Alba Monn is a mother who had a fascinating experience with the birth of one of her children, Orelia. Alba had a near death experience that changed her life. It was, in actuality, a shared death experience, as you will learn when you hear her story.

I’ve broken this very special episode into three parts. In parts 1 and 2, I get out of the way and let Alba tell her story as she recalls it. It might be a bit confusing in parts because the story doesn’t begin on the night her daughter was delivered in an emergency situation, it begins years earlier. In part 3, I ask Alba to go into more detail and we discuss the lessons from her absolutely amazing experience.

In her experience, Alba learned:

• Souls have no age
• Forgiveness is absolutely essential for our soul’s well-being
• Souls have no age
• Humans are all flawed equally and differently,
• A life can have profound meaning no matter how short the time here on Earth
• Something prepares us for the tough lessons we’re about to encounter if we pay attention
• Tragedy is less of a punishment and more of an opportunity

Get Alba’s book here:

Proof Of Eternity

Transcript:

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted, and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Everybody, I want to set up this interview with you. I’m going to break this into three parts. So this is part one. And it’s what the woman named ABA, mon ABA was telling me a story about her daughter being born, and includes elements of a near death experience with incredible rich educational experience while she was on the other side, with pre cognitive dreams to go back two years before her daughter was born, there’s a lesson of forgiveness in here, there’s just so much in here, there’s a lot of richness. So it took us about an hour and a half to get to the first part. And we went back and recorded a second part that actually fills in some of the blanks when Allah was telling me her story. So I do encourage you to listen to all three parts, there is so much in here that I think it’ll be really beneficial to you to go ahead and listen to all of it. So ABA did not want to be recorded on camera. So there’s no video of ABA on this one. But it’s definitely worth getting through. Thanks a lot and have a great one. Hey, everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth. And today I’ve got with me a woman who has gone through a journey of the loss of a child is a journey that we both share. Uh, her name is Alba mon, and her daughter really passed. And Alba had a really interesting experience with the raelia when she passed I was going to tell us about today. So with that brief introduction, I just want to introduce ABA to brief degrowth and say welcome, and thanks for being here today album.

Alba Monn 2:13
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah,

Brian Smith 2:16
it’s really good to, to get to know you and to hear your story and have you share your story with with my audience. I know that your daughter passed away, and I noticed you had a particularly spiritual experience when your daughter passed. So tell me about what what happened.

Alba Monn 2:31
Yeah, I had an lifethreatening accident together with orelia. And the thing was that she was actually clinically dead, she had to be resuscitated. And she was brought to another clinic about an hour away from my clinic where I was to stay because I had to have an emergency operation. And unfortunately, it took it should have taken them about half an hour. But the procedure showed that there was something else going on, they couldn’t stop the bleeding. So it took about two hours instead of half an hour. And while I was in the operating room, earlier, was resuscitated, and she had a heartbeat. She had been without a heartbeat for more than half an hour because they had done some other procedures instead of the ones that she actually needed. And after having had this emergency operation, I was left in the ICU. And I was not with my daughter because she was taken away. And so I was thinking about the whole circumstances and trying to guess if she could have a normal life still, after all that what was going on after the accident. and in this situation, I had a near death experience together with my daughter. And to be honest, it was something that I would have never expected. And I was just laying in my ICU bed and thinking about the state that she was in and and trying to figure out how many minutes she had been at a loss of oxygen. And suddenly I felt that somebody was standing behind my bed. And I just felt a presence. And that’s how it all started essentially.

Brian Smith 4:37
Wow. So I just for some little bit of context. It was a really at the time of the accident.

Unknown Speaker 4:44
Actually, she was a newborn. And so the emergency operation that I had was actually an emergency emergency cesarean section and I was and I wasn’t Physically aware of everything that was going on because I was still in full anesthesia. And she was taken out, they tried to resuscitate her with the help of specialists from another clinic, they were on the phone with the specialists, and they told them what to do and how to try to resuscitate her because she was clinically dead when she was born.

Brian Smith 5:20
Okay, so you felt a presence behind your bed. And then what happened?

Unknown Speaker 5:25
Well, I, I was fully aware, I hadn’t been asleep at all during that night, because it was that was all around midnight when I had emergency operation. So I was in my bed after one o’clock or so in the evening. And I just felt that a presence was right behind me. And I remembered that I was asking myself Who is that? Who could that be. And at the same moment, I realized that my daughter, it’s my child. And I actually was really puzzled because I felt that this person was a grown up person. So it didn’t seem to make any sense. And before I could grasp what this was all about, she was actually already trying to communicate with me. And we had a fairly political discussion. And it was all around the circumstances of the of the accident, because my husband actually left right after the accident in his car, I had told him, we must go to the hospital at once, because the baby’s not moving, and I need an ultrasound. And he had just woken up, he went to bed a lot earlier than me. And so he didn’t understand what was going on. And we had another child that was not even two years old. And I told him to get our older daughter dressed so that we could go to the hospital. And t got mad at me because he didn’t understand what was going on. And he just left in his car, because I told him to get my other daughter dressed. And he just, he was too sleepy to realize what was what was really going on. He didn’t understand anything. And so I was in this situation where I knew that I was blaming him for everything that had happened, because I had to get my little daughter dressed, I had to go down downstairs with her, our house has three stories. So I had to go outside look for him, his car was gone. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen. So I was in shock at that time, because I knew I had to go to the hospital at once. And he wasn’t anywhere to be found. So I had to go back upstairs with my older child with my toddler on my hips. And I had to go to stories up to find my phone and finally call him. And then I had to convince him to come back because he said he went, he was going to go to his parents house because he didn’t understand what I wanted for him to do in the middle of the night to get our toddler dressed. So he obviously didn’t understand anything. And I had to decide if I wanted to call them for emergency medical emergency. And I decided not to do that, because I needed for him to look after our toddler daughter. So I knew that I had to stay in the hospital, or car seat wasn’t his car I had I didn’t see any. I don’t know, I didn’t see any solution to this problem. So I told him, he must come back at once and, and get me to the hospital. And that’s what he did. But we I think it was between 20 and 30 minutes until we actually arrived in the hospital. So it was a big delay. And I wasn’t ready to tell anyone in the hospital what was going on because I didn’t want to put my husband in the back place. And anyway, I just realized I’m talking to them about the circumstances wouldn’t make any any sense because all I wanted for them is to rescue my daughter essentially. So I was really upset with my husband, I had this huge anger inside I that I couldn’t articulate because I wasn’t with him. I couldn’t even talk to him or communicate with him. I didn’t want for anybody else to know. So I wouldn’t try to talk to anybody else in the hospital. And I was in this inner turmoil of anger and hate to be honest, because I was blaming him for all the medical problems that are taught Who would ever have in the future now and in the future. And I was also blaming God, to be honest, I was in an inner rage. I was thinking how could this ever happen to me? How did I deserve something like this to happen in my life? I didn’t. I didn’t find any reason for me to go through something like that. and in this situation, my daughter was standing behind my head looking down at me she was grown up and she didn’t hesitates, she just started to talk to me. And her first words were forgive him. And I, I was so upset, I just answered, No way, I’m never going to get forgive him, because what he has done is unforgivable. And so she talked back to me, and she’s

Unknown Speaker 10:21
dead now, forgive him. And she repeated it between seven and 10 times. And during these moments, I started to try to analyze what was going on. And I was thinking, What’s this? What’s this conversation? Who is? Why is she standing behind my bed? Why does she want for me to forgive him, it just didn’t make any sense to me. And I also felt like she was putting pressure on me extra pressure in this situation, because as I was trying to understand what was going on, I felt like she should have understood my point of view. And my point of view was that I was going to separate from him as soon as possible, as soon as I was out of the hospital again, and, and able to take steps, legal steps to get away from him, actually. And so she repeated, forgive him. And I was not ready to even talk about it. And so we had this telepathic discussion, and I always brought forward some more arguments, why I wouldn’t forgive him. And she was trying to explain to me why I should, for instance, she told me if you don’t forgive him, it’s going to be over your marriage is going to be over. And I said, Well, no problem. I am planning on doing this anyway. So this is nothing that will be in my way, I’m not going to hesitate to separate from a guy that doesn’t protect his family that doesn’t protect his baby, actually. And so she told me, for instance, on maybe he didn’t do it on purpose. And we had been talking for a while before that. And that was actually the point when I started to think it all over. And I realized that she was right. So he definitely didn’t do it on purpose. And this calmed me down. And we had some more parts of the conversation where she finally convinced me that forgiving him was something desirable. So I, I understood from a philosophical point of view, like, totally theoretically, I understood that it was fine. Could be something good for me to do to forgive him. But I told her that I’m not willing to do it, because the circumstances had caused too much pain and anguish for me. And I didn’t want to just look past that. And she tried to make me see why I should forgive him for some more other reasons. But I just, I just didn’t think that I would want to make that effort. It was an emotional effort that seemed to be so huge that I couldn’t do it. Yeah. So I finally told her that I knew what she meant, I knew that she meant well, and that I was just not willing, and not capable of forgiving him at that point in time. And to be honest, I also told her that I think it’s unforgivable. So no matter what, I would never forgive him, like for the whole future. As long as I live, I would never be able or willing to forgive him. And then she was quiet. And

Unknown Speaker 13:53
after that, it was over. So this telepathic discussion was over. And I was thinking so finally, she understood that there is no way that we could ever agree on something because I was not willing to do what she wanted for me to do. And so I was kind of relieved that this pressure on me was gone. And I was fine with how the discussion had ended. But suddenly she was sitting on the visitor’s chair right next to my bed about maybe, I don’t know how much it is in inches, but maybe between four and five feet away from me. Hmm. So there was a visitor’s chair and everybody who comes to visit is allowed to sit in that chair and the chair was in front of the door. So behind the chair, you could see the door to my room. And so she was sitting down and she was holding her hands like she was praying and she was looking at me with this very pleading. look in her eyes, and I knew that she was trying to make me see that it was serious. So I was in a serious situation. And I would, I should at all. I don’t know, under all circumstances, no matter what the circumstances had been, I should forgive him. But I was irritated because of what she looked like. And I didn’t want to start this discussion, and he get anymore and I was just looking at her and I was not ready to get into a telepathic discussion anymore. So from my point of view, this was settled. Wow. Yeah, it was actually very irritating because I was laying in this bed, thinking to myself, What is going on here? I could see the the medical personnel behind the class window, looking at different kinds of medical. How do you call it,

Brian Smith 16:04
charts?

Unknown Speaker 16:08
machines that they were checking my oxygen in my blood and all that, and I was looking at this person at the same time, and I was thinking What is going on? I knew that it was my daughter on the chair. But it didn’t seem to make any sense. First of all, she was grown up. Secondly, she looked very strange, like her hairdo was reminded me of the roaring 20s. So she had these waves in her hair. Her hair cut was very short. And also what she was wearing, like her clothes, they looked like something people people would be wearing in the roaring 20s. So I was, I was puzzled, to be honest. And I, I felt that I’d like to reject what I was seeing, because I was starting to think that’s weird. I mean, that’s even weirder than the discussion that we just had, because the discussion felt kind of normal. Or at least, it made some kind of sense. But in this situation, I was I was ready to shut her off in a way. So I was thinking about her hair to what kind of other hairdo would look a lot better on her. And I was thinking about her clothes, thinking that they looked old fashioned Jesus Christ, why was she wearing something like that. And for instance, it was way too tight on on her upper body for what seemed appropriate to, to me. And it was the shirt was too tight. And her skirt was a strange kind of length. So it all looked awkward. And, and also her shoes, I was just thinking about what I would tell her to wear and how I would make maybe to influence her to have another hairdo or stuff like that. So just rationalizing how I would change her so that she would fit in everyday life. Interesting. Wow. Yeah, I was actually I was at that point, I was really shocked. Because I realized that after a couple of minutes, when I was looking at her, she looked absolutely normal, like solid. But when I was concentrating, maybe on an on an element on her shirt or something, I saw the door behind her shimmering slightly through her upper body. And that totally freaked me out. I was thinking, What is going on? How could I see part of the door, not behind her, that, you know, just behind her. And I was I decided I’m not going to go go through with this. And I’m not going to try to listen to her anymore. And it just, it just seemed too weird. And I remember I turned my face away to the other side because I didn’t want to look at her anymore. And the important thing is that I had no idea that I was actually in the process of dying. I was splitting it internally. And they had just decided to sew me up after two hours trying to get the bleeding stop, which they couldn’t and they decided they would just, you know finish the operation and what they were actually not allowed to do. But they told my husband that either I would bleed to death on the operating table, which they didn’t want to happen where they would just finished the operation and and just charge it up because they didn’t put it in any records. So they didn’t write it down. That operation didn’t go well. And I’d had no idea that I was about to die. And my husband actually knew it but he was sent home so he wasn’t allowed to talk to me anymore. And and the thing is that I explained the whole setting to me as my daughter trying to reach me because she knew that I was in the process of dying. And if she wouldn’t reach me and change my attitude and change the emotional turmoil that I was in, I would die in this state of anger and all negative emotions that you can imagine. And I had no idea what he wanted, because I didn’t realize that I was in any danger. And I was thinking, I’m on the way to getting Well, again, I just had my operation. And now I’m going to be home in about a week or so. So that was my belief system at the time. And when I turned my head away from her, because I was just, it was too much for me, to be honest, I was

Unknown Speaker 20:49
I was feeling that I had no strength to be put under any pressure from her anymore. So I turned away. And I actually heard her say, a sentence, she whispered a sentence that was audible. And when she said that sentence, a kind of flash went through my whole body, I can describe it, just I can just say it was like fire or lightning flash going through the inner part of my bones. So I felt a flash of energy, just rushing through me. And at the same time I was in another room. It was just an instant. And I think it was just her sentence that just took me out of the whole situation. And what she was whispering was that, but he’s actually my daddy still. And I heard that sentence and I remembered that it was this energy bolt of lightning going through me in a split second. And then I was in another room, and I was standing upright, I was full of energy, I didn’t feel weak anymore. And I was in, in a room that had no edges. And no ends. I don’t know how to describe it, but that was how I felt it was it was without ends and without edges. It was kind of a round, lengthy round room. And it seems like a huge Hall maybe like inside of a church, but just without the edges and without anything that would disturb the, the the shape of the room. And in this room, I I felt all emotions that I felt were like, intensified by, by 10. Like by tenfold. And I had a huge heat in my chest area. I felt it felt like fire burning like fire and I saw myself and my husband standing about seven meters seven. I don’t know what this is, and

Brian Smith 23:13
it’s about 20 feet, but

Unknown Speaker 23:15
Okay, okay, yeah, about 20 feet away from me. And I was standing on the left side, my husband was standing on the right side. And the way we were standing is that we were holding our hands up in an 45 degree angles towards each other so that just our fingertips would be about to meet above us, and it looks like a doorway like an ancient doorway.

Announcer 23:41
We’ll get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach. If you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, grief to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri e f the number two gr o w th.com. If you’d like to support this podcast visit www.patreon.com slash grief to growth www.patren.com slash g ri e f the number two gr o w th today make a financial contribution. And now back to grief to growth. And

Unknown Speaker 24:41
as I was watching what I was presented with, I realized that this is the door of life. So my husband and I had been the door of life for our daughter. And I first I was irritated. I had no idea where I was but I realize that this meant that I was presented with the door of life, which means that we had a both equal on input into, into her and into her life and into our future. And I saw that my, for my heart there was coming a light out of it. And this light was on, how should I say it? It was enlightening the whole room. So there was no other sources of light, but the light that was coming out of my heart. And I was wondering how this was be possible. And I looked down at myself. And when I looked down, I saw that there were two different pipe pipe pipelines of light, went out of my chest area out of my heart, one was going towards me, and one was going towards my husband. And I was overwhelmed by all these emotions, there, I could analyze four emotions. One was love. And one was remorse. And one was sadness or grief. And the fourth one was a very strong desire for being forgiven for everything that I had done wrong. In in my whole life. I don’t know why. But it was a very, very strong emotion. And I was puzzled by everything I did, I was presented with in this in this room. And I was starting to understand that I had to ask myself some questions. And I asked myself, What is this that is coming out of me like light or fire, because it had little fibers in it that were like, little strings of fire, so it was just little fibers, and then about five feet away from me, it would separate so this pipeline would kind of crack crack open, and some of these strings would look out. And then it was just like, very strong flashlights from every one of the two pipelines was just white light, pure white, light, netboot, enlightened the whole room. And the answer that I was given was that love, what is what is shining in this area. So that’s love that comes out of me. And I was, in this moment, I was so overwhelmed that I realized that I was seeing the situation, from my daughter’s point of view, I realized that this is not my only point of view, because I, as I was analyzing it, it was, I was seeing the whole situation from her point of view. And I don’t think that I’m such a good person to be able to enlighten the whole room by myself. But I, as I was watching it, I realized that it may, and that her love to me and her love to her dad, were exactly the same. And in the situation, when I was so angry with my husband, it seemed unbelievable that she would love him just the same as she would love me. And so that got me thinking. And while I was thinking about this equality of the love, I realized that it’s the same with the door of life. Also with us, we are both 50% of the door of life, like genetically and in every other way. And at the same time, her left to us, was also either 100% for both of us, or you could say 50% for me, and 50% for her dad.

Unknown Speaker 28:50
Yeah, while I was looking at this, what was presented to me, I, I reached a point where I got it that she wanted for me to see that I shouldn’t think that I was any better than my husband. Because in our discussion, in our telepathic discussion, she told me that one sentence was, no one is better than the other one. So this was one of those sentences, and it looked as if she would show me in this spiritual round, that this was the truth that none of us is more important to her, and that she has the same for both of us, and that it was not fair of me to think that I was any better than my husband, because he just didn’t understand what was going on in this situation. Do you want for me to go on? Yes, yes, please. I had reached a point where i, where i thought that I had understood what the store of life was about. And I had reached a point where I realized that she loved my husband. The same that she loved me And I was shattered, I was so overwhelmed by the thought that you had so much understanding for him and so much love for him that I was, I had the feeling that my whole concept of life was, was tumbling down. And as soon as I had the idea that I understood what this was all about, I saw in the distance, about 20 feet further away from my husband and knees standing towards each other, I saw huge pharmacy scales, they were at least three times bigger than we were. So I am automatically met the mathematician, but it must have been huge from the perspective that I was in because it was a lot further away. And the scales were in balance. And there was a little bit on one side, and then there was a huge bed on the other side. And I, I was actually I was shocked when I saw it. Because as soon as I saw those scales, I had the feeling that this was really serious. And that was something that looked like authority, so that I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have a say in what was presented to me now. That’s how I felt to me. And the one side was a little bit spiky, like little black spikes, and the other one was like jelly fish. So it was kind of gooey and soft. And, and I realized, when I saw that those little piles, or bunches, I realized that it was what came out of our lives. Like the that was the thing that didn’t fit in with what we should have lived our life like. And it felt like it was like, if our life was something like Earth, we would be put through a grid. And those big things wouldn’t fit through the grid. So everything else was fine, it fell through. But these things were the things that couldn’t get through. So they stood out. And I, I was trying to analyze later on what what did those punches mean. And I think it’s the things that that we have to carry, like the psychological things that are kind of a burden for each of us, there’s something that that we carry with us through life. And I realized that this little spiky things, they were something like inner harsh criticism, maybe even if you don’t say it out loud, but inside you, you criticize others, and you have judgment about others, and it’s hurtful in a way, like it’s hurtful as if you would step on something like a little spiky thing that is in your foot and it hurts really, really bad. And the other thing behind my husband was this jellyfish kind of thing. And I intuitively realized that it meant that the things that he had to work with or or try to

Unknown Speaker 33:27
try to change was that he was too soft like this jellyfish, it has no backbone, you know what I mean? It is it’s it’s very adaptive to to some surface, but it doesn’t have any strength in it. Hmm, okay, yeah. And so it meant that this kind of sense that I had done and my husband had done, it felt like bunches of sense that were sipped out of our lives, and analyzed. And what I hadn’t explained before is that when I saw my husband and me standing before me, there, there was a point when I could see inside of us, it was like, a psychological analyzation of all our strengths and weaknesses. So there it was, as if it was percentages, for instance, empathy, for instance, 60%, and other things like hope 70% were patients 80%. And each one of us was, was analyzed at the same time. So simultaneously, I could look inside of us and realize what the strengths of my husband were, and what my inner character looked like it, it seemed as if I would just be able to look through us so that the body didn’t matter. But I would look through all everything on the surface and just the character would stand out. And at the same time, when I saw the scales, I realized that the scales were Even meant that there was no way that in. In reality, this could be even because the jellyfish was a huge pile and the little spiky things were just very small. And I knew that they didn’t have a lot of weight. So it, it seemed strange that this case would be even. And then I realized that that’s how I explained it to me in the situation, I realized that it must be a process that first sees the potential in both of us. So it’s like a mathematical potential of our character traits. That is accurate. And then behind us is it’s like plus and minus. It’s like an equation. So in the front, that was plus, like all our potential. And in the back on the scales, there was the outcome, like the life result of both of us. And the life result. was even so there was no one of us better than the other one. But of course, it meant that we were both not very good. And when I saw it, I was devastated. Because I realized that with what I have had seen in both of us, there was so much more potential, and what was the outcome in that situation. So it was really embarrassing, it was shocking, and, and I was, yeah, I was devastated. I was ashamed of what I saw in front of me. And I think it was all those negative emotions that I had been in. That resulted in this equation, and it was horrible. I, I had constant thoughts about how, how I wish to change it, I had this urge to make everything better, and prove that I could do better. But I had this feeling that there was nothing I could do any more like it was final. It’s like if you have a test that you have, if you are in your final year in high school, and you have to do the final exams, then if you hand in the test, it’s done. If you want to rush up to your teacher and say, Oh, my God, I just got this idea how I could do this one part better and and change this one because it’s wrong. And the teacher says, Well, I’m sorry, everybody has said it in their, their stuff, and you can’t change anything anymore. And that’s how it felt. So I had this feeling that my life result was done. And no matter how much I understood how I could have done it better, I I couldn’t change a thing about it anymore. And this was the most horrible thing that I felt the finality of it. And that being able to understand everything in this room was too late, it felt too late. And I reached a point when I was thinking I understand everything. And in this moment, I was in a totally different area I was on on my favorite mountain, about 2000 meters high, just below the the peak. And there was a little fence a wooden fence in front of me. And it was actually the real whether that was

Unknown Speaker 38:17
real at that time of day. So it was in the very early hours of the morning. And I was walking the path and I had been on that mountain first couple of times. So I had been there with my family and friends, but always on the very good weather conditions. So always in sunshine and always nice weather and with a future view and and as I was looking around me I realized where I was because I knew the setting. But the weather was just horrible. Like it was very windy and foggy and I could hardly see where it was going. And then I saw a huge boulder in front of me. And it was way taller than I was it was about eight feet tall and eight feet in diameter. And it was very spiky with sharp edges. And it freaked me out. I was just going on this little path, this narrow path. And then there was this huge boulder in front of me and I tried to find a way to go around it or, you know, pass by it. But there was no way because this path was so narrow. There was a stone wall next to me on the left side. And on the right side there was a very steep hill, hillside down. So there was grass and everything but it was way too steep to try to go there because you would fall and as I was standing there I realized for the first time that I’m in danger, that’s the first time when I realized it’s about me it this whole thing is about me and I’m standing with a huge A huge thing in my way I can never get around it, I cannot escape it. If I go back down, it will roll down the hill on the path and crush me. I cannot go to the left, I can’t go to the right. And there’s no way to escape in any direction. And that’s when I realized that it was I was in life danger. That’s that’s the point when I realized there’s no way out. There is absolutely no way I can get out of this situation. And I had been in this other in this round where I was enlightening the whole round with the fire in my heart. But when I was standing on this path, I realized that everything that I hadn’t understood was true. Everything was final, I couldn’t change anything about my life anymore. I couldn’t change my feelings that I had been in, I realized that this My life was over, I realized that my path is gone. I cannot take any step further. And I was so frightened that I wasn’t able to have one more thought. And I just stared at this huge folder. And I was thinking this is it. There’s no way out. And I’m, I’m not able to change anything anymore. And this is it. And then I had no thoughts in my in my mind anymore. And suddenly, I heard like a little echo the things that my daughter was telling me before I was catapulted in this room, and I remembered her voice saying, forgive him, forgive him. And so this was just like an acoustic echo that I heard, like therapy telepathically. And in this moment, I realized what she meant was that there was just one way out of the situation. And that was to forgive him. And all the sudden, it seemed so easy. I don’t know it. As I felt that I was in life danger, I didn’t mind to forgive him. It seemed like the most natural thing to do. And I realized that this was my only chance of escaping this horrible situation where I was stuck in. And so I said, I forgive him. And I meant it. And I was breathing in and out. I remember that very clearly. And all of a sudden, this huge rock was starting to roll downhill to my left to my right. And I was so startled that I watched it I turned over and I watched it as it was gaining momentum going down the hill. And it even pulled out little pieces of dirt and, and grass, or throwing them in the air as it went down. So it was totally realistic. And I was so astonished. I didn’t dare making another step. And I was I was thinking, oh my goodness, what just happened and just saying that I forgive him took this huge powder away and out of my way. And so I realized my path is clear again. And I wanted to go over between the fence because there was a little

