September 21, 2025 • 56 mins
Now beginning our 8th year bringing you the world's experts and teachers of all things spiritual, metaphysical, and enlightening, episode 221 of World Awakenings: The Fast Track to Enlightenment continues on this path as we meet Kara Goodwin. Kara is a spiritual guide, energy healer, and author devoted to helping people awaken to their divine nature and live in alignment with their soul’s purpose. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she spent over 15 years in IT and consulting. Despite professional success, she felt unfulfilled and dejected, and it wasn’t until a series of personal challenges and tragedies led her to meditation that helped her to reconnect with her true essence. Now she is on the path of a spiritual nature with a mission to help you live with more clarity, purpose, peace, and fulfillment. Plus, not only is she the author of the book, “Your Authentic Awakening: A Guide to Every Day Spiritual Living” AND is the host of the super popular “Soul Elevation” podcast!
Find out for yourself what the brand-new TV network, New Reality TV is all about! Just click this link.
It's time you found out about Karl Gruber's ground-breaking new book, "True Spirituality & the Law of Attraction: A Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship". Click this link to get your copy now.
Our guest, Kara Goodwin has a new book out. "Your Authentic Awakening" Click this link to read it now.
To find out more about our guest, Kara Goodwin, visit her website https://www.karagoodwin.com/
Find out for yourself what the brand-new TV network, New Reality TV is all about! Just click this link.
It's time you found out about Karl Gruber's ground-breaking new book, "True Spirituality & the Law of Attraction: A Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship". Click this link to get your copy now.
Our guest, Kara Goodwin has a new book out. "Your Authentic Awakening" Click this link to read it now.
To find out more about our guest, Kara Goodwin, visit her website https://www.karagoodwin.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is World Awakenings, the fast Track to Enlightenment with
your host, Carl Gruber. World Awakenings is a podcast dedicated
to opening your mind, your heart, and your eyes to
the fact that the world's population is now more than ever,
awakening to all things spiritual, metaphysical, and enlightening and just
(00:27):
how they play an all important role in our daily life.
So join Carl on this enlightening experience as he interviews
metaphysical and spiritual experts to discuss, debate, and delve deeply
into the house and whis of this world wide awakening.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
The law of attraction states that everything is energy and
that like attracts like. True spirituality states that the only
true reality is that of oneness, unity, and unconditional love
and forgiveness. Together, these two are attached at the hip
and perform a beautiful symbiotic dance together. Hi, I'm Carl Gruber,
(01:14):
author of the brand new book True Spirituality and the
Law of Attraction Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship. This is a book
that will show you how to build a rock solid
personal foundation based on unchanging, eternal universal truth that shows
you how to become a consistent co creator with a
(01:35):
universe to create the life you love to live and
live to love. Get your copy today of my new book,
True Spirituality and the Law of Attraction, A Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship,
and learn how to manifest the life and truly desire
to be living, now available as an ebook or paperback
(01:56):
on Amazon. Do you want to know? I mean, really
know what lies beyond the three D veil of the
(02:18):
physical world you perceive? If so, then you are certainly
in the right place. This is world awakening. He's a
vast track to enlightenment. I'm your host, Carl Ruber. Now,
this is a show that meets and talks one on
one with the top experts, teachers, masters and purveyors in
the areas of spirituality, metaphysics and enlightenment. And by the way,
(02:40):
don't forget that you can now not only watch this
show on YouTube, but you can also watch it on
your home TV, a new reality TV. Just click the
link below in the show notes to find out more.
Now today, our guest here on episode two twenty one
is Kara Goodwin is a spiritual guide, energy healer, and
(03:02):
author devoted to helping people awaken to their divine nature
and live in alignment with their soul's purpose.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I love that already.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she
spent over fifteen years in it and consulting, and despite
professional success, she felt unfulfilled and dejected. And it wasn't
until a series of personal challenges and tragedies that led
her to meditation that helped her to reconnect her true essence.
(03:31):
Now she is on the path of a spiritual nature
with a mission to help you live with more clarity, purpose,
peace and fulfillment. And boy, we need that in this world. Plus,
not only is she the author of the book Your
Authentic Awakening, a guide to everyday spiritual living, and she
is the host of the super popular Soul Elevation podcasts.
