Life is Short! Live your F#cking Dreams - and DEEP Talks on Awakening, Psychosis and Death with Maya Lila Di Vento

Send us a text

**Warning - this episode discusses deep adult theme topics including drug use, sex, rape, and death. Mind the little ears.

Maya Lila DiVento is a Spiritual Counselor + Transformational coach
who helps people un-fuck their lives, get unstuck,  re-connect to their souls, and have the courage to live their dreams.

When we're conditioned to prioritize safety and security over authenticity and passion, what happens to our dreams? Maya Lila DeVento's journey from disillusioned alcoholic to spiritual seeker offers profound insights into what's possible when we dare to follow our heart's deepest longings.

Growing up with the mantra "you can't make a living being an artist" despite her creative gifts, Maya eventually rebelled—embarking on a path that led her from Italy to Los Angeles, Argentina, Patagonia, and beyond. Through raw honesty, she reveals how substance use masked her disconnection from her true path, and how psychedelics, meditation, and trauma healing ultimately reconnected her to her body's wisdom.

What makes this conversation extraordinary is Maya's profound trust in synchronicity and divine guidance. When logic said "get a job with insurance," she followed seemingly random signs that led to life-changing connections—proving that our dreams often are divine directives calling us forward. Her experiences with both ungrounded and grounded spiritual awakenings offer crucial distinctions for anyone navigating intense spiritual energies in a society that pathologizes mystical experiences.

We also venture into territory many fear to tread—discussing grief, death, and the interdimensional nature of existence. Through my recent experience losing my son, we explore how profound loss can break us open rather than closed, expanding our capacity to love beyond what we thought possible. Maya beautifully articulates how pain transforms into beauty when fully embraced rather than avoided.

Ready to stop playing small and start living the life your soul craves? This episode might just be the permission slip you've been waiting for. Your dreams are calling—will you answer?

Find Maya Lila at https://mayaliladivento.com/ and on IG @mayaliladivento

And you can reach Joya at VIBOLOGIE and on IG @vibologie

Episode Transcript

Joya (00:00):
You are listening to.
We Woke Up Like this and I amyour host, joya Cisnowski.
I am dedicated to the soul'sgrowth and seeing the higher
self embodied, expanded andexpressed in every woman.
Enjoy the show.
Well, hello, maya, thank youfor joining me again on.
We Woke Up Like this, and I sayagain, because we had recorded

(00:22):
a beautiful conversation, thatfor some reason this, and I say
again because we had recorded abeautiful conversation that, for
some reason, the divine wantedus to rerecord, because I think
we needed to get to this juicy,juicy conversation about you and
what you have to say aboutliving your dreams.
So what are you talking aboutwhen you say life is short?
Live your dreams.

MayaLila (00:42):
Well, that pretty much summarizes it.
Life is short and we need tolive our fucking dreams, and I
feel like all of us that went tothat had typical parents in the
United States and went to atypical school.
That's not the focus.
Like the focus isn't.
How will you be the most youand the most thriving, authentic
version, and what's yourpassion and what lights your

(01:05):
heart up and what are yourskills and gifts that you're
here to serve the world with?
Like that's not questions.
I was asked as a child.
You know what I was told is Iwas a very skilled artist and
loved creativity of all kinds,and I was told over and over and
over and over again you can'tmake a living being an artist.
You can't make a living beingan artist.
You can't make a living beingan artist.

(01:26):
And both of my parents wereschool teachers and so they took
the very like safe route ofgetting a job at a school and
with a, you know, with a pensionand with health insurance, and
they both stayed there for 40years until they retired.
And like, yeah, they retiredand they had a lot of money from
their pension and they hadhealth years until they retired.
And like, yeah, they retiredand they had a lot of money from
their pension and they hadhealth insurance until they die.

(01:48):
But they didn't live theirdreams and they didn't really
have anybody Like we didn'treally have anybody around us
that was living their dreams.
Most of my family was eitherteachers or in the military.
Um, so it was a very safe paththat was presented to me and I

(02:08):
rebelled.
And I was, you know, when Iright out of college, I told my
mom, right after I graduated, Iwas like I want to move back to
Italy because I had studiedabroad in Italy, fallen in love
with the culture, with a guythere with a language, and I
knew the first time I left theUnited States, at age 18, I knew
I wasn't meant to be in theUnited States.

(02:29):
I was like this isn't my home,like I value beauty and I value
quality of life and things thatshow up more in Europe than they
do in the United States, and Ijust felt that there was a
mismatch there.
And so when I graduated fromcollege, I told my mom like hey,
I'm moving back to Italy, andshe freaked out and she was like

(02:50):
no, you need to get a job withinsurance, like right out of
college or you're never gonnaget a job, which obviously is
like insane, that doesn't makeany sense.
But at the time she wasterrified for me and that was
like our first big fight really,and I said, sorry, mom, like
I'm moving back to Italy, whichI did but then I couldn't really

(03:10):
work legally and I had collegeloans hanging over my head and
so I tried it and I couldn'treally make it fly.
So I came back and was just sodepressed and moved to Los
Angeles, got multiple jobs andspent yeah, spent over a decade
as an alcoholic in the rat racein a place that my heart knew

(03:32):
wasn't my right place.
And and, yeah, it took it tooka decade for me to finally leave
Los Angeles and that was one ofthe best decisions of my life
and I moved to Argentina.
Wow, you said so many thingsthat I think are so interesting
that it just gave me an ahamoment.
Around that generation, likeour parents, depending on your

(03:53):
age, right, so like our parents,had that mentality of get a job
, you need to be safe.
You got to create security and,as you said that, I was like,
oh, I wonder if we'retransitioning as a society, as a
species even, from like that'slike all root chakra stuff,
right when it's like I need tobe safe, I need to be, have
security, and then you live yourwhole life in a cubicle and

(04:17):
then you live your whole life inyour living room watching TV
and then you die.
So I love this and we both know, obviously we know a lot of
people like that.
I know a lot of people likethat and I've always said, like
that seems so awful to me.
And then you also said somethingto around 10 spent 10 years as

(04:37):
an alcoholic in Los Angeles, andI want to hear a little bit
about that, because I know forme, drinking was a mask to
escape a reality that I didn'twant to be living in under the
guise of well, let's just gohave quote unquote a good time.
So talk about those two things,what drinking was for you, how

(04:58):
you stopped.
And then what was the impetusfor you to just decide to leave
LA and stop doing what you weredoing was the impetus for you to
just decide to leave LA andstop doing what you were doing.
The first time I ever got drunkwas in Italy and I was 20 years
old and I was at this bar calledTeatro Scribe it's this little,
tiny, tiny hole in the wall barand there was a band that would
play on stage almost everynight and I remember I would.

(05:21):
The only thing that I had theguts to play was a chicken egg
shaker and I studied music mywhole life but like one of my
biggest woundings has beensinging in front of people.
Like I can sing in choirs andda, da, but if it's me alone in
front of people, my throat usedto just close like I could not
do it, and I was.
I felt like I was going to die.
And one night this woman got onstage and she sang Son of a

(05:44):
Preacher man and this like stabof envy, just like shot through
my heart, and I was like I wantto do that and I just was.
I had so much trauma andrepression and past life stuff,
whatever, that I could not.
I couldn't do it, but if I hada few drinks I could get on
stage and play the drums.
I could get on stage and playthe drums and, like you were

(06:09):
saying, like I had so much fearand anxiety in my body that the
drinking helped put that awayfor a while so that I could just
be happy and enjoy my life,quote unquote and so from like
from that point, and then, yeah,that was in Italy where I was
like much happier.
And then I came back to theStates, went through a pretty
severe depression and starteddrinking, you know, pretty much
every day, and it wasn't like Iwasn't getting smashed.