Unknown Speaker 43:17
doorway so that you could go through the fence. And I wanted to reach that little wooden fence and go up to the mountain to the very top. But as I went ahead for maybe two or three more steps, I was catapulted back in my ICU bed, and tears were running down my cheeks because for some reason, I felt the strangest things, I felt uplifted. I felt forgiven, I was totally happy. I was totally okay with everything in my situation. And I was, um, I felt that I had been blessed and that I had been forgiven everything actually. And that I remembered part of the scripture that says that you should be forgiven. As you forgive, I don’t know, but there’s a connection. And I realized that because I had forgiven my husband. For some reason I felt like I was going through a spiritual washing machine. It felt like I came in dirty, and I came out totally clean. And it felt. I don’t know, I felt so relieved. I can’t put it in words. And I didn’t want to wait for any other moment. I sent my husband a short message. And I wrote to him that I’m sorry that I was thinking that it was his fault. What had happened and that I’m sorry that I had accused him of silently and that I was okay with everything and that I didn’t have any accusations for him anymore. And I told him that I was sure that our daughter was I’m disabled, because she told me in our telepathic discussion, she told me when I told her, this is going on for the last two years, I, I can’t forgive him so much, you know, this amount of time that there was disappointments and broken promises and everything I said to her, I can’t forgive any of it. Because I told her if even if I could forgive what happened today, it would still amount to, I couldn’t forgive everything that he had done for the last two years, so it’s too much. And that’s when she told me, I can also forgive. And for me, it’s not only about two years, it’s about my whole life. And at that moment, I realized that she must be talking about some mental or physical disability. That’s how I interpreted it. And I was sure at that moment that she was very badly harmed by this accident, and that I was 100% sure that she was handicapped, severely handicapped, but I didn’t mind at that stage, I just, I was just happy that she would survive, actually, to be honest. And, and after that, I told my husband in the short message, that I’m sure that our daughter will be severely handicapped. But that I think that if we have understanding for each other, and if we stick together, we can overcome everything that is, in our way, any anything. So no matter what it is, we could, so more or less, we could overcome everything. So there is no obstacle in our way anymore. And this huge boulder seemed like the symbol for all these obstacles that were in my way, all these negative emotions, and that I had against my husband. So I had written this short message, and I was feeling totally happy and in, in total place, and everything was alright, and I and I had the feeling that now everything was fine, forever, to be honest. So it, nothing could ever change that. And I was thinking now I should go to sleep because I was awake for the whole night. And as I wanted to fall asleep, I realized that my heart rate was was increasing. And as I felt my heart beating, ever and ever faster, I realized that this meant that the heart of my daughter, one hour away from me in the other clinic was beating like that, and that I felt what she was going through. And so I pressed the button for,

Unknown Speaker 47:40
for the people to come in for the medical personnel to check on me. And I told them that I have this notion that I think that my daughter is in stress, and could they please call the other clinic to make sure that she was okay. And the lady told me that only the doctor can make these phone calls, she’s not allowed to. And the doctor is busy with another operation. So I would have to wait. And after maybe another five or 10 minutes, I was in such a state that I was about to cry. So it was so horrible. But I felt it felt like my daughter is going through so much pain and distress. And so I asked again for them to call the other clinic. And when they declined again, I asked him for a Bible because I was thinking maybe I could find a clue in the psalm of the, of the date of the birthday of my daughter, like, in a way like a message from her to me. If I read the psalm of her birthday, then maybe I could realize what’s going on at what, what she would like to tell me that was my intuitive idea at this very strange because I hadn’t looked in the Bible for years, to be honest. But in during that night, my mom had been on the phone with me, asking me to Yeah, to pray with her. And I said, I’m not going to pray anything because that’s, that was before my near death experience. And I was so in anger and turmoil. I was not ready to pray anything. And I said to her, no prayer is going to be okay with this situation. So there’s nothing that I could ever pray even if I wanted to. And she said, Oh, there’s one prayer. God’s will, should be done. And I said, I’m not going to pray that I said, Nobody asked me if I was okay with it. And it’s going to happen anyway. So there’s no purpose for me to join in this prayer at that time. And in this moment, when I felt all the distress that my daughter was going through in the other clinic, I felt that I needed some message from her that would reassure me Actually, I was hoping that there was something in Psalm saying, I’m in distress, but everything will be fine. Because that’s what I was hoping for. And so someone gave me the Bible from another section in this hospital. And I looked up her Psalm, as quick as I could. And, and it started with, I’m calling to you, God are listen to us, when we call to you in distress. And so I was going down to some as fast as I could, and the end was God, down here, as when we are calling for you and yours in the hour that we are calling for you. And in the Catholic tradition, there’s a prayer that you say, for Mary, and there’s one line in it saying, our God have mercy on us in the hour of art death, actually in the last hour before we die. And this little line reminded me of this other prayer. And I realized that this was the hour when she was dying. So that’s, that’s true, in a way what I felt. So this was it. And of course, I asked them to call again, but they just came in an hour more than an hour later. And they told me that my daughter died about an hour ago. And I knew the time when I had looked at it. At the time when I had read the prayer, and this Psalm and I realized that it was the same time when my daughter was actually dying, when I was reading this line that said, Listen to us when we call out for you. So this was, in a way was very touching. But in another way, it was very hard to be an hour away and to feel that your daughter is dying in another clinic and you can change anything about it.

Brian Smith 52:02
Alright, that’s the end of part one. Stay tuned for part two. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Sandra Champlain is the host of We Don’t Die, a popular podcast; the author of We Don’t Die, a bestselling book; and the single biggest reason I started podcasting.

Sandra was a lifelong skeptic about the afterlife. But, she also feared death. Her investigative and skeptical mind led her to delve deeply into afterlife studies to know for herself what is true and what is not. Sandra not only studies the afterlife, but she’s also hands-on trying things like Electronic Voice Phenomenon, channel, mental mediumship, attending physical mediumship demonstrations, and even traveling to Arthur Findlay College, the “Hogwarts of Mediumship”.

Sandra is a much sought-after speaker and a friend for several years. I was finally able to find enough time in her busy schedule to get her on Grief to Growth for an hour.

You can find more about Sandra on her website, including information on her new show Shades of the Afterlife on Coast to Coast radio.

ℹ️  www.wedontdie.com

Transcript

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth in a day I’ve got with me, Sandra Champlain. And Sandra and I go way back I’m really, really excited about having her on, on grief to growth, and she’s actually I’m gonna give her credit for being the reason why I’m doing this. So I’ll talk to you about that in a little bit as we get started, but I want to read Sandra’s bio and then we’ll just have a conversation like we always do. The fear of dying let’s say to Champlain in a long road to find evidence of the afterlife, the death of her father calls to investigate the painful worlds of grief. Now 25 years into this journey She is the author of the number one international best selling book We Don’t Die A Skeptics Discovery of Life After Death. She’s also the host of We Don’t Die Radio and shades of the afterlife, a new podcast and I Heart Radio shows online afterlife courses, demonstrations and events, including a free global Sunday gathering. Sandra’s committed to empowering all of us to live our best lives possible. So with that, I want to welcome my friend Sandra Champlain.

Sandra Champlain 1:47
Oh, Brian, thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.

Brian Smith 1:50
Yeah, I think we’re both really excited about this. As I said, we go back. Oh, wow. Let me think about this five years. I guess. I think I met you. I think it was the first AI conference. I

Sandra Champlain 2:00
think so. I think so. Yes. Yeah.

Brian Smith 2:03
Yeah, it was really wild. I got to tell the story. I hope it doesn’t embarrass you. But we were at the conference. And you walked up to me said, I know you. And I’m like, well, that’s crazy. I can’t believe Sandra knows who I am. And I was and you said I like to have you in my program. And, and I’ve been following you for a long time. Listen to all your podcasts. But you actually thought I was somebody else. And so it was funny. I’m so my wife Sandra wants to have me on her program. But we ended up becoming friends we met and I have been on your program a couple times. So it’s all worked out. Great.

Sandra Champlain 2:35
It’s so funny, because I think things are meant to be. But I’ve embarrassed myself all the time, actually. Okay, we’re together.

Brian Smith 2:44
Yeah, I was okay. said I was I was thrilled. I was like this is this is fantastic. So I would I don’t want to let you tell your story about tell people how you how I started how I discovered you too. But how did you get into like, starting with, we don’t die. And I’m not gonna ask you questions. I already know the answers to but I want the audience to hear it. So how did you get into writing the book and starting the podcast?

Sandra Champlain 3:05
Well, way back when? Oh, gosh, it was 2000 2005. I started taking afterlife courses and things. But it was in the mid 90s that I actually started on this journey looking for evidence of the afterlife, and I had a fear of dying. I don’t know where it came from. My mom speculates I had worked in a nursing home when I was a teenager volunteering and I saw a lot of depth. And maybe in my subconscious, it’s just all built up. And then this fear came. So very secretly, I started this investigation on the world of the afterlife just for myself just to rest my own fears. And there came a point Brian, where I thought, someday I should tell people about this, because it’s pretty big. But like many of us were afraid to share this because we’re afraid of what people think. because growing up I thought anybody that talked about this woowoo spiritual afterlife, angels, all that stuff, that they were crazy. Really I did, I thought, they’re crazy. So the last thing I wanted to do was risk my reputation and come out to the public about what I had found. I mean, the fear that we humans share, I think is awful. And it’s crippling. So even though I would meet people that had lost a loved one, and I kept thinking, Oh, if I can only tell them what i what i found out what I knew that would really help people, but the fear was so strong. And in the early 2000s, I really started looking for things I could tell people besides my story of taking a mediumship class and all these great things that came out of my own mind. You know, my fear was there that people would say, well, who do you see around me, and anyone who’s taken a course in mediumship fear and connecting to the divine can’t be in the same space. So when you’re fearful, all that shuts down So I was looking for more reasons to be able to share with people, good, credible evidence, it didn’t have to come out of my own head. And along those lines, I started thinking, you know, someday I’m gonna write a book, and I’m gonna title it, we don’t die, you know, so that seed had been planted. And it wasn’t until 2010, when my father passed now, long times passed between mid 90s, and 2010. But when my dad passed, it was one of the worst experiences of my life, if not the worst experience, you know, talking about from grief to growth, my family split up, split apart, my siblings, and I started fighting. My dad and I became very, very, very close in those last six months, I was his primary caregiver. And that relationship ended and I got into trying to figure out why grief has to hurt so bad. That was the first thing because I think many of your followers know I mean, grief is the most painful thing we, we go through. So I was really looking for a little self help for me. But in that process, I opened up this world of grief that man I had no idea about, and I don’t think many people know that it’s an autopilot thing that our chemistry goes through, to try to regroup and be accustomed to the new reality. And there are so many things that happen to our grieving mind, that we think we should be able to turn off, you know, thoughts of guilt and replaying situations over and over and those really horrendous feelings of pain and crying. And so I found some things that not only helped me make a smoother transition through grief, yes, it was painful, I’m not ever going to say it was easy. But when I decided to let people know what I found out about grief, I put out a free audio called How to Survive grief, still not talking about the afterlife. And then what happened was, it didn’t quite go viral. But 1000s of people heard it within a few weeks. And people started writing me that not only did it give them understanding, not only grief, from death of a loved one, but say a divorce or being diagnosed with a terminal illness, many things trigger grief. But people started telling me that they chose not to end their life, because of my words. And those that’s pretty profound. I thought to myself, this information needs to be out there as far as it can. But between you and I and your followers here, not many people know they’re grieving, not many people are looking for a grief book. And then I had that aha moment that I thought if I could be courageous enough, and come out with my reasons for believing in the afterlife, title, the book, that title that I like so much, we don’t die, which is totally in your face, because people like Yes, we do. And strategically slide in that information about grief that it could really help mankind. So that was the genesis of it. And the book came out, I believe, in 2013. And my biggest fear really, truly was what people in my life, were going to think about me believing in this stuff. And the opposite happened from what I thought people embraced it very few people gave me a funny look, you know, very, very few. And people embraced it and were interested in then I got the courage to just continue on and start the podcast. And, you know, then that grew. And unfortunately, COVID unfortunately, and fortunately, COVID put everyone in lockdown. Because it was an opportunity for me to be able to get to more people and share what I was really passionate about. And so in the past year and a half, we just have a Gosh, I don’t even know how many hundreds of people that come weekly to our Sunday gathering and take courses that live in the soul and so

is it a synchronicity? Is it a miracle? Is it my grief to growth? I say yes to all of the above. And that’s what brings you and I here together today.

Brian Smith 9:24
Yeah, well, I have to say, you know, the book is excellent. I I think yours was the first podcast I ever listened to like, ever, not just grief podcast, but the afterlife podcast, but I don’t know even how I found it because I wasn’t listening to podcasts and I was walking on a daily basis. And I was like, I’ve got to find something that’s going to help me and I found your podcast, I remember your audio and I’m encouraging people get the audio, get the book, the audio is free. And I remember lying in my bed listening to audio and listen to it a couple times and my wife and I listening to it and it was so helpful when I was going through that first because my daughter passed away in June of 2015, I just listened to every one of your podcasts I went back to through the back catalogue and lists all up. And it really transformed me. You know, and it’s interesting how we have similar journeys. And I, you talked about the fear of death, and the everybody has a fear of death, I think it’s natural. But most of us put it aside, we don’t think about death, people like you, you’re your real deep thinker. And you can’t put it aside.

Sandra Champlain 10:31
Absolutely true. I think people have three major fears. It’s not public speaking, it is fear of dying, fear of being alone and fear of failure. And we can try to put them aside. But you know, everybody knows what you resist persists. And then when you get to a certain age, I think it’s only natural to start asking those big questions. When we’re a kid, we don’t have any fear not so much do we think about death, and who we are and what the big picture is. But I am thrilled because what I’ve uncovered, and many other people have as well, this is not just me. But when we do really believe in the afterlife, when we believe our loved ones, they have a purpose, you know, their souls still growing, they’re still living life on the other side. But they’re only a breath of thought away. And they’re our biggest cheerleaders, when we can embrace that, first of all, our fear of death can go away. But not only that, is our fear of being alone, to know that we have these invisible cheerleaders, often with us within our toughest moments. And not only that, is, if we don’t die, there must be a purpose to our life. And I really do believe it’s an education for the soul, I, I personally believe that heaven or the Hereafter is fantastic. But the thing is, is we all know, if you have something fantastic 24. Seven, it doesn’t become special anymore. So here on Earth, we can really experience and it is through our toughest times that we do have the most soul growth. But when we can embrace this big picture, those things that we’re afraid of as failures, there’s a new context for them, you’re not failing, you know, at all, there’s always learning to be done. So yeah, that’s what I have to say about that.

Brian Smith 12:24
Yeah, you know, it’s it’s interesting how parallel our journeys are that fear of death. And then, you know, again, some people turn away from it, you and I both turned into it’s I did a lot of studying about the afterlife before my daughter passed when you did before your father passed away. But it’s when the rubber hits the road is when we have that grief of that. And that’s what that’s when you have to take what you’ve what you’ve learned and put it into practice. And for you or transform you into launching this this podcast and the book and the audio that have now reached, I don’t know how many 1000s of people and and with your Sunday program, which I want to talk more about the people understand what what that’s about, you’re just you blossomed into something that you wouldn’t have been with that that event of your father having passed?

Sandra Champlain 13:08
Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And unfortunately, I’m one of those people that thinks I can do everything, right. So I figured there must be something within me that I can change so much of what’s happening in my occurring world. And what’s tough to say is I still have estranged relationships with my siblings. And I thought, you know, once I figured all this out, that they’d understand the world of grief, they don’t understand why our communication broke down. Because a grieving mind can’t store information properly, our perspective of what’s coming in. It may not be the truth. So it really can break down relationships. So I thought everything would be great. Well, it’s not that way. And on one hand, it saddens me. On the other hand, I know Brian, we can choose to be responsible for our life, or we can choose to be a victim. So our Sunday gathering that we did on August 29, was accentuate the positive, we played music from the 40s. And there’s a song accentuate the positive, but it was really looking at the positive side of life. And if I’m to choose that, everything that’s happened, dad’s passing, even the breakdown with my siblings, if I’m to choose that that’s positive. What it’s been doing is it’s keeping me fueled to get the message out to more people because my family is not alone in family breakdowns during a death. What if my siblings and I, and even my dad, way in the beginning before coming to earth, we took a look at what’s happening with humanity, and we thought, Hey, guys, we can make a difference here. And dad said, You know what? I’m gonna go this way, you kids will fight. This will happen. Sandra will go on this, this journey, you guys support her from a distance. And like a circle, you know, things that come apart, they come back together at the top. So it’s not every moment that I think this, Brian because I’m human right I have bad days, I do fall into that victimhood sometimes. But there is a conscious choice to see things from the positive. And so I try that as much as possible, I try to speak about my message as much as possible, I try to share as much as possible, because I can’t live in that victimhood. And it’s not very attractive. But when I share about what I know to be truth, that’s when I’m back in the driver’s seat in life.

Brian Smith 15:51
Yeah, and I appreciate and it’s really one of the things that attracted me to you is your your transparency and your honesty about your feelings and about your family and with the book, you know, and audio about grief, because people when they’re going through grief, they think they’re going crazy. There’s something wrong with me, I can’t concentrate, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, you know, etc. We don’t understand that these things are common. And I learned that by listening to your audio, and even the thing with your family, that’s a very common thing. I’ve seen it over hundreds of people I’ve talked to saying, Yeah, you know, I don’t talk to my sister anymore. My brothers Don’t call me You know, I’ve had a falling out with my mother in law, etc.

Sandra Champlain 16:32
Absolutely. And it’s hard. It’s very, very painful. Because not only my dad’s death happened, but it was like death of relationships, and not being able to see the children, my nieces and nephews. And so I would have to say it was a good four years, even the things that I was doing, but for years that I had this cloud of grief over me. And then one day, and it really was like, there was a cloud over me and dark, rainy skies, but one day, it’s like the sun peak through and I felt like I’m back, you know, you know, there’s some moments that I fall in, because, gosh, all we need to do is see a movie, television, commercial for a Hallmark card, and we can trigger it all over again, right? But the clouds started to lift. And I’m sure you talking about this, like I do. But some like there’s a pine tree that needs to be subjected to extreme forest fires for new growth to begin, and I love grief to growth, because I think I, I really buy into that the toughest times are the things that have the possibility of giving us our soul growth, and getting us on each on that individual journey, because so many people tell us what to believe in. But we ourselves need to find our meaning. And once we start going on that journey, not only is it enriching to ourselves and gives us purpose, but people start automatically falling into our lives that need to hear what we have to say. So while not everybody’s going to have a podcast or a book, don’t ever discount anyone who’s had a tough time, that you’re not the person to really make a difference for another and so many people live, and you see a nice smile. But inside, they could be one step away from ending it all. And that interaction with you might be a compliment might be just a few nice words can really shift the needle for people. Yeah,

Brian Smith 18:45
absolutely. I don’t want to assume everybody knows what we don’t die as your podcast. So take a few minutes and explain to people what it is you do on your podcasts.

Sandra Champlain 18:54
Yeah, I can talk about both actually. back after I wrote the book, I had real employment that I was working as a chef for racecar teams traveling with my mom in a big business, which unfortunately, unfortunately got taken away because of COVID. Because again, now I’m doing this. But in that time, I still yearned for looking for reasons to believe in the afterlife. But I didn’t have time to invest in books. So very sneakily, I thought if I could have conversations with people that have written books, or have had near death experiences, that I could learn a lot without having to invest a lot of time. So I just invented We Don’t Die Radio, just why not? And I would record these conversations and just put them out in the world. And before you and I met I got invited to be a speaker at that afterlife symposium where we met and I asked Craig Hogan, who was the president sense of the afterlife Research and Education Institute if I could share on the podcast about this upcoming symposium, Oh, absolutely. He said, so each and every time. At the end, I would say, oh, and you can meet me and other great people, these dates and this go to this website. Once we got to that symposium, there was something like 750 people there. And Craig Hogan said to me, when he put in the registration, how did you find out about this 550 put Sandra Champlain’s We Don’t Die Radio. So this still gives me goosebumps

Brian Smith 20:38
to this. So I found out about it.

Sandra Champlain 20:40
Because here I am, most of the time recording these conversations sitting in my jammies, you know, and never having known the impact, and then to meet people face to face, who have suffered incredible loss many times have children, loved ones, made many things, many people and how they found hope and faith in my words and understanding. And again, boy, I don’t take this lightly when somebody doesn’t take their own life because of the information. I mean, that’s, that fuels me to keep going. So with that, I just kept it up. And so now there’s 361 hours of episodes of We Don’t Die Radio, and about a year ago, actually was about a year and a half ago, because it was just before COVID hit. I got a call from the producer of Coast to Coast AM, which you may or may not know, but they’re this overnight radio show on mainstream radio, dealing with the paranormal. And I had been a guest on their show a couple of times, they really liked my words. And they said, We are working with I Heart Radio, and we want to create our own Podcast Network. We want to have one on the afterlife. Would you be interested in being our host? Yes. So I actually had a conversation with the president of I Heart Radio. Wow. And then COVID hit and I heard nothing else about it. I thought well, that’s alright. It’s in God’s hands, so to speak. But then I got the call. We’re ready, we’re settled, we want to start. And so how shades of the afterlife is different than We Don’t Die Radio is that if I only had one hour to have with someone on shades of the afterlife, I want to pump in as much information as I can. That so there’s different topics within each episode of shades of the afterlife where as We Don’t Die Radio, I talk to one person. So there’s different topics, there’s more of my thoughts, instead of just hearing the thoughts of a guest. And also there’s a lot more of the new and cutting edge information in that. Now there are commercial breaks, which on We Don’t Die Radio, there’s no commercials, because I don’t like commercials. But the thing I had to realize is to be backed by iheart radio Coast to Coast AM they’re committed to getting to the most people. Well, commercials are necessary to do that to get sponsorship to get it out there. So anyways, there’s some pretty great sponsors to it. And now there’s between the two shows there’s a well over 400 hours of episodes.

Brian Smith 23:34
Wow, crazy credible. Yeah, that’s amazing. So um, so you you met you because you and I had we were I said let’s not talk too much before we get started. So I know that you when I met you you’re a full time chef catering on the race racing circuit. I know that kind of fell apart last year. So are you not doing that at all now,

Sandra Champlain 23:55
not at all the teams we cooked for we would have a big hospitality tent with a buffet down the center, lots of tables and chairs. And it was for the emsa series of racing, which is owned by NASCAR cars go 200 miles an hour, and it’s a business I shared with my mom for over 33 years. And with COVID hitting, there could be no more buffets. So the racist stopped for a while and when they started again, the racetracks were supplying the meals in individual to go containers. And we didn’t have the staff or the equipment once it started opening back up again, to be able to offer that plus, mom’s close to 80 on 55. We hadn’t had any vaccines yet. The last thing we wanted to do was to be around a lot of people. So there’s another fellow who also had a catering company. So we supported him from a distance to be Successful so that he could have a livelihood and be able to put these meals on for these teams. So a lot of teams don’t get the the catering they will go out and have sandwiches for their teams. So it’s still up in the air of the future, how that’s going. But for myself, it’s like, how do I pay the bills? Yeah, what do I do. And for a long time, I’ve had this hope and wish and dream, that somehow I would transition out of doing the catering and be full time sharing what’s in my heart. And that’s the after the reality of the afterlife, helping people through grief and helping people have a better life. And nothing can force you into that more than when you no longer have an income. So in a way, I mean, I have to have integrity, because that’s who I am. But I partnered up with some of my favorite medium friends, Scott Milligan, Carrie McLeod, Philip dikes, who also couldn’t travel and also couldn’t support their families. And I said, Guys, what if we start doing things online,

100% Money Back Guarantee low cost, people get recordings of everything. Because like I said, integrity is so important to me. And over the past year and a half, building this community that people can take courses, to tap into their soul to tap into their psychic nature, to get into these breakout rooms and be able to do readings with people that could be 3000 miles away, for people to learn mediumship, to and so much more. We’ve really developed this community. And then one of the things we had done also, and this is the Sunday gathering, is there are places called spiritualist churches that are around the world. And I’ve been a couple of times, and they’re great services. But at the end, what makes them different is the minister is also a medium, and he or she will work the congregation and prove that life after death is real, not as entertainment, but as empowering people that your loved ones are still around. So I had thought someday when we do a live event, because before COVID, we did a few We Don’t Die live events, and had many people attend. But I thought we could bring that Sunday service to our community and between my friends and I, we thought what if we tried to figure this out online, people are in lockdown. People can’t leave their homes, people are scared, there’s a lot of death going on. Let’s just try it. So happy that we have now over 75 weeks of these which you can watch the replays. They’re all very empowering, very empowering. Each one has a theme, whether it’s gratitude, or accentuate the positive, living in the positive, or whatever it may be. But we bring in a few really great elements. One is the power of prayer. We don’t push spirituality on anyone, so people of any religion or not, can attend. There’s a moment that we do healing to we we play a beautiful piece of music, and we have people send healing visualize people in their lives and themselves. Healthy well and whole, we do a reading. And the readings are not like a reading from a gospel. They are people living on the court on whatever subject matter we talk about. So they’re live like there’s an address where someone will speak from their heart, it’s usually one of us, sometimes a guest, you’ve been on our Sunday gathering to really share what’s in your heart. And then what makes us really different is that we have a medium demonstration within every one of our gatherings. We may have two to 300 people joining us live. And only a handful of people will be reunited with their loved one who’s in the afterlife. But the way it’s brought through, there are so many specifics that our mediums can’t make up. And we ask the people attending if you are working with one of the mediums to just say yes no or I don’t know, don’t give them any information. And everybody can feel the love coming through the shared memories, the evidence. And so it leaves people realizing that in this unseen space around us are our biggest cheerleaders that are still very much alive and doing their very best to plant images and thoughts and memories in our imagination. But sometimes our minds are so very busy, we don’t feel it. But that’s how they work. And so there’s music, they’re very light hearted, but it really gives a shot in the arm of spirituality and knowing that there’s a much bigger picture and that our lives here on Earth are important.