(03:53):
So with that, welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Caara, two World Awakenings.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Thank you, Carl. I'm so excited to have this convera
with you. I thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Well, it's always fun to have another podcaster on. I mean,
you have a really awesome podcast of like mindedness like
this show. But you know also what you do. I
mean I like to dive in here and so let's
find out here. You seem to have followed a similar
path that many of my guests have, and that is
one of getting burned out on their job in the
(04:24):
corporate world. What happened with you.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Well, yes, I was a part of the corporate world,
and just like you said in the intro, I was
very successful. I remember referring to it even as I
was going through it, that it was the golden hand.
The golden handcuffs right, because I could tell that it
was really hard to keep everything going. It wasn't really
(04:48):
leading me to fulfillment, but it was really hard to
walk away. And I actually ended up having some grace
come through where my husband got an opportunity to have
a job in Italy. And I had been very back
and forth about my own career because like I said,
(05:12):
you know, I was very successful and my company, I
worked for a major, major company, and they and I
was a young mother, you know, working mother with young kids,
and they were they were good about trying to work
with me when challenges came up. You know that things
(05:33):
just came up. I had three animals, and you know,
like things happened with your house and all of this,
and my husband really wasn't in a position to be
the one to take over when when the personal things
needed taken care of. So I really was burning the
candle at both ends, and when this opportunity came up
(05:54):
for his job, it really gave me the opportunity to
step way. That was how that happened because when we
moved to Italy, we didn't have any network and I
didn't neither of us really wanted to like hire somebody
to do what I would do, you know, I take
(06:15):
them to school. The whole lifestyle changed because we were
living in a city versus the suburbs. And again we
had relied a lot on family and babysitters and things
like that, with both of our careers going a million
miles an hour, and it was like, we have no
idea what is going on in this in this country,
in this culture. Like it just it was like we
(06:35):
don't want to we don't have anybody to fall back on,
and so I stopped working then. But two years into
that stint is when the personal challenges came through. So
I spent two years just being immersed in the culture,
in the xpac community, working, helping out at my kids' school,
(06:58):
and really just kind of breathing for change, you know,
really just not having to be burning the candle at
both ends, as I said, But I also when I
look back, I'm like, Okay, I was just kind of
skating on the surface of everything, you know, And even
(07:19):
when I was working, I was kind of just skating
on the surface of life, never really able to get
into the depth of my being that I was craving.
And then even when I got the time, I got
the gift of time, I didn't really take that time
to explore, you know, the the depths of my being.
(07:41):
But two years into our time there, we just had
a series of things happen within our family that really
pulled the rug out from under us. It started with
the suicide of my sister in law, and she was
one of my best friends, and she was just like
three weeks away from getting married. She had two young children.
(08:05):
It was heartbreaking and shocking, and we knew that she
was depressed and that she'd been struggling with depression, but
it was still like a major shock. Very shortly after that,
our dog died. Then my stepdad ended up having surgery
on his brain stem, which is a very delicate procedure.
(08:29):
We didn't know his health was deteriorating. Luckily, he's doing
well now. My mother in law was hit by a
motorbike as she crossed the street, ended up in the
hospital recovering from that. And then my stepmom had been
managing heart she had a heart virus. She'd been managing
(08:50):
that for years with diet and exercise and was kind
of this marvel like her doctors were like, you've got
to tell people about what you're doing because it's so great. Well,
all of a sudden, she sort of just got very sick,
very fast, went into the ICU, and went to the
top of the heart transplant list, and ended up having
(09:11):
a heart transplant that saved her life. So all of
that happened in seven months, Carl seven months, and so
I started to just feel like I like the like
the my like my house was built on sand or
something like that, you know, like, and I felt that
(09:33):
I really needed meditation. That was kind of what I
landed on. I landed on meditation. It was something that
I had tried a few times before, but never really
felt like I got anything from it or that I
was doing it right. But with this, like with my
life just being in disarray, I decided that I wanted
(09:55):
to get a teacher and really learn meditation. And so
I learned from actually a spiritual organization. It was like
a yogic Lenny Well Parmhans Yogananda's methods that he's the
author I know, you know him, but he's the author
of Autobiography of a Yogi, which most people recognize the
(10:16):
name of that book. But he passed away in nineteen
fifty two, but his teachings live on and there are
a couple of organizations that are still dedicated and devoted
to sharing his teachings and his methods, and so that's
how that was the organization I learned from online. But
even though that was a because he was a very religious,
(10:39):
not religious, but very spiritual person, and I was interested
in the teachings that he's left behind, but I also
was kind of not really I was just kind of
curious about it. But I didn't really want to pray
before my meditation. I didn't really want to get myself
involved in the spiritual side of it, and so I
(11:02):
tried to keep everything very secular, and which is just
funny because I was learning from monks, you know, so
they were kind of like that was part of the teachings,
was like pray, here's a prayer to say before you start.