(06:31):
Every day I would drink it likeone or two alcoholic, you know,
glass of wine or a beer, and Iwas with friends and everybody
did that, like that was justnormal in LA.
You go out for drinks afterwork, go out for drinks after
work, and and then it progressedto like blacking out every
weekend pretty much for a couplehours, because I would drink my

(06:53):
black Russians and drink acouple or Red Bull and vodkas
and I would.
I would go out dancing mostly,and the, the dancing and the
drinking I realized later wasalso just to deal with the
energy of living in a city likeLos Angeles, because I'm
extremely sensitive and psychic,intuitive, whatever, and so,
and at the time, like until Ihad a huge heartbreak at age 29,
30, I was pretty disassociatedfrom the neck down, from the

(07:17):
head down, so I didn't.
I was like I don't have anxiety, I don't have anger issues, I'm
good.
And then that stuff startedleaking through the cracks in my
late twenties and then, when Ihad my heart smashed, it all
came out and I was like, oh fuck, like there's a lot in here
that I need to deal with that Ididn't even know was there.

(07:46):
Actually, my late 20s was Istarted doing ecstasy, mdma, and
I learned pretty quickly thatyou can't do ecstasy and drink
at the same time, because Iended up the first time I ever
somebody gave me ecstasy andthen I was drinking like normal.
I ended up making out with likefour different guys and I
actually was sexually assaultedalso by one of them and I
confronted him after and he waslike no, nothing happened and I
was like my pants are onbackwards the next morning.

(08:07):
So I knew something hadhappened and there's other
evidence.
So I stopped drinking when Iwas doing ecstasy and we now
know like at the time this is inthe 2000s we now know that MDMA
can be used to treat like PTSDand anxiety disorders, and I
have CPTSD from childhood trauma.

(08:28):
My earliest memory is my fathertrying to kill my mother by
choking her.
He was bipolar, manic, alcoholic, and so he also would threaten
to kill her while I was spendingtime with him and would tell me
that I would be an orphan onSkid Row and take me to Skid Row
in LA and drive me around.
So I have some severe traumathat the dancing and the MDMA

(08:51):
started to help me, like workthrough some of that.
And then I also did psilocybinnot very many times, just a few
times while I was living in LAand again, like that kind of, I
started waking up and I startedrealizing like okay, like I
don't want to be gettingblackout drunk, like if I'm
supposed to be having fun and Idon't remember anything, what's

(09:13):
the point?
Like that's obviously nothaving fun if you can't remember
it and um, and then I starteddoing more meditation and yoga
and so I did kind of pull myselfout of alcoholism and it's
something that I no longerstruggle with and I will have.
Like I still love wine, eventhough I can feel like as soon
as I have a glass I can feellike the.

(09:33):
I just feel tired and I canfeel my eyes closing, you know.
So yeah, I rerouted myself fromalcoholism in my late 20s and
with the help of psychedelics,Wow, that's amazing, and you
know.
It just goes to show how manydifferent routes and paths I'm
like.
It doesn't matter what you do.
Your soul is always on its pathof awakening and no matter what

(09:55):
road you choose to take, it'sgoing to lead you to where you
want to be, assuming you livelong enough to have that happen
to you, to have that experience.
So your dreams that were to you, to have that experience?
So your dreams that werecalling you forward, what were
those dreams that you wereignoring or that you were
tamping down, that you finallysaid, yes, I'm going to do this.

(10:16):
The biggest one was just gettingout of the country.
I had huge travel dreams.
I wanted to travel.
I loved living.
I hate traveling, I hate theprocess of like getting on the
flights and traveling, but Ilove going somewhere and living
there, and preferably six monthsto a year so you get to
experience different seasons andeverything.
And so when I was in LA, I metsomeone who turned into a

(10:40):
spiritual mentor for me.
He was this super hotArgentinian, kundalini, yoga
instructor, musician.
I was in love with him.
I'd been celibate for like ayear at that point and I'd
stopped, I'd quit drinking.
I quit drinking for a couple ofyears and I met him at a yoga
class and I knew immediately Iwas like that's my soulmate.
And I made a list, like an houror two prior, of like the you

(11:03):
know the 35 item list ofeverything you want a soulmate.
And when I walked into the yogastudio I saw him and I knew it
was him and so we talked and um,and he's like oh, I live in
Argentina, I'm leaving in a fewdays.
And I was like, okay, nevermind.
Like I had done long distancewith my Italian boyfriend, so I
was like I'm never doing thatagain.
So I was like, okay, I'll seeyou later, like have a good trip

(11:23):
to LA.
And I went outside and I waswalking through the farmer's
market and this is in SantaMonica.
And so I'm walking through thefarmer's market and I see him
walking towards me and hedoesn't see me.
And my intuition was like gotalk to him.
And I was like I don't want totalk to him.
He's leaving for Argentina,like Argentina, like what's the
point?
But my attention was like gotalk to him.
And it was this choice pointwhere I could have just kept

(11:46):
walking.
But instead I chose to listento the voice that was telling me
to do something and I turnedaround, I tapped him on the
shoulder and I was like hey, Iknow you're leaving in a few
days, but do you want to go tothe Getty tomorrow, which is
this huge museum?
And he was like sure.
So at this point all I knew wasthat he was Argentinian and
that he liked yoga.
And so the next day we went tothe museum.

(12:07):
We ended up having this intenseconversation for 10 hours where
I found out through the courseof the day he was every single
thing of like the 25, 30 itemson my list and in I had this
realization that all the thingson my list like um, he like, I
wanted a guy who was a musician,I wanted someone who was half

(12:30):
an Italian, I wanted someone whowas a yoga instructor they were
all things that I wanted to be.
And so I kind of had this likelike, oh, it's all projection.
All the things that we think wewant in a partner are just
things that either that we havelike weird conditioning around
or they're unclaimed parts ofourselves.
And he said that day, he's like, he's like, look like you're

(12:50):
hot, but I don't feel like we'remeant to have sex in this
lifetime.
Of course I didn't want to hearthat and I was like, yeah,
whatever.
And so we became close friendsand I got laid off of my job in
in Los Angeles a few monthslater and he had gone back to
Argentina.
So he's like hey, why don't youmove to Argentina?
And I was like, okay.
So I sold, I sold everything,sold my car.
Everyone in California myfamily, my friends are like

(13:13):
don't sell your car, you needyour car.
And I'm like I'm not comingback, I don't want a car.
Um, and I moved to Argentinaand, um, he kicked my ass
spiritually, like called me outon all of my, all of my
unconsciousness, all of my justways that I was being
manipulative or or not speakingtruth, or like all the ways the

(13:35):
ego shows up to try to likeweasel its way to get what it
thinks it wants.
So it's very intense, veryprofound, and eventually we were
working together again, like wenever engaged sexually, but we
were working together on hismusic.
And eventually I was like Ineed to go, I need to figure out
what my dreams are.
And he was like no, no, don'tleave me.
Like like, stay and we'll workon my dreams and then we'll

(13:56):
figure out your dreams.
And I was like no, like I gotto leave, I can't do this.
And he was pissed, but I knew Ijust had to, I had to focus on
myself and that kind of launchedme into a spiritual journey
that hasn't ended since then.
But getting out of the US andmoving to Argentina, like I felt
fully alive.
I was like this is what I wassupposed to be doing, and like I

(14:18):
didn't love Argentina, like Ilove parts of it.
But I also was like, ah, like Iwould rather, like I want to be
in Italy.
So I ended up moving to Italyfor a year after that, when I,
when I took the leap into thevoid of moving to a different
country, it felt right andeverything worked out,
everything flowed and and I knewthat doing this crazy thing was

(14:39):
following my heart and mydreams and I knew that, like
this, is in alignment.
I don't know what I'm doing, Idon't know where I'm going, you
know, but this is in alignmentwith what I came here for.
I love that, so many things thatyou just said, and especially
about how we like when we'reunconscious about honoring our
own dreams, and even learninghow to listen like when you said
you were disconnected from thehead down.