Brian Smith 30:18
Awesome. So tell people how they can get to the Sunday gatherings. I know I go through Facebook is it available on YouTube also,

Sandra Champlain 30:24
it is available on YouTube. Also, if you go to my our our home base, which is we don’t die.com you can click on the store button or the calendar and see everything that’s coming up. But there’s also a tab on the top that says Sunday gathering. And so there’s the Facebook, links of all the past replays. And then there’s also the registration link for the upcoming one. So you can register and you can be part of our Zoom Room, if you’d like to. And if they’re all they’re all free, so And while you’re at, we don’t die calm, there is a box that you can join my email list. And if you do, I don’t spam you by any means. But you get a free copy of my book, We Don’t Die A Skeptics Discovery of Life After Death in PDF form. And you also get that audio of how to survive grief. Plus, if you scroll to the radio show tab at the top, you can listen to all those episodes I was telling you about.

Announcer 31:24
We’ll get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach. If you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, grief to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri e f the number two gr o w th calm. If you’d like to support this podcast visit www.patreon.com slash grief to growth www.pa TRE oh n.com slash g ri e f the number two gr o w th to make a financial contribution. And now back to grief to growth.

Brian Smith 32:21
I wanted to say to anybody because I said I listened to the audio This was several years ago. And you know, read the book and listen to every episode up into that point at least. This is an excellent, excellent free resource on getting through your grief, especially that early part where you’re like you think you’re going crazy. And a lot of times people when they’re angry, they can’t read, they just can’t focus enough to read. So having an audio format is a great way to get that information you know out there and the Sunday gatherings. I go to them on occasion I can’t get to them every week but I go to they’re fantastic. They’re like the most uplifting service you’ve ever had there two o’clock Eastern Time. On Sundays, of course, you can always get the recordings. But it’s a great way to really fill your fill your soul.

Sandra Champlain 33:08
Yeah, people need something to keep themselves plugged in to the bigger picture. I’ve had a tough couple of months, my mom is healthy and well but she went through a little spell that she wasn’t and I’m relocated to live with her I still have my house in Massachusetts, but like here with mom is where I know I need to be. And not every day has been a great day. I just got tremendously sick myself a couple of weeks ago. And it’s hard for us human beings to understand the bigger picture 24 seven so we all fall into this inner chatter made up our mind is not a pleasant place. You know, it starts off when we look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning, whether it’s the wrinkles of the gray hair, too much weight or whatever. We’re you know, right there, it’s saying something negative or we’re stewing about the past or we’re worried about the future. It’s it can be ugly to be in our own minds. And I think that might be the design of the human being because when we can have so many experiences in life. This is how we grow this is how our soul grows. But it’s important to remember the big picture so we like to do the Sunday gatherings I really enjoy people that listen to the podcasts and I listened to my own things and listen to books as well or read books because left to our own devices we are living in a negative mind we are just how it is. But keeping connected through podcasts and books in the Sunday gathering or an online course. It can help in the bigger picture. So for me, every Sunday, even when I wasn’t feeling good, you know, I had to put a smile on my face. And guess what happens? I feel good. I feel good. And here’s a little trick for any one of your followers. And I think you already know this, but a lot of people around us can be negative. And there’s a way to shift them that also shifts us. And you get people engaged in some of their favorite memories. And for instance, I was working with a guy at the racetrack catering, and he couldn’t have been any grumpier. And just mean, you know, and that’s something that normally worked with us. And I thought, Sandra, let’s try this strategy. And I just asked him, I said, Hey, Dan, you have kids? Yes. That’s how many do you have I for you know, he is so grumpy. And I said, Do you remember when your first child was born? No, I’m single, I haven’t had that experience. Well, it took him a second. And all of a sudden, he just had a smile on his face, remembering when he held his baby in his hands for the first time. And he paused. And then I said, Oh, what what do your kids like? Well, the more he started sharing about that, Brian, oh, he became happy. What do you like to travel? You know, what are your favorite vacation spots? What are your favorite? Oh, tell me about your kids. So it’s strategy, yes. But when we are with people, and they can start feeling better and start sharing, they’ll naturally ask you the same questions. And it’s just, it lifts us up and people need people. So that’s just a little tool.

Brian Smith 36:38
Yeah. You said something there, I think is really important. And I’ve wondered this myself, because you said people tend to be negatives are in our minds a bad place to be in certain extent. But I believe that’s where the human was designed. That’s, that’s biology. Because it goes back to you know, we’re biological beings, we have to look out for danger. So we’re always looking for what’s wrong, you know, that’s where so we’ll look at a situation and 99.9% of the can be right, but we’re looking for what’s wrong. And that’s, that’s not a bad thing. That’s just the way we’re designed. But we can make a choice. And this is, you know, when I first heard about this positive thinking are essentially the positive and I’m, I’m a real rationalist kind of person. I’m an engineer. I’m like, that’s a bunch of hogwash, I’m not going to try to fool myself into believing things are great. And I’m reading Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking, I literally threw them in the trash can. I’m like, this is just garbage. But I have realized over the course of especially the last six years, and Shane has passed, that everything is a choice. How we look at everything is a choice and the things that you’ve gone through the passing of your father, the breaking up of your family, we can choose to look at that as the negative part of it are, what, what growth came out of it? And what purpose does it serve. And that’s why your show, you know, both of your shows, the Sunday gathering the book, those are all making a choice to look at things from a different

Sandra Champlain 38:03
perspective. Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s not easy. You know, I’ve had some real dark times I never contemplated and in my own life, but I got it, life was so dark that I completely understood how people would choose that option. And it is a choice. And there’s a lot out there about the power of gratitude. And while I do buy into the power of being human, there’s so much more that we’re capable of, on this unseen level that we we don’t know, I do, but buy into a lot of that, but also to live on the court. And if I start going down that negative tunnel, it takes something to catch it and go, Oh my gosh, I’m on this kind of loop, repetitive loop here. And the more we think thoughts, the more those thoughts will come. So the more guilt we feel over say, oh my my dad went just before he passed his best friend called me on my cell phone and said, I’d like to just let my best friend Hear my words before he goes. So I held my cell phone to my dad’s ear. Brian, and for about 10 minutes this guy said whatever messages he said to my dad, they were friends forever, his friends forever. And it wasn’t till after he hung up that I realized that I held the phone to my dad’s deaf ear. I lived with that guilt for so long. Just feeling awful. Now many moons later I realize that the big picture dad hurt it. But I learned to catch myself in the act. Every time my mind wanted to start thinking about that, I would start thinking about something positive, something I’m grateful for. And while I couldn’t come up with these big, grandiose, great things I’m grateful for, I would say, I’m grateful I can breathe, I’m grateful I can walk, there’s some people that can’t walk, I’m grateful that I have a bed to sleep in. And I would force myself to write down 50 things that I’m grateful for. And to give my mind attention to that, to side rail, those thoughts of guilt. And once you start writing, things you’re grateful for a really sneaky and wonderful things have happens is you start really feeling the gratitude. And there’s a whole different way of living, thinking about the positive feeling grateful for something. And it does make you feel better. And here’s a bonus that helps lift those natural neurotransmitters that help us move through grief. Yeah, so it does a lot for our chemistry as well.

Brian Smith 41:07
You know, and, again, when I first heard this before I started practicing. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t believe this. But I have to say I’ve been doing it for several years now. And it works. And also we talked about how the brain is naturally drawn to the negative, it retrains your brain to see the positive. So you will start noticing more positive things in your life. And there, we call them little things, big things. But I do this every practice every morning for I get it but at least three things I’m grateful for. And it can’t be like, I get to go for a walk today. I couldn’t go for a walk today, because it’s raining. So if I get a chance to go for a walk tomorrow, I’ll be grateful for the fact I do get a chance to do that. So we definitely can choose that. And that’s what you know, that’s the message that you give them a and I love, like I said, Your transparency, because people. The other thing we tend to do is we idealize other people’s lives. So we say their life is great. Look how great I have, I’ve actually had someone say this to me, a friend, actually, we fell out as friends. You say, I can’t be around you, your life is too perfect. And I’ve like, Okay, let me let me tell you what my life is really like, but we do that with other people. My life is horrible, your life is great. So it’s really important for us to understand, we all have challenges, you know, and I want to go back to something you said earlier, because people again, look at people like I like yourself. Sanders got a successful radio show, you know, she’s gonna have 1000s of listeners, she’s probably making all kinds of money from the show. And when we do podcasting, there’s very little to no money, no end podcasting. And then so I want to broaden this a little bit, because I know you talk to a lot of mediums. I’ve heard people say, well, mediums shouldn’t charge money. People that are doing podcasts, I just had an situation very recently, where somebody was monetizing YouTube channel, and someone else criticized that person for monetizing the YouTube channel for putting ads on it. And you know, it takes time for us to do what we’re doing. So I just want you to explain to people what it’s really like being on the other side of this, you have you had a full time job for most of the time you were doing this.

Sandra Champlain 43:12
Yeah, I had a full time job that paid my bills. So this could be a hobby. And that disappeared. So while I had a little bit of money and savings, certainly not enough to go forward to pay all my bills. It’s tough. And just because someone writes books, so I’ve written a book here, I can show it off. It’s my book. Yeah, that’s it. I think I get less than $2, a copy that sold in the world. And now there’s not millions of copies sold. So there’s 1000s, but not millions, right. And the podcasts are all labors of love. I mean, certainly they brought people to some of our online courses and things like that. But there needs first of all, to be an exchange of energy. It is proven that people that are given a book 97% of them, don’t read it, right. It’s only those people that actually purchase it. And then once they purchase it, most people only read the first chapter. So if you’re going to write a book, put your best stuff in the first chapter. But people don’t take seriously things very often that they don’t pay for. I’m a big proponent of this money back guarantee. And while most people don’t ask for their money back, it breaks down the barrier that okay, this is somebody I can trust. If she’s really willing to put that out there, you know, I’ll take a chance. So even some of the mediums that I recommend doing a wonderful practice of saying within the first 10 minutes if you’re not feeling that connection, or I’m not supplying you good information, let’s just call this out. And no money exchanged hands, because there’s people out there charging a lot of money for things. doctors can’t give away their services. But you know, we just can’t it takes money to make the world go around. So if you look for people that have that transparency, have that integrity, it speaks volumes, it really does. I’ve had people very kindly donate to me knowing the situation, but because everything’s made a difference, and because I’ve been the person I am. So people, I say, need to shine who you really are. anyone listening or viewing right now you are one of a kind, you are special. The world needs you just the way you are not trying to be somebody else. But try to be you when we are authentic. And we can show our embarrassment, or our warts or whatever they say warts and all. Yeah, that’s some people can fall in love with you, is be you you’re one of a kind. People need to hear things just the way you have them. And with that you can never lose, really. And when you put your sights on making a difference for another person, I think life can work out. If I was forced Brian to do an afterlife show or shows or do the Sunday gathering. Because I needed to make money, it wouldn’t work. But if I’m able to share what I love, generously, genuinely from my soul, be able to exercise my creativity and I’m a fun person, I like to have fun. So to engage in good conversations with people I trust in the big picture that it will work out.

Brian Smith 46:52
Yeah, yeah, you know, it’s Yeah, it’s interesting because I have gone through similar transition that that you’re going through, and I do have a full time thing which is not going so well right now. So figure out what that’s going to do. I love doing this work. But sometimes people don’t realize how much effort it takes for you know, for us to do this, you know, you have 400 episodes, that’s, that’s at least 400 hours just recording, not to mention the editing and the prepping and inviting guests and all the other things that go into it. So just I guess I want people to understand that you know, we love doing this, but it does, it does take a certain amount of effort. I want to talk to you about your experiences because you’ve had some incredible experiences. Like I know you traveled the Arthur Findlay College, you’re you’re a medium, I don’t I don’t think you’re practicing medium. Now in terms of professional. You’ve been to physical, you know, seances and stuff. So tell people about some of the stuff you’ve been able to experience as you’ve been going through this journey.

Sandra Champlain 47:53
Oh, I’d love to. First of all, the subtitle of my book is A Skeptics Discovery of Life After Death. So it’s important to know that I didn’t believe in any of this at all, at all, so I was very secret going through it. And one of the very first things that I had done was take a course in mediumship. And the instructor had said, if you get drawn to this class is because you’re a natural, medium, and etc, and so forth. So I thought, when things seemed too good to be true, yeah, most of the time they are. But I went and she gave us just the basics of how mediumship works, and how the afterlife, this unseen world is a vibrating energy around us that we are actually part of it, instead of it being out there somewhere. And that when we can quiet our mind and trust, the feelings and the images that we’re getting. And we have love in our heart for the person that we’re with that all you need to do is tell a story of what’s coming to your mind. And so the very first exercise she gave us, she says, We’re not going to do a medium reading, because you’re not you’re not there yet, so to speak. But she says I want you to each pretend you’re a medium. I just want you to evoke your imagination, and create that somebody is behind your partner, she had a pair up and twos and somebody is behind them. And she says I want you to sit there, hold hands with your partner, close your eyes and just invent that there’s somebody standing behind them. And all there is to do is just tell the story. Now again, we’re not really doing it. We’re just this is what we will do eventually. So she took away that fear that I needed to try to be a medium. I didn’t know that at the time. But I’m certainly creative, I think, and I invented with my eyes closed that there was a man standing behind my partner. I didn’t know this woman at all. But I heard the name Yon come in my mind I heard Denmark. I saw a blond haired blue eyed, blond haired blue eyed Man with a big gap between his teeth puffing on a cigarette. And then I saw a fishing boat. So I said, Well, okay, I believe that I’ve got your grandfather here with me that his name was Yon. He was a fisherman from Denmark. This is what he looked like the gap between his teeth. And he died of lung cancer. And then I got this message kind of coming through that. He never said I love you to his daughter, which was would been her mother. And anyway, so I just delivered my message with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes just to tell the lady Okay, it’s your turn to go. And there’s just streams of tears coming down her face. her grandfather’s name was young. He was a fisherman in Denmark, died of lung cancer fit the description. And her mother was somebody who was really hugging and really I love you because her own father never said I love you.

Brian Smith 50:58
Wow, wow.

Sandra Champlain 51:00
That started it, Brian lab started it. And while I’m not a practicing medium, I do keep a foot in the door of a medium class we do on Thursdays. Just to kind of keep that up. I I think my mission is, I don’t want to say bigger than being a medium because being a medium is pretty mighty to be able to reconnect people with their loved ones. But I want to reconnect people in different ways. And I want people to know their life is for a purpose. So I’m not a practicing medium. I’ve never got to the point where I can really trust that stuff that’s coming out of my mouth is from the afterlife. It’s not my imagination, because sometimes it is my imagination. So that’s one of the things that had happened. But once I learned that, again, I didn’t tell people because first thing that asked me is Who do you see around me, and oh, my gosh, the fear is crippling, but I took a course in something called Electronic Voice Phenomena, which is ebp. And I wanted to see if there was any credibility to this, there was a husband and wife that I had seen at a spiritualist church and they played a recording that they said they left their tape recorder in their room with just a fan blowing. And they left the house for 20 minutes. And they said when they came back, this is what we heard on our recording. And both the couples, the both the people in the couple had been divorced. And they had had children who had passed in prior marriages. So the little voice said, Mommy, and Daddy, don’t be scared, we’re still here with you.

And there was giggles and things. And oh my gosh, Brian, again, goosebumps filled me to think if that’s possible, and people can actually hear this, then I’d have a little bit more of a backbone to share the evidence, the afterlife. So I went on to a retreat center, the Omega Center in New York, and took a weekend retreat on this Electronic Voice phenomenon. And it was just a small group, there was I think eight of us in the class. And the couple were very scientifically minded. And they were also spiritualist ministers. And they would say that our loved ones don’t have all the answers in the universe just because they pass but they can practice this as well. There’s different things they can practice on their side to be in communication. So we always say just a little loving prayer, I just feel that builds the energy in the in the connection. And there’s always something going on in the background. So whether it’s a fan blowing, people call it white noise. And of course that was a name of a scary movie. But there’s no scariness that comes through that’s that’s Hollywood. But there’s messages of love and sometimes humor that comes through because we get our to keep our own personalities when we pass, which is great. But every night, we would practice this, and I went to my room on the last night of class before the last day of class. And I wanted this to be so real. I really did. And unfortunately, I had not heard anything in my own recordings. So I was getting a little discouraged. But I went back to my cabin and it was just pouring rain outside. I was all alone. I put my tape recorder out there holding it. And I imagined my grandmother, grandfather and aunt and uncle in the room. And I said guys, if this is real and I’m supposed to help people believe in the afterlife, I said, Please try to talk louder, you know. And so I just left the tape recorder recording the raindrops for about a minute. And when I played it back, again, the goosebumps I had to replay it over and over and over. And it said Good night Sandra. And then hear two little whispers Good night. Good night. And then Good night. And, oh, you’re talking about a holy cow moment. Yeah, it was comforting. But it was also a little fearful. I thought, you know, people always around me all the time. The answer’s no, they don’t watch you in the shower in intimate moments. No, they have lives to live, but that they are around. And so using that recorder, I started sharing my story, and I’d meet people, and we would do recordings together just to see if somebody would come through. And I know, Hurricane Ida is hitting New Orleans as we record this. And 16 years ago was Hurricane Katrina. And I had met a woman at a conference and told her my story, and she said her mom had died in Hurricane Katrina. And she says, could we try to do one of these recordings, and literally, we were sitting at the San Francisco Airport, I had no idea if this would work. The lady introduced herself to me as de. And that’s how I knew her. And so we recorded the white noise, the background noise was just airport noise, people talking and all of that. And just before she boarded her airplane, we did this recording. And I heard and she heard a very loud, I love you, Elizabeth. That didn’t make sense to me. But she looked at me and she said, My real name is Elizabeth. Only my mom called me, Elizabeth. Wow, though, shifted her life, she boarded her airplane. And you know, there’s other stories to tell about that. So that’s amazing. There’s also people that are mediums that are spirit artists, and they can talk to you and tell you evidence, but meanwhile, their hands drawing their picture. And, like my dad came through how he looked in his 20s when he was healthy and well in the airforce. Also, there’s a beautiful woman in Brazil named Sonia Rinaldi, who I think is the leading edge of afterlife proof because of some of these images that she shows. I know there’s also folks with the soul phone that are really doing some amazing things as well. But Sonia can take video. And she works with the audio to these voice messages. But she’s can create different with like white noise, but visually social, use some different projectors and put like the, whatever you want to call it.

static images kind of all in the center here, and she’ll film it. And there’s, she’ll film it. And then she’ll go through frame by frame. And in each section of the video, there could be 32, or 64 frames. So she’ll literally go through each one. And at one point, she was sending me pictures of these unknown people that would come through, and one of them kind of looked like my dad. And I just kind of very silently said, Dad, if you’re trying to come through to Sonia, I said, it looks kind of like you but I’m not 100% convinced? Well, one day she sent me a picture, Brian, that was almost identical to my dad, how he looked when he was in the Air Force, I’ve got an image of my dad looking straight at the camera with the smile. The image that she got through this trans communication was he was looking off to the side, but it was like the same picture. And then she sent me the video of all the static, and then you can see it transform into his face, and then it disappears. So currently, right now we have We Don’t Die films.com and my friend Robert Lyon is just coming home from Brazil now. And we have a documentary that’s being made. So if anybody wants to look at We Don’t Die films.com you can see the preview and you can see a whole bunch of the work she’s done. But those are just a handful of the things there’s so much more and I know time goes by fast. So again, get a free copy of my book and there’s a ton of stuff like we don’t die calm, so I won’t go through all

Brian Smith 59:07
of it. Yeah, and that’s one of the things I really appreciate about you. You’re you’re not only a skeptic, but you’re also an experiencer you’re like okay, if this is real, if this mediumship is real, let me take a mediation Of course let me go to an MVP course you’ve I know you’ve gotten to Arthur Finley, you’ve been to and we want to, we have a little bit of time left. But I know you’ve you’ve been to physical sciences, which a lot of people might not understand what physical mediumship is. So maybe take a cup cuz I know you’re friends with Scott Milligan is an incredible human being. And he does this thing that tell people what to say and says

Sandra Champlain 59:40
it’s wild. Now first of all, through all of our skeptical minds, that word seance can really activate something in us to thank you, okay, I’ve really enjoyed this interview on grief to growth, but now they’ve gone too far right? So our mind can tell us that. And there’s also a word that I was always afraid to say too which is ectoplasm because we think of Read stuff from Ghostbusters. Well, when I started digging, Dan Ackroyd, who wrote the movie, his grandfather, great grandfather as well, too, would participate in these seances. So that’s how he learned the word ectoplasm. And, again, I totally get it. If this seems a little far out there, it’s one of those things you have to experience to believe. And same thing. There’s very few things, few physical mediums out there. And due to COVID, people aren’t meeting but eventually we will again, but it’s being in a small group of people, the one person who Scott Milligan, a physical medium, he sits in what’s called a cabinet, it’s just a frame, which has got four black curtains on it, basically. And that’s to build up this energy, we sing songs, we laugh, and this builds up, this energy that exudes from him. So it’s like a vapor or a mist that comes out and again, sounds wild. But what I have experienced is people who are deceased, actually can step into this and become real again, you can hear their voice, you can touch them. There’s been animals that have come through with little cat stepping on your lap, I have. It’s dark, it’s, this is done in the dark. But there’s often a red light on or a little glow in the dark something. And I’ve actually seen the hands of a little spot, a spirit child, I could see them, she touched me. As she moved around. I’ve heard people reunited with their loved ones, again, really specific information that only that person knows.

It’s incredible. It’s really wild. And again, to the skeptical mind, it seems like it could be make believe. So again, when we when the world starts cleaning up a little and we start doing more live, we don’t die events. We’ll have Scott Milligan there, you can experience it for yourself. Another thing that he does is what’s called trance mediumship, which for the past 25 years, he has learned how to quiet his mind and let a spirit person you know, we all have guides and friends and the unseen world, be able to use his mouth and speak through him. Now he’s not possessed, he’s not being taken over by any means. All that’s present is love. And every Friday, you can come for free, you can leave a donation, we do one of these demonstrations of trance mediumship. And we get to speak to his friend in the unseen world and ask any question about life, death, the afterlife. Now the person that comes through, has a different voice, a different tone to their speaking, he passed at the end of the 1800s. So it’s very prim and proper. Being around this gentleman, Eric, for the past five years, it is completely different than Scott, its personality or who Scott is. And again, this could be something you experience to realize that hey, this guy’s not making this up. If you want to watch one again, we don’t die.com if you click on the store, scroll down, there’s got to be 50 replays, there be my guests Use coupon code free, and you can listen to one. And also at the Arthur Findlay College, I took a two courses on trance mediumship, to try to quiet my mind. And we were all given the opportunity if we wanted to, to present to the entire class. And so I knew in my soul, that I have a real incredible problem with fear. Most of the time, fear stops me and I was committed to not let it stop me. So I raised my hand, I closed my eyes for about 10 minutes, I just concentrate on my breathing. Now I’m still aware. But you know, you say a little prayer that whoever my guide is, or my friend is in that unseen world can use me to speak. And what the instructor would say is it could be 1%, the spirit world and 99% Sandra, because our souls are very intelligent. But Brian, I just went for it. And so with my eyes closed, just focusing on my breath. We always say the Spirit wants to tell you, you know, just to get the ball rolling, but didn’t my mouth and my words continue to come out of my mouth. Now, when we talk, we’re very present that it’s us talking. And when I’m concentrating on my breath, and words still keep coming out. You know, the first thing I did was try to pay attention to what those words were, and it stopped. So then I went back to paying attention to my breath. And the words continued. I also had the feeling that I was turning And I was talking to everybody in the circle, there’s probably 30 people. And finally, the word stopped. It took a few minutes for me to just kind of get myself together and I opened my eyes. People were crying, I thought, Oh, they said, I told some kind of a story about a ship on a journey and the waves and the darkness and, but relating it to our paths as being human beings, and how all these different things are going to come in and try to rock us but to you know, but down at the deep depths of the ocean where everything is quiet. So where we can tap in something like that, they were telling me and I said to them, I said it was so weird, because I moved, I moved looking at everybody, it felt like they said, Sandra, you remained perfectly still. So we must have this aesthetic body. And so while I’m not practicing that, because I don’t have any, but like, my mom would freak out if she knew the story. Nobody sent her this video, but to know that that’s possible, and to know how important it is to sit with the quiet of our own mind. And just, I love it. I love it. And I love being part of it. I don’t have any idea how it’s going to unfold. I’ve got some roses outside that are these really tight buds. And no matter how much I can’t wait to see them bloom and smell their fragrance, we can’t force it. So I know what we can do is I can water and give good fertilizer to my roses. But same with us if we can kind of surrender believe that there’s a bigger picture take some time to quiet our mind and just trust focus on our breath know that that we’re loved we’re giving ourselves that water and sunlight and fertilizer for ourselves to unfold.

