now means gossip. You know, oh, there was so much tea at the party. And my daughter's saying tea serving tea. Awesome.

Okay. So we're constantly changing what words mean and the meaning and the association with words. And sometimes that's confusing. Okay. And we've got to catch up. And I don't ever expect to be fully caught up on street slang in this era. And I don't feel the great need to either. But I find it interesting when it does come up.

And so, again, meditation means a lot of things to different people. And so integrate. Well, you know, in the schools that I was raised, you had a teacher. And you had a teacher who knew what they were doing. You know, they studied with their Zen teacher or their guru or whoever taught them for a decade or 15 years or whatever it is until they got the blessings to go and teach, you know. And usually you go up and you get their teacher who taught them until you get their teacher who taught them. And so there's this whole, you know, graduation of teachers. Part of the problem now is that a lot of the people who are teaching this don't have the experience and they don't have the knowledge and they haven't apprenticed.

And so they've read a book or they've taken a little mini course somewhere and now they're passing on what they've learned, which could be very useful in many ways. I'll give you an example. I started working with relaxation techniques. You know, we're talking about mid-80s, 1980s, to the second half of the 80s, okay? It was all starting the relaxation response and all of these things and relaxation techniques, all of these things were becoming,

they were right on the cutting edge. So I was running around, grabbing what I could, following people, going to conferences, and talking to people and what have you, and grabbing an app. So I started working with my clients, these, you know, relax and breathe, and reading techniques.

And I've done years in the ashram and with Buddhist. So I figured I had a pretty good idea of what was kind of going on. And I would be okay. With my clients with this, I had my own profound non-ordinary states of consciousness experiences. And so I think it was going to be no brain now. Until. And I made a little tape of relaxing and being in the light and breathe in and peaceful comments and everything.

And I was the first person doing that. But I knew I didn't know anybody else was doing that. And I was really giving up my tape to everything. Everyone was silly. I should copyrighted them. This is mid-80s, okay? And one day a client comes back to me and she says, you know, I was working with the tape. And she said, a very strange experience.

And I said, too, do you want to talk about it? And so she says, yes, I felt like I was in a plane and I was shot down. and I was my plane was on fire and I knew I was dying and I was going into the into the ocean into the water some part of me went uh-oh I get out of my depth here I think I need more training okay and so I thought okay I'll take what I know so I walked her through how do you feel did you feel like that was a real experience or just a dream or a flashback and she said it feels like a past life it a life I lived and a life I died in. So then I needed to take some, you know, read some more and see who I could dream with who might be teaching anything about past life progressions and past life experiences and things like that.

And so when we enter into, because they're all non-ordinary states of consciousness. Okay. And so the non-ordinary state of consciousness could be meditation, kind of daydreaming, relaxing, the dream state at night, accessing it through fasting, sensory deprivation, transcending, trans-dancing. There's so many different ways

that we can enter into a non-ordinary state of conscious, not only through mpheogens and psychedelics, which are very popular now. However, the same maps that are used, the same cartography. And that's what's so important for me, and that's why I've written about them, that's why I try and teach the maps

and the cartography. Because me too, I was stumbling around in the forest and up the mountain. So I'd try and find where's the maps? How do I know where I am? You know? And so we see that it's possible to have deep, deep experiences. And so we need to have the cartography.

We need to have the understanding because the people who are kind of teaching it, I mean, people are doing yoga. Yoga used to be something vastly different from what it is now. They do it to. do kind of zoom-zoom music and we do it and pop things. And it's, for me, that's not yoga anymore.

It's something else. But the people I trained with would look at that and go, that's something else, okay? That's something else. Is that just everybody in their cute outfit with a yoga mat and their specialized water bottle, you know, competing with each other as to how far they can stretch that and how hard it can be?

Because that's kind of how I hear it being talked about. I don't hear people talking about their chakras and their energy bodies and all the things that I was taught when I was learning. I was taught that the happy yoga was spontaneous positions that were taken when people were in non-ordinary states of consciousness to be able to open their chakras and to open their body to reflect the openness of their energy body. So it's everything changes.

Okay, I think that's an important meditation. It has a role, everybody. Enjoy it. Find a way to integrate into life. You can bring down your blood pressure. You can bring down your pulse. You can learn to relax your body. You can learn to calm your mind.

You can learn to put a healthy, positive statement in that can help you to calm your mind. Let's talk about prayer. What is prayer? We talked a few minutes ago about directed prayer and non-directed prayer. But what is prayer, George? Man, that's an epistemological question. I think, for me, it seems to be a way in which I can radiate something beautiful into the world in hopes that it finds somebody else and it bounces back to me.