(15:01):
I know exactly what you'retalking about because I was the
same way for a long time andlearning how to, yeah, those
projections that we're puttingonto other people like, oh,
let's do this for you, and thatlist that you made, like, oh,
this is for me, not for apartner.
That's like we're.
We have to learn to giveourselves that permission to say
yes to what we want.

(15:22):
And you just said something sokey and it's something that I'm
realizing for myself right nowin this process of as I'm
stepping into just deeper anddeeper self trust, which means
not caring what other peoplethink about my experience of
reality, because that truth thatyou just said right, that this

(15:43):
felt good in my heart, thatthat's really, I think, where
the truth speaks.
It's not logical, it's notrational, it's not in our mind.
Our mind is going to argue withus that this doesn't make any
sense, this is not rational,this is not a good thing to do.
You shouldn't do this, youshouldn't do that Versus the
heart is this felt sense oftruth?
And so I'm wondering about thatfelt sense of truth and if

(16:04):
that's something that you canshare your experience of and for
anybody listening how thatfeels and how you know to listen
to that truth as opposed tothat arguing mind that wants to
keep you safe.
Yeah, and I have the perfectstory for this that it's a
continuation of Argentina.
So I lived in Buenos Aires forseven months with this guy and

(16:27):
worked with him and really grewa lot, but realized I needed to
go.
And a friend of mine had movedto Patagonia and she was working
with this woman who hadmultiple sclerosis and lived on
like this ranch in the middle ofnowhere, and so she would, you
know, help her out in themornings and then have the
afternoon off.
And my friend was like whydon't you come visit me and stay
with us down here?
And I was like, can I just movethere, like, do you need more

(16:50):
help?
And she was like sure.
So I took a 20-hour bus ride tothis tiny town 2,000 people,
middle of nowhere, middle ofPatagonia, and no paved roads,
no restaurants like, nostoplights, no, no cars.
Really Everybody rode horses orwalked in this little village
and it was the first time I'dever lived outside of a city,

(17:11):
because I grew up in SouthernCalifornia, in Orange County, I
lived in LA, I moved to BuenosAires, which is like a huge
metropolis, and then I went tothis tiny place in Patagonia in
like silence and nature, and Iloved it and I was just like, ah
, like I can finally breathe, Ican hear myself think, and like
there's not this like low gradeanxiety that's constant.

(17:32):
So it was.
It was amazing and I loved itso much.
But then after a few months,like my money started running
out and again there wasn'treally any way to make money and
I'd had an income flow thatstopped and so I got to this
choice point again where it'slike, okay, I can't stay here, I
need to go somewhere.
So what do I do?
And my choices in my mind.

(17:52):
My options were move back to LAand like move in with my
parents and try to get anotherjob, which, like that, felt like
death.
I had an aunt who lived inOregon who had invited me, if I
ever needed to, to live with her.
I'd been to Oregon when I waseight years old on a road trip
and I had a knowing in my boneswhen I was eight that I would
live in Oregon eventually.
So I was like, okay, I could goback and live with her in

(18:14):
Oregon, which that was slightlybetter, but I didn't want to go
back to the States.
Another choice was I had afriend who was living in
Marseille in France at the timeand he said, hey, I have an
extra bedroom, you can move here.
Like, at least that's not the U?
S, I don't really want to go toFrance.
And so I'm struggling with thisdecision of like okay, and, and
they were all kind of, and theFrance one wasn't logical

(18:34):
because I can't work in Franceeither.
And it was like okay, I need tobe logical, I need to go
somewhere I can make money.
Like, where do I go?
What do I do?
And this woman had a deck ofgoddess cards and at the time I
didn't know much about likegoddess stuff or like animal
medicine or any.
I didn't.
I was kind of a, I startedmeditating, but I didn't know
that much.
So she said, well, why don't weask the goddess deck of cards?

(18:57):
And I was like okay, so we'reshuffling.
And I told her my options andshe's like well, where would you
go if you could pick anywherein the world?
And I was like Italy, like Ilove Italy, I want to go back to
Italy.
Like this, like I, every dayI'm in Italy, not in Italy, my
heart hurts a little bit.
And so she's like okay, so weshuffle the deck and I pull a
card and it's Fortuna, the Romangoddess of fate, and the whole

(19:19):
card is about Italy.
And we start laughing.
And I was like okay, I guessI'm going to Italy.
And she's like I guess you'regoing to Italy.
So the next day I booked aflight to Italy and again there
was no logical reason for me togo to Italy.
I didn't really have anyconnections left from, I wasn't
with the guy anymore, like thathad ended almost a decade prior.
But it's where I wanted to go.

(19:41):
And I got the sign from theuniverse of like go.
So I was like okay, fuck it,I'm just going to fucking go
with the last of my money.
And so I booked a flight and Istarted kind of reaching out to
try to find contacts.
I found a couch surfing hostwho, like this Italian guy who'd
been to Burning man which I'dbeen to Burning man.
So I was like, okay, like heseems cool.
And he's like, yeah, you canstay here for two weeks when you

(20:02):
land.
And I was like, okay, I'm goingto go there.
And then that was it.
I didn't know what I was goingto do after that I was.
I had to go back to Buenos Airesand get my passport renewed, so
I had to stay there for a monthand a friend had commissioned
me to watercolor for herchildren's book and I was.
I had so many blockages aroundcreativity and art but I was

(20:23):
trying to do it, but I wasprocrastinating.
So I was on Twitter and I'mjust like scrolling on social
media instead of doing thewatercolors.
And I see this line and it saysthis woman is imagineering the
future or something like thatImagineering the future with
Dana Lynn Anderson.
So I click on the interview andit starts playing and it says
Dana Lynn Anderson is opening anacademy of art, creativity and

(20:44):
consciousness in Italy.
And it was like I was hit by abolt of lightning and I was like
I'm going there, like I just Iwas like I'm going there and I
stopped the interview.
I didn't even listen to therest.
I Googled her, I found her emailaddress, I emailed her and I
was like hey, I'm going to be inItaly in a month.
Can I come help you launch thisacademy?
And she was like sure, likecome.

(21:05):
And she sent some informationand I started Googling more
about the spiritual communityshe lived in.
And so this is 2012 and likenine no, I don't know five or
six years prior, I had, in oneweek, two people handed me a

(21:26):
copy of Autobiography of a Yogiby Paramahansa Yogananda, and so
I was like, ok, I guess Ishould read this book.
And so I read the book, changedmy life and started studying
meditation through his center,the Self-Realization Center in
Los Angeles.
So that's where I learned howto meditate.
So that's where I learned howto meditate.
Dana Lynn Anderson and theAcademy of Art, creativity and
Consciousness was part of theAnanda community, which was an

(21:49):
ashram in Italy that had beencreated by one of Paramahansa
Yogananda's direct disciples,swami Kriyananda, which just
blew my mind, because I didn'tknow there were ashrams in Italy
, I didn't know there werecommunities based on Paramahansa
Yogananda's teachings.
Like it was complete divineorchestration, synchronicity,
whatever you want to call it.