Brian Smith 1:06:56
Yeah, absolutely. And I love hearing you tell this and this is I wanted to give people a little preview of what you’re going to get if you listen to the We Don’t Die podcast and also I guess on shades of the afterlife there’s so much and so you might say okay, I can’t go as far as physical mediumship I don’t believe people can do that. Okay, that’s fine. But you know ebps and the and the people that you’ve interviewed and and all the other there’s just so much and I’ve talked to quote skeptics. One person I was comes to mind she said there’s no evidence of any of this stuff. And so she was total skeptic said, Send me the best medium You know, I’m going to go I’m going to prove this was wrong. So I sent her the best medium I knew. And she came back she goes it’s absolutely true. Then she started doing her own research and she came back and she goes Why isn’t anybody told me that all this is out there you know and if you find a podcast like we don’t die and start listening to it, you’ll be amazed by how much evidence is really out there and and the things that we all experience and Scott’s you know, incredible what he does. I’ve heard other people channeling, I’ve seen some women with very high pitched voices, channel men with very deep voices. I’m like, I know they’re not that good in person in your voice.

Sandra Champlain 1:08:08
And you have to really look for the intelligence, because I hate to say it, there are people out there that are frauds there are. But when you get the goosebumps when you start having this pull at your soul, your gut thinking, this is the real deal. Pay attention to that. We all have that inner bs detector, I’ll say that we do. Pay attention to our feelings, you know, you we all have the gut instincts. But if there’s a little bit of you that’s interested in exploring the evidence is there. You know, there’s a company a group called ions. I am d s.org. And I know, you know that well. There are millions of people who have had near death experiences. And for me as the skeptic, I would say, oh, there’s no proof of, you know, a near death experience. It’s just a natural thing that our minds go through when we die. Well, idiot, Sandra, it Meanwhile, there’s this organization that’s been out for ever that’s got the military involved with countless stories of these people, and what happens and what they’ve witnessed and what they’ve come back and how they’ve lived life and blind people that have never had vision, can see during a near death experience, and if accurately told people what they were doing, what clothes they were wearing, there’s so much more but you know, we want to, it’s not that we choose to be skeptical, like you said, it’s part of our Human Design, but doesn’t serve us all the time. So if you want to have the most powerful life ever, really buy into the positivity in that there is a much bigger picture. don’t take our word for it. Go on the journey, and you’re gonna find some miraculous things.

Brian Smith 1:09:56
Totally agree. I think that’s a great way to wrap up. It’s actually 1111 Here too. So Sandra, I want to thank you so much for doing this. It’s been an honor. You know, having you on my podcast, I would have never thought six years ago that I’d be doing a podcast. And certainly I think I’d be interviewing us so we don’t know where things are going to go. So as you wrap up, remind people where they can find you what it is you’re doing.

Announcer 1:10:19
Yes,

Sandra Champlain 1:10:20
I would say you started we don’t die.com home base for everything. Excuse me, you can see our Sunday gathering or online courses, past things, future things coming up. And listen to a ton of episodes. If you click on that radio show link. There’s no need for you to believe that you’re alone in this world and that your life doesn’t matter. I tell you, you who’s ever listening or watching this right now you are special, you are one of a kind. And none of us want to take that final breath in this life having any regrets. So your dreams are important. It’s never too late to start. But know when you do take that last breath, that the journey continues on whatever we don’t do here, we can do over there. And we will open our eyes and like crossing a finish line. With people doing the wave and standing ovation will be greeted by our loved ones and even our pets. Wow. Thank you Brian.

Brian Smith 1:11:22
That’s a great picture. Good seeing you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

I am happy and hopeful to share this special episode with you. All of my episodes are special. But, in this one, I discuss a particular type of pain that some of us suffered at the hands of toxic theology. I hope it helps someone who listens. If you know someone it could help, please share. In this episode, Dr. Purcell and I discuss how similar our childhoods were due to the teaching that God made us imperfect and we were deserving of eternal torment for that reason. We both struggled for decades trying to reconcile this teaching with our hearts. Traditional Christianity is literally insanity. In this episode, we discuss the evil god of Calvinism not loving enough to save everyone; who in fact, creates most people just to throw them into eternal torment. We discuss the weak god of Arminianism who wishes he could save everyone, but it’s beyond his capability to do so. And, we talk about who/what we believe to be the true God who not only loves everyone but actually knows what He’s doing.

Dr. Boyd C. Purcell holds an undergraduate college degree in Comprehensive Social Studies from B.G.S.U. He also has a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling from Bowling Green State University. His Master of Divinity Degree is in Biblical Studies from Ashland University Theological Seminary. Dr. Boyd’s doctorate is in the integration of psychology and theology. He is a retired hospice chaplain, having provided comforting spiritual care to hundreds of dying patients. Dr. Boyd has experience as a psychotherapist on the Christian Therapy Unit of a psychiatric hospital. He has taught counseling courses to students earning their Master of Arts Degree in Counseling at Marshall University Graduate College. He pastored an Evangelical Church for 15 years until condemned by the denominational officials for coming to believe in too much of God’s all-inclusive, unconditional, everlasting love, amazing grace, infinite mercy, and perfect justice for all people everywhere in the whole world!

He has written several books including:

• “Spiritual Terrorism: Spiritual Abuse from the Womb to the Tomb”
• “Christianity Without Insanity: For Mental/Emotional/Physical Health.”
• “Symbolic Fire in the Holy Bible A Thru A,” the subtitle, “God is Fire/Baptism of Fire/Salted with Fire.”

His website is:

ℹ️ https://www.christianitywithoutinsanity.com

Transcript

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith.

Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth and today I am really excited to have me Dr. Boyd C. Purcell. Dr. Purcell has an undergraduate degree in comprehensive social studies from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He has a Master’s of Arts degree in counseling from Bowling Green State University. He has a master of divinity degree in biblical studies from Ashland University Theological Seminary. And his doctorate is an integration of psychology and theology. He’s a retired hospice chaplain having provided comforting spiritual care to hundreds of dying patients. Has his website is Christianity with that insanity calm. And I’ve read his book Christianity without insanity. That’s what we’re gonna primarily be focusing on today. But we’ll talk about his other books, and his other work as well. But I’m really excited to welcome to Greek to grow. Dr. Purcell.

Boyd Purcell 1:36
Thank you. So good to be here.

Brian Smith 1:39
Yeah, I said, I’m really looking forward to having this interview. I wish I read found your books like 3040 years earlier. So tell me how did you come to write these books and become passionate about this field?

Unknown Speaker 1:54
Well, I would say that I really was spiritually terrorized as a child.

Boyd Purcell 1:58
I had zero fear of God up to my eighteenth birthday.

Talking about our shared experience with Kentucky, I was born in Kentucky, you said you lived there for a while. But my parents at age eight for me moved to Ohio for better economic opportunities. And then they start going to church before that.

Unknown Speaker 2:22
So I’m really curious as to what got you passionate about this field, what was your background that led you to this? Well, I had zero fear of God, prior to my 8th birthday. And we lived in Kentucky in a rural area. And the church was not close. And we didn’t have an automobile. My dad worked out of state in order to support the family. And it works in Ohio. And we’re not moving to Ohio.

Unknown Speaker 2:49
And my dad had more economic opportunities there. And then we start going to church every week. And I start hearing about Hellfire damnation. And it just seemed absolutely horrific that God I heard was love. With torture people, they don’t use Word torture, that’s a torment. But I use the word torture by writings because if getting people burning in a literal Fire of Hell, especially forever, is not torture, then we need to delete the word torture from our vocabulary, and get rid of it from our English dictionaries. Certainly as torture, so terrorized by that, and it talks about getting saved and they sing the song Amazing Grace, given all her call to come forward to get saved before it’s too late. But then they preach about how you have to live a perfect life. They quoted Matthew 548, many times, Jesus said, Be therefore perfect. Father, heaven is perfect. On the one hand, he said, no one is perfect and can’t be perfect. And yet, to get into heaven, you have to accept Christ and then live a perfect life, or you’ll get burned in hell forever. That just seemed absolutely absurd to me, then I was really terrorized by that.

Brian Smith 3:57
So this was when you said about eight years old at this, this happened with you.

Unknown Speaker 4:02
So I went on through for my 12th year, but going up to getting 10 years old. So here’s 2012 is the period coming pretty fast. And it’s like you have a grace period before 12. And if you die, you will have an automatic way because you’re not accountable for your sins. Right? If I heard the term accountability, that’s not a theological. It’s not in the butt. Right? Something that Christians are made up to try to excuse God and make us all better. You only torture 12 year olds and older, not 11 year olds under, right. Yeah, what’s his 12 year old girl for that matter? But anyway, as my 12 year old approached, I started hoping I would die. Yeah, I wanted to die. And I asked my mother who believed in prayer, you should pray for a man that God would take my life before my 12th birthday. I knew she loved me. And that would really hurt her for me to ask that so I didn’t do it. But then I thought about asking my dad He was a hunter and he took me hunting with him. If he’d do me a really big favor and shooting kill me before my birthday, I’ll go to heaven, hell forever. And I know he wouldn’t do that, Hey there, he’s a very good safety cutter. So he wouldn’t do it. That’d be just totally out of character for him. So I didn’t ask him. But as my 11th year came, I got to my 11th, month 11th year, only one month ago, and for my 12th year, I thought about taking my own life. But then I heard that suicide is self murder. So that would be something covered by this period of grace update as well. So I’d be setting myself the hell by the one hand, so I didn’t do it, obviously. But that’s what I went through. That’s all the terrorism that’s not being hyperbolic and terror and labeling or titling my book, spiritual terrorism. But the subtitle is spiritual abuse of the womb to the tomb is not quite the womb for me, but is started very early in life with just a J. But some people believe that God will be Catholics or explains that a baby, not baptize, God will either at least bar forever and beholding his face. Or God will actually burn the baby in hell forever, even though they’re totally opposed to abortion, because it’s taking an innocent human life. Is that not oxymoronic? And then the Calvinists are even worse, because they believe that God chose his sovereign choice, who would be saying, Who be damned to hell forever, not just before born, but even before the crease of the world. That’s absolute sir. That’s certainly the oxymoron that gospel probably oxymoronic gospel.

Brian Smith 6:37
Yeah. And and as you as you were telling your story, I’m just sitting here nodding, going, I understand. And my path is exactly parallel. And I know some people are going to be thinking, well, that’s, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. That’s insane. And it is. But this is what we were taught for me. I was I remember being my grandfather was the pastor of our church. We were Pentecostals. And I was taught that Well, yeah, absolutely. I love my grandfather’s. I admire him. And, and he meant well, but we were taught the same thing. And there’s some people and it sounds like you are like I am, that are sensitive to this. And we really take it to heart for most people seems to kind of go over their head. And I think it’s because it’s so insane, that they don’t really grasp it. But I did as a five year old, and I was about eight when I started being able to not able sleep at night. And I would pray to God, why did you create me? Why would you put me in a situation where I am at risk of being tortured eternally, and I would rather not have been born. I thought that many times. Yeah. And you find yourself in this dilemma where it’s like, I didn’t choose this. And I can’t love this guy, because he’s a monster. So I can totally relate to everything that you said.

Unknown Speaker 7:50
So don’t send that’s why I call that Christianity. With insanity.

Brian Smith 7:54
Yes, absolutely. So at what point did you escape from this? How did that come about?

Unknown Speaker 8:02
Well, I kept taking a step at a time, which is very painful. And I went off to college and the same miserable condition. And I was told many times in church, that there are people out there who will tickle your ears with things you want to hear. But be really careful about that. Because the end of there is the way of death and not just ceasing to live, but getting eternally tortured in hell. So I was really cautious about seeking out anything else at college where there were opportunities to do that. So I started going to the same kind of it was a Pentecostal Church at Bowling Green, I grew up in only did that for about a semester. And it was just so bad. Like, just like everything else I’d heard. Because there’s no point in going through the study more, or sending church from the dam to hell forever. Anyway, so what I had to go hear about it every Sunday. Well, then I started going to another church that was somewhat similar to what I grew up in, but not it was better, and the pastor there to preach all this stuff about Hellfire and damnation. And I wondered why. And I asked him, you know, why are you emphasizing all this cellphone damnation because it was a very fundamental church. And he’s the way he grew up Roman Catholic. So you hear a lot of this is another legalisms. But he was not there very long until he left. And then they got into a new pastor. And he’s as bad as a pastor I ever heard. Yeah, my next the last Sunday there. He preys on the hill. And it was sinful to dance, because dancing, smoking, drinking, going to movies all that will send you straight to hell. So he said, because he shook his finger in their face and he said to the parents, if you let your children listen those Elvis Presley records, they’re going to hell and you are to know I didn’t care about Elvis Presley myself, but my sisters love Belle’s Seven Sisters and know that his records and so on which I didn’t I wouldn’t walk across the street here, Elvis but I thought you gotta go Again go to hell for listen to Elvis Presley’s records. So I thought that’s it I’ve had it was church. I’m out of here, which I was. So next Sunday I stayed home from church. And in my college dorm room, I thought I’m feeling really guilty about not being a church and God made me to hell forever for that because they also quoted Hebrew is about foresight not there’s so many songs together, and so much more as you see the day approaching the day, the Lord Jesus Christ, Second Coming. So I thought, what, what can I do to be religious about going to placate God, so I don’t get to hell for staying home. So I turned on the radio, and I heard a religious program by Dr. Umar de Haan. And he was preaching, teaching on the definitely law and grace. First time I really heard that. Yeah, wow, that’s really good news. We’re saved by grace, not by all these works. And so I sat down and wrote him a letter and sent out a small donation. And a couple weeks later, I got back a big box of books because I asked him to send me everything he had written on that I didn’t realize somebody’s written. A lot of booklets in there. So I started sorting through and finding the things that laundress the most pertinent. And I read those, it just sounded wonderful. And I thought, well, you know, I remember those years, there’s a way seems right into a man, but then there are others the way of death. So I thought I’d take a buck or two back to this Elvis Presley creature, and see what he was saying he took one look, and he said, Ah, he says that dad will Baptist doctrine easy believe ism, salvation by grace. Here’s a really classic thing. He said, even if I believe that, Chuck, I wouldn’t preach it. Because it’s damaged men souls to Hell is the easy way that grace was just too easy. It’s a hard way. It’s a pressing way. You got to live a life and all that. And I thought, well, thanks. No head of the church, I never went back there again. I went to the Baptist Church and started here, some of that salvation by grace on the screen, the believer, and that’s really the really beginning of getting out of that. I just continued to grow about that. But let me say one thing, there was an elder who came to visit me in my dorm room, after I stopped going to that church, church. And he said, You know, I really need to come back. And he said, If I don’t, if I end up in hell, and he said, you’re just never gonna be happy outside the Pentecostal church. I said, Well, that may be true. You know, I’m not happy now. So I won’t make a difference. in or out of get any worse.

Brian Smith 12:20
So what is it you think? And I and I, again, I relate to what you’re saying that? Okay, they tell us be baptize. I’m assuming you probably spoke in tongues. I don’t know. But if you’re a Pentecostal, we talk about that. Yeah. So we would like be baptized, you know, and Jesus name speak in tongues received the Holy Spirit, but then you still never really felt safe. You still never really felt secure?

Unknown Speaker 12:46
Well, that’s one thing because you’re never really sure you’re safe. Unless you spoken dogs. Because that what I was taught was, if you’re saying, you know, what, besides being saved, you have needs to be filled the Holy Ghost, right? You haven’t. So speaking in tongues, right? All right, then to know your say, you have to get the feeling you’re that feeling? Like if I wasn’t feeling feel like no one ever told me it would just you’ll know this feeling. So it’s not just a feeling. It’s the feeling right? And then you’ll know your sight. Well, I went the order dozens of times, praying and played in the eye. Oh, God, please give me the feeling safe and giving the feeling I’ll never do that based on the left brain person. I think the right brain people are more emotional. And you know, speaking in tongues, in tongues, even at the moment, there probably be tape recordings, I wish to have hundreds in my head. Not that I’d actually be going in the Holy Spirit will be speaking through me. So I don’t know just speak in English, rather than some unknown tongue, right? Like this. But even if you get the evidence of the getting the feeling and speaking in tongues, you still have to live the perfect life to stay safe. But that won’t get you to say that doesn’t keep you safe. Right? So much insecurity. It’s just absolutely awful.

Brian Smith 13:58
I remember what again, we were in little kids, and they would say things like, I’m five years old, eight years old. But don’t go to the movies. Because if Jesus comes back and you’re in the movie theater, Jesus is not coming in there. You know, and don’t go don’t go to a bar because I’m five, I’m not going to a bar. But you know, but Jesus is not going to come in there. So you were always It was like, at any moment, if you had any unconfessed sin and Jesus came back or you happen to die, then you were just out a lot.

Unknown Speaker 14:26
Even one unconfessed sin person that was a good person going straight to hell, forever. My God is love.

Brian Smith 14:34
Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 14:34
I don’t want people to thank you here this, this all about Pentecostal church? And I kept out on my books didn’t say it, because another thing Well, what else do you expect from those that Pentecostals but they’re non Pentecostal or just as legalistic. He’s just as much fear. This is legalistic. That’s what medical schools are.

Brian Smith 14:52
Yeah, a lot of times they don’t really emphasize it, you know, and, and I’ve been to some secret sensitive charges recently and they just keep it underneath the surface. So they bring everybody and it’s very happy, you know, they get great production values, great music. And then once every six months or so they’ll actually talk about this thing that, you know, by the way, if you’re not saved, you’re going to go to, you know, you’re going to go to hell. So it’s not just the Pentecostals. And I mean, you talked about the age of accountability. I again, I smiled when you said that because it’s not difficult. But what it is, is people said, Well, God can’t be this horrible. So let’s put this this artificial thing in that you’re you’re okay until you’re like 12 or 13. And it’s not in the Bible. And I was a little kid and here I am, like, eight and I’m telling begging my parents let me get baptized on a go to hell. And they’re like, well, you’re not old enough yet. So yeah, I had to wait till I was like 13. And I was baptized when I was 13. But the Catholics at least were more honest and said, you know, babies are born in sin. So if you don’t have your baby,

Unknown Speaker 15:55
yeah, if you don’t have your baby baptized, then God’s like, I want them in heaven. That’s, that’s at least more honest. Right? Then even as Catholic, you lose your salvation, if you could get more, you know, they classify sense as mortal and do anyone’s misdemeanors. But the mortal sins are the capitals. So just minor things you might think, wouldn’t be a capital crime, mortal sin, such as children masturbating, which almost all children do. They’re normal. But that’s a severely disordered action. That’s the latest version of the Catholic catechism when it was a grave sin, a mortal sin to masturbate.

Brian Smith 16:34
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you talked about you discovered the Baptist Church, and that was a little bit more fraying. What what actually kind of led you to read the ledger to read the Bible and understand Christianity in a different way?

Unknown Speaker 16:52
Well, actually just reading it for one thing for myself, rather than what people told me it said, but still reading it. With the background I had. It was like a shield. I’m not sure what the word I’m looking for here. But he’s reading it with a mindset because you to misunderstand and to sit and legalistic way, exactly. Right, in a loving, graceful way. But the more I read, the more understood, seemed to contradict what I’ve been taught. Then I one thing I came to believe fairly early on, was that the fire of the Bible is metaphorical, not literal. And I never heard anybody say that, right. But the things in the Bible that can be seen really horrific, like the turtle, how far the lake of fire and all that revelation, people get thrown into torment. They’re not forever and ever. But there are other things like when it says God is a consuming fire. Logic says always got in a state of combustion, right? Absolutely not. So what does that symbolize? Well, God who is Love is in the process of consuming sin. Safari love of God can sin sin was purified centers and perfect love. Yeah, that that soon, but at least I understood the fire some places metaphorical, right. And I was asked, and when I was a kid, around 12, I asked the pastor of the church, his personal Hellfire and damnation. What about fire in the Bible? Could it maybe not literal, I didn’t know the word metaphor. Right? was trying to get at that and something symbolic. And that’s a snap and said, No, the Bible says fire and I believe it means fire. So fire isn’t literal, then you don’t believe you’d go to hell for not believing in the Bible? Because the Bible says the father’s literal, which it is. Right,

Brian Smith 18:39
exactly. And I love what you said there because we do come to when we read any, any text with a certain mindset. So the people that are reading it, the people that are taking it literally are coming at it with a literalistic mindset and this God who’s judgmental, and harsh, and that’s what they read. When we come to the Bible with a metaphorical mindset, and we look for a loving God. That’s what we find. Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 19:05
Let me give you a really good example here. This just blows the fundamentalists away if they’ll even listen. Most of them won’t even listen to a logical explanation of from my first subjective of love, Grace, mercy and eternal salvation from Universal salvation. But in blue people wait I asked you realize if you believe the Bible is true, that God is actually in hell. You ever heard that? The gods in hell? Oh, that can’t be possible guys. How was it that you believe the King James version that’s the Bible is probably terrorize more people than that version? Yes. I was having I was given a King James Version. When I was like 12 years old. And again, when I was graduating college, this was this is the basically this is the Bible, not just a translation Bible. And always have every only the King James because in the last days, they will change the Bible. Well, what about Psalm 139? verses seven through 12. Now the King James translators Hebrew word shield is hell. Now the psalmist said, Oh Lord, if I ascend up to heaven, behold, you’re there. we’d expect that. Okay? But if I sat down the shield now the hell King James says, We hold you there. So God is in hell. Yeah. So there’s no place to go from your precedence because you’re omnipresent throughout the whole world, the whole universe.

Brian Smith 20:30
Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s, you know, I, for myself, I was I was about 40, I think I started going through real crisis because this thing with God was just freaking me out. So I started seeing a counselor. And I went to see a Christian counselor, I want to talk to you about that. I’ll come back to that. But I went to see a counselor. And I discovered this thing called Christian universalism. I got on the internet, and I started doing some searching like, what other people believe is there any way that I can I can still be a Christian and still, you know, understand and love God. And I found I don’t know if you’re familiar Gary Sigler and tentmaker website. I found that and if not some other guys. Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s Yeah, so I found I found these guys. It was a couple different guys and a group of people. And I’m like, there’s a total different way to read this. A total, total different way to read this, the Bible and in white, and I start reading about, okay, what’s the history of the Bible, and the King James and the, and the word show, which never appears and in our in our old testament, we see the word hell and that’s not the proper translation. But translation.

Unknown Speaker 21:39
No, it’s not. But it was simply a place for be parted spirits, right? To have any connotation of any punishment. But by the time of Christ, there had developed two schools of theology, Hebrew tradition, that was a Rabbi Hillel Rabbi Shama. You heard of them? I have Yes, I’m sure that are you want to hear what that But anyway, Rabbi Hillel, believe that the fire of gahanna that was a Greek word for translate the King James SL, was literally a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem. fires burning continuously there and the place where they threw out the not only their trash, but the bodies of criminals and prostitutes and hair techs and others likely to be trash. And so the bodies weren’t feeling any pain, but became a symbol of disgrace and his honor, and so on, because good people, burials with honor. So Rabbi Hillel believed that if I began on supplies, disgrace, dishonor, and not the torture, per se, but no one would be tortured forever. Because after 12 months, then God would annihilate those who couldn’t be in court, or at least be one be tortured forever. So it was a lot more humane view. But Rabbi Samurai said, No, he just really he agreed that the fire was metaphorical. And it was for the purpose of purifying people. For those who could be an corrigible, God wouldn’t annihilate them. They just continue in that state of torment. And but the important thing was that there was no time limit on salvation. So why pick that up? And so well, there is, God’s gracious offer eternal life comes with no expiration date. A customer thinks we buy food and so on, have an expiration date. Right? salvation has no expiration date. So God was going to win this cosmic struggle between good and evil. As I said, it makes no difference. Whether that is, thanks a million, or a billion, a trillion, or a zillion aeons, or a years, for God to win this cosmic battle, God’s gonna win. And it will make no difference how long it lasted, it’ll be no more than a second with a snap of the finger and eternally, because God is eternal. God has always been God always obey. God is not so impatient, that God gives people one brief lifetime on earth, and so far more brief than others, and then down to hell forever, including those who have never even heard of Christ in this lifetime.

Brian Smith 24:14
Yeah, yeah. And that is the logical conclusion of the way a lot of Christianity is taught. And again, it’s one of those things and I saw something the other day, it’s like, well, you’ve got these two years to get it right. And, again, as you said, get it right, by believing in Jesus and living his perfect life until you happen to die. And if you don’t, then you’re going to you’re going to live forever and be tormented. The two things just don’t seem to add up. You could be the worst gun bomb on Earth.

Unknown Speaker 24:43
If you haven’t have 30 seconds. You’re going to die. And your deathbed prayer, oh god, I’m sorry, except Christ my Savior. Then you’re saying you’re going to heaven. And what some people who lived a wonderful life, maybe like Mother Teresa, and she had one bath or left a good deed on done because since the old mission kotlik sends up commission, you get down to hell forever because you have that last moment to repent.