It's this way that maybe I can get to see myself. as part of the whole in some way. And there's something beautiful about realizing that you're part of this whole magical thing. And that to me brings me, it gives me goosebumps when I think about it. It's like, oh, okay, I don't have to carry all this. I'm just part of this thing. I guess that to me is when I think of prayer, I think of being thankful to be part of the whole in some way.

Very nice. Very nice. Okay. And there's a large grain of truth. and what you're seeing. So for me, and this is, I've written about it for those of you who want to read more. I write about all the research that Larry Dossi did, about the history of prayer, about its place in human experience and life, and also the power that is within ourselves. Okay? This is the interesting thing. So a few things happen. First of all, there's different kinds of prayer, apart from directive and non-directive.

Now, let's set aside directive prayer. You know, God go heal my neighbor. If people want to pray like that, that's fine. If that's what really helps you feel, or if that's part of this virtual tradition, it's not for me to tell them not to do it. I'm just saying that in research, non-directive prayer shows infinitely better results

as far as, you know, really good, quantitative research at this point. And so if we look deeper into non-directive prayer, what are we looking at? Okay. Well, it seems what we're really looking at is the ability for us to connect with that larger, what you're saying, that larger sense in which we are sending good vibrations, good thoughts, we're sending light, peace, healing thoughts. good vibrations to a situation to sit to a person, to a family, to our family members, to our nation.

And we're sending these good vibrations. Now, all the great teachers encourage us to meditate and or pray. They tell us even pray for our enemy. And while people go, what? Well, there's a reason for that. And I'll get to that in a minute, okay? And then, so that's individual prayer. That's when we're walking through the forest and we think of somebody and we just want to send them good vibrations.

Perhaps somebody has a kind of a prayer habit for sitting in the morning when they're meditating or stretching or taking their walk. Sometimes people will have it before they go to bed at night and they will think of all their loved ones and they will send them good vibrations and healthy healing thoughts and good wishes. Okay? Now, interestingly enough, there's when we pray, if we pray our individual communion, our individual dialogue with the universe, that actually has a benefit for us. You know, when we're directed to pray for your enemies, the reason is is because it helps us. Whether or not it helps our enemies, it helps us. Now, that sounds crazy, but how does it help us?

It helps us not be focused on the negative. It helps us try to step back, to take a step back, and to see the situation and or the person, perhaps from a different life, and stop seeing them as other and enemy. And so us being able to pray means we have truly pray is we pray from the heart now. mind and we open our heart and we allow good vibrations to flow from us and by doing so we become a source of those good vibrations those good vibrations are moving through us when we're thinking about other and the enemy who we hate what's happening to us our vessel our channel is filled with

anger, hurt, cheer, hatred. I'm reminded of that, you know, it's so archetypal, so Joseph Campbell, but I'm reminded of that, you know, that wonderful scene and I forget which Star Wars film it is, but I think it's the second one where a looped Skywalker is on the planet with Yoda and he has to, he feels cold to go through the forest, he goes through the forest, he comes to a hole in the ground, it's so So shamanic, he goes into the hole in the ground and who does he meet Darth Vader and they fight. And then Darth Vader's helmet falls off as he struck him to the ground. And whose face does he, his own?

And so this is the teaching behind these things, as if we hang on to anger and hatred and curses and everything, which is easy to do. We're human. Okay, let's only, it's really easy to do, you know, many blessings in a few purses. And it's easy to do, right? We're human. So to actually turn that around and say, okay, sending you vibrations of light and peace

and start there, just start there, a little glimmer, a moment. And then we find we're actually liberated from our attachment to that situation. we're liberated from our attachment to the person and what they did or didn't do or should do or whatever we're liberated we've liberated ourselves through that power of doing that so that's individual prayer and the power of working with it

to forgive ourselves peace and liberation and freedom because that's what it does when we ask for it when we pray for it and who are we we asking, who are we talking to? Our higher self, the universe, the guardians of the light. That's for each person

to decide what their worldview and their belief system holds. We each get to choose what we believe, right? You want to believe there's varies from the bottom of your garden? That's grand. I'd love to come and visit them

sometime, good I love that if somebody had a period in their garden. You know, I happen to not believe in it. I mean, But I know what I'm saying. But if there were some, I'd be thrilled me on belief to meet them. I don't believe the world is flat, by the way. Okay.