(22:09):
So I flew to Italy and I'm anAmerican.
Usually, you know, you only getthree months in the Schengen
zone in the EU.
But when I got to Rome and I hada layover before I flew to
Florence and I was trying to geta cell phone and I saw this
like shortcut to the part of theairport with the mall and I

(22:31):
asked the guard.
I was like, hey, can I go get acell phone and he said
something really fast in Italianand my Italian was rusty so I
didn't understand and I was likeyeah, yeah, ok, and so he let
me through, and then I got myphone and then flew to Florence,
then through, and then I got myphone and then flew to Florence
, then got my luggage and I stepout on the street corner and I
realized I never went throughcustoms, I never got a stamp in
my passport, there's nodocumentation of me entering

(22:53):
this country.
So I realized I can stay herein Italy as long as I want.
You know, like that was justwhat I assumed.
So I ended up staying for ayear at the ashram, helping the
launch of the Academy of Art,creativity and Consciousness.
Oh my gosh, that's so amazingand I love that number one your

(23:14):
trust just to follow the cardand go to Italy.
When you listen to those things, that's how the magic unfolds.
And I always say that peoplewho call experiences like that,
those kinds of synchronicitiesor those signs that we really
get, that we know inside of usis a sign, but I always say that
people who don't believe in thedivine or believe in

(23:36):
spirituality, they use the wordcoincidence rather than the word
you know, a synchronicity, orfollowing it, or trusting it to
go.
So that was, I mean, that placesounds amazing to go there, so
did that reignite your love ofart and your?
I mean, it sounds like you'realready doing it, but did it
reignite something inside of you?

(23:56):
It actually changed myrelationship with art, because I
had always had this likecerebral connection to art.
And it was when I, when, as achild, I was a really good
artist and so it was all aboutlike, how good can you be, like,
how good of a picture can youmake?
It wasn't about myself-expression, it was about
like a photocopy of, like apicture of a tiger, and then I

(24:18):
can like do almost photorealismof this picture of the tiger,
and so there was no juice therewas.
It wasn't art that I was making, it was just like like
photocopies.
And when I went to the Academyof Art, creativity and
Consciousness she has atransformational art program
which I got certified in and inthis process I learned how to
create from what I was feelingin my body, which, again, I

(24:41):
hadn't been connected to until afew years prior.
So it completely for the firsttime in my life, which, again, I
hadn't been connected to untila few years prior.
So it completely for the firsttime in my life, and I was like
32 at this time I, I, I paintedand I drew from feeling rather
than from the mind, and so thatcompletely shifted my connection
, um, to painting and to art andand yeah it was.

(25:05):
It was a year of, like, verydeep transformation and, um,
just living it.
It fulfilled a dream for me ofliving in Italy long term.
And after that, after that year, um, I came back to the states
when my grandmother and myfather both passed away.
When my grandmother and myfather both passed away and I I

(25:29):
want to I intended to go back toEurope, but I ended up staying
in Oregon for 10 years.
But being in Italy for thatyear kind of like satiated that
longing that I'd had sointensely for the prior 15 years
or however many years.
It was 12 years, yeah, it's.
I feel like sometimes we havethese dreams and you kind of
have to do the dream for it tobe completed in some way, and

(25:53):
then you're ready for, like, thenext dream, and so living in
Italy for that year kind ofcompleted, okay, like I lived in
Italy and I was an interpreterfor yoga and meditation classes,
because I always had this ideaof like okay, maybe that's what
I want to do for with my life iswas an interpreter for yoga and
meditation classes, because Ialways had this idea of like
okay, maybe that's what I wantto do with my life is be an
interpreter and translateItalian and English.
And I did that and I realizedlike, no, like I need to use my

(26:13):
own voice, I want to speak myown words.
I don't want to just be puttingother people's words into
different languages.
But I didn't know that until Idid it and I didn't realize, you
know, yeah, I had to live thosedreams in order to then go on
to like the next things withoutthat that desire, kind of like
staying active in that longing.

(26:34):
But I believe that our, Ibelieve our dreams are destiny
and I believe that they'redivine directives and I feel
like things that we've alwayswanted to do are almost like
future memories calling usforward that are part of our
life path.
Yeah, that makes total sense tome.

(26:55):
I always think it's interestingwhen we're having conversations
like this and how similar we allare as humans and taking these
different paths and learning totrust ourselves, and sometimes
it is doing the thing that's notthe right thing.
That will then direct you, andI love your level of
self-awareness of knowing andrealizing these projections

(27:17):
right when it's like oh, this isa projection that's for me to
own, including interpreting forother people.
Right when you're like I needto learn to use my own voice,
and I just think that's sobeautiful.
And I also think that ourdreams are like.
They're energetic, right, andso it's really the energetic
expression of what our soul, howour soul wants to express and

(27:41):
how, when you follow one, evenif it's like a baby dream, right
, that little mini dream thatjust launches you into this
different trajectory of life,how then that path begins to
unfold and open things that youdidn't see coming.
Given that, what was thebiggest surprise?
Or the next dream that calledyou forward after being in the
States for 10 more years?

(28:02):
I loved, like Oregon isbeautiful and I loved living
there.
I had an amazing community ofwomen and witches.
And again, like more intensehealing, I lived in nature.
I'd always dreamed of living ina yurt on a creek in the woods
and I finally achieved that andit felt amazing.
And again like it's like theseleveling ups where I got the

(28:27):
yurt on the creek, in the forest.
That was gorgeous and I lovedit.
And once I got it, I was like mysoul was like okay, like next,
like you don't just stay hereforever, which I kind of thought
maybe I was going to.
But then after we lived therefor a little yeah, about a,
about a year, and we lived alsoin like another cabin for a year
before that I feel like as you,as you expand into your dreams

(28:51):
to, because to get from whereyou are into your next dream,
even if it's a little one, ittakes courage because you're
choosing the crazy, maybeillogical thing or thing that
people are like no, youshouldn't do that, just stay
normal, just do the thing, justwork here and stay safe.
And so when you take theseleaps, I feel like making

(29:14):
courageous choices that arealigned with our truth levels us
up into higher timelines.
So once I had gotten this kindof like dream life in the woods
on the creek, my intuition thenwas like, ok, like now you need
to get the fuck out of theUnited States.
And I had an awakening likeI've had a series of awakenings
over the last 15 years Like I've.
You know, I've had a series ofawakenings over the last 15

(29:36):
years, but this this last one inFebruary a year ago, february
was like a heartbreaking openawakening and I got a direct
message of get rid of all yourshit, get your finances in order
, you're, you're leaving, you'removing to an island, basically.
And I was like what is going on?
Where are we going?

(29:56):
I don't know.
And there was a lot of fearbecause at the time I was I mean
, I'm a single mom.
I had two children who werelike five and nine at the time,
and no money like living, youknow, hand to mouth, and.
But the the directive was soclear and it came along with a

(30:18):
lot of other downloads and somehealing capacities came online.
There was a lot going on.
But I was like, okay, like I'mbeing presented with this
directive, do I follow it or doI stay safe and just stay here
on my land in Oregon and keepgoing on this path, and I knew
that if I didn't go on to thenext thing, that my soul would

(30:41):
die, I would start shrivelingand I would just end up dying
eventually.
So I started getting rid of mystuff.
Most of my friends and familyare supportive of me following
my intuition and being crazy atthis point.
But I did have a family memberwho freaked out and she was like
cause it it?
I thought we were moving toHawaii for a minute, cause I've

(31:02):
lived in Hawaii before, but thenI was redirected to Greece,
which I've been wanting.
I've been longing to go toGreece at that point for 25
years and it never been.
I've been to Italy like ninetimes but I'd never made it to
Greece.
And some things opened up andso it's like okay, we're, we're
going to Greece.
And I had a family member andshe, she freaked out and she was
like I think you're in a manicstate and you're making, you

(31:25):
know, irrational choices.
And dah, dah, because I was, Iwas breaking the family motto of
stay safe, don't be crazy, youknow, don't follow your dreams.
And the thing was that thisfamily member she had bought me
a map of Greece six years prior,because she's known that I've
always dreamed of living inGreece.
And so I brought that up, likeI heard her fears and I kind of

(31:48):
held space and I was like youbought me a map of Greece six
years ago, like you rememberthat right.
And she's like, yeah, yeah, Iremember that.
I'm like okay, like this isn't,I'm not manic, this isn't a
crazy out of nowhere, like I'mmaking irrational decisions,
like this is something I've beenwanting to do for 25 years.
And so she's like okay.