Brian Smith 25:08
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:08
But back to Rabbi Shabbat and Hillel. Jesus cleared up that misunderstanding the controversy between those two schools of thought when he said regard to the purpose of gahanna was to assault everyone in it with fire. Have you heard anything salted with fire? A half? Yes. So for me if you hear from someone else before me,

Brian Smith 25:30
now I’ve heard it before. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ve been studying for for a while. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:34
Okay. Why never heard it in church? No, no, no, no. And I’ve asked that of hundreds of people in the last 30 years after coming to understand that myself, and including the clergy. And, personally, I was one of the few that have or believe in Christian Universalist. But I asked one professor, I knew well, who was Hebrew, and Greek professor in some other languages, brilliant man, teaching Old Testament. And I talked to him after I had written my first book, spiritual terrorism. And he’s Calvinists, by the way. And he said that he believed in Calvinism, because it made more sense, and I’m Indian ism. But he said he would like to believe in Universal salvation, and he would give anyone $1,000 if he could show him that the Bible actually teaches universal salvation. Oh, wow. Well, Doctor, have you ever heard of being salted with fire? But like you said,

Brian Smith 26:30
I don’t probably no, no, these are no,

Unknown Speaker 26:33
right. It’s brilliant man. Right THD doctor theology degree, it was tough to get That’s hard. a PhD. Was all the language requirements. He immediately got out his Greek New Testament, I read. Pause, Gar, cry Hello slice of time. This, everyone’s totally salted with fire. He’s blown away. He had never heard that in all his education. But then he immediately tried to explain it away by saying, well, that’s probably bad salt. reverser is not bad. So it’s not even a good salt. Right? salt, a fire, right? metaphor for purification. But he what but so we’ve exchanged communication a bit last 10 years, but he’s still not believing I still haven’t gotten my $1,000. Well,

Brian Smith 27:19
yeah. Because once people have that mindset, you cannot you cannot reason them out of it. And let’s talk about what Calvinism and arminianism is for people that don’t know.

Unknown Speaker 27:30
Well, Calvinism believes that God has suffered a lot in Calvinism. And so God decided before time and for the grace of the world, that these somebody will be saved, called the elect. Everyone else was the unelect, elector told is very small. And so pelvis. How many percentage is that like 50% as 2510 or whatever? They say it’s most of all said small. So once said, Well, I think probably 10% probably kind of stretching is probably less than 10%. That’s simply the general thinking. Now there are something Calvin’s now there’s one in his name at the moment, who called himself a biblical universals, who was Calvin’s, he believed that almost everybody select almost everyone, but not everyone is interested. Everyone who select will be saved, but those not elect hit won’t be saved because they can’t be safe.

Brian Smith 28:26
Be safe. Yeah. So it’s important to emphasize for people to understand, if you’re not elect, you cannot be saved. God has made you for destruction.

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Unknown Speaker 29:32
Right. So the other hand if you are elect, you cannot be lost. God’s already decided he’s gonna draw you to himself with blocks. Your resistible grace right can resist grace. Now that doesn’t mean that grace can’t be resisted at all, Sandy because it can be resisted for a lifetime. But 30 seconds before you die. You capitulate to saving grace or a prayer of confession and you say, right, that’s the Calvinistic. Do not Many of you says no God would do that. You know God’s impartial, we’re told the Bible God is impartial. So we no favoritism to anyone. So therefore God couldn’t just do something we say, we’d have to hell forever, theoretically, and everyone has a chance to be saved. Now Kelvin is going to go back a moment. Maybe the Jesus only died for the elect, he didn’t even die for the unknown, right. But Armenians believe that Jesus died for everyone. But in order to be saved, you have to hear about the gospel. First of all, listen, Bassman right, the world has never heard they lived and died, not ever hearing the name of Jesus, I still do the same, but they’re going to hell anyway. But at least you have theoretically a chance to be saved with arminianism. But the bottom line is no more going to be saved. But in Calvinism, it’s going to be very few, probably less than 10%. Because Jesus said, straight is the way they are the game, at least alive. If you it’ll be fine. But why does the road is the road? And why does the get the lead to destruction? In many areas, they’re out according to the King James, but that has nothing to do with heaven or hell, that’s talking about the life on Earth, the abundant life versus black living here. They read hell into that passage scripture.

Brian Smith 31:13
Yes, and I want to point out to people that most Christian churches, even though they may not call themselves Calvinist, or many nests, or one of the other, they they have that that set of beliefs and I learned this when I was reading and we talked about earlier, William Talbots book, The inescapable love of God that I love the way it lays this out, because either God is sovereign, and just doesn’t care about most people that he’s made for destruction, or God wants everyone to be saved. He just can’t do it. It’s just that it’s just that powerful enough to pull

Unknown Speaker 31:44
out the crux of the matter. What the dictionary says, The crux is something difficult to explain. So the crux of Calvinism is that God is able to save everyone, but unwilling, right? I mean, it isn’t God is willing but unable, because of humans abuse of free will. But God.

Brian Smith 32:04
Well, this comes about from reading into the Bible, and assuming that not everyone can be saved. In fact, most people can’t. So they’re coming into with that mindset and trying to explain it in one way or the other. And it makes God either either weak or evil.

Unknown Speaker 32:19
Exactly. Or both. As I said, that kind of God, I smell that was a small g is the supreme sadistic, more monster in the whole universe

Brian Smith 32:31
guy that I do want to talk, I want to move shift a little bit because I was co teaching a class on toxic theology of the last few weeks. So I was in there with some people who were from a toxic theology background, a lot of chaplains. So people that weren’t from, you know, the Christian or the Pentecostal background, and they’re basically saying, Well, here’s the thing. Just give up on all that just forget all that stuff. Christianity, that that’s just crazy anyway. And if you need to go see a mental health counselor, go see someone who’s not a Christian, because that’s the only person that can help you. Because you can’t be saved, you can’t be helped from that mindset. And I alluded to it a little bit earlier, when I wanted to go see a counselor, I had to see a Christian, because I knew I had to solve this from the way it was created. So I did and I sought out, I call that throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And so Tommy, when you were doing counseling with people that were going through, they had been tortured by this insanity. How did you help lead them out of that?

Unknown Speaker 33:29
Basically, by asking them what they believe, if it makes sense, what they’ve been taught, and most people that didn’t, I didn’t tell people what to believe. And I didn’t right up front share with people, Christian universalism. And with hundreds of the hospice patient, dying patient ever hospice patients dying patient. So I would just listen to him and share with me about your background and so on. And some would say chaplain, I’ve been trying to be a Christian. What’s their thing trying to be and being a Christian, they didn’t say I am a Christian, but I’ve been trying to be, and they’ve been trying for 40 5060 years, and sometimes only patience. and still they weren’t sure they’re good enough to make it into heaven. Right. Few of them said, chaplain, I used to be a Christian, I used to be a Christian, but I didn’t really realize I couldn’t live a life and I just gave up all that legalism. So even some of the patients though, who said, more like Roman Catholics was right, I am a Christian. You have to express the same fear of going to hell because of not being good enough to get into heaven. So an awful lot of phony baloney out there and things are just messing up people’s mind. So I basically just listened to people and show them and then I’m asking questions like, you believe the fire of the Bible especially relates to God and judgment isn’t literal fire. Oh my god, I thought about that. I really hope it was not but not heard. And I share examples one from my God, mega consuming fire up he doesn’t say to combustion. Well know that God couldn’t be in a state of emotion. They asked him about Do you believe in salvation by grace? Well, I’ve heard about that we sing about Amazing Grace, right? Because grace doesn’t seem very amazing at all. So what am I What? What is Grace? So I’m there to favor. There’s a book, I’d recommend about God’s grace, addiction and grace. that talks about voice being the most powerful force in the universe because it’s divine love and action. And as we get further along the road, I’m asked him about being salted with Have you ever been salted with fire? No, never that. Well. Tell me about that. Yeah. What is that? So I shared that with them. That’s what Jesus said, those are Jesus words. Well, could that be literally true and you could salt something with salt you burn someone fire? But can you literally solve anything or anyone to fire? You can do that. Well, that must be a metaphor. But what would that symbolize? So getting people think for themselves and come to the truth and understanding that I say, Well, if hell is eternal, as we’re told it is, then Jesus must be then confused. He must have misunderstood he must have misspoken. He must not have been what he said. was some people say his case, when he said, john 1232, if I’d be looked up from the earth, on the cross, I’ll do what, I’ll draw people to myself. I’ve always heard that. We even sing songs about it. Right? What song I’ve heard some repetitively a dozen times or more, with all our call to come forward, hit save points eternally too late. But lift him higher, lift him up, lift him up for the world to see. Jesus said, that’d be lifted up from the earth, elder all man on Tuesday, you have to give an older call to get saved for it’s eternally too late. Because he really isn’t good at all people. When they say, Well, he’s going to draw people to himself to offer themselves nation. But if they refuse it, then they’ll get down to hell forever. Right? Well, that offers already been made the offer of salvation. So if drawing them to himself does not mean salvation, then that is a meaningless statement. Right. And I think it’d be very insulting to Jesus to say that he made meaningless statements. I think Jesus said exactly what he meant. He meant exactly what he said, if you looked up on the earth, across the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world, he through irresistible grace will draw people to himself. Therefore, hell cannot be eternal. He cannot leave one person eternal torment and draw people to himself. Right? That’s right, logically, is fraying.

Brian Smith 37:26
Yeah, and it’s, you know, it’s interesting, as we do go through this logically, and use your left brain person, and I think I am too, you know, as I was, as I read these arguments, and as I start to read the, the real words of Jesus and how take it metaphorically, and as we compare Calvinism arminianism. Now, if we combine those two things, and say that God does want to save everybody, and God is sovereign, and that God’s grace is irresistible, then we come to the conclusion that everyone must be saved, because of God wills it and God is omnipotent, omnipotent, and it must happen. And that’s the conclusion of Christian universalism.

Unknown Speaker 38:04
That is true. So, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, and God has foreknowledge, and as you said, it’s not God’s will that any pairs for all come to repentance? Why cannot the sovereign God get what God wants? Right? We’re told in job 42. In the United a translation, that’s the James, that then also Revised Standard Version, that no purpose of God can be forwarded. Well, that would include God’s plan of salvation and whatnot,

Brian Smith 38:33
that would be the most important thing.

Unknown Speaker 38:36
Yeah, can’t be thwarted because God is sovereign. God has decided he is going to all people himself. He’s the longshore process and destroying sin, consuming sand purifying centers and perfect love. So eventually, all will come to the Lord Jesus Christ him through the Lord Jesus Christ. They’ll bother me as Philippians two says, Every So Bob knows that heaven knows on earth and those under the earth. That’s a three story first century cosmology. We’ve got Earth here, heaven up there, and hell down there. We know today, the universe is infinite fraction, but that’s how we understood them. So those under the earth, that’s Satan’s domain. So Satan and the demons are also going to be buying their own capacity Jesus Christ for the glory of God the Father to devil can you say, the devil can I will be saved? In Matthew 2541. Jesus said department to the centers into the alien fire prepared for devil is angels. So people can be saved the demons and that will be saved as well. It’s the same fire. There’s 46 legal entity own Empire, prepare for the devil and his angels were told, but there’s a case of a really serious mistranslation. We talked about the righteous going into eternal life, the androids going to eternal punishment. What translate is punishment is the word colossal Greek word colossal space pruning. And it means to prune plants to cause them to grow better. And that’s what molten Milligan say, and their massive volume, testing the two great experts that you own and means that it was the reasons not to do whether it’s at an infinite distance, or no longer than the span of a Caesars live, it’s gonna be very long and very short, depending on the context. So the translate that as eternal punishment, the eternal proving that you might get annihilation on that, because after all, would be nothing left to prove, right. But logically, proving indicates something that’s good, you prove dead limbs is going to cause the plants the tree to grow better produce more fruits, right.

Brian Smith 40:36
So and this is, this is interesting, because and this is taking some of these verses that we thought proved eternal torment, and really understanding them and understanding the original language and putting them in the context and understanding that we’ve been taught the exact opposite of what these things, you know, mean. And I was I was talking with my with my daughter last night. And we raised her in the church, but she’s now says, she doesn’t believe in that. And I’m like, that’s fine. We raised you to be a free thinker. But I was explaining her the way that I believe and all the studies that I’ve done, and she’s like, Oh, well, that that makes more sense. And some stuff that I was taught, we tried to take her to get churches, I think we did, but most churches do not, do not preach this and, and for most Christians, you know, like when they hear Christian Universalist, it’s like, oh, that’s a new thing. That’s some new thing that just people may not. So you might want to explain to people what the real history of Christian universalism is, as well, you got to do what’s

Unknown Speaker 41:29
covered in the book, as you know, not anything by any means. That’s what Jesus taught, about the apostles praise in the early church lay for at least the first 500 years of church history, has already explained some of the things that Jesus said, Paul wrote, everything evolving over time to the person, and john and the revelation. And this great the often in this nation of God, so ever created being in heaven, on Earth, on Earth, honestly, and all things in them. That’s the point of redundancy. Be sure we don’t miss the point. Not one creative being in the whole universe fail to participate in this great hymn of adoration and praise, where they were singing to the one who sits on the throne, the Lord God Almighty, and to the Lamb. He glory, blessing dominion and power forever and ever. So that’s a wonderful message of Christian universalism. So what happened with this, the church got off track by Roman emperors, being the head of the church, and Emperor is all about control. They’re control freaks. And so the best way to control people is have the greatest fear, I’ll kill you, if you rebel against me. And then if we get the, the pope or whatever legislator we have, he has the power to damage your soul to hell forever. That’s the ultimate weapon control, is it not? So there’s we got off track. And here’s the interesting thing, historical facts which I love about the history major studies, Major, European American history. And I know the origin was the church’s first systematic theologian, was born at 185. He died to 254 69 in full communion, that has good standing with the Christian church, to which he devoted his godly life. But when we think of him as a heretic, for believing in Christian universalism, and the idea,

Brian Smith 43:19
I’m gonna get some time to 505 5553.

Unknown Speaker 43:21
Okay, what’s the 299 years after his death, what we’re good at cadenza one 300 years after they’re dead.

Brian Smith 43:32
Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s, and that’s the history that I learned when I started studying these things. You know, because we’re taught that these things have been this is what it’s always been that the church has always believed this night. And what I want to do with this with this interview is encourage people to study and to learn, and to approach the Bible with a new approach because it said I was I was on this group the other day with these people that were just basically just throw I call it throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And I’ve seen this happen so many times, people, they go from being a believing Christian with hope of heaven to I hate the word atheist, to a materialist, they’re like, the whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. So I’m just throwing the whole thing out. And I don’t have anything to any more thing more to do with this because it is literally I love the fact that you don’t mince words. It’s insanity. It’s it’s, it’s torture, you know what I call it what it is, it’s this idea of eternal, you know, damnation, and it makes God as I said, weak and ineffective or both rightful?

Unknown Speaker 44:35
It does it just destroys the character of God. It’s nothing to be done that’s more immoral and more insulting, more demeaning to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ is nonsense, not eternal punishment. And there’s a thing called the doctrine of reserve. If you haven’t heard that one, but if you haven’t, that means that even this was sent to me by the likes of a nice committee buddy domination that voted condemned me as a heretic for belief. Think that Jesus won’t save the whole world. And finally else’s, even if you’re right, even if Jesus is going to say better, would it be better to preach the document eternal punishment in the fire of hell? And then in the end, if everyone is saying, What harm will have been done, oh, God said, What? Gross spiritual immaturity. Wow, see, the harm has been done to me as a kid, as a 12 year old in my teen years and wasted that much of my life, worrying about that, and then worrying about salvation of other people, getting them saved. But once you’re totally too late, and you say what harm to be done?

Brian Smith 45:37
Yeah, and you know, that’s just I’m sorry, when someone when you’re hurt, it’s just shocking the system because as, as a child, and again, my grandfather loved them, I still respect them. My parents, they were trying to do the best thing for me. But it’s it’s torment to teach a child that a sensitive person that really understands what you’re saying to them to understand first. Yeah, and then say that I am just this awful, terrible being that guy can only say because he killed his own son and sprinkled his blood on me. It’s just horrible. And it’s not just children I fortunately escaped from but you talk in your book about the insanity that’s causing people to even kill their own children?

Unknown Speaker 46:18
Yes, I’ll kill 500 children all five, and save them from eternal damnation send them on the hill before it was totally too late before? Well, by the age of accountability,

Brian Smith 46:29
and I was talking to my daughter about this last night. My daughter is a mental health professional, she’s a licensed professional counselor just got her license. And I said, you know, people will look at that and say, Oh, that’s that crazy religious person. She was insane. I’m like, What she did was insane. But what she did was rational. If you love your children, and you see them approaching the age of accountability, and it doesn’t look like they are going to make the right decision, then logically to kill them

Unknown Speaker 46:56
would be the most loving thing you could do. What the churches don’t teach that. But logically, that would be and here’s another thing, that if people who love children really are children, then the best thing you do is not to Henschel. So we won’t have any chance getting burned.

Brian Smith 47:11
When I was a kid, before I understood that my parents decided to have me I blame God. But if I, if I had known what I know, now, I would have blamed that why would you bring me into this situation? This is, this is it’s not worth the risk. It’s not worth living your 60 or 70 years to be tormented eternally.

Unknown Speaker 47:27
As a 10 year old, I wanted to ask my parents that question, did you believe in total motion before you hit me? Suddenly, it’d be hurtful to them that I didn’t ask them because it loved me. But what if you believe in eternal punishment? Why don’t you have children, any children, and I made up my mind that I thought I would never have children even admit losing the girl the love of my life at that time, which I did. It wasn’t because of that, as I was 27, before getting married at 30 years old, before my third year of seminary, because widely understood the Bible well enough to risk bringing a child into this world that really wants to save everyone. So that having almost everyone to health room. Hill was not literal. It was corrected image.

Brian Smith 48:08
Yeah. And that is that is the harm. And I was talking with a friend of mine who was taught the same stuff. And he was taught about what he was actually taught, Jesus was coming back at any moment. And it’s like, if Jesus is coming back at any moment, then there’s no point and you go into college, there’s no point you saving for retirement cuz you’re, you’re not going to be here. So he literally did not go to college or save any money. So we do real damage in the world when we teach these these crazy things, and so don’t so people can’t, you know, to say, well, let’s just teach this anyway, you know, just just in case now,

Unknown Speaker 48:44
no, not at all. Absolutely. Right. It’s absolutely awful that people would do that and teach that thinking they’re doing a good thing, when they’re terribly perverting the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Brian Smith 48:55
Right.

Unknown Speaker 48:56
And it what people say but love, he always argued, in fact, more flies with honey than with vinegar. Let me say that.

Brian Smith 49:03
Yes. And but it’s, it’s such a childish view of of God, it’s a child’s view of people, you know, because I, you know, I hear people in the church, well, if you teach that to people, they’re going to do whatever they want. Why would they? Why would they? Yeah, why would anybody be good? Why would anybody bother to come to church? You know, it’s

Unknown Speaker 49:23
like the outside, you know, do good for goodness sake. It’s a concept that doesn’t seem to occur to these people, that maybe I’ll do good out of out of gratitude. You know, the person being altruistic doing the right thing for the right reason not out of any fear of punishment or any reward just altruistically. Like I had an evangelical pastor Tell me, boy, if I believe what you believe, but everyone thinks I’d go have a good time. Wow. Yeah, pastor of a church. And I said, Well, what sense Do you want to commit? You want to lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery? What is it and then he realized that was such a foolish thing. Something he said he looked down at the floor, hung his head and would not answer the question.

Brian Smith 50:05
Yeah. And that’s that shows that just a very low. there’s a there’s a story. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a great story. Jose Balu, the the Universalist circuit preacher was out riding with another pastor and the guy said, If I believe that she believed I would, you know, knock you over the head and steal your horse. And the guy said Jose Balu said, No, if you believe what I would believe you would never think about doing that. So this idea that it’s a license to sin, you know, and I love that that answer you don’t like someone said, you know, if I was an atheist atheist, someone said that he’s an atheist. Well, I would rape his murder as much as I wanted to, because I rape and murder as much as I want to, but I don’t want to rape and murder.

Unknown Speaker 50:47
Well, then you have my book, he said, as far as the Christianity about and soon and in there. I just like to share this. I guess we’re probably getting near the end. Yeah, please. But the first chapter is, as you know, it’s the title of Christianity within Sandy. Well, the book is without insanity. But the top 10 oxymorons, by the way that word oxymoron. As you probably know, it comes to two Greek words oxus being sharp walking in more automating dull or foolish. Oh, wow. So it’s inherently awesome. What has inherent contradiction, okay, so we need to eliminate oxymorons from Christianity to make it attractive to people and get people safe through love rather than through fear. And so these are the top 10 oxymorons accordion my listing here, the top 10 lists in reverse order. 10 is that’s perfectly proportional justice and eternal hell. Nine, does this have an unpaired almost all parents 870 overruled by human free will, is the Calvinist of anything. I mean, they’re seven God’s omniscience and inability to change freewill, six God’s omnipotence and evidence to save all persons. That’s on my presence and eternal separation from God. You hear that a lot of eternal separation. It’s impossible. God’s out of my presence. You can’t be separate, right? That’s why God’s even in hell. She’ll, number four, God’s amazing grace and eternal punishment in hell. Three, God’s unconditional love and eternal torment on how to God’s everlasting love and eternal damnation in hell. And here’s number one, my favorite, God’s infinite mercy and eternal torture.

Brian Smith 52:26
Right? Right. These things cannot connect coexist,

Unknown Speaker 52:30
right? Here’s my third book, I just finished running this one. Okay, well, I find the Bible e through Z. And the God is far, the baptism of fire and salted with fire. And then you have the salt shaker are coming out of the holes in in reverse layout is purified by fire Martin 949. So looking forward to people eating that some people already told me that they really helped them a lot. One woman told me it’s fun and amazing, so informative, and was helping to change your life.

Brian Smith 53:02
Absolutely. And I do want to recommend, and I’ll put in the show notes, the titles of all your books. So I recommend that people do do get them and do and do study. And you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it’s interesting to situations I man where I’ve where I’m helping people understand the afterlife, which is what I do a lot of the time and, again, talk with people about toxic religion. And there is you know, there is still beauty in the Bible, there’s still there’s definitely beauty in Jesus words and what Jesus taught, and even what Paul taught, if we learn how to read it properly and understand how it’s been corrupted. I mean, the Bible has been corrupted by by the church

Unknown Speaker 53:44
has translations and more than interpretation translations like that. Let me say this, too, as far as the revelation, many hospice patients and other people are so fearful of getting thrown into like a fire and brimstone that many times, yes, I say, what is the word brimstone? Yes, let’s talk about that. So the only person been able to tell me that out of 100 people is a retired chemist. And he told me that means sulfur. And sulfur was a wonder drug an ancient we’re looking at some of this. So when I shared this with my mother, which is 75 years old, she said, Oh, boy, that makes sense to me about the lake of burning sulfur, and so on. Why would that make sense to you? And she said, Well, because she remembered helping her dad, my grandfather sulfur apples when she was a young girl, huh? So I never heard of that. I said, How do you sell for apples? And what do you sell for apples? And I said, does that leave it off? I aftertaste because I’ve never had that chemistry in high school chemistry class that burning sulfur smell. And she said, No, it doesn’t leave an aftertaste and the apples taste delicious that way but he said you do it to go plant light and any disease and to preserve the animals so you can preserve them on winter that way. She said you slice them up, put them in a big pots scale by the placement centers. Send in silverpop send on fire and they get on building because it will fumigation. No. But that’s why people understood long before canning and freezing to preserve the produce. Also, sulfur place mature body store, it would also someone died in infects in a home of infectious disease, they burn software to disinfect the house. And software can be taken internally and externally for various melodies. So every software is used out of a national connotation, until the Chinese centuries later, forgot to wait to use software to make gunpowder. Right.

Brian Smith 55:35
And I think that’s really important. And I want to emphasize that, you know, because the thing is, the Bible is a metaphorical book. And it was written a long time ago, and a lot of the metaphors don’t make sense directly in English. So when we think of software, we think of something stinky. And we think this is going to be this place. And the ancient people that heard Jesus would have heard purification, they would have heard healing, demand, and what we’ve been taught to heal to read it exactly the opposite. So we really, really need to understand the language of the day. And the metaphors of the day so we can understand what Jesus was was really saying, right? That’s exactly right. Yeah. And I really appreciate you know, the fact that you do that in your book, and I love the I love that you. You know, the people, you know, what the religion, you’ve got to check your brain at the door, and just go in and believe whatever they tell you. And even if it’s even if it’s offensive to your senses, and you alluded earlier to all the little things, again, was talking about yesterday. And there’s a guy and I hate to say this, but I’m going to say it. A lot of churches are basically cults, you say they, they ruled by fear and intimidation. And when I when you’re when you’re a little kid to give these verses and say, Look, someone’s going to come along and try to tell you something different. Don’t listen. They’re tickling your ears to leading you to destruction. You can’t so believe whatever we’re telling you right now. And don’t believe anything that anybody else ever tells you.

Unknown Speaker 57:03
What you believe what makes sense to you doesn’t make sense. So you don’t waver? Right?