And that the moon landings was a Hollywood backlaw. But never mind. There's lots of things people believe. And you know what, Elvis is not still alive. So there we go. People can believe what they want to believe. But let's choose things that are healthy and healing and uniting. And it is our belief system that will reflect in our prayers.

It will reflect in our meditation. It's like a cycle. What we believe will return to us. If we believe we can open our hearts and we can communicate good vibrations to others and those around us and those good vibrations become what we are. It's the foundation of what we are. If we hold on to anger and bitterness and hate and that person can't be trusted and this person is bad. Well, then that's negative emotions. corrode the vessel that contains them.

Yeah. Another kind of prayer, and that is community prayer. And what happens when people get together and pray? And now people can get together and meditate. People can get together and chant. People can get together and sing. People can get together and pray and hang. Now, those are community experiences.

And people who do that will always understand the power of singing together. power of praying together, the power of men is living together, that there is something that is communicated. As long as the intentions are common, okay, that we're holding in common certain intentions, that there will be a profound community experience in which we will feel a liberation, a community sense, a unification, a strong connection with things. Now here's the other thing, whether we're alone or with people. If we have our individual conversation with the divine realms, okay, that's one thing. But if we decide to have a practice of set prayers, for example, now around the world, there's all kinds of prayers,

there's Hindu prayers, there's Buddhist prayers, around the world, everybody's got a different set of prayers, okay? But let's choose a calm one. Okay, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not Catholic come south of Godney. Okay, but we're going to choose a common one. Hail Mary, full of grace. Okay. If you start to pray that, you are actually going to enter into a prayer current

around the world where in this moment millions of people will be praying that prayer. Let's choose another one, on the Mashabaya. If you start chanting, praying on the Mahashiyahe, you will enter into a current. Right now there's probably millions of people around the world. in a temple or in their own home who are praying,

you're chanting, oh, Masha Vaya. Same with home. You sit, you own, you're not alone. You've just joined an entire voice of people in the collective human experience who are in that moment right now, chanting home. And so there's the power of the individual communication,

and there is the power of the shared, the using new prayers and chains. Where'd you go? You went somewhere I watched you. Yeah, no, I'm just, it blows my mind to think that you can enter into communion with other people around the planet just by knowing how to do so. And then we all have that capability. And for a moment, like that's where I went. I'm like, right now there's people doing all of that.

Yes. I can almost feel it. You know, if you just stop for a minute, you can almost be like, I'm not. You can. You can. And it will nourish you. You know, people laugh at me when I say one of my favorite quotes is from Einstein when he says, what alone. I'm never alone. I'm surrounded by the collective unconscious. And I have that experience so deeply that at any moment we can just expand our consciousness because that's what we need to do.

Expand our awareness, shift our perception. I am joining a course of people who right now are chanting and free. and together our voices together our hearts together are in union a vibration in elevated vibration of good intention and well-being and that anybody can do anywhere anytime you can be sitting in the metro you're on the metro heading to work and you know what long slow deep breath you don't even have to close your eyes unless you want to and you can connect You can let it all fade away.

So choose the prayers, choose the mantra, choose whatever feels in alignment with, you know, your heart and your beliefs. Choose something, make it yours. And then if you want, adapt it and put it into your daily practice. Because for sure, if the research shows that it improves health and well-being, then, you know, this was the question that some of those earlier doctors were asking. And I think, you know, in Larry Darcy's books in his research, he asked the same question, saying, we're handing out prescriptions and we're doing all the diagnostics.

Why aren't we praying for our patients? It's such an effective tool. Yeah, it makes sense. Was there a period? Sometimes when I think back to, we'd have to get Dr. David Solomon on here to cook, corroborate this. But, you know, was there a time that you can think of that you researched where we did go to the church and pay for prayers to heal people instead of modern science?

Yes. And so prayers became monetized. You're absolutely correct on this. To this day, you can pray. You can pay a priest, a minister, a rabbi to say prayers. every week in the service, you can pay to have that person's name put on a list. Now, what's that about? Trying to control it, maybe arrogance.

Maybe on some level, trying to get other people to do something that you can do. Doing your own work, maybe. Okay, so I'm thinking of a teaching that Jesus gave when he said, When you pray, go in your closet. Don't stand out on the corner of the street, praying at the top of your lungs. And what was he trying to teach? Don't pray to impress people. So I can't tell you why.