(32:08):
And so she you know, she calmeddown.
But it was interesting to feelthat like family conditioning
voice be like no, no, stay safe,stay here, stay put, don't act
crazy.
And given your, you know yourhistory, what you shared about
your father, it's like this fearof like they're trying to
control it, right, they'retrying to control, control,

(32:29):
control.
So nobody has that experience.
Yeah, and I'd gone through thatwith my mother at one point
where I did have a psych.
I had an ungrounded, awakeningexperience that then devolved
into a psychotic, like apsychosis, psychotic break,
which my experience was.
I went into the underworld andI was, I was on the side of
madness, which I've been therenow and I understand what it is

(32:51):
and I know what it feels likeand I've worked with people who
have, you know, when they tipover to that side, I'm actually
really good at communicatingwith them because I understand
it and I've been there.
But it wasn't and I went, youknow, I was put in a mental
hospital and held there for awhile and I refused all
medications and the doctorstried to diagnose me with

(33:13):
bipolar and I was like, I'm notbipolar.
This was like an incident, thiswas like an isolated incidence
and I was I think I was eight ornine months postpartum.
So I was like what aboutpostpartum psychosis?
Why don't we diagnose it as that?
And they're like well, okay,and I was just like.
You know, I had to play thegame because the systems are
rigged in in fear and also as aform of protection, but they're

(33:36):
not actually helping anybody.
And most shamans you know, thepeople that are schizophrenic,
bipolar experience, these thingsthat we term mental illness are
actually the people that walkbetween worlds and in indigenous
societies they are recognizedand mentored of how to work with
this energy.
In our society it'spathologized, it's repressed,

(33:57):
it's drugged.
So that's something I'm superpassionate about.
I and I yeah, I have ADD and Ihave, you know, some of these
things that could bepathologized, and I think we
just don't understand.
We don't understand energy, wedon't understand spirit, because
our our actually our society isschizophrenic because it's

(34:19):
based on a lie that the divinedoesn't exist, ancestors don't
exist, spirit is the woo is notreal.
So we're living in a world thatis constructed on a lie.
So, yeah, we're gonna everyone'sgonna feel crazy.
Yeah, and oh my gosh, you justsaid so many things.
Oh, we could go on this wholeother tangent now about those
gifts, those things that aretruly gifts, and refusing to go

(34:41):
down a path if you're notcertain, like 100% certain, that
this is driving me somewhere.
That's not healthy.
And I really want to touch onsomething that you addressed
briefly, because I my intuitionwas like oh, people need to hear
this, especially right now, asmore people are awakening,
ungrounded awakenings,spontaneous Kundalini awakenings

(35:02):
.
Let's talk about that.
So that's what is that?
Yeah, when you, when you went oninto what you're focusing on,
that's exactly what I want totalk about, I feel like the main
.
So there's two main problemswith with these spiritual
universal energies and awakeningOne is being ungrounded and two
is trauma.
And so in our current society,almost everyone is traumatized

(35:24):
and has trauma and like varyinglevels with varying sources.
And you know, there's likecapital T trauma of like parents
dying, sexual abuse, war zones,things like this.
But there's also like smallertraumas that occur daily in
schools or in families where thechild feels like they're not

(35:46):
being heard or like theiremotions are being denied or
rejected or they just feel aloneand that energy gets trapped in
the body.
And so what I see in peoplewhere there's a negative
expression of these intenseenergies in bipolar, manic
schizophrenia, other things,even ADHD there's trauma in the

(36:11):
system that's blocking theenergy flow and kind of making
it shoot out sideways like ahose that has a kink in it.
And that was my father.
He had severe trauma.
He was born in Ireland in the1950s in the Magdalene laundries
, and the Magdalene laundrieswere slave labor camps for Irish
women who got pregnant out ofwedlock, and so he was in this

(36:36):
Catholic orphanage and we allknow the Catholic base of trauma
, which is sexual abuse and thenalso physical abuse, the nuns
hitting people, everything.
But he was there until he wasfour and then he was adopted by
an American family or purchased,and this is the fifties.
They don't know about trauma,they don't know about detachment
style.
There was no counseling, therewas no nothing.

(36:57):
It was like you're in San Diego, now you have a good life, what
the fuck is wrong with you?
And that manifested in a lot ofugliness when he was an adult
and in my childhood.
But so I feel like we need tobe able to work with these
intense energies of basicallybeing a channel of source energy

(37:20):
which again, people,schizophrenia, bipolar, manic.
I feel like they're actuallytuning into these energies of
the other world, like Iexperienced in February.
I never believed in entitiesbefore last year, but I had a
direct experience.
I was at a party and the entityof rape entered the house and I

(37:42):
felt it and I was like what thehell is that?
Like, oh my God, is someonegetting raped?
And I went to check all therooms.
No one's getting raped and Iwon't tell the whole story right
now, but I, uh, I stopped agirl from getting raped by two
men and I took them outside totalk to them.
And, um, men and I took themoutside to talk to them and they
were doing cocaine and alcoholand they had entities attached

(38:03):
to them which I cleared.
I found out later they wereLakota, they were from a
reservation, so they hadundergone severe trauma, some of
which they shared with me atthe party.
But it wasn't like these menwere going to rape the girl.
It was the entities that wereattracted to their trauma that
basically possessed them to dothis horrible thing.
That's like an echo of traumathat was done to their people.
You know, it's all thesepatterns and cycles.

(38:23):
So, yeah, trauma healing isnecessary for us to hold those
spiritual energies and thesource energies without them
going sideways due to entitiesand or fear or, like you know,
the ego shutting down as aprotective mechanism, which is
that's what psychosis is, andthen grounding.
Most people, most humans, aretotally ungrounded.

(38:46):
They don't have their feet onthe ground.
Some humans can go their entirelife without ever touching the
earth If they wear shoes andthey never go to the beach, like
they can just go their entirelives without touching the
ground.
When, again, when we, whenthese energies come and you're
not connected to the earth,they're going to fry your
circuit board and again causeall these you know issues that

(39:09):
we then pathologize what Iexperienced.
So when I, when I had theawakening, ungrounded awakening,
I basically I went to this veryintense retreat and then I woke
up and I basically was likeenlightened for like a day or
two, but I also wasn't sleepingand I wasn't grounded and I was
breastfeeding my daughter, whowas eight months, and so I

(39:31):
wasn't, I wasn't stable and Iwasn't able to hold all this
energy and stay stabilized andso it devolved into psychosis,
went into the underworld.
The experience I had in Februarywas the same kind of energy,
but this time I was totallygrounded.
I was living in the woods, Iwas barefoot every day on the
earth.
I had been barefoot on theearth for a few years at that

(39:54):
point, on a daily basis, and Iwas, yeah, like my energy was
cleared out because I'm livingin the forest, I'm not in a city
anymore, and I'd done a ton ofhealing work at that point.
And so my experiences with thefirst round of awakening, where
it went into psychosis, in inthat space, it was interesting
because, um, I stopped beingable to function in space.