Brian Smith 57:08
Right. And that’s what that’s exactly what the opposite of what you’ll be taught as a child and a lot of these, you know, Sunday schools and stuff so I’m, you know, and the thing is, there’s so much out there, you know, I’ve read like Marcus Borg, john Spang, and your book now and Thomas Talbot, you know, brilliant people that have studied these things. I can teach you the truth like use, I was shocked when I was discovering Christian universalism. They said the first 500 years of the church, the doctrine was universalism, the doctrine was Jesus and saved everybody. I was like, 50 before I heard that,

Unknown Speaker 57:41
right, exactly. I was talking to her as a teenager. Well, before I heard that as an eight year old that totally changed my life. Yes, absolutely. Well,

Brian Smith 57:50
I’m Dr. Purcell it’s been a it’s been wonderful getting to know you and having this conversation with you. Thank you for for your books. I thank you for your time doing this today. Any last words you want to say before we wrap up today?

Unknown Speaker 58:04
Well, thank you for having me on and great interview and you have a wonderful voice. I guess you’re in the right profession with a voice you have very melodious and very pleasing voice. But I mentioned I’m one helping questions known as the wounded healer. So I just want to make people’s I can to find peace with God, trying to call the mind healing for damaged emotions, enjoy of living. In Christian universalism does that it’ll bring people together, a world now so torn by religious violence, all kinds, especially religious strife. But someday we’ll become tolerant, peaceful. And Jesus, the Old Testament prophet said, Isaiah, that someday that the rice so rushed down like a binary string, now’s the Lord to fill the hole or they’ll be nothing armor, I thought the whole world. And so I guess I’m like, tore down and that’s not just the 1000 year millennial reign of Christ. That’s a never ending reign of God Almighty. And Christ has gone all people to himself, when all evil has been abolished, and there’s only good and right and righteousness throughout the whole world and the whole universe. Well, everybody, will everyone else just as God has instructed us to do through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Brian Smith 59:18
Yeah, looking forward to that day. Thank you very much, have a great rest of your day. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Leslie Lindsey Davis is the author of the book “You Can’t Eat Love” where she shares the lessons she learned on a journey to learn to love herself. Part of the work was finally dealing with the ungrieved loss of her mother decades before.

Leslie learned how to name and honor the emotions that she had kept shoving down. It was not until she began to confront the emotions, especially the grief that she was able to set aside her ‘drug of choice’ – food.

Her least favorite phrase as it relates to grief is “you’ll get over it” followed quickly by “aren’t you over that yet?” As part of her journey, Leslie lost over 100 pounds when she learned the art of self-love and how to process her grief properly. Her book helps others learn these same lessons. How do you heal in a world that wants to keep moving forward and doesn’t want to hear about your pain?

ℹ️  https://www.youcanteatlove.com

Transcript:

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried. But what if, like a seed we’ve been planted, and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth. And today I’ve got with me Leslie, Lindsey Davis and Leslie is the author of the book you can’t eat love, where she shares the lessons she learned her journey to learn to love herself. Part of the work was finally dealing dealing with the angry loss of her mother decades before Leslie learned how to name and honor the emotions that she had kept shoving down. It wasn’t until she began to confront the emotions, especially the grief that she was able to set aside her drug of choice, which was food. Her least favorite phase as relates to grief is you’ll get over it followed quickly by Aren’t you over that yet, which is we’ve all heard of us. Those of us have been in grief. So with that, I want to welcome to grifter growth. Leslie Davis. Well, thank you so much, Brian, I’m, I’m really excited to be able to talk to you today. Yeah, I’m looking forward to having this conversation. I know your book is called You can’t eat love. And you started on this journey of self discovery. So tell me what started the journey of self discovery that you’re going through?

Leslie Davis 1:46
Well, actually, it started with a moment of grief, if you want to know the Absolute Truth. About six years ago, my oldest son decided he didn’t want to have a relationship with me anymore. And my father had died just a couple of months before that. And then my oldest son and his wife had their first baby, which, ironically, was the coincide with same time that I lost my mother, the birth of him was two weeks after the loss of my mother. So I went, you know, down into this deep spiral. And because I really had not learned how to grieve, I didn’t know what to do. And so it was like, you know, falling off of the edge of a cliff and you’re free falling without a parachute or trampoline or anything else. And that was when I realized I could go one of two directions. And I decided, because I didn’t want my children to be in the same situation I had been. I decided I was going to have to learn how to grieve, but not only how to grieve how to deal with all the other emotions that I did not know how to deal with.

Brian Smith 2:56
Yeah, that sounds like a lot happening at one time with your son and the birth of your grandchild and your mother, you know, passing away. So do you feel like you mentioned in your bio, that you had to engrave loss of your mother? Why do you feel like you weren’t able to do that grief work at the time?

Leslie Davis 3:14
Well, she died. And then two weeks later, my oldest child was born. And my you know, my entire family. I mean, I was 26, my youngest sibling was 18. So you don’t have a lot of life experience at that point in time. But at the same time, everyone that was around me was either struggling with their own grief, or my husband’s side of the family, they were ecstatic that they had a new grandchild nephew, whatever, you know, my husband had a new son, all of these things. So everybody forgot about me. And when you’re forgotten about you think well, you just have to soldier on. Right. And so you, I did you know the best that I could which reflecting back I was not taking care of myself. I didn’t know how to do that. But I don’t know about you. But I realized as time went forward, anytime an important person in my life would would pass away with die. That grief would come back. It’s kind of like, if you vacuum your house, but you don’t move all the furniture and you vacuum it well, the stuff comes out from under the furniture, but you still don’t get it all out from under the furniture until you actually move the furniture and you know, clean out from underneath it. So to me not dealing with grief in the moment or at the time and working our way. Not so much through it but to the point that we are better than we were. It comes back out.

Brian Smith 4:56
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of really important things that you said in there. I mean One of the things that I tell people all the time is when it comes to grief, it’s really about self care. And a lot of times we’re not taught how to take care of ourselves. And we don’t understand that we need to do that. And the other thing that you that you touched on there is grief. I like your analogy is kind of like the dust under the furniture, because it’ll just hide out there. And it’ll hide out there until something else triggers it. And then we realized we never actually dealt with it. So how long was it between the time that your mother passed, and you felt like you were able to start dealing with your grief?

Leslie Davis 5:31
31 years? Yeah, the one that I felt that I could start dealing with it was that I started dealing with, right, I didn’t have an option. I realized if I was going to survive, I was going to have to confront it. And that that was difficult. But what I realized also is I didn’t have to do the work by myself. And I’m grateful for podcasts like yours, because you are so authentic, and honest. And you don’t try and sugarcoat it, you don’t try and say, you know, we have to get over this, you know, the cliche comments that people make about loss are so unhelpful. Hmm.

Brian Smith 6:22
So, yeah, so yeah, what you said, you know, people might say, Wow, 31 years, and I’ve heard of this, I’ve heard of people, it’ll be decades sometimes before people can deal with the grief. And, and we don’t even know that we need to because no one’s taught us that we have to go through this process and do this work. And we don’t realize that grief is manifesting in different ways. And I know you mentioned that that food was your drug of choice, did you? Do you think that the grief is what led to that eating issue that you had?

Leslie Davis 6:52
Well, grief was just a part of it, because I didn’t know how to deal with any other emotions. You know, grief is just one of those major, major emotions. And as I was preparing to talk to you today, one of the thoughts that came to my mind is even as young children, we’re not taught how to grieve the small losses. And can we experience loss in small ways, from the time that we’re young, you know, it can be that we either lost a toy or a toy broke, and it was a toy that we enjoyed playing with, or we moved or friend moved. It can be that, you know, we’re changing schools, they’re all these little teeny tiny losses that happened in our life, that we’re not taught how to acknowledge how to address and how to mourn those tiny losses. And so we really never had the opportunity to learn how to how to experience how to enjoy joy, for example, we don’t really know how to experience happiness. There’s this wide range of emotions that we really are not taught how to experience. Grief just happens to be to me, like the giant elephant in the room, right? Because it’s the one that nobody wants to touch. But I was thinking, you know, part of what you’re doing, I believe is so beneficial people and I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But this is just, you know, the thoughts that I’ve had is I’ve listened to you. What you what you were doing is you’re taking this elephant and you’re putting it in the middle of the room and you’re saying everybody, let’s look at this thing. And we can circle back around and if we can get to small children, or even children for the hit the teenage years, and start teaching them how to mourn things and acknowledge that they are mourning them. Well then when something of great magnitude such as the loss of your daughter, the loss of my mother, you know, the loss of a very close loved one, one of those huge losses happens. We are not hamstrung. Yeah, we already have some of the tools, we already have some of the ability to be able to do what we need to do in order to cope with that.

Brian Smith 9:13
Yeah, yeah. Again, some excellent points you made in there. We don’t. We don’t teach our children emotional intelligence. We don’t teach people how to deal with uncomfortable emotions. So we tend to stuff things down, we tend to ignore things we tend to self medicate. Now all these different various things that we do to deal with them. And it kind of seems to work for a while until this major thing comes along that just then we have no clue. We have no tools on how to deal with it and and it blows us away and then you know, and as you said, People say to you, well, aren’t you over that yet or Don’t worry, you’ll get over time heals all wounds we’ve heard, we’ve all heard that. And I what I say to people as time allows you to heal all wounds, but time on its own not heal on ones. It just doesn’t happen magically grief is grief is work, you know. And I tell people that it’s a process we have to go through.

Leslie Davis 10:09
Well, very much so. And I can remember my now ex husband, this is just among the many recent season x, five years after my mother had died. It was Mother’s Day. And I was feeling very, very, very sad. And his comment was, aren’t you over that yet? And I, I felt ashamed. I really did. I felt ashamed that I was not over that yet. And truthfully, it wasn’t until probably 15, maybe 20 years ago, when I read the book, motherless daughters, that I understood that what I was feeling was normal. That I wasn’t crazy. That what I was feeling was normal. We don’t get over these things. Oh, my gosh, that just makes me crazy. You’ll get over this. No, you don’t get over it, you may get through it. Right, but you’re not over it. You know, one day maybe better than the next day. I tell people that grief is like being in the middle of an ocean. And you’ve got a lifejacket on. And some days The ocean is you know, relatively calm, and you’re just kind of bobbing along and you’re very comfortable. Other days, the waves get a little bit bigger. And then they’re those days, when a tsunami hits you out of nowhere. Out of absolutely nowhere new, we’re slammed to the bottom of the ocean floor and you are struggling with everything that you have to get back to the surface. And I realized that not having the tools not having the vocabulary, also not having the self love to be able to say you know what, this is how I’m feeling right now, I need to just take a moment, I need to discover what caused me to feel this. Because as you mentioned, different things will trigger us and they can come absolutely out of the blue. It can be a commercial. Yeah, it can be a billboard that you drive past. It can be a word that somebody says in such a way that it reminds you. And I discovered that if I wasn’t going to take the time to learn how to take care of myself. In those moments, I was going to continue being slammed to the bottom of the ocean floor with no ability to get myself back up to the top. So it’s not that we don’t go to the floor. It’s not that we don’t have the tsunamis. It’s it’s a matter of what do we do after that happens? How do we take care of ourselves? After that happens? How do we talk to ourselves? How do we allow other people to speak to us? When those people say, well, aren’t you over that yet? Well, no, of course I’m not over it. This person was extremely important in my life. So why would you think that I would be over it? And then we walk away? Hmm.

Brian Smith 13:07
Yeah. Yeah, I think what you said is, there’s very profound and you know, it’s and what I try to do with people’s, I try to be very transparent about things. Because sometimes people will look at me and say, Oh, you thought you’ve healed this, you’ve worked, you’re all you’re all done, and you’re over, I’m like, No, I still have bad days. And so I have bad moments. The thing is, we don’t, we can’t always stay on balance, what we learn how to return to balance more quickly. So you’re right. And I love that analogy. I’ve used to you know myself about the waves. And I tell people, the first part of the grief, the waves are just, they’re unpredictable. And they’re just slamming you all the time, they get farther and farther out, they become more predictable. But there’s still times when they just you know, things will hit you out of the blue. There’s still times when, you know, like you said a word or phrase or commercial or whatever it is that can trigger a memory that can take us right back to that moment. And it’s important that people understand that doesn’t mean you’re going crazy, doesn’t mean you haven’t done the work properly. Because these people are important to us. So I’m going to miss my daughter for the rest of my life as I’m sure you’ll miss your mother. And that’s and that’s okay.

Leslie Davis 14:16
And it is okay. And I think that that’s one of the things that I’m so grateful that you’re being very honest about grief, you know, you’re being very transparent that, you know, it doesn’t go away. I mean, you’re not going to make your daughter disappear off the face of the earth simply because she is no longer walking on this physical earth. And I have I have gotten so frustrated with people who lose a loved one, regardless of the circumstance of how they lose them, where they try and pretend that they never existed.

Brian Smith 14:49
Yeah, yeah.

Leslie Davis 14:50
And I find that to be so sad because that person was important. And they made a difference who were impacted your life. And I know in my family, because none of us had the skills, I’m the oldest of six, six kids, and then my dad, and none of us had the skills that we needed to be able to cope with this. And so we would tiptoe around whether or not our mother was alive or dead. And she wouldn’t, it was almost, you know, as if that name which cannot be spoken. And it wasn’t until you know, I started doing the work. And then my, I have three sisters until each one of them started doing a little bit of the work, that each of us in our own way was able to no longer pretend that our mother did not exist. But I think that that’s one of the saddest things is that people don’t have the skills, they don’t have the safe place to go to honor the grief. And that that’s what I think that we need to do. And that’s why I’m saying we need to teach small children how to mourn a loss, so that they’re mourning it in a safe place, a small loss, being mourned properly in a safe place so that when they get to the big losses, they’re not just absolutely devastated beyond repair. I’m not saying you’re not going to be devastated, but not devastated beyond repair.

Brian Smith 16:26
Yes, yes. And that that coping mechanism of pretending the perfect person didn’t exist is just your everybody’s walking around sad, pretending to be happy, but you don’t stop thinking about that person, you can’t. You just don’t want to, you don’t want to, quote trigger the other person. And sometimes people will bring up my daughter, and they’ll say, you know, I hope I didn’t make you sad, or they won’t want to bring her up because they think it’s gonna make me sad, and like, you can’t make me sad. And you believe me, I think about my daughter every day. So you not bringing her up is not serving either one of us. But I’ve actually worked with clients that have that have had children pass, and one partner will say, well, we’re going to pretend they didn’t exist. I mean, they don’t say that, literally. But they’ll put the pictures away, they won’t talk about them. And then the other person’s left just suffering tremendously, because all they’re thinking about is that is that child is that’s not that’s quote, not there anymore. And I think it’s very important that we keep that person alive, whatever your beliefs are, some people believe that they still exist, I do happen, but my daughter is still here. But in any event, keep the memory alive, talk about them, celebrate them, you know, celebrate what an important part of your life that they were, if that’s that’s your belief, or in my case that that my daughter still is. So you know, this, it’s one of those very, very common coping mechanisms is just doesn’t work is pretending the person that never existed?

Leslie Davis 17:56
Well, it doesn’t, who is it serving, it’s not serving a single solitary person, because the person who is running around pretending that they didn’t exist, I can only imagine how much of their brain space is being occupied trying to keep that demon down, locked up down in the cellar. And then as you mentioned, you know, the other person wants to talk about them, they want to have a conversation about them, they want to discuss with them, but they don’t have a safe place to to have that discussion. So you, to me, you’ve almost got two sides of the same coin. You’ve got two people stuffing down these feelings in two different sellers, but they’re the exact same thing. And if only the you know the person who wants to speak about it can speak with the person that they trust the most. Who is trying to keep you know the person from not being mentioned. If only they could have an honest conversation. I just imagine how much healing could take place. Now, I will say this. One of the things that I learned is we heal from these losses we do heal, the scars remain. And if it’s a deep enough wound, the pain when you bump it is still there.

Brian Smith 19:15
Yeah.

Leslie Davis 19:16
And the the scars, to me are what tell another person. You know what, I may not have gone through what you went through, but I can only imagine how you were feeling. And we just leave it right there. For example, my our youngest son is getting married in less than a month. And my husband’s father died 15 years ago, and my husband was saying the other day that he was feeling very sad because his father wasn’t going to be there to see his his grandson get married. He couldn’t fish with them and all this and I said to him, I can imagine how you’re feeling. I said I would be sad too. I said actually I know exactly how you are feeling. And I said, while it may not be exactly how you’re feeling, I have a very good idea of how you are feeling because that’s how I have felt myself. I said, you know, do you want to talk about that some more, and he was okay. But, you know, we often people often are uncomfortable when somebody else is grieving. And I believe it’s their own fear and lack of skill that makes them uncomfortable. And one of the things that I learned is, if I can say to somebody, I can only imagine how you are feeling. I don’t need to say to them, I know how you’re feeling. Because really, truly, I don’t, I don’t know how you are feeling. So I’m not inside of you. But I can imagine how you’re feeling. And I can imagine how you were feeling based on how I feel.

Brian Smith 20:58
Right? Right.

Leslie Davis 20:59
But just think how much better that sounds and saying, Oh, I’m so sorry. I know how you feel. But no, you really don’t. Yeah,

Brian Smith 21:09
yeah, exactly. So what I’m after all those years, what started you on your journey to, to healing your grief into into self discovery?

Leslie Davis 21:21
Well, I decided that I wanted to live my very best life that if I was really going to honor my mother, who died at the age of 49. And this year, let’s see at the time, I was 59. I decided if I was going to live my very best life, and I was going to live to be 153 years old. And one day someone celebrate all 153 years at 1201 on the 150/3. And one day, I’ll go so that’s all right. The only way I would be able to do that is if I was helping mentally, physically and emotionally. And I realized that to honor her. Her life was cut short, she died of cancer. Her life was cut short. So to honor her, I needed to live my very best life. But at the same time, I wanted to live my very best life. And so I decided I need to get healthy mentally, physically and emotionally. And I realized the biggest piece of that was to get healthy emotionally. Because I had spent so many years stuffing down emotions, everything from sadness to anger. And a lot of times anger was a consequence of sadness. And it was when I started doing that journey of self discovery, and honoring what I felt and being able to verbalize to somebody else. Right now, this is how I’m feeling. I’m not asking you to do anything about it. I’m simply informing you that right now, this is how I’m feeling. And then you were talking about nobody can make you sad. That was like a ginormous aha moment for me when I realized no one can make me anything except reservations for dinner.

Yes, absolutely. I wanted to keep my power, I could make a choice to be sad, I can make a choice to be happy, I can make a choice to be angry, but no one is going to make me anything anymore. And if I was going to honor myself and live my best life, I needed to, you know, hold on to my power. So really being able to acknowledge that yes, I’m very sad because you know, my mother’s not here to celebrate these moments. Yo, she’s missed every every single event in all of her grandchildren’s lives. She’s missed major events and all of her children’s lives. And I didn’t want to continue living a life in my rearview mirror. Right for

I want I wanted to live, you know, the best life that I could. So to do that I needed to, you know, honor that.

Brian Smith 24:02
So where do you think that wisdom came from that to learn how to do that, to understand that you are in control of your emotions and to start speaking again about your mother? Did that come from inside? Or did did you read some books? Or Where’d that come from?

Leslie Davis 24:17
Well, it actually came from a verse in the Bible. I stumbled upon I want to say it’s psalms 149 147. God heals. Let’s see what is it? God heals all wounds and Jesus button or God heals all something in Jesus binds all wounds something to that effect. And that was like, Okay, I don’t have to deny that I had these wounds. I don’t have to deny that I had these scars anymore. So let’s start from there. Okay, okay. And that was It’s really the aha moment. And since since that time for the past six years, part of my morning routine is I read verse out of a chapter out of Psalms every morning, I read a chapter out of Proverbs every day. And then I read another chapter in the Bible. But I also read some other inspirational readings. And I write three pages in a small notebook. I’m not, you know, in the big eight and a half by 11. Note, but then I write three pages in a small notebook conversations with myself. Because I discovered that the ones that I have in my head were not productive. Yeah, the ones that I have on paper a little bit more productive. And I don’t reread the conversations, I simply write them and, you know, close the book, and I’m done for the day.

Brian Smith 25:49
Yeah. So you, you have developed a practice that works for you that that to allow you to deal with your grief. And I understand when you started on this journey, you didn’t tell anybody about it. Why is that?

Leslie Davis 26:04
I didn’t want I mean, I don’t know about you. But when we start on journeys, you end up with the what I call the watching police, and they start watching you and they start questioning you and they start telling you, you should you be doing that. And then the shoulds in the woods come out. And I’m just you know, and I felt as if I had enough shame to deal with within myself, I had enough shoulds and Woods within myself, I didn’t need the outside world contributing to the shame in the woods and those things. Because I was battling my own stuff, I didn’t need to battle the exterior stuff. Because I don’t know about you. But when you know, when the outside world starts questioning you, then you start questioning yourself. Even if what you are doing is incredibly logical, it works, it’s going to work for you. You have already determined what your reasons are, you’ve determined your objective, and you’ve got a clearly thought out plan to the best of your ability. When those people show up, don’t start questioning yourself.

Brian Smith 27:16
Well, you know, the thing is, and this is an interesting dynamic, I think in families. It’s not a it’s not a intentionally negative thing, but they always want to keep us the same. They don’t want to see us transform. You know, it’s like whether it’s losing weight or quitting drinking or quitting smoke. I’m not saying they wish negative things on us. But they, they tend to, like always put us back to where we were. But they’re like, this is the person that I know, for good or for bad. So when you say I’m going to make a transformation, that’s your right, that’s when they start coming out with the Are you sure you could do this? And I you know, and so I understand exactly why you would keep it, you know, keep it to yourself, at least for a while?

Leslie Davis 27:58
Oh, well, it is, as I started making the changes as I started, you know, getting healthier and dealing, you know, with some of the emotions and things like that. My husband started questioning things, you know, what are you doing? Why are you changing what’s going on, and I really couldn’t verbalize what was going on. But he also doesn’t have a very high EQ. So it would be very difficult really, and truly for me to explain it so that he could understand it. He’s incredibly intelligent, but his EQ is incredibly low. In so many people that we are surrounded by have very low EQ. So whenever people start doing this high level, emotional work, if we’re not talking to another person who is you know, it moderate to high level emotional vocabulary, even it’s difficult to explain, because, let’s face it, our emotions come from that part of the brain that don’t have any language. Yeah, it’s pictures. And so when we start trying to explain these things to people who are logical and literal, they don’t get it.

Brian Smith 29:09
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good point for people. I just want to fill in the for people that don’t know what EQ is, that’s emotional quotient as opposed to intelligence quotient. So a lot of times, you’re right, we can people can be very, very intelligent, and have no ability to understand emotion and just saw a quote, I mean, with Helen Mirren the other day talking about, you know, when you’re trying to explain something, some are trying to argue something somebody first begin with, do they have the ability to understand it? And some people in our life are not going to have the ability to understand what we’re doing when we say, I’m going to stop doing this and I’m going to start doing this. They will just look at you like, why why would you do that?

Announcer 29:50
We’ll get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach. If you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, go reef to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri e f, the number two, gr o w t h.com. If you’d like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com slash grief to growth www.patren.com slash g ri e f, the number two gr o w th to make a financial contribution. And now back to grief to growth.

Leslie Davis 30:47
Exactly because they don’t understand it. It’s you know, it’s out of their realm of logic. And that was the other thing that I discovered on the journey is that, you know, families we talked about dysfunctional families and families who were loaded with dysfunction, generational dysfunction, because I started looking back at my own family, we we did not have the coping mechanisms for grief. We really didn’t have the coping mechanisms for many emotions at all. Going back generationally, for example, my grandfather’s father died when he was pretty young. And he was, you know, in an environment where you have to be a man, you know, you got to man up, and men are not allowed or expected, or even encouraged to feel emotions. In my grandmother’s family, on my mother’s side, her parent, her father ran away with his secretary when she was young. And you know, you just have to get through these things. So she didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with that kind of grief. And then on my father’s side of the family, his mother was supposedly orphaned. And I later discovered she was not orphaned. She was sent off with her older sister and the father lived not all that far away, but never saw her again. And so what do you do with that? So generationally, we’ve been taught to not deal with emotions. So when when we’re hit with something big, we don’t know how to how to handle it. And so the work that you were doing is so very, very important. Because the less connected we become, which is what I believe is happening, even though we’ve got the you know, zoom and telephones and all that we actually are becoming less connected. The work that you are doing actually is going to benefit people in so many ways, because you’re giving people skills, that generationally they don’t have, and then you stop and you pause and you think, well, if I’m looking back at the generations that went before me, of course, I don’t have these skills, right. And if we look at the skills, you know, are the people that are around us, of course, they don’t have those skills. So when we start doing something different, we’re pushing the boundaries. We’re changing the rules. Yeah. And not only that, but we’re changing the game totally and completely. And that causes a lot of tension and discomfort. Yes. Because circling back to what you said earlier, people want us to stay where we were, where they knew us, because that’s where they’re comfortable. Because when we change, they have to do something.