I mean, in some traditions, people do this because they feel it's part of their tradition that they want, not just their prayers or the family's prayers, but they want the community's prayers to be added to. Okay. And so, therefore, they do this because then they feel that they're asking the community to remember this person, let's say, for the first year. That's quite common. Traditions for the first year after the passing that you, you know,

that you have the community pray, you know. But then again, I have to say, well, it's all fine. That's what some people believe in. If it feels like if it feels like in a really important part of their grieving process and something that's significant for them in their culture and their tradition, then I see zero wrong with it. But on the other hand, it's like, what kind of prayer is actually being prayed? You know, is this what we're talking about,

where prayer is a direct communion with the divinity, rounds where we are shifting our consciousness and awareness to actually enter into a state of awareness of the unity of all things in which we can transmit good vibrations or is this just a recitation of someone's name i don't know he also threw the money changers out too you know that kind of sounds like changing money for prayers right yeah yeah changing money for prayers And this is just part of the human experience. Right, right. This is part of the human experience is that there will always be people who will want to.

And this is a difficult conversation. It is. And I see that I don't remember who it was, who opened the conversation. It might have been our dear friend, G.V. Freeman, who opened the conversation about payment and payment for services. And a lot of people have done their apprenticeships and their trainings and invested a lot of their time, energy and money in learning to do a certain thing. And nobody thinks twice about paying a lawyer or an accountant or a dentist. And yet everybody says, oh, you can't monetize the spiritual things because that's wrong.

So, you know, ministers and pastors and priests and shamans, everybody else, they're supposed to accept six eggs and a squawking chicken. and be going to pay with that even though it doesn't cover the mortgage or pay back their loan, you know. And so it's a complex conversation to be having about the sacred and money.

And how do you navigate that? And how do you come to terms with it? And what are the decisions that are made about it? And in the end, you know, you can just look at history and see how different traditions have dealt with it. and with some traditions it's all donations. People donate and they're taught in their culture to respect elders

and to respect the spiritual elders and teachers and so they respect them and they learn to bring them flowers and fruit and food and things like that. When my daughter was, she lived in Singapore for her year and I went to visit her for a month and then we went to Laos. I wanted to go to a really Buddhist country and so we took Laos because it was the one with the least civil conflict going on.

Okay. And we had this wonderful experience where you get to feed the monks. And you buy food and bring food. And you have to go before dawn in the morning. And you take your offerings and you line up and on the street. And all the monks come down and they have a basket. And you put each, you put something into each monk's basket. and they just quietly go and they take it all back to the ashram.

And what they do is they keep some of it for the ashram, and then they redistribute it to the poor. And so, you know, different cultures have found different ways of managing these situations. And so it's a big conversation. That was based in the Anglican Church and the Anglican Church. You know, in its heyday, it could afford to, if you were a minister, an Anglican minister, then you would be given a parish, you would be serving church, that you would have the manse, which was a home with a housekeeper, and a salary and a pension

when you retired, you know, because they felt, well, you have a job just like everybody else's, so you need a house and you need that. Most of them are, of course, man. You need a housekeeper, cook your meals, do your laundry, and you're on duty for the sick and the happy and doing all the services and it's a job. Yeah. And so it's a big and interesting conversation with many sides to it. Do you see prayer changing? Like we've talked a little bit about like the evolution through which we've seen,

the infiltration, I don't know that's the right word, but we have seen this merging of east and west kind of coming together. And if we if we think that perhaps past relevant, behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. What do you see looking forward maybe in the next? I know one has a crystal ball, but I mean, what do you see moving forward? Do you see this continued merging and maybe this rediscovering of being the receiver that we talked about?

What do you think? Well, there is interesting research being done. And there's people who are paying attention to what's happening with anthogens and psychedelics. And, you know, I usually give a shout out to people like, Jules Evans and the work of David Luke and his graduate and doctoral students. And they're researching the difficult times and talking about the things that need to be talked about. And they're actually, you know, trying to talk about, you know, it's not just I've got both dramatic stress disorder, therefore I should take fill in the blank MDMA, kid them in, what have you.

Okay. or I'm in palliative care and I should take psilocybin and it's all about me and my personal work and what have you. It's not that. What these people have to, what everybody kind of needs to understand is the cartography is in that kind of profound state. Yes, you will have personal experiences, but you will also have trans personal experiences. And what are your maps for those trans personal experience? And so in the Germanic maps

and the maps, the transpersonal maps is, of course you're going to meet beings, of course you're going to enter into other realms, of course you're going to meet entities, of course you're going to have this happens, you know. This is sort of like, of course if you're going to climb out Everest, it's going to get very cold

and there's going to be less dark oxygen. Okay, so the sheriffs who climb it all the time, they know the mountain, they know what happens. You know, but then you've got these people who think they understand. the mountain when they don't know anything about it, you know, and they're prescribing these things and giving these things, and then they have no answer to what's happening, people who are having difficult experiences where they're connecting into difficult realms, and they're connecting

into difficult internal experiences or ancestral experiences. They're meeting difficult encounters, and they don't know, and people don't know how to help them to integrate these things, you know. And so this is all part of the conversation right now, is how do we help people focus on that, which is helping positive. And if they are deeply determined to do a deep inner dig through these techniques, then they should be aware of the realms they will be connecting to and the possibility of experiences that they may have.