(40:17):
Space.
It was interesting because Istopped being able to function
in space, like at the time I wasin Los Angeles where I'd lived
for over a decade and I couldnot locate myself in space and I
had to get anywhere.
I had to use a GPS and like myiPhone was like my tether while
I was in LA for that time,because I could not get anywhere
, even places I'd lived and beenbefore a million times, like my

(40:42):
whole sense of space was erased.
So that was really interestingfor me.
In that experience, with thisexperience back in February of
last year, my sense of time waserased and every day seemed like
a thousand years and thesynchronicities were just like
nonstop synchronicities.
I could hear thesynchronicities I could.
I could hear the universespeaking to me.
I could feel the intensity ofthe divine's love for me and

(41:03):
everybody.
And again it wasn't like aboutme, it was like, oh, like the
divine loves everyone sointensely and we as humans,
we're just playing this gamewhere we can't feel it and we
can't see it, and it's this,this like divine amnesia is what
Alan Alan Watts calls it.
But I could feel the intensityof of the love of the divine and

(41:25):
but yeah, so in this groundedexperience, time disappeared and
I couldn't, like I was in thepresent moment so intensely that
I couldn't remember ifsomething had happened a day ago
or a week ago.
And again, like every, everysecond felt like a year.
It was very intense, but it wasalso a lot of fun and it was
beautiful.

(41:46):
And in the psychotic episode,when it devolved, it was a lot
of fear and I was in it like aform of hell where there's
paranoia, and I thought, youknow, I was in this place where,
like, everybody was coming tokill or rape me and it was.
It was horrible.
And I think I want to share toois when I was in that other
dimension, the only way, what Ithought was the only way I could

(42:08):
get out was to kill myself.
And at the time I wasn'tsuicidal, I didn't want to die.
It wasn't like, oh, I'mmiserable, and like I had been
considering suicide.
But when I was in that otherdimension, in the underworld, I
thought I had to kill myself toget out of it.
And and I, if I, if I had beenable to kill myself at that time
, I probably would have, but Ididn't.
I didn't and you know Iobviously lived.

(42:31):
But I want to say I think a lotof times when people commit
suicide it isn't any other know.
They're like I had no idea andI thought they were fine and
they never said anything.
I think sometimes people killthemselves when they go into
those other dimensions and theydon't know how to get out or

(42:51):
they don't have people aroundthem that know how to support
them in the process of gettingout, because that's another
thing.
Yeah, if you can hold space fora person while they're going
through the underworld withoutfear, then they kind of come out
the other side and like arereborn.
But again, our society doesn'thave any literacy in doing this
really.

(43:14):
And oh my gosh, this is such animportant topic because I'm
witnessing this that exact kindof experience happening in a lot
of young people, becausethey're doing mushrooms, they're
doing psychedelics, they'redoing these, they're taking
these journeys into a part ofthemselves that they have.
No, they're't have the love andthe guidance, and so they're
going into these journeys andthey're getting stuck in that

(43:40):
underworld.
And, oh my gosh, so you justhit on something so important,
because psychedelics do.
I think there's such a greattool for activating and
cultivating a differentperception and a self awareness
level that may not have beenthere before.
But there is a dangerous sideto them in not understanding the

(44:01):
energies of a very realenergies of entities that exist
that we can't see those energiesthat do exist and attach to
those lower vibrational and theylook for those fear states,
they look for the wounding, theylook for the traumatized, they
look for the pain, becausethat's what they want to attach
to.
Yeah, wow, yeah, that's such animportant thing to talk about,

(44:23):
maya.
And I will say from a higherlevel that I don't believe like
even entities are all.
They're divine.
Also, the darkness is made oflove as much as the light.
The darkness is also the divineand entities are just part of
the game.
They're kind of like if you'rein a video game, there's like
the scary demon that comes tokill you and you have to like

(44:44):
shoot it and kill it and likethat's, and then you win.
And it's the same thing withdemons.
I know it sounds crazy to peoplewho are like no, like, if you
die, you die and it's a seriousthing.
Yes, it is serious for thehuman and and when we lose
people to death, you know it'svery painful and the body has to
grieve that as a human.
And there's a higher levelwhere there's only the divine.

(45:07):
It's all one thing your soul iseternal.
You don't disappear, as youwill know now, and I don't know
if you want to speak to that,because I would love to share
this podcast with friends and wehaven't gone into your recent
experience, which I also want toshare.
Another tangent, but on thehigher level, there's really
nothing to be afraid of andagain, this is a whole can of

(45:27):
worms because, again, we live ina schizophrenic society where
people are fucking terrified ofdying and of death of dying and
of death.
Yes, they are.
And yeah, and I didn't want toyou know I don't want to bring
things up like that and makethis podcast about me and my
experience but yeah, I lost my18 year old son just a little
over a month ago.
Now it'll be five weeks,actually Monday as of today,

(45:49):
which is March, this time thingyou talked about.
I'm in.
I'm like what is the date today?
I don't even know the 21st, andand I'm having the experience
and you know, I went actually toa bookstore to go seek out.
I'm like somebody surely hashad this experience that I'm
having and I can't find anythingabout it.
So I'm like, okay, well,clearly this is a book that

(46:12):
needs to be written, because theinterdimensional relocation of
my son, because theinterdimensional relocation of
my son, his interdimensionalrelocation from his physical
body, has the first day.
It's um, I had a psychoticbreak.
I couldn't breathe, my wholebody was shaking and I realized
in that oh, my gosh, my um.

(46:34):
Thank God I had a friend who'sa somatic trauma therapist and I
was able to call her.
She got me back into my body,maya.
Thank God, I had a friend who'sa somatic trauma therapist and
I was able to call her.
She got me back into my body,back into my breathing, back
into the present moment.
And when that happened, Irealized that there was a voice
that was running in my mind.
That was not my voice, itwasn't even my own voice.
It was an energetic attachmentthat had glommed onto my pain,

(46:55):
that was trying to make me blamemyself for this experience and
it sent me into this black holeof grief that I was like
drowning in.
And when I felt it, I heardthat voice, I was like, oh yeah,
you can go, fuck off, that isnot even my voice.
I'm like Bye, get out of here.
And after that experience,rather than having the death of

(47:16):
my son break me closed, it hasbroken my heart open so wide.
I've shattered open into amillion pieces.
That wouldn't have happenedOtherwise.
There's just no way this levelof pain that my physical human
is experiencing Because, as yousaid right, there's light in the

(47:36):
darkness, there's dark in thelight, and I know that to the
deepest level of this pain thatI feel in my heart is equal to
the amount of love I feel.
So I'm like this is love, thisis love manifesting itself in a
different way, and so I'm havingthis intense.
I was already spiritually awakeand it's been like where the

(47:58):
rubber hits the road in thisexperience of like.
Are you awake?
Do you really believe what youbelieve?
Do you really trust in thedivine?
Do you really can you reallysurrender everything you think?
You know that I that I knewrationally, I knew
intellectually and also in myheart, but this has really
separated me so much from mymind and my thinking to notice

(48:20):
how the conditioned self lovesto play negative thoughts
through my mind and even thefact that I'm experiencing in
the midst of the pain there's somuch peace and in the midst of
the grief there's so much loveand there's and I'm starting to
find joy again already not tothe extent that I had before,
obviously on February 16th, butI know it's coming back and I

(48:42):
know it's going to be evendeeper and bigger.
It's such a part of life andit's something that we avoid as
a society, and I think that'swhy we are schizophrenic and
crazy, because everybody runsaround acting like they have all
the time in the world, runsaround acting like they have all
the time in the world, and thetruth is, what nobody wants to

(49:03):
really acknowledge is that wenever know when the period comes
at the end of the sentence ofour life that like this is it of
our physical life.
And then we take that energeticself and we get to the other
side of.
Yes, this is an illusion, thisis a video game.
My son knew that we talkedabout this all the time.
He was a very highly consciousbeing for being so young, which