Brian Smith 33:36
Yeah, yeah, people, human beings do not like change. And you know, I really appreciate what you said about the generational things. My grandmother lived with us when I was growing up. And she’s to say, because my grandmother was very stoic person didn’t express much emotion. But she had enough emotional intelligence to understand that she didn’t know how to express emotion. I remember saying to my mother, you know, I had a main step mother, but you have books, you have TV, you have things you can learn tools from, so you can do differently than I did I. And I still remember my grandmother saying that, and I was probably 10 or 12 years old. And it’s affected me even to this day, because I realized, this is something that I’m going to have to learn. When I was when I was in my 30s or so I was going through, you know, it’s like a, like a midlife crisis or whatever. And I found a book from a guy that I was so excited about was a guy named john Eldridge. And the book was called Wild at Heart. And it was about how men bonding with their fathers and emotions and all that kind of stuff. So I remember giving the book to my father. And you know, he just could not understand it just just didn’t get it. No, no blame, no judgment, because that’s, that’s where they’re coming from. That’s where the generations coming from. So I realized and my generation, at least for me, I’ve got to, I’ve got to do something different. It has to be intentional. So I have two girls, and I’m like, I’m going to be different with my girls. I’m going to I’m going to make decision to be different. So I’m saying this and I know that you’re, you’re saying the same thing to people, you’ve got to make that decision.

Leslie Davis 35:07
Right, you have to make that decision, you have to make that choice. And one of the things that I realized, even when my, my three boys were younger, I didn’t want them to had the same outcome that I had. So like you, I made a decision early on, that I wanted to raise boys who were kind who were caring and who were compassionate, awesome. Because I, what I was projecting for them was who they were going to end up marrying. And I wanted them to marry someone who was also kind, compassionate and caring. Well, if they are not kind, compassionate or caring, they’re not going to be seeking out or or attracted to, or the person that is attracted to them is not going to be kind, compassionate, caring, but they also needed to have enough maturity and self love to be able to weed their way through the the narcissist and all those other kinds of people. And I have to say, I, despite the fact that I haven’t spoken to my oldest child, now in almost seven years, you know, he, he made a good choice and a wife, not so great. And you know, the rest of the decisions, but you know, that’s okay. That’s his choice. It’s not mine. But my other two boys are in very, very good relationships. I’m extremely proud of, you know, the people that they’ve grown up to be, even though my youngest one will tell you that he was not raised by his parents, he was raised by wolves. But I feel like you know, it’s up to us as we are raising children and your children are still in your daughter is still in her formative years. We’ve got to establish boundaries, and also teach them to look for people who are going to support them emotionally. Because let’s face it, we go through life, life is not a flatline, life has its mountains, and it’s got his valleys, sometimes it’s Mount Everest, sometimes it’s the bottom of the Marianas Trench. And if we don’t have a life partner, that can help us during those times. Well, then we end up repeating that cycle. And we need to have a life partner that can help us and support us in the joyous moments, in addition to the lowest moments.

Brian Smith 37:32
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m, I’m curious, when you when you began your journey, what did you expect the outcome to be? And did it turn out to be what you expected it to be?

Leslie Davis 37:44
Well, what I expected was that I was just going to feel better. I didn’t expect it to be hard. I will tell you that I thought it was gonna be you know, okay, I’m going to do these few things. And in a couple of months, it’s all going to be over with and it’s going to be great. Well, I don’t know about you. But when when I started doing the the hard work of the hard work, which is being honest with myself about my emotions, my feelings, you know, learning how to take care of myself learning how to verbalize those things. It’s almost like you can use one of two analogies, peeling an onion, you know, you peel back one layer, you find another layer, or you go into an old house that has never been really redone. And you start taking off one layer of wallpaper and you discover 50 more layers of wallpaper. So it became like that, just as I thought, oh, okay, I got this is like something would happen. I’d get smacked. And I thought you had it. No, you know, you have to keep doing the work. But it’s just like mowing your grass. You don’t mow your grass one time. And that’s it. You know, the grass grows and you have to keep mowing it. Well, the same thing that I discovered is this is not a one and done deal. Just because today I’m okay doesn’t mean that tomorrow, something won’t happen. And I don’t have to figure out how to deal with that. And I’m not talking about just the grief, I’m talking about the joy as well. So everything. So here we are six years later since I began the journey, and I’m still doing the work. And how do I do that? I read books, I listen to podcasts, I read magazines I write. I do you know, things to help me become a better version of myself so that each day I’m working to become a better version of myself with the understanding this is not a one and done.

Brian Smith 39:37
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s a really good answer. And I think that’s, that’s really that’s what life that’s just being humans about, you know, it’s about always improving and always being better. And, you know, and I think, you know, when people say I’m the same as I was 20 years ago, I’m like, well, that’s a real shame, cuz I hope I’m not the same in 20 years. Hopefully I’ll look back, you know, 20 years and say Didn’t know, there’s so much more I’ve learned and I learned, I learned new things every day. And I like, you know, and it’s it’s work, but it’s not a grind. I mean, it’s it can become, you know, a pleasurable thing and the things that you’re doing sound like, similar to the things that I do, I do them on a daily basis, but I do them because I’m starting to see the benefits from and you don’t you might not see him, but the very beginning, but after a while, you can look back yourself a five or six years ago and say, oh, okay, I can see that. I’ve grown some since then.

Leslie Davis 40:34
Well, and also just like, you know, riding a bike or doing anything else, the more we practice, because truthfully, this is a lot of practice, and we practice the things that we’re doing. It’s not a one and done. But the more we practice, the easier it becomes for us. And then we can move to that next level. So, for example, I was at a party the other Saturday, and two of the people there had just lost a loved one one, it was her husband, the other was the father. And so I greeted them and said, I’m so sorry about your husband. I can just imagine how you’re feeling. She said, Oh, it’s it’s okay. And I said, I paused and I looked her in the eye, and I put my hand on her elbow, and I said, No, it’s not okay. I said, I can just imagine, you know, how you’re feeling? And she said, Oh, you’re right. No, it’s not okay. But right now, today, I’m doing okay. I said, you know that, I’m glad to hear that. But she was really startled that I didn’t, except her canned answer, which is what we do so many times. And this that, for me, has come through practicing, not just with other people. But one of the things that I talk about is finding those situations, finding those people that you know, are going to do or say certain things. So for example, Thanksgiving is coming up in a few months, right? You know, that Aunt Sally is going to be there. And Aunt Sally is going to say whatever Aunt Sally is going to say. And you know, how it makes you feel, or you know, how you feel when Aunt Sally does whatever, we need to start practicing for those events. So that we’re prepared for a response or a reaction, we can make choices ahead of time. So you know, in the with with regard to your daughter with regard to my mother with regard to somebody else who has recently lost a loved one, a holiday comes up, it’s not that they have never existed on the face of the earth, that holiday is there, we miss them, we wish that they were enjoying that holiday with us. And if someone says something, if you’ve practice saying, you know what, my mother would have really enjoyed this moment. And I’m feel very sad that right now she’s not here. If we’ve practiced that, then we can say it. It sounds natural. And we are not concerned about the reaction of the other people.

Brian Smith 43:05
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s we’re stating our truth. That’s so important. You know, because we do, you know, I’ve noticed that, like, we’ll greet someone, and we’re just the standard greeting, how you doing? Right? And then the other person, most of the time, we don’t even answer the question, sometimes just we answered with how are you doing? Or, you know, or, or if we do answer, I’m fine. I’m good. You know, and we just move on, because we know no one really cares. I mean, no, one, it’s not a genuine question. So it is fun to kind of practice at some time and say, you know, how are you really doing, I really want to know, and then you watch people’s faces, you can watch their expression change, you’re like, Oh, you really do care how I’m doing and then they’ll, then they’ll tell you, you know that they’re struggling. And that’s and it’s okay, but we have this thing about, like, no one wants to make anybody else uncomfortable. You know, I don’t want to make you sad by by sharing my sadness with you. But if it’s a true friend, they really want to know how you’re doing.

Leslie Davis 44:03
Well, in talking about, you know, how are you doing? My second son and his wife lived in the UK for two years. And he made the comment that he observed that most of the people over there say, you’re doing okay, they don’t ask, you know, how are you doing? They ask you doing okay. And so I had switched to say you’re doing okay. And I’ve been really surprised by the responses that I’ve gotten. Hmm. Because it First of all, it catches people off guard, because they’re expecting the hell are you doing and then they just respond back to you. And if you listen to your own self, when somebody asks you, how are you doing? I’m fine, and you probably are not fine at the moment. If they’re asking but you know that they really don’t care, right? Or they’re not concerned. They’re just trying to get on with the pleasantries. But I even had the experience where I was getting my drink at Sonic one day and I asked the person who was handing me my drink. I said, you’re doing okay. And she paused, and she just started sobbing because she had just broken up with her boyfriend or her boyfriend had just broken up with her. But I caught her off guard. Because I broke the pattern.

Brian Smith 45:24
Right? Right. Right. And you had an opportunity to have a genuine moment that that she’ll probably remember for the rest of her life. And sometimes people that those small things can really make someone else’s day you know that someone someone cares. Someone, you know, cares enough to ask me a genuine question. So So let’s see. I’m Leslie, I’m curious, what made you decide to write a book

Leslie Davis 45:51
I got tired of, well, first of all, Mother’s Day, two years ago, I sat down. My youngest sister always made pies to honor our mother for Mother’s Day. And I never did because I hated Mother’s Day. My first Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day as a mother was my first Mother’s Day Without my mother. So one of those tried to avoid it. So anyway, I intentionally decided because I’d done all this emotional work, decided that I would honor my mother by making pie. And so I, the day after Mother’s Day, I sat down with a piece of the pie. And these thoughts started falling out of my head, and I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down what I was remembering, which basically, I was triggered back into a place in time. And it occurred to me that what I had been trying to do with food, I mean, I’d already lost about 100 pounds at this point in time. But it occurred to me what I had been trying to do with food was to eat love. And I realized that that is the moment when I said you can’t eat love. You know, love is in the memories. Love is in the doing love it. You know, love is in everything but not in food. So I wrote this little bit down and then the words kept haunting me. And also people kept asking me, Well, what did you do to lose the weight. And so I sat down and just started writing, and the book fell out. It’s not so much a book about you know, losing weight or anything like that. It’s really more about learning to love yourself so that you can change your relationship with your drug of choice. Because I sent the book my youngest sister ended up getting a degree in counseling, and she works in the area of grief, specifically and an addiction also. And she said, Really, the book could be called you can’t drink love, you can’t drug love. You can’t you know, whatever your drug of choice is love. Because you know, so many times it’s we’re trying to do we’re trying to fill what I call that myself sized hole in my heart. So anyway, long story short. Yeah, that’s how the book happened.

Brian Smith 48:04
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know, what you just said about the hole in your heart that reminded me when you mentioned this earlier about the wound that we have something one of my first grief counselor said to me, that was so profound, she said, you know, she modeled like, here’s, here’s your heart, and it’s got a hole in it now, and the edges are raw. And so everything’s gonna gonna hurt those edges and everything. But eventually, those edges will, will smoothed over and they won’t hurt so bad in terms of being triggered. But you’ll always have that hole. You always had that, that hole, what you know, that memory of your daughter or whatever. And so we do try to fill those holes sometimes with other things, because it’s like, we know there’s something missing. So you know, it might be alcohol might be food, it might be some people poured themselves into work, you know, lots of different things, anything to avoid actually doing the word. I mean, we seem to be really good about that. And we can do it for you know, if we could do it for decades, sometimes before we realize, Oh, this is what’s causing that and thinking about grief. You know, as you were mentioned earlier, being an emotion. Grief is actually I think it’s a container for all different types of emotions, a lot of different things that could come in and out. And grief is that one kind of catch up thing that we put everything under. But we don’t realize what’s causing it. You know, a lot of times we don’t understand what’s You know, this is reason why I’m so sad. It’s because I haven’t dealt with this.

Leslie Davis 49:29
Well, you mentioned here that grief is it’s like I even say in my book, you know, if you didn’t think you needed algebra, remember all those times you said why when am I ever going to need algebra, right? But you need algebra to understand not only grief, but also anger. Because usually those two emotions are summations of things. And you know the the A plus B and sometimes plus D, E, F, G, whatever equals you know, grief or anger and That was part of the work that I had to do, you know, teasing it apart. And I’m grateful that you mentioned that because yes, it is a summation. And it’s really not until we sit down and start teasing it apart, that we are able to look at the different elements to understand. Okay, so this is why I’m feeling like this, right. And I think that one of the hardest things to do is to pause long enough to do that work of teasing it apart. And looking at each piece of it. It’s almost like a Lego thing, you know, you pick up this completed Lego object. And it looks like there’s not a lot to it, but you start taking it apart and you realize, okay, well, so they used a two cube to make this look like this. They used a four cube, they used a six cube. So we need to be able to pause long enough to take those things apart, and then honor each one of those pieces and say, Oh, now I understand. Okay, well, what can I do right now? to take care of that?

Brian Smith 51:08
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you. And you know, the thing is, against that, it’s that learning that emotional intelligence, learning that emotional language, going within examining your own emotions, teasing them apart. And unfortunately, a lot of us were never taught that. And, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting. And the work that I do, I interviewed a guy a couple of weeks ago, he’s, he’s into grief stuff. And he goes, it’s really great to talk to another guy, because we never see men in this field. I go to I go to conferences, I go to things, and it’s 80 90% women, and the guys that are there, a lot of times we’re brought along by their wives. So we don’t we don’t teach and I love what you said about your boys, because we don’t teach that to our boys. And it’s not a biological thing. It’s not like this is how men are men are men are biologically, it’s the way that we’ve been programmed. And we’re all programmed. And so we all have to understand our programming and decide, I’m going to make a conscious decision to do something different if we’re going to do something different.

Leslie Davis 52:14
Well, in we, we become good at what we practice. And so if we are not allowed to practice grieving, being male or female, doesn’t make any difference. If we’re not allowed to practice breathing, we don’t know what to do, right? But now, you know, the female of the spicy, the spicy species is usually encouraged to be a little bit more compassionate. You know, guys, especially of my generation, possibly your generation, it was frowned upon, you know, what are you doing crying, things like that. So an emotional male is viewed as being very weak. And I always was uncomfortable with that definition. Just as I was uncomfortable with, you know, a weepy female, being, you know, a very kind and caring person. But you know, either extreme is not good. But I like that, you know, you are going to conferences, and you are an example to people to say, you know, look at me, I am a healthy, male, healthy mentally, emotionally and physically. And I am not afraid to do this work. And I think that that is so important, because you’re modeling for generations, that it is okay to express your feelings. Yeah. It is okay to, you know, to be sad, it’s okay to be kind, it’s okay to be loving. Because I feel like the media especially does a great disservice to the world. That, you know, it’s not encouraged. It’s just not encouraged. So I’m grateful to hear that you do attend conferences, and I do wish that more people were there. But I can just imagine the guys that are being dragged along by their wives. Do you ever get an opportunity to have an actual private conversation with them? Because I’d be very, very curious to hear what it is they have to say that they are getting out of the conference.

Brian Smith 54:12
Yeah. And then there are obviously exceptions, all the things we’re talking about. There are men that are very in touch with their feelings. But it’s interesting to have his observation. And while we’re talking about that, on the flip side, while women tend to be more emotionally intelligent, women are not taught self care. So a lot of times, women are like, they’ll take care of everybody else other than themselves. And I’ve worked with a lot of women. I’m like, No, this is time for you to take care of you. And I was talking with someone just the other day, who had a loss of a teenager in their life that was killed and they’re like, well, I’m falling apart. I’m not getting anything done. I’m not doing all the things I should be doing. I’m not back at work yet. I’m like, it’s been 30 days. You know, give yourself a break. But this is how women tend to react. It’s like I’m not doing all the things I need to be doing, you know, taking care of the house and Taking care of this person taking care of that person. And people are we’re encouraging this person to go out and get involved and like causes and stuff. And I said, No, do not let someone put that on you 30 days out, don’t let someone do that to you.

Leslie Davis 55:15
And well, in the reason that I’m laughing is when my mother died two weeks later, my oldest child was born. Right. Okay, I was, my mother in law happened to be there because she was supposed to be there for baby Sharon, she ended up staying for a week and they left on my birthday. My birthday is a week after my child was born. I was feeling guilty because I didn’t want to clean the house. I felt guilty because I would end up sitting, you know, for six hours not moving literally not moving. I felt guilty because I didn’t want to fix dinner, I felt guilty because I didn’t want to do the laundry. I didn’t want to go the Gretna delete the list of things I didn’t want to do was an incredibly long show. And I felt guilty because I didn’t want to do those things. And you know, knowing what I know. Now, of course, I didn’t feel like doing any of those things. But I didn’t have anybody saying to me, of course you don’t feel like doing any of those things. No, you’re sad. What can I do? You know, can I listen? Just tell me something, just sit here. And I will you can cry all you want. Now listen to you. I didn’t have the ability to do anything with that. So you know, that’s one of the reasons why my grief went so far underground, right? I couldn’t, I wasn’t around people who had that coping mechanism. But you know, you talk about women in the lack of self care. Something that I talked about is put your own oxygen mask on first. When we fly, they tell you put your own oxygen mask on first and help somebody else. And I always went, yeah, right. Anyway, you have about 30 seconds when that plane loses oxygen or pressure in those mass drop down, you’ve got about 30 seconds to get that mask on. And if you’re busy helping everybody else, and I tell people this, if you’re busy helping everybody else, you’re gonna be laid out in the aisle, the planes gonna land, they’re gonna step over you and sit there sit nice person who helped me they’re going to go on their way and where are you going to be? Right?

Brian Smith 57:21
Right. The other thing is, if you if you don’t take care of yourself, that you’re not going to be there to help anyone, anyone else. So that’s what I’ll tell the people you know, sometimes it’s like, you’ve got to take care of yourself first. And it’s okay. self love is not selfish, you know, it’s actually a part of something that you have to do to be healthy. So. So tell people, where can we get your book and tell us a little bit more about what we can expect if we get your book?

Leslie Davis 57:48
Well, you can get my book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble. It’s also available on nook and some of the other e readers. And what you can expect when you get the book is me having a conversation with you pretty much like we’re having a conversation right now. Because I wrote the book, the way that I taught. And the lessons that you learn in there are you know how to put your own oxygen mask on first, but also finding your why why are you doing something major in your life? Why are you deciding to make a huge change? But I talked about, you know, learning to love yourself is the main theme and the skills and the habits and things that you want to have so that when you’re driving your car down the road of life and you hit a traffic jam, you don’t park your car, get out and walk home. You know, we keep moving forward. And I talk about celebrating the little things because even even if we are especially when we are having you know one of these days where we don’t know if we can get out of bed, celebrate the fact that you did get out of bed look at you You got out of bed. This is how you felt I’m so proud of you. You got out of bed. That is amazing.

Brian Smith 59:03
Yes, yes.

Leslie Davis 59:04
And you stop right there. You don’t shut us You don’t want us you don’t put us you stop right there celebrate the little things. And if they wouldn’t reach out to me You can find me at You can’t eat love calm or reach out to me by email Leslie. And I would really love to hear from you. I am available, you know, anytime so just reach out.

Brian Smith 59:27
All right. Well, Leslie, it’s been really great getting to know you and to learn more about your story. And I appreciate you sharing it with with people. Because I think it’s really, really important that we model this for people and we give people permission to talk about the grief and explore the grief. And so thank you so much for being here today.

Leslie Davis 59:46
Well, thank you so much. And if I could just leave your listeners with just one parting statement. Sure. And that is no matter what is going on. No matter what anybody is saying to you just know this You are enough, just as you are. Awesome. Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate it.

Brian Smith 1:00:06
All right, have a great rest of your day. You too. Thanks. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Frances Key is the scribe of a four-book series called The Team: A Mother’s Wisdom from the Other Side. She began writing the books 19 days after her mother died when she sensed her mother communicating important spiritual insights to her. Frankie considers the true authors of the books to be her mother, Teddy Key, and the spiritual team she rejoined after she died.

If you’ve listened to me for any length of time, you are aware I am obsessed with these books. I first interviewed Frankie in May of 2020. I have participated in a book study she led. And, I’ve read The Team books no less than three times, maybe almost as many times as she has read them.

I find myself referring to concepts in the books continually. The first book was received from Teddy, while Books 2, 3, and 4 carry the energy of both Teddy and other teammates who came through to share their perspectives on life and death.

In this interview, I discuss with her some of the concepts in Book 4.

You can find out more at: ℹ️ https://www.theteambooks.com

Transcript

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine

Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth. And today I’ve got with me Francis key or Frankie key. Just for everybody who doesn’t know about my obsession with the team books that we’re going to talk about a series of books called the team and we’ll get into what that is. If you want to find out more detail about about Frankie or about the team books go back to Episode 102, which was in December of 2020. December of last year, you can listen to that. I’m going to read a quick bio, then I will introduce Frankie and we’ll get started. Francis key it’s a scribe of a four book series called the team. A mother’s wisdom from the other side, she began writing the books 19 days after her mother died. When she says her mother communicating important spiritual insights to her. She considers the true authors of the books to be her mother, Teddy key and the spiritual team that her mother were joined when she died. The first first book was received from Teddy, while books two, three and four, carry the energy of boteti and other teammates who came through to share the perspectives on life after death. Today we’re discussing her some of her concepts and book four and a couple other things. With that, I want to welcome to Grisha growth Francis key. Hello, I’m so happy to be with you. Yeah, it is really great to have you back again. As I mentioned in that quick intro, I’m obsessed with the team books, I’ve read a few books that I feel like I’ve changed my life. I’ve read, you know,

I think of some before some books by a guy named Marcus Borg and CS Lewis. And there’s a guy named Bernardo kastrup wrote why materialism is baloney, there’s been a few books that have really impacted me. And the team books are definitely among the the books that have really changed my life. So you and I have known each other I guess for a couple of years now reached out to you after reading the books. And I wanted to have you back to discuss the concepts in book four. But before we get into that, just for people that don’t know, let’s review, like how did these books come to you because you don’t consider yourself to be the author of the books?

Frances Key 2:49
Correct? Correct.

As you said, 19 days after my mother died, I had an experience of communication with her. Should I move this down? Okay, yeah, that’s fine. All right. Good. All right. So a little back, a little background on on my mother and myself. We were both we were extremely close. We she was on a spiritual journey. And she took me with her. In essence, she would go to different churches. She had left the Catholic Church, which she found to be not answering her questions. So as a child, I was taken to different places with her, she talked to me a lot about her, her inner search and my experiences with

if you want to call it psychic phenomena, or mediumship, or spiritual awareness began as a very young child, I think directly because of her. And so I had no doubt that I would have some kind of connection with my mother, I’d had connection, and dreams and visitations and things of that nature with other people who had passed. But I never dreamed that it would take the form that it did. So it before she died at the age of 86. I used to tell her mother, why don’t you write the story of your spiritual search and each chapter would be a different concept. And she said she would say, Oh, no, I’m too old for that. I can’t, I just couldn’t do it. So got our tape recorder. I kept encouraging her actually to do something like that, but she never did. And she would say to me, Well, why don’t you try to sit and do that? inspirational. I’ll call it automatic writing. But it wasn’t complete automatic writing where you have no awareness of who you are, what you’re doing it, but it was this very flowing inspiration writing. So she would say why don’t you try that anymore? And I’d always say oh, I don’t know. I don’t feel called to do that. So lo and Behold, the to what she told me to do what I suggested that she do, came to pass in 15 books. I never dreamed it would happen that way. I believed and trusted that I would communicate with her after she passed. But 19 days after she passed, I was on an airplane, going to New York City to see my two daughters who live there. I have four but to live there. And I spoke to her in my heart, looking out the window with the beautiful clouds, which are always so inspiring, I’m sure to everyone. And I said, Mother, is there any distance for you? And I heard her answer me. I heard her answer in my mind, but I, I hesitate to say I heard her audibly, but it felt audible as well. So it it, she began to speak to me about where she was about her perspective. I was asking questions, and I started writing them down, because I always had pen and paper with me, I’m just a writer. So I do that. And asking her and, and writing down what she was telling me. And at first, I was talking to her about my personal grief and my, my regrets in my life, and apologies to her about certain things, things of that nature. But then it just started to blossom. And within the two hour flight, it was all about so much more. So I thought this would be a one time encounter on the airplane. But it turned out to be something that went on day and night, really, for over a year, over a year. The first book was written in three weeks. And by the way, because I released it so quickly, I’m in the process of tourism, editing and correcting of it. But it has some typos. But I felt it was important to get it out there first I gave it to family and friends. And then people started asking for them. And I was printing them up putting them in a folder, giving giving them away. And then I went ahead and did it through a company where people could order them on demand. So but the writings continued, and I would handwrite everything in this big scroll. And then I would sit and type it up. So it took a bit of time. The books came out every couple of years. And book four, it actually took about four years, three and a half years to get that final one out, because I had gone back to work. And so I didn’t have this block of time to do and it was kind of in bits and pieces, it took me longer to pull it all together. But book for which you wanted to speak about today.

shades describes it as taking the lid off everything else and telling us not to cling to any of these teachings thinking Oh, now I’ve got all the answers. But to use them to to move further. Because you can take any concept in these books, and most of them are in seed form. I call them in book one. They’re in seed form. And then there’s so many layers of more information about every single one of those ideas and concepts. And I think that’s what book four does. It’s like, book four is essentially it’s called Beyond the team. Right? Right, for that reason?

Brian Smith 8:46
Well, I think it’s interesting. Every time I talk to you, I learned a little bit more about about your story about your relationship with your mother. For people that don’t know you did you start doing automatic writing when you were a child? I mean, you wrote some things that were just so profound, that we wouldn’t expect to come from a child. And then I hear you say to your mother, okay, well, you should write this stuff down. And she’s like, well, I’m too old. You know, it’s, like I hear I hear other people say, Oh, it’s too late. I can’t do this. Right. And so it’s never too late. Cuz, you know, she’s still writing through you now. And,

Frances Key 9:17
yeah, she’s gonna

Brian Smith 9:19
go ahead, because she’s encouraging you to use your gifts, and you’re trying to get her wisdom out.