But the names on the names that we were praying
to was this guru lineage that I was kind of like,
(11:23):
I get. I mean, I will follow along, But like
when I was meditating on my own, I didn't necessarily
want to do that, and so I really approached meditation
from a very secular standpoint. That's why I'm sharing that,
because it was like, I just need to feel better.
I want to know how to call myself, I want
to feel more secure. And it was through the ongoing
(11:50):
practice of meditation that I started to open up more
organically to the spiritual side of it, because now that
is so important to me. And that's when I started
going deeper, you know, that kind of depth that I
was talking about missing how I felt that I was
kind of skating the surface of life and avoiding going
(12:12):
deeply and deeply into knowing myself, deeply into connecting with anything,
you know, kind of multi dimensional within myself. I wasn't
nurturing that. And it was through the practice of meditation
and through experiences like perceiving light descending from above but
(12:35):
through my body so my eyes were closed. I was
meditating and started to feel and see light that was
It's as though it was coming from you know, like
the very top of my head head and then just
coming into my brain and into my inner site. And
it was so warm and so beautiful and so mysterious
(12:59):
that it I burst into tears during my meditation. It
just felt so powerful and so poignant. So I had
a few different experiences like that. Another one being that
I was meditating and I started to see in my
inner site this spiraling galaxy. So it was as though
(13:21):
I was looking at it from a distance. I was
seeing this rotation, and it looked like a cluster of stars,
a cluster of points of light, just rotating. And I
am not especially back then, I was not really into space,
not a sci fi person, and I was really confused
(13:43):
by that. Now, as I've gone along my journey, that
was many years ago, As I've gone along my journey,
I've started to I have understood more the role of interdimensionals,
extra dimensionals ET's, you know, the what we would call ali.
I didn't even believe in them back then, you know,
(14:03):
and they certainly I didn't have any frame of reference
of why they would show up in a meditation or
why something related to that would show up in meditation.
Fast forward many years and I started to understand the
phenomenon and even feel within myself. Oh, I think I'm
a star seed. I have had connections and experiences that
(14:23):
seemed to involve like off planet or non human intelligence,
but at the time, it was just this mysterious thing,
like why I have no context for this. I don't
know why anybody would see this. I don't know, and
I'm not really I would never call myself a clairvoyant,
and I certainly wouldn't have back then. That's not like
(14:46):
how I typically perceive things. I have had some very
very powerful clairvoyant experiences since then, but I still wouldn't
say that I am clairvoyant necessarily. So it was all
very interesting. And so that's kind of painting the picture
there of the early the early times of how I
(15:06):
got to where I am and the role that meditation played.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Wow, you've really lived the human journey so far, and
there's more.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, but you know, let's go back.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
You know, so you lose the golden handcuffs, which is
an amazing term that I haven't heard before. I like that,
and you moved to Italy. Now, when all of these
personal family tragedies happen, were you still in Italy and
then you probably had to come back to the States
several times, and you finally, I'm guessing you finally decided
(15:38):
to move back to the States because of.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
That, right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
My husband's family is actually in England, and so with
the things that were happening with them, we were closer
to them, but still it was, you know, a few
hour flight, and then my family was here in the States,
and so yeah, we couldn't even really very easily be
with everybody as these tragedies were happening and as everybody
(16:06):
was trying to navigate like a new normal. So that
did have an extra element, added an extra dimension into
all of that. And then we were there for another
two years before we moved back to the US.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Real stressful situation in a beautiful place. Heck, I'm a
wild and crazy bachelor. If I lived in Italy, I
just sit on a balcony drinking wine and going buns.
Your yes, But you know I'm curious too. You've found
meditation while you were in Italy and all you were doing,
you were studying with monks in Italy with your meditation.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well, I found an online program that's actually kind of
part of the journey that I write about in my book.