listen, if I had clients just listening to a tape saying, I relax your body and breathe in the night and, you know, very simple relaxation techniques with positive statements, if I had people dropping into birth experiences and past life experiences, just with that, can you imagine, you know, people taking psychedelics and antigenes? And so we need the maps. And again, I encourage anybody listening, you know, buy my books. And all of the cartography is there about the realms and the beings and mediumship and what gets awoken, creativity, spirituality.

We're all channels. What are we channels for? What are we channeling? Now, we've talked today about prayer and meditation. How meditation can help us to calm ourselves and settle ourselves. Yeah, but it'll also possibly open the channel. And then all of a sudden you'll find creativity and inspiration. But then the channel wants all the good energy wants to clear out all the old stuff.

And sometimes we can be attached to that old stuff. And then it gets scary because that old stuff has to go or transform. The loss of identity on me letting go of everything is scary. Am I now when I'm not that? Yes. Who am I now when I'm not that? It's what happens when people retire, you know? 25 years being a doctor and person accountant, you know, whatever.

Okay, an airline pilot. And now all of a sudden they're playing golf and there. And it's like, who am I now? I don't know who I am. I'm not doing that. I'm not being that. Then who am I? And no one's there to.

validate the story of who you were on a daily basis, all your relationships. What does that mean when all your relationships change almost overnight? What am I now? It's both beautiful and frightening. It's the terror before the sacred. Yeah, and it brings us back to the most important thing, my relationship with myself. Yeah. Right?

Yes. If those are the questions we're asking ourselves, who am I now, in my life with what's going on, then the most important question is okay maybe it's just never mind anybody else what they think of me let's go let's go of impression management and what people think what I want and need people to think about me and who I am let's let's go with that and then who am I rely who am I why am I here what do I want big questions yeah big questions Now, the most important thing when you're in that space is to keep a sense of humor. You've got to keep a sense of humor, okay? Really, seriously, keep a sense of humor and hold it lightly. Hold it lightly, you know? Well, I'm still a female and I'm still a Canadian.

I'm still a mother and a sister and a grandmother and this and not. Okay, I'm still those things. Still human, so I'm still here. Apparently, my mother started saying, and she passed away last year at the age of 102. She got a couple of two weeks past her birthday, 1002nd birthday, which is very common, by the way, that people pass after anniversaries and birthdays

and a significant event quickly. They seem to be able to hold on until they get through it, and then they like, oh. So, yeah, if she would have to be, ask a few times. Oh, I'm still here. I'm still here. I'm still here. Which is getting funny. You have to have a sense of humor around it. I'm still here. Okay. Well, it's been wonderful. I'm always sharing with you. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask or say about meditation and prayer and the circle of wholeness and walking around that circle and finding all the things that have meaning and importance to us and how we

can have great relationship with them in our lives. I would point to everyone to check out your books. I think the word cartography fits it so well. It's sort of like a Rann McNally or a book, you know, a map of what I think of like there's so much. I love that for Rand McNally of Sakely of Courageful Journey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm thankful. I feel like myself and I know Thomas and everybody else that's listening

and I get so much great feedback when we have our conversations because I think it's relevant. And I think it's right now we are just in such wonderful times and we're getting to rediscover things. And I'm really thankful for it. So thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you? What do you have coming up? People can find me on my personal website. www. ravdr, that's Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester, all lowercase.com. And people who are interested can find links to a lot of podcasts, many from yours.

Yes, I am occasionally unfaithful to you, George, and do do do podcasts with other people. Please don't be offended. it. I also publications, most of which are free for educational purposes other than my books, which I am an obligation. You can find them on Amazon or you can order them through my website. And Awaskawak Awakening, a guide to self-discoe. Thank you. It's so important. Who am I? Why am I here? Self-mastery. How can I master myself on the path and self-care, some of which we are. speaking about today.

That's it. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope that you get to ask some of these powerful questions, and I hope that you find a way to incorporate the circle of wholeness in your life. And that's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful day. Aloha.