Frances Key 9:24
And this is exactly what happens, attacks. And I came to realize that you know, this team, this spiritual team, her main, her main teaching was, you are not alone. You’re not even functioning as one person. Nobody is because you are a member of a team. And that spiritual team is close to you as breathing and that we are like a representative, you know, of our team. It doesn’t mean we’re the only one here and that all of our team is on the other side. You know, there are many members of our team right here. On Earth, they were all working and connecting, and have a particular role and each other, some of us very, you know, intensely and some of us will never physically meet, you know, across the, across the world from each other, but we’re affecting each other. But, you know, we still are a representative of our team, which to me is just such a powerful concept. And, but what I came to realize was that the team saw this opportunity, first of all, the opportunity came because of the asking, of humanity for this, it would not be presented if there wasn’t a collective spiritual asking for the material. In fact, it’s true of any anything that comes out. And then, you know, supply and demand, if you want to call it that, you know, if, if nobody wants to, to buy the drugs, the drugs are not going to be sold, or they’re supplied. So it works on, on with negative difficult things, and it works for spiritual matters, too, it’s supply and demand, then, the team was able to see that there was a calling in the world for this book, and that they had a person who had this very fresh connection to someone who had passed, who was able to teach it. And someone who was able to, was prime to receive it, because I was, you know, in an in a state of grief and missing my mother. And because I was very suspicious, to be honest, of not suspicious, but cautious. I never wanted I heard, you know, some stories of people tapping into things that weren’t, were mischievous or, or things of that nature, and I wanted to protect my self, and I wanted, I didn’t want to be channeling or or a part of anything that might come through that wasn’t pure. So I trusted my mother, and I trusted her voice. And that’s why book one was 100%, my mother, then I became aware as the as we went along, particularly a book to some of it felt and sounded like my mother and then other teammates came in. There’s chapters that speak of all through the books, there’s chapters that speak of scientific things, or medical things, or quantum ideas that I’m simply not educated in. So these were, these were part of teammates that had that wisdom. But my mother was the main, I knew she was at the helm.

Brian Smith 12:51
Right, right. Yeah. You know, one thing about the books for me, and like I said, it really changed my life, and just how I even look at my life, I mean, just totally fundamentally, because I’d heard the concept of angels and guides and stuff like that, but it’s still kind of like, you’re the star of your own story, right? We are the person that’s here, and they’re there to help us, you know, the angels and guides are there just to kind of help us. They’re almost like their servants in a way. And this, this book, or these books, maybe feel like, no, we’re all part of a team, we’re all equal members of the team. I just happened to be the one at this moment, that’s in the trenches, but I’m not the star of the show.

Frances Key 13:32
Right. And the beautiful thing about that is everything that you go through and learn, your team absorbs, everybody doesn’t have to go through everything and do everything to get the to get the wisdom, and everything they’ve ever gone through. You will absorb everything, every bit of wisdom we attain becomes part of the team. And then teams, teams are connected to other teams to other teams. And that’s how all of it is spread out into the, into the one. So but for our human mind, the concept of a team and our belongingness is exactly what our human mind needs. And and can use the best if you if you think too far beyond Oh, well, that team’s connected to that team. So you know, it can boggle the mind. But yes, we’re not the star. We are a piece of the puzzle. And we are a representative. Yeah, so it’s exciting. It’s an exciting concept. I agree.

Brian Smith 14:40
It really is an answers to me so many questions because I you know, I’ve worked with people work with a client who was like, elderly and was alone and everybody everybody else was on the other side. And they’re like, why am I still here? Why am I going through this and what I explained there is that this is not just for you, you know, we We go through is not just for us. And for me, it just makes it just opens up so much more possibility as to, why am I going through this. And when I think about it, it’s not just for me, it’s for the other people, so maybe they don’t have to go through it.

Frances Key 15:14
Absolutely. You know, we, it, there’s a reference somewhere, I think it’s in book one to how, you know, they these simple analogies are given, but a stronger person may carry a heavy suitcase, you know, for someone at the airport. You know, as we’re walking along, we may lift up a child who can’t keep keep up the pace, we take on things for one another, just like we do in our daily lives, I mean, we do with our families, our loved ones, our friends, you know, we, we just take it on, or we think I’m just gonna do that for them, they’re overwhelmed. And in the same way, we spiritually accept certain experiences, so that we can provide in again, the wisdom and provide it to others, or to take it off another. And we take turns doing that you you said, right now you’re in the trenches, you know, we take turns being in the lookout tower, is how she put it, or in the trenches. So as she always says, neither position is superior or inferior to the other, we were simply looking at things from a different way. And so yeah, if you’re up in the lookout tower, you’re able to see a lot farther and yell down to the ones below, you know, what you can see. So it really is a matter of being open to signs and guidance and understanding that somebody on our team, and beyond the team, certainly can see the trajectory of things more than us. And she did say, this book, one of the reasons she said in Book One, and one of the reasons I am able to do this at this time, is because it’s an all hands on deck time for humanity. So the need is there. And we had this fresh, she was fresh from the conference, so to speak. Yeah. And reporting back, and I was available and have a writing ability. So they just use that. That combination.

Brian Smith 17:35
Yeah, I love the you know, it’s funny, because as you’re saying this, I’ve read the books like three or four times. So I know the analogies and other people might be kind of a little bit lost. But there are some great analogies in there that I, again, I just incorporated in my life, like this idea of like a representative, you know, from an organization going to a conference and representing the organization. That’s kind of like what it’s like when we come here. And so we prepared while we’re back at home. And we come here and we represent and we’re having some communications while we’re there, but it’s not, it’s not a direct thing, necessarily. And then we go, we eventually go back. So it just changes our life, my life and looking at, I’m here for a while, and then I’m back there for a while that I might be here for a while. And this idea of even our, our guardians or angels or whatever you want to call those people we have a lot of times I think we look up, it’s kind of like that’s a hierarchy. They’re higher than we are. They just have as your mother says, they just happen to be in a different position now. And we’ll be in that position, you know, at another time, and they’ll be in the trenches. Of course, yeah.

Frances Key 18:36
And when you go into the trenches, I mean, we’re talking about a military analogy here, if you’re in the trenches, you a little bit below ground, your vision is not as clear and you’re weighed down by all the gear and the uniform and the headset and then whatever’s going on the boots, the boots, yeah. So and yet, if you don’t have all that weighing you down, it isn’t a superiority, but there is a superior ability to to perceive my when, when we’re free of that of the oops. So and and i think angels are something different. You know, we’re talking about our souls, and the experiences of the soul throughout the universe. And one of those experiences is a human experience. But I believe angels are a different kind of entity. Hmm, yeah, we don’t just become angels, right. Right. Now there are different there are different kinds of being. And one thing she pointed out, I always love this concept. I always talk about it because you talk about something that meant so much to you. It meant so much to me to learn that our soul has many aspects, just like our brain has these different areas. For language for math, or spatial relationships, whatever, so the soul has all these aspects. And there’s only, I won’t say how many one or five or 10 aspects, even connected to this human body, the other aspects of me and you and everyone are doing other things. Yeah. And because that so we are not stuck in a body, the body is inside the soul. You know, the soul is this vast and vast creation. And it’s like a person sitting on the side of the lake and sticks their toe in the water, their foot in the water, part of us is in the water, part of us is on the shore. And because that’s true, these other aspects that are continued to be with our loved ones,

Brian Smith 20:51
you know, yeah, and I want to, I want to want to kind of reiterate what you said, so people can keep up with that, because there is this upside down view, I think that we have of, you know, we are a body with a soul. And our soul is like inside of our body, we think if we if we think of it at all. And again, a concept I’ve got from you. And I’ve also gotten from other places, because it’s this truth comes up all over the place, is that our bodies are actually inside of our consciousness or inside of our souls. And it’s just a small part of it’s, it’s here. And you gave that analogy about sitting on the shore with your toe in the water, the toe in the water is us in the body. Meanwhile, the rest of our soul is off doing other things. And it’s so ironic are so synchronous, I guess, just this morning, I saw on medium it posted something. And he was explaining to people the way reality really is. And he said The thing is, you know, people that are on the other side are telling me, they’re living multiple parallel lives, and they can get on a couple of lifetimes while you’re still here. So you know, you’re there, you’re thinking they’re just having just relaxing or hanging and hanging out. They’re still with you, you’re still with them. And this is mind blowing stuff. But it’s really, it’ll really change your perspective on what your life is all about.

Frances Key 22:02
Yes, there’s so much more going on. I mean, right, this moment, all around me are all kinds of light rays that my human eyes can’t see, I can’t see ultraviolet rays and microwaves and radio waves, I can’t see them. Right here. And and in the same way, there’s all these colors around us, you know, that we can’t see, we think it’s blue, yellow, green, it isn’t. There’s so much more colors, we don’t even that the human eyes are not capable of saying the ears are not capable of hearing all the vibrations and sounds around us. So, you know, when we use this physical body, we only perceive what the body is able to perceive. And we automatically think, Oh, this is it. This life? Is it this deficit, this body is it that even if we think I’m a soul, we don’t think beyond our bodies. But other aspects of our soul have much greater vision, they have different kinds of bodies. and can even we can, another aspect of our own self can be here on the earth in another location associated, I don’t like to say in another body, but associated with another body. And it points out in the books that scientists and inventors across the world will suddenly discover a piece of something and relate it to a scientist, you know, on this side of the world, and they put their information together and voila, they’ve got it, you know, that’s probably another aspect of their own identity. So we are, it’s so vast and, and I think a lot of speaking of grief. Since that is a focus of your program. I think a lot of our grief comes because we we forget the vastness and we focus so much on the body that is used for that aspect of the soul. But, but if that body no longer exists, the aspect certainly exists. And other aspects of ourselves are with our loved one in other places. So those that we grieve for and miss. I just remind myself, my body misses her body, my body misses his body, my soul is still united. And we’re doing all kinds of fun and amazing things and having experiences and unity and closeness and a dimension I cannot see and I am still on assignment.

Brian Smith 24:37
Yeah. And that would you said reminds me of another concept and I share your concepts, all other concepts of your brother all the time because this idea that, you know if I got it correctly, it’s like when we are together like you and I sitting here together, I use the word avatar. This is kinda like my avatar. So that means our souls are actually connected on the other side and for us to know in order to be doing this, so we’re So when when my daughter Shayna, for example was here, we were both in our avatars we were connected here. But now we’re still connected there. It’s just my avatar is still here. And my consciousness is tied to this avatar, but I’m not missing her in a sense, because there’s, there’s a greater aspect of me that’s we’ve never left each other.

Frances Key 25:18
Yes, we’ve never left. We’ve never left each other. And you have the chapter where relationships abide. That’s really describes that in great detail. I think it’s Book Three, I need to memorize so many chapters and so many books, but I’d hate to have memorize better where they are. But I think that’s where it is.

Brian Smith 25:39
Yeah. And you know, thing is, there’s another teaching that I’m a little bit familiar with, called A Course in Miracles. Yes, yeah. So as I, as I read these books, and I hear this concept, because it calls us basically like a dream. It’s like, we mistakenly think we’re here, but we’re really back at home. And that’s the that comes through the team books, you know, so, so clearly. Yeah. But I forget, before we get started, I was asking you, and I don’t want to get personal, but I was asking you like, how are you doing? Then you said, you’re having some health challenges, and we kind of started on that. But then then you just kind of morphed into you start, you know, you’re reading I guess book four, we’re referring to book four this morning, and tell me how that affects how you feel about the challenges you’re going through? Yeah,

Frances Key 26:23
yeah, sure. I mean, I’m having some physical challenges as the body ages. But today, I started reading through book four to prepare for interview because, like you, I’m a student of the books, and I don’t always read them and study them. I mean, they’re, I’m immersed in the mindset of it. And but just like everybody else, you know, I get caught up in life and forget some of these amazing concepts. So I started reading the first chapter called your sacred life. And book four in particular says, Please read the first seven chapters of this book before you go into the rest because it lays a new kind of foundation. And it’s it you know, I was told, then after that, you can jump around to different chapters, like people like to, but please focus on those first seven. So, but on your sacred life, when as I read it, I was just moved to tears Truly, I was wiping the tears off before I got on with you. It and I’ve got a little bit, I’m going to read just a small portion of it here to you. Because book four is more confrontational is how I would like to put it. It’s a bit of more of a wake up call and a shaking up of our thinking. So your sacred life starts out this way. The sacredness of your life cannot be overemphasized. Not just my life, by the way, your life, everyone’s life. Be not cavalier about the phenomenal experience of human existence, and the gifts you have been given the gift of education. So you may read this book, the gift of speech, so you may share your light, the gift of friends, family, teachers, shelter, clothing, food, water, sunlight, the gift of mobility, the use of your hands and eyes, since senses of smell and touch, precious tools. So you might have all things available to you to evolve and assist others in their evolution. These are not random ordinary things tossed into the mix of life for no purpose. Each one of them is a miracle in themselves. So, and of course, again, this is about all of us, because we all if we are not mobile, we have some other ability. And she points that out. She says, the whole world has served you from the moment you were born from infancy, where you were sustained until you could sustain yourself. This is not accomplished by one person, but by many, most of whom You will never know. It took many to protect, guide and educate you through childhood. You can’t thank them because you weren’t even aware of their care and protection. You were snatched from dangerous situations many times even to the point of saving your life but you cannot remember this. I mean, I think of any toddler how many times this is done for them. Right. Okay, so I’m skipping ahead a little it’s it’s so intense, but how often do you stop to think that you have the ability to love because you were first loved? What are you doing with this love? What do you choose to view with your eyes and speak with your lips to create with your imagination? How do you treat The people who are available to you for love and care, how do you interact with others? Whatever you say and do to another you are doing to yourself quite literally. All you put forth blends with the principles of earthiness and returns to you in unique conditions and solid form. So you may have the honor of proceeding. what is and isn’t? Yes, seeing a returning ugliness is as great an honor as seeing a returning beauty, learn to value all have it. So, I mean, this continues in this way. And one of her biggest things she points out is that everyone we meet who irritates a noise and angers us people that we see that we don’t approve of their philosophy of life or their behavior. These are our former selves. In essence,

there is no person no one of us who at some time in our spiritual evolution was not just as ignorant, just as lost, just as angry. And someone saw the light in us and someone inspired and nudged. And many actually, along the way to bring us if we have more peace, if we have more wisdom, never gloat in it. Never have any arrogance. Because anyone, anyone you see, that doesn’t have that kind of awareness. It’s another is a, an a mirror. It’s a sample of of who we once have been.

Announcer 31:45
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Frances Key 32:41
Yeah, so a lot of it’s about about, you know, humility.

Brian Smith 32:49
Yeah. And I think that’s, that is so beautiful. And as we were having a discussion again, before we started recording, you know, I was asking you like how you’re doing it. When we start, we both we do this, we start with our challenges. And I’m going through this I’m going through that we all we all do, because that’s what our that’s human, that’s our brains are programmed. But you read something like that from from that chapter. And it really, and this is why it’s so important. In my life. I’ve incorporated since reading the books of gratitude practice. So I try to wake up and focus on what are the good things that are going on? What What do I have as right as opposed to what I don’t have. And it’s a it’s a conscious effort. But as you and I were talking, you know, we are your perspective is risen so much because you started with, you know, I’m going to just challenge it, but then you’re like, but look at all the things that I have and look at the abilities that I do still have. And that’s priceless.

Frances Key 33:41
Well, as you’re saying a little further, in this chapter, it’s about gratitude. And she says, Do not be like so many who choose to complain about what they were not endowed with and shrug off what blessings I do have, you have before you at all times the option of cultivating a spirit of contentment, or a spirit of bitterness, depending on how you regard and utilize your personal set of gifts. Remain remember it is pride that fuels dissatisfaction and humble gratitude that fuels contentment. Yeah, I don’t know, Chapter Chapter One of book four, so much more to it really is a powerful thing to shake up, wake up type thing.

Brian Smith 34:35
And you know, the thing is that people I think may think, Oh, well, I’m supposed to have gratitude. Who am I supposed to be grateful for? Why Why should I do this? You know, and the thing is, it’s just like, it’s just like forgiveness because we tell people you should forgive and so why should I do that? You know, I’m not trying to be a saint or whatever. The thing is, the gratitude is for us. It will change the way you view your life. It’s not a it’s not a matter of it being like a moral superiority thing or you No some sort of a virtue and other than it’s a virtue that serves us. It’s just, it’s so incredible, when you can start to think of things that way. And it’s something that I’m working on, I’m not going to say that I’m there at all. But it’s something that I actively practice. And I found that it’s changed my life.

Frances Key 35:17
It says here, your life is as sacred when you’re pulling the weeds as when you’re meditating. When you’re weeping as when you’re laughing. When you’re falling down, it’s when you’re getting back up. Because what makes it sacred is its transformative. Nature, the way it is part of the creation of reality, the way it is contributing to evolution. So we are contributing something at all times when we are creative beings, we cannot stop creating, if you sit perfectly still, and don’t even say a word you’re going to create with your thoughts that most of the time we’re doing, we are creating, speaking, interacting we’re creating. And, of course, then then some people create music and art and all kinds of things and buildings. And I mean, we are constantly creating, and that means we’re constantly contributing to something. So we are contributing to these vibrational spheres, we’ve talked about these big balls of energy or contributing love to the love sphere, and we’re contributing anger to the anger sphere. And then we draw from them. So when you go into a state of bliss, meditating, or whatever you are contributing, but drawing from the bliss of all meditators. And then when you some people go into a terrible rage and do something they can’t believe they did or said, it’s because they’ve tuned in beyond their own anger into a vibrational sphere that contains all anger. So we can tap into tremendous balls of energy. Because we’re always contributing. Yeah. And we’re always pulling in.

Brian Smith 37:10
Yeah, and that’s another concept that was new to me. That’s the spheres, I call them spheres of ins, I think he’s got it in the book called spheres of influence. That’s, that’s what I remember. Anyway, there’s, there’s these and then they’re not literal things. But I think they’re concepts that, you know, we can contribute to these things. And we can draw from and we can see this sometimes, like, when we get angry, it’s like it goes beyond us, it starts to spiral out of our control. And it’s like we’re being sucked in. And that’s what this book is saying it’s happening. we’ve tapped into something bigger than ourselves, it’s actually drawing us in.

Frances Key 37:40
Yes. And people say I was a tidal wave, it was a tidal wave of rage. And I can’t believe I did this horrible thing, some violent act or, or behavior. And just like somebody lifts a car off of a person in an accident, they have superhuman strength. I mean, it isn’t just their strength, they’re tapping into the strengths and the rescue impulse of humanity, that all have contributed to that particular ball of energy. And we can I talked to somebody recently, and he said, he loves that idea. And that every morning he taught when he wakes up, he deliberately visualizes this ball hanging over his bed, and starts contributing to and pulling from it, you know, the love or patience or whatever he feels drawn to for that particular day. And she says, these things are all around us, we just can’t see them with our human eyes. They’re very real. They’re not like, made up abstract ideas. They’re, they’re truly they’re,

Brian Smith 38:47
well, they’re entered, I guess I would say they’re energetic. They’re energetic things that and I love this. I love the idea of again, I for me, I’ve been trying to do gratitude. I think that’s so important. So I have a practice where I wake up in the morning, I’m like, what, you know, I my thing is at least three things and usually goes on for a while. I’m like, I have to stop now. Because you could learn to be you can learn to be grateful for things and then it’s not natural. Because we take things for granted. I tell people, you know, until you’re sick, you don’t appreciate being well my wife was was sick for a week a little while ago, she she got an infection and she was on antibiotics, their bodies react well to so for weeks, she was sick. And the day she felt better. She’s like, I feel so great. You know, and so why not feel grateful when we just when we’re able to do things like take a walk like I did this morning, or be able to speak to you, you know, that’s that’s not a given.

Frances Key 39:44
Yeah, truly, truly. And the funny thing about human nature is, you know, we people set goals, and they reach them and then they’re not content with that. Then they set the next goal. This can be harnessed in a good way. It can be, you know, we can say, Okay, now I have the, the house I want. And rather than, you know immediately well, but I don’t like this and I have to change that and we end Yes, we may remodel or do whatever but. But always there’s a chapter in there that talks about when Jesus turned the fish to five, and enough to feed 5000. In a boy gave him I think five fish. And it says Jesus blessed the fish, and then he was turning them in, that the key there is that he bless the fish, he didn’t say, this isn’t enough for this, what can I do with this? To bless what is and to bless simple means to recognize the inherent value without comparing without comparing the analogy is given of $1. If you start comparing $1, it’s worthless. But if you just recognize $1 is $1. And in and of itself, that is perfect. And then the other analogy that’s absolutely perfect, is when you have a newborn baby, this baby can’t clean themselves, they can’t walk, they can’t do a thing for themselves, they make a lot of noise. And yet, they’re perfect. We don’t immediately start comparing Well, you know, when are they going to walk or when we just look at this newborn, and we just cherish, you know, she or he is enough. Yeah, and get the mindset of enough enough, not immediately a goal of I need more added to that. But when you bless and recognize the inherent value of whatever it is, that’s actually when you can turn it into 5000 fish. Because if you just throw them down and say that’s not enough, you undo, you know, you undo the value, the inherent value of what’s there anyway. Yeah, the tangent But

Brian Smith 42:18
no, it’s I think that’s, that’s beautiful. I think it’s perfect, because I was I was speaking with someone the other day about, you know, the idea of just everything that happened supposed to happen, you know, are we supposed to be and I said, whether it is or not, we are where we are. So we should learn to try to accept where we are. And and when I say except I don’t mean just tolerate or just like, Okay, this is where this is where everything in my life has led me to be and have faith that this is where we’re supposed to be and then then we can work on the future. You know, yes, we can work to make things better things in the world are not perfect. We’d like for things to be better. But first, I love that bless what is, you know, look at the progress we’ve made, even as we’re judging ourselves, because we’re so hard on ourselves. I’m not where I need to be, I’m not who I need to be, but look how far you’ve come.

Frances Key 43:06
Yes. And you know what, even if you haven’t come far, even if you really are at the bottom, and you are fed up with yourself and you feel like you let all your opportunities go and you’ve ruined your life. You know, I mean, even if you really are at that point, remember, the most saintly being that you can imagine once was there. The when you see Michelangelo’s beautiful works of art, you don’t see all the times that he’s slashed the canvas because he was so frustrated with his work or threw it out or said I’m never gonna paint again and went and got drunk, you know, you don’t see it. And you you meet people who are successful whether you’re talking about something spiritual, spiritual tranquility, they seem to have attained spiritual tranquility or you meet people who have financial success or any of the things that you’re looking at that you wish you could have. They were not always that way. The when you go here a symphony that those people were once little children playing twinkle star on that piano, so don’t where you are is valuable. I don’t care where you are. Even if you’re groveling in the mud. It is a valuable time, a valuable experience that will lead you if it’s pride. All our self loathing and our beating ourselves up is really a form of pride. Some people think it’s a form of humility, but it isn’t because we’re saying I’m too I’m too good and I’m too important to make those mistakes. It’s okay for you. Joe and Susie over there to make those mistakes. But I’m not supposed to do it right now.

Brian Smith 45:06
Yeah, I think that’s a really important concept. And I again, I want to reiterate what you just said, because that gets in for people, I think we missed that we think that beating ourselves up is a form of humility, where I’m pointing out my own faults, and I’m saying, you know, I’m a terrible person, because like this, this or that, and it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a form of pride, because we’re saying, I’m too good for this, I should not make someone else can make those kind of mistakes, but not me, because I’m too good for that. So we need to let that go. We need to just say I’m where I’m supposed to be. And that there are, there are people if you want to compare, there are people that are infinitely ahead of you, and they’re people that are infinitely behind you. So there is no comparison when we when we really grasp that concept, that we’re never going to be a quote, advanced being because there’s always gonna be somebody more advanced than us. But we’re also not at the very bottom, there’s always going to be someone that’s this this worse, worse than we are also, and except where it is that we are and go forward from there. I think it’s so important.

Frances Key 46:09
And some of the difficulties and burdens that we carry, we may actually have agreed to carry for our team. Some people have very, very painful lives that have a series of heartaches and others seem to have lives that even though I would say even the best of lives, you know, has heartache. It, you know, you see people you don’t know what’s going on throughout their life. So there are reasons. And yes, if we can be humble and say, I’m like everybody else, I can be, you know, obstinate and angry, and I can be addictive, and I can be a failure, just like anybody else. And that marvelous saintly, accomplished person over there. Once was in this state, we’re all one, we’re all doing it together. And try to strive for that humility that can bring you peace, and you can move up and you can move on what keeps us down more than anything. Is that self criticism?

Brian Smith 47:23
Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s Wow, that’s that’s, that’s really profound. So we’ve talked about some of the concepts and the books, are there any other concepts of book for particular that you wanted to bring out?

Frances Key 47:37
Yes, there’s a chapter called holy creative power. And again, it’s talking about that we are these creative beings. And it asks the question,

Unknown Speaker 47:52
Do

Frances Key 47:54
Do you have any doubt whatsoever that you have the power to create chaos, negativity