Because I told you that I wasn't. I was kind
of maybe agnostic, not really not like super I didn't
really even know what I believed, if I believed anything,
I think, And when I look back on it, I
think I don't know that I ever would have said
(17:04):
that I don't believe in God. But I didn't feel
that I was like a critical part of God's plan
or on his radar or worthy of, you know, worthy
of anything, because I hadn't been, you know, because of
my actions in not not trying to have any sort
of relationship, but also just I figured there, you're probably
(17:25):
born that way or you're not. You know, you're either
like a sage or you're a regular person. And I
was just a regular person. So I kind of just
felt like I was just, you know, kind of under
the radar. And of course, you know, with my as
my spiritual understanding has grown, I do understand we are
(17:47):
all known and seen by God. Absolutely, But I was
walking home from taking my kids to school one morning
and just recognizing like all of the things that were
happening and that it just felt overwhelming, and it also
felt like what's next? You know, this is there is?
(18:08):
It just seemed like every time I turned a corner
there was something else and it was huge. And so
I was kind of like having this conversation in my head,
and I was like, I don't know if you know
me talking to God, you know, And I don't know
if I know that people have worse problems, even like
(18:31):
even with me having these problems, I know there are
worse problems out there. But I feel like maybe meditation
could be a way that I could always felt drawn
to meditation, and if meditation would be a way to
help me through this time, and that's a good idea,
then lead me to a solution. A teacher or you know,
(18:56):
show open the door for me and make it so
that I, you know, don't miss that I don't miss it,
and let it be in English, because I did speak Italian,
but like I had actually tried a meditation group that
somebody in one of my language classes had had recommended,
(19:16):
but it was in Italian, and you of course, you
keep your eyes closed while you're meditating, and there were
just so many times where we'd be in silence, and
I would have translated what they said, but then we
were in silence, and I'd have to kind of like
open my eyes, like is everybody done? Like did I
misunderstand what they said? Is everybody done? And they're just
waiting for me to open my eyes? Same thing happened.
(19:37):
I took several yoga classes while I was there, and
I had the same insecurities where I'm like, I think
that we're just supposed to hold this pose and keep
our eyes closed, but what if everybody is like out
of the pose waiting for me to come out of
it and open my eyes. And so I was like,
you know, so please lead me, please guide me, and
(19:59):
let it be in English. And so I did find
an online program that took That's a whole other story
because I was looking at Yogananda's organization Self Realization Fellowship
that he created while he was alive, and the only
program was a mail in program, and my mail was
so unreliable that I had wedding invitations that never made
(20:20):
it to me. Deliveries were really hard and the way,
and it was going to be like I really wanted
to dive into this and I didn't want it to
be one of those things that I had this extra
hurdle of I'm not receiving my lessons and now I
have to pay again, and it was so archaic, and
again I knew my mail system was unreliable, so that
(20:43):
really felt like a closed door. And then the other
alternative was to go to California and take a class
for like, I don't remember, two weeks something like that.
And here I've got my two young kids, I've got
my husband who is most of his job required travel
all through Europe. And I was like, I literally cannot
(21:06):
do that. I cannot travel halfway across the world and
stop my like couldn't stop my life. And so I
kind of closed it and I was like, all right,
I guess I'll do this when we moved back to America.
But I was like, I don't think we're moving back
for another couple of years. And one day, because I
was I just kept going back to the same you know,
(21:27):
website and seeing if there was something i'd overlooked, and
eventually I got the idea just google, like you know,
google Parmhansei Yoga, Nanda meditation or something like that, and
I found another organization that they had a whole robust
(21:50):
online program. They had several courses and several ways for
people all over the world to be able to engage
with these practices. And it was like when I open
I just I still remember so vividly doing this Google search,
finding it, clicking on it, and it was it felt
like the doors flung open, and it was like, ah,
(22:12):
you know, I mean I remember thinking like, oh my god,
this is it. And so they had like a I
think it was like a ten week learn to meditate
program or something. There are people from all over the
world who were participating, and it was exactly what I
needed when I needed it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Wow, that is that's pretty awesome story. You know, going
back though to you know, when you were in a
corporate career, you know, unfortunately most of the world follows
that same path of a career that is intense, demanding, burdensome.
Why is it you think that people who some people
(22:51):
don't get fed up with it and continue to lead
this life even though it's unfulfilling, And why do some
people are the golden handcuffs permanent on them.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's such a good question, and I think it's so nuanced,
it's so layered for different people because there really are
people who, you know, they feel that they don't have
a choice or you know, for whatever reason, whether it
is you know, life is so busy and they've got
a lot of demands, and the last thing that they
have time for right now is to go and do
(23:25):
some job searching to find something that's more aligned. There
are many, many reasons, and one of the reasons could
be that they actually are where they're supposed to be
right now. One of the things that I want that
I love that you're bringing forward that relates back to
(23:46):
the story. My story is that I felt that life
was you know, I was letting life lead me by
the nose, and so I had a lot of demands
and I really wasn't allowing myself to explore that spiritual connection. Now,
this was ten plus years ago. The world was different.
(24:08):
Back then. We didn't know there were fewer people awake.
You know, there were still plenty of people who were awake,
but we have such a much bigger awakening community now.
I didn't have a lot of people that I knew
who went against the grain or had a different way
of thinking or were modeling that. You know, you didn't
(24:30):
have to be part of this machine. So that's part
of it. But the other piece is that, you know, I,
even though I felt this deficiency within this spiritual kind
of desert within me, that I wasn't passssssssssssssssssssssss
This is World Awakenings, the fast Track to Enlightenment with
your host, Carl Gruber. World Awakenings is a podcast dedicated
to opening your mind, your heart, and your eyes to
the fact that the world's population is now more than ever,
awakening to all things spiritual, metaphysical, and enlightening and just
(00:27):
how they play an all important role in our daily life.
So join Carl on this enlightening experience as he interviews
metaphysical and spiritual experts to discuss, debate, and delve deeply
into the house and whis of this world wide awakening.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
The law of attraction states that everything is energy and
that like attracts like. True spirituality states that the only
true reality is that of oneness, unity, and unconditional love
and forgiveness. Together, these two are attached at the hip
and perform a beautiful symbiotic dance together. Hi, I'm Carl Gruber,
(01:14):
author of the brand new book True Spirituality and the
Law of Attraction Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship. This is a book
that will show you how to build a rock solid
personal foundation based on unchanging, eternal universal truth that shows
you how to become a consistent co creator with a
(01:35):
universe to create the life you love to live and
live to love. Get your copy today of my new book,
True Spirituality and the Law of Attraction, A Beautiful Symbiotic Relationship,
and learn how to manifest the life and truly desire
to be living, now available as an ebook or paperback
(01:56):
on Amazon. Do you want to know? I mean, really
know what lies beyond the three D veil of the
(02:18):
physical world you perceive? If so, then you are certainly
in the right place. This is world awakening. He's a
vast track to enlightenment. I'm your host, Carl Ruber. Now,
this is a show that meets and talks one on
one with the top experts, teachers, masters and purveyors in
the areas of spirituality, metaphysics and enlightenment. And by the way,
(02:40):
don't forget that you can now not only watch this
show on YouTube, but you can also watch it on
your home TV, a new reality TV. Just click the
link below in the show notes to find out more.
Now today, our guest here on episode two twenty one
is Kara Goodwin is a spiritual guide, energy healer, and
(03:02):
author devoted to helping people awaken to their divine nature
and live in alignment with their soul's purpose.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I love that already.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she
spent over fifteen years in it and consulting, and despite
professional success, she felt unfulfilled and dejected. And it wasn't
until a series of personal challenges and tragedies that led
her to meditation that helped her to reconnect her true essence.
(03:31):
Now she is on the path of a spiritual nature
with a mission to help you live with more clarity, purpose,
peace and fulfillment. And boy, we need that in this world. Plus,
not only is she the author of the book Your
Authentic Awakening, a guide to everyday spiritual living, and she
is the host of the super popular Soul Elevation podcasts.
(03:53):
So with that, welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Caara, two World Awakenings.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Thank you, Carl. I'm so excited to have this convera
with you. I thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Well, it's always fun to have another podcaster on. I mean,
you have a really awesome podcast of like mindedness like
this show. But you know also what you do. I
mean I like to dive in here and so let's
find out here. You seem to have followed a similar
path that many of my guests have, and that is
one of getting burned out on their job in the
(04:24):
corporate world. What happened with you.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Well, yes, I was a part of the corporate world,
and just like you said in the intro, I was
very successful. I remember referring to it even as I
was going through it, that it was the golden hand.
The golden handcuffs right, because I could tell that it
was really hard to keep everything going. It wasn't really
(04:48):
leading me to fulfillment, but it was really hard to
walk away. And I actually ended up having some grace
come through where my husband got an opportunity to have
a job in Italy. And I had been very back
and forth about my own career because like I said,
(05:12):
you know, I was very successful and my company, I
worked for a major, major company, and they and I
was a young mother, you know, working mother with young kids,
and they were they were good about trying to work
with me when challenges came up. You know that things
(05:33):
just came up. I had three animals, and you know,
like things happened with your house and all of this,
and my husband really wasn't in a position to be
the one to take over when when the personal things
needed taken care of. So I really was burning the
candle at both ends, and when this opportunity came up
(05:54):
for his job, it really gave me the opportunity to
step way. That was how that happened because when we
moved to Italy, we didn't have any network and I
didn't neither of us really wanted to like hire somebody
to do what I would do, you know, I take
(06:15):
them to school. The whole lifestyle changed because we were
living in a city versus the suburbs. And again we
had relied a lot on family and babysitters and things
like that, with both of our careers going a million
miles an hour, and it was like, we have no
idea what is going on in this in this country,
in this culture. Like it just it was like we
(06:35):
don't want to we don't have anybody to fall back on,
and so I stopped working then. But two years into
that stint is when the personal challenges came through. So
I spent two years just being immersed in the culture,
in the xpac community, working, helping out at my kids' school,
(06:58):
and really just kind of breathing for change, you know,
really just not having to be burning the candle at
both ends, as I said, But I also when I
look back, I'm like, Okay, I was just kind of
skating on the surface of everything, you know, And even
(07:19):
when I was working, I was kind of just skating
on the surface of life, never really able to get
into the depth of my being that I was craving.
And then even when I got the time, I got
the gift of time, I didn't really take that time
to explore, you know, the the depths of my being.
(07:41):
But two years into our time there, we just had
a series of things happen within our family that really
pulled the rug out from under us. It started with
the suicide of my sister in law, and she was
one of my best friends, and she was just like
three weeks away from getting married. She had two young children.
(08:05):
It was heartbreaking and shocking, and we knew that she
was depressed and that she'd been struggling with depression, but
it was still like a major shock. Very shortly after that,
our dog died. Then my stepdad ended up having surgery
on his brain stem, which is a very delicate procedure.
(08:29):
We didn't know his health was deteriorating. Luckily, he's doing
well now. My mother in law was hit by a
motorbike as she crossed the street, ended up in the
hospital recovering from that. And then my stepmom had been
managing heart she had a heart virus. She'd been managing
(08:50):
that for years with diet and exercise and was kind
of this marvel like her doctors were like, you've got
to tell people about what you're doing because it's so great. Well,
all of a sudden, she sort of just got very sick,
very fast, went into the ICU, and went to the
top of the heart transplant list, and ended up having
(09:11):
a heart transplant that saved her life. So all of
that happened in seven months, Carl seven months, and so
I started to just feel like I like the like
the my like my house was built on sand or
something like that, you know, like, and I felt that
(09:33):
I really needed meditation. That was kind of what I
landed on. I landed on meditation. It was something that
I had tried a few times before, but never really
felt like I got anything from it or that I
was doing it right. But with this, like with my
life just being in disarray, I decided that I wanted
(09:55):
to get a teacher and really learn meditation. And so
I learned from actually a spiritual organization. It was like
a yogic Lenny Well Parmhans Yogananda's methods that he's the
author I know, you know him, but he's the author
of Autobiography of a Yogi, which most people recognize the
(10:16):
name of that book. But he passed away in nineteen
fifty two, but his teachings live on and there are
a couple of organizations that are still dedicated and devoted
to sharing his teachings and his methods, and so that's
how that was the organization I learned from online. But
even though that was a because he was a very religious,
(10:39):
not religious, but very spiritual person, and I was interested
in the teachings that he's left behind, but I also
was kind of not really I was just kind of
curious about it. But I didn't really want to pray
before my meditation. I didn't really want to get myself
involved in the spiritual side of it, and so I
(11:02):
tried to keep everything very secular, and which is just
funny because I was learning from monks, you know, so
they were kind of like that was part of the teachings,
was like pray, here's a prayer to say before you start.
But the names on the names that we were praying
to was this guru lineage that I was kind of like,
(11:23):
I get. I mean, I will follow along, But like
when I was meditating on my own, I didn't necessarily
want to do that, and so I really approached meditation
from a very secular standpoint. That's why I'm sharing that,
because it was like, I just need to feel better.
I want to know how to call myself, I want
to feel more secure. And it was through the ongoing
(11:50):
practice of meditation that I started to open up more
organically to the spiritual side of it, because now that
is so important to me. And that's when I started
going deeper, you know, that kind of depth that I
was talking about missing how I felt that I was
kind of skating the surface of life and avoiding going
(12:12):
deeply and deeply into knowing myself, deeply into connecting with anything,
you know, kind of multi dimensional within myself. I wasn't
nurturing that. And it was through the practice of meditation
and through experiences like perceiving light descending from above but
(12:35):
through my body so my eyes were closed. I was
meditating and started to feel and see light that was
It's as though it was coming from you know, like
the very top of my head head and then just
coming into my brain and into my inner site. And
it was so warm and so beautiful and so mysterious
(12:59):
that it I burst into tears during my meditation. It
just felt so powerful and so poignant. So I had
a few different experiences like that. Another one being that
I was meditating and I started to see in my
inner site this spiraling galaxy. So it was as though
(13:21):
I was looking at it from a distance. I was
seeing this rotation, and it looked like a cluster of stars,
a cluster of points of light, just rotating. And I
am not especially back then, I was not really into space,
not a sci fi person, and I was really confused
(13:43):
by that. Now, as I've gone along my journey, that
was many years ago, As I've gone along my journey,
I've started to I have understood more the role of interdimensionals,
extra dimensionals ET's, you know, the what we would call ali.
I didn't even believe in them back then, you know,
(14:03):
and they certainly I didn't have any frame of reference
of why they would show up in a meditation or
why something related to that would show up in meditation.
Fast forward many years and I started to understand the
phenomenon and even feel within myself. Oh, I think I'm
a star seed. I have had connections and experiences that
(14:23):
seemed to involve like off planet or non human intelligence,
but at the time, it was just this mysterious thing,
like why I have no context for this. I don't
know why anybody would see this. I don't know, and
I'm not really I would never call myself a clairvoyant,
and I certainly wouldn't have back then. That's not like
(14:46):
how I typically perceive things. I have had some very
very powerful clairvoyant experiences since then, but I still wouldn't
say that I am clairvoyant necessarily. So it was all
very interesting. And so that's kind of painting the picture
there of the early the early times of how I
(15:06):
got to where I am and the role that meditation played.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Wow, you've really lived the human journey so far, and
there's more.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, but you know, let's go back.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
You know, so you lose the golden handcuffs, which is
an amazing term that I haven't heard before. I like that,
and you moved to Italy. Now, when all of these
personal family tragedies happen, were you still in Italy and
then you probably had to come back to the States
several times, and you finally, I'm guessing you finally decided
(15:38):
to move back to the States because of.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
That, right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
My husband's family is actually in England, and so with
the things that were happening with them, we were closer
to them, but still it was, you know, a few
hour flight, and then my family was here in the States,
and so yeah, we couldn't even really very easily be
with everybody as these tragedies were happening and as everybody
(16:06):
was trying to navigate like a new normal. So that
did have an extra element, added an extra dimension into
all of that. And then we were there for another
two years before we moved back to the US.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Real stressful situation in a beautiful place. Heck, I'm a
wild and crazy bachelor. If I lived in Italy, I
just sit on a balcony drinking wine and going buns.
Your yes, But you know I'm curious too. You've found
meditation while you were in Italy and all you were doing,
you were studying with monks in Italy with your meditation.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well, I found an online program that's actually kind of
part of the journey that I write about in my book.
Because I told you that I wasn't. I was kind
of maybe agnostic, not really not like super I didn't
really even know what I believed, if I believed anything,
I think, And when I look back on it, I
think I don't know that I ever would have said
(17:04):
that I don't believe in God. But I didn't feel
that I was like a critical part of God's plan
or on his radar or worthy of, you know, worthy
of anything, because I hadn't been, you know, because of
my actions in not not trying to have any sort
of relationship, but also just I figured there, you're probably
(17:25):
born that way or you're not. You know, you're either
like a sage or you're a regular person. And I
was just a regular person. So I kind of just
felt like I was just, you know, kind of under
the radar. And of course, you know, with my as
my spiritual understanding has grown, I do understand we are
(17:47):
all known and seen by God. Absolutely, But I was
walking home from taking my kids to school one morning
and just recognizing like all of the things that were
happening and that it just felt overwhelming, and it also
felt like what's next? You know, this is there is?
(18:08):
It just seemed like every time I turned a corner
there was something else and it was huge. And so
I was kind of like having this conversation in my head,
and I was like, I don't know if you know
me talking to God, you know, And I don't know
if I know that people have worse problems, even like
(18:31):
even with me having these problems, I know there are
worse problems out there. But I feel like maybe meditation
could be a way that I could always felt drawn
to meditation, and if meditation would be a way to
help me through this time, and that's a good idea,
then lead me to a solution. A teacher or you know,
(18:56):
show open the door for me and make it so
that I, you know, don't miss that I don't miss it,
and let it be in English, because I did speak Italian,
but like I had actually tried a meditation group that
somebody in one of my language classes had had recommended,
(19:16):
but it was in Italian, and you of course, you
keep your eyes closed while you're meditating, and there were
just so many times where we'd be in silence, and
I would have translated what they said, but then we
were in silence, and I'd have to kind of like
open my eyes, like is everybody done? Like did I
misunderstand what they said? Is everybody done? And they're just
waiting for me to open my eyes? Same thing happened.
(19:37):
I took several yoga classes while I was there, and
I had the same insecurities where I'm like, I think
that we're just supposed to hold this pose and keep
our eyes closed, but what if everybody is like out
of the pose waiting for me to come out of
it and open my eyes. And so I was like,
you know, so please lead me, please guide me, and
(19:59):
let it be in English. And so I did find
an online program that took That's a whole other story
because I was looking at Yogananda's organization Self Realization Fellowship
that he created while he was alive, and the only
program was a mail in program, and my mail was
so unreliable that I had wedding invitations that never made
(20:20):
it to me. Deliveries were really hard and the way,
and it was going to be like I really wanted
to dive into this and I didn't want it to
be one of those things that I had this extra
hurdle of I'm not receiving my lessons and now I
have to pay again, and it was so archaic, and
again I knew my mail system was unreliable, so that
(20:43):
really felt like a closed door. And then the other
alternative was to go to California and take a class
for like, I don't remember, two weeks something like that.
And here I've got my two young kids, I've got
my husband who is most of his job required travel
all through Europe. And I was like, I literally cannot
(21:06):
do that. I cannot travel halfway across the world and
stop my like couldn't stop my life. And so I
kind of closed it and I was like, all right,
I guess I'll do this when we moved back to America.
But I was like, I don't think we're moving back
for another couple of years. And one day, because I
was I just kept going back to the same you know,
(21:27):
website and seeing if there was something i'd overlooked, and
eventually I got the idea just google, like you know,
google Parmhansei Yoga, Nanda meditation or something like that, and
I found another organization that they had a whole robust
(21:50):
online program. They had several courses and several ways for
people all over the world to be able to engage
with these practices. And it was like when I open
I just I still remember so vividly doing this Google search,
finding it, clicking on it, and it was it felt
like the doors flung open, and it was like, ah,
(22:12):
you know, I mean I remember thinking like, oh my god,
this is it. And so they had like a I
think it was like a ten week learn to meditate
program or something. There are people from all over the
world who were participating, and it was exactly what I
needed when I needed it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Wow, that is that's pretty awesome story. You know, going
back though to you know, when you were in a
corporate career, you know, unfortunately most of the world follows
that same path of a career that is intense, demanding, burdensome.
Why is it you think that people who some people
(22:51):
don't get fed up with it and continue to lead
this life even though it's unfulfilling, And why do some
people are the golden handcuffs permanent on them.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's such a good question, and I think it's so nuanced,
it's so layered for different people because there really are
people who, you know, they feel that they don't have
a choice or you know, for whatever reason, whether it
is you know, life is so busy and they've got
a lot of demands, and the last thing that they
have time for right now is to go and do
(23:25):
some job searching to find something that's more aligned. There
are many, many reasons, and one of the reasons could
be that they actually are where they're supposed to be
right now. One of the things that I want that
I love that you're bringing forward that relates back to
(23:46):
the story. My story is that I felt that life
was you know, I was letting life lead me by
the nose, and so I had a lot of demands
and I really wasn't allowing myself to explore that spiritual connection. Now,
this was ten plus years ago. The world was different.
(24:08):
Back then. We didn't know there were fewer people awake.
You know, there were still plenty of people who were awake,
but we have such a much bigger awakening community now.
I didn't have a lot of people that I knew
who went against the grain or had a different way
of thinking or were modeling that. You know, you didn't
(24:30):
have to be part of this machine. So that's part
of it. But the other piece is that, you know, I,
even though I felt this deficiency within this spiritual kind
of desert within me, that I wasn't passssssssssssssssssssssss
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