(49:24):
is why he didn't have to stayhere so long.
He didn't have to be here thatlong, and his experience here of
leaving so soon has broke me soopen.
And now what I'm experiencing isnot only synchronicities
constantly that I know it's him.
I mean, that are just crazy.
I would have to be insane tosay this is a coincidence, right
.
And now it's like this feelingis happening inside of me, where

(49:48):
I can energetically feel him,that when I go into grief or
crying and I say his name, Iwill get this warm, melting
sensation that comes from righthere I'm touching my heart and
my solar plexus, that wholeregion of just pure love and
peace that melts over my body,and I've had a near-death

(50:11):
experience right there.
So I also have that gift ofhaving a near-death experience
in trying to take my own lifewhen I was 21.
And so it's like I've neverwondered if there's life on the
other side.
I know there is, but when youlose somebody that you love in
the physical, there's differentways of handling it.
There's different ways ofhandling that experience, and I

(50:32):
think I'm handling it in a waythat not very many people do,
which definitely makes otherpeople look at me like I'm not
normal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And two days before your sonrelocated, a friend of mine, her
son, also relocated and he was18 months and she had, has had,

(50:52):
she's had five kids, free birththem, unschooled them.
They were traveling the world.
They've been traveling theworld for a few years.
At that point, so this 18 monthold baby had been to already I
don't know 12 countries and justhad what's, surrounded by his
siblings, like so much, likesuch a beautiful, like profound,

(51:12):
rich 18 months of life and justthis little light star being
and she's, she's handling it theway you are, and I would love
for you to to get on a podcastand talk about this because,
like there's no deeper grief, Ithink, than a mother that loses
a son and for you guys to behave already been fairly

(51:34):
awakened before it happened andthen to be taking it as this
like fucking rocket launch intoexpansion and truth and openness
.
Like when people see you,they're like okay, like I can't
pretend anymore and and peoplecan feel the truth of what
you're sharing.
You know, and it's, itchallenges the standard status

(51:55):
quo, schizophrenic reality oflike no, none of that shit's
real.
It's like no, it is real and weall need to wake the fuck up to
that.
It's real and life is short.
There's more than just thematerial plane and in love never
dies, it doesn't go anywhere.
You are a soul and this life isprecious.
You have this one life as youin all of time and space and

(52:18):
eternity and even with multipletimelines like.
There's only this one singularexperience of you in this
lifetime, in this moment.
What are you going to do withit?
You're not here to get some job.
You fucking hate and watch TVuntil you die.
Oh amen, sister.
And you know, that's thebiggest thing too in Weston's
transition is I feel like a partof my soul always knew he

(52:43):
wasn't going to be here verylong.
There's like a sense in my soulof a familiarity, like I
somehow always knew, and, inreality, of physical reality,
none of us are here that long.
We're here, our lives are likea fireflies light, like you're
gone and so, yeah, what are yougoing to do with it?

(53:03):
And it's like and I I know thatWeston would be so mad if I was
laying in bed crying and beinglike, oh, I can't get out of bed
and I'm not judging anybody'sexperience of grief.
I just know that for me andwhat I know to negate and go
against that trust, against that, to listen to this head, to
listen to my mind, which Ishared on, I share my journey

(53:23):
openly on Instagram and I hadsaid, you know, I realized that
I'm there's a voice in my headthat pops in, that's judging my
own grief experience of and itsays the most awful things, but
I don't judge it.
I'm like, well, that's aninteresting thought and I
realized it's just my thoughtstrying to and and maybe some of
them aren't even mine they couldbe those energetic attachments

(53:45):
that are like let's try thisentry into the you know, like
into this being, and see if wecould tear her down.
And I'm like no, there's beautyin everything and that this
human life, this human journeyis, is for our soul.
We are souls in a body, here tofully express as only we can.

(54:05):
Just like you said, there'snever going to be another me,
there's never going to beanother you, never.
When we really stand and look atthe, at the immense gift that
it is to be in a body and I haveit as energetic beings that
it's like it's like a fishgetting caught in a net, right
that we're like we're goingreally fast in our energy and

(54:28):
then all of a sudden we're likewe get to have this really slow
experience called life on earthand then we're gonna leave it
again, right?
What do we do with that?
What do we do with thisexperience While we're here?
How do we, how do we say yes toour dreams?
How do we say yes to what iscalling our hearts forward?
And you said it takes courage,and I love the word courage,

(54:48):
because courage means to be ofheart, it really means to listen
to your heart and not that mindthat does seek to think it's
real, to to think the body isreal, to think that what society
says is real, to what ourgovernment says is real, what
the media says is real, that allthese division tactics are real
, when none of that is real.
It's all bullshit and none ofit matters.

(55:10):
And it's all the game.
It's all the game of rememberingthat we're God and goddess
incarnate.
And there's this teacher I loveof Kabbalah called David
Guillaume, and he calls SatanSatan.
However they say it, he's theopponent.
And again, it's like whenyou're playing a sport you want

(55:30):
a good opponent.
You need a good opponent, yeah,to get stronger, to increase
your capacity to level up.
And so I love this presentationof this earth experience and
like entities and Satan orwhatever it's not, they're not
this evil thing and the bad guyla la, it's like they're your
opponent and what your task is,what the game is, is to open

(55:56):
your heart more, increase yourcapacity to love, increase your
capacity to hold more light andbeam more light against the
darkness.
And so I just love thatreframing of like, oh, like,
satan is just the opponent andhe's part of your game.
He's the bad guy in your movie,but then when you're done
filming and like brad pitt isplaying satan, then you guys go

(56:18):
out for sandwiches like it's notthis horrible fraught thing,
but that's the game, like that'sthe point is to make us think
that it is.
So then we have this experienceof like riding on the roller
coaster and thinking we're gonnadie and go to hell.
So there's that, and then alsothere's this quote that I love
from one of my mentors, j Joshrocks, and he says pain is just

(56:39):
unfinished beauty.
And I, whenever we're in painand suffering, like that's,
that's, it's totally valid andit's totally real and it it
deserves our, our honoring andour attention and our full
embodiment and like fullyexperiencing and feeling
whatever that is, the pain, thefear, the anger, the sadness.

(57:01):
But then we keep going and itturns into beauty.
It always turns into beauty,because we live in this like
two-sided coin, dualistic worldwhere it's all one thing and so,
you know, the darkness holds,the.
We wouldn't see the stars ifthe sky, when the sun's out and
the sky's all bright, you don'tsee any stars, and so the

(57:23):
darkness again, it's not a badthing, it's not negative, it's
not even, yeah, it's not thisevil thing we make it out to be.
It's just part of the wholebeautiful experience of duality
of this world.
Yeah, and we do live in aduality of this world.
Yeah, and we do live in a in adual nature in the world.
And and actually I make it mypractice to try to be not try, I

(57:46):
make it my practice to practicenon-duality of seeing that end
point, like if you're there'stwo sides of the coin, to sit on
the edge where I could see like, oh, there's the dark over
there, there's the light overthere.
What choice will I make formyself, what choice will I make
for my life?
And to be able to hold both ofthose, because I am equal parts

(58:06):
darkness and equal parts light.
I've been to the dark, I'vebeen to the depths of hell,
literally in my life, and beingthere has propelled me to go
even more into the light.
And that's the alchemy of beinghuman, and something that I love
to just say is we're here to befully human and fully divine.

(58:30):
And so the fully human part iscompletely experiencing and
again honoring all of thedarkness, all of the pain, all
the sadness, all the grief,because that's what makes life
so sweet.
And, like you were saying,grief and love are the same
thing.
Grief is a celebration of loveand it's a completion of that
form or stage of love.

(58:51):
But love never dies, love neverends, and so the grief is like
this celebration of thecompletion of that phase, of
this experience of life.
And so the fully human sidegets to experience all of the
darkness and all the light ofbeing human.
And that's what we're here for.

(59:12):
And so I'm a somatic therapistand I love going into the
darkness and into those I'm nowcalling them exhale emotions.
So again, all of thecontractive, negative emotions
are just the exhale.
It's when your body's likeshrinking down and you're like,
oh my.
God, I'm alone in the universeand I'm going to die and nobody

(59:34):
loves me and I'm not good enough.
I'm not enough.
It's the shrinking down andthen, from that exhale, then we
move into the expansion, and theexpansion, the inhale always
comes after the exhale and youcan't keep inhaling forever as a
human.
You're going to die.
You need to exhale, and thenyou need to inhale you need both
, and so it's this dance betweenthe contraction and the

(59:56):
expansion, and our societyalways wants to stay in the
endless expansion.
It never wants to exhale and wecan't do that.
It's not working.
It doesn't work.
No, it doesn't, and it's drivingpeople mad, trying to seek
something, seek for happiness,seek for meaning outside of
themselves.
You'll never find it there.
You'll never find it there.

(01:00:17):
You wind up chasing forever.
Yeah.
You just never fully are alivebecause you're not going into
the pain and then you're notfully experiencing the joy
either.
Like we, you got to go into thedarkness to fully experience
the light and to increase yourcapacity to experience love.
And yeah, a friend said oncesomething like grief is one of

(01:00:38):
the only emotions that actuallydigs your capacity grief deeper,
like your capacity to love isexpanded by grief.
A hundred percent.
So a lot of people I feel likeare stuck, not breathing or
barely breathing.
We're like they'll barely getsad, but they'll barely
experience joy and happinesseither.
And so they're in this likestate of freeze and working a

(01:01:00):
job they hate and watching TVand not living their dreams
because they're afraid of goingthrough the discomfort of
feeling.
Yeah, and I think that's theworst kind of grief, and if you
listen to death doulas andpeople who do this work for a
living, that the thing thatpeople most say at the end of
their life is they regret allthe things they did not do.

(01:01:22):
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's not in the, it'snot in the stuff, it's not in
the.
Oh, I'm so glad I watched that.
I binge watched that wholeNetflix series that weekend Gosh
, that was so great.
I'm so glad I did that.
Like I'm never gonna say thaton my deathbed.
And so this is so such abeautiful conversation of
following your dreams, listeningto your heart, and that really

(01:01:44):
is the work of coming into thebody.
You have to be embodied Inorder to listen to those other
two brains, our gut and ourheart, not just the thinking
mind that is picking up messagesthat are not generated from
inside of you.
Those are messages that cancome from outside of you just as
much.
Or have been programmed byconditioning.
Yes.

(01:02:04):
Like all of the years of ourparents, what they were telling
us, our peers, our schoolingsystem, our media is
conditioning your brain to thinkin certain patterns that are
not written or built for humanthriving.
Absolutely yeah, Maya.
Where can people find you andyour work that you're doing in
the world?
So I'm most active on Instagramand I'm the only Maya Lila

(01:02:26):
DeVento in the world.
So if you just Google Maya LilaDeVento, you'll find my
Instagram.
I'm getting more active onYouTube and then I have a
website that's pretty brief andI'm still figuring out my life
and like what I'm here to do.
Like I know I'm here to do thisstuff.
Yeah.
Talk about the divine and I'mkind of I've been kind of the

(01:02:49):
spiritual counselor spiritualcounselor for a decade now
because I am able to hold like asuper high perspective and I
just love humans so much and Ilove life and and so, yeah, I do
transformational coaching andspiritual counseling, but I'm
still figuring out.
I don't really know what thefuck I'm doing.
Well, and do any of us really Imean like the, as when we're in

(01:03:13):
on this divine walk, I am wellaware that to go with the will
of my soul, to follow the willthat's connected to something
far greater than I, requiresthat I have to trust in that the
path that I think I'm on mightjust all of a sudden be like
Nope, you're going over here, soI love that you, you're doing
it.
I'm doing it.

(01:03:33):
I'm doing it.
I'm living in Vietnam right now.
We've I've been traveling withmy daughters since last July,
and then we lived in Italy, welived in Greece, we lived in
Thailand, we lived in Vietnam.
I honestly don't know wherewe're going next, and so we're
here for now, and the thingsthat have been lighting me up
lately is feminine embodiment,like learning how to be a woman

(01:03:55):
in our society because we'rewomen.
women are so fucked and justbasically conditioned to be
toxic, wounded men at the sametime, and it took me decades to
learn how to be a woman and inmy feminine and I'm still
working on it because I used tobe super pushy, aggressive,
defended, you know I was I wasoperating in my wounded

(01:04:16):
masculine and so, um, I, I'mstarting now to figure out like
okay, like how to teach women tobe in their divine feminine
rather than in their masculine,and embody their radiance and
experiencing life as, like a, asa reflection and magnetism of
your own radiance, and it gets alot more fun and easy.

(01:04:37):
And then also just divineembodiment, like becoming God
and developing our relationshipwith God, because most of sight
again, either doesn't believe inGod or, if they do, they treat
God like a narcissist.
Yeah, so it's like this battleagainst the divine that's trying
to punish you or trying toteach you lessons, like there's

(01:04:58):
a lot there.
And then also, I'm veryinterested.
I feel like this time thatwe're in of awakening is also
related to divine union ordivine reunion in relationships,
and so I feel like we're beingcalled to heal our own inner
masculine and feminine.
And then we're also being called.
A lot of people I know arebeing called into conscious
relationships and like how doyou do that?

(01:05:21):
How do you make it work?
How do you communicate in likethe higher aspects rather than
in our wounding?
Because I was never given atemplate or any examples of a
healthy relationship between aman and a woman.
My parents tried to kill eachother in front of me when I was
four.
So, that's a big thing that'scoming up and I feel like we're
moving towards this divinereunion, within and without, and

(01:05:45):
so I love that topic of justyeah, how to do that and how to
make our relationship withourself work and feel good, and
how to make our relationships,our intimate relationships, work
and feel good.
So so beautiful I was.

(01:06:05):
I went and had lunch the otherday with a couple and I just
loved what he said aboutmasculine, feminine and their
spiritual couple, as as myhusband and I are, and so we
were having a really deep,beautiful conversation and he
said, uh, we're talking about,like, men and women and coupling
and really sacred relationships.
And he said, oh, it's verysimple, women are life and men
are the protectors of that life,and I loved that.

(01:06:29):
Yeah, beautiful.
Yeah, well, thank you so muchfor joining me on this show and
this conversation has beenreally powerful, really
beautiful, and I have your linksdown below where people can
find you, and I just wish yousuch a beautiful rest of your
day and thank you for being here.
Thank you, and thank you forshowing up in like your grief

(01:06:52):
and in this huge opening thatyou're going through, in this,
like it's amazing.
Um, I'm what you're.
You know, what you're sharingon on social media is just so
powerful and moving, and I've,I've been calling cause, you
know, I know you and my friendwho lost her son, but then there

(01:07:13):
was a bunch of other deathsthat kind of popped off around
the same time and I'm callingdeath now light explosions,
because I feel like wheneversomeone dies, especially a child
or someone young, especiallythese souls who are like, so
alive, and then they die whenthey're like 28.
And you're like, why did theydie so young?
It's because it's like thismassive light explosion and

(01:07:34):
again it's like a reminder forall of us to like massive light
explosion and again it's like areminder for all of us to like
wake the fuck up, like trulylive, and so thank you for
taking this light explosion andjust going with it and
amplifying it.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate it Much love.
Thank you.

Joya (01:07:51):
Thank you for listening to .
We Woke Up Like this.
I would appreciate a like, asubscribe and a follow wherever
you listen to this podcast.
Thank you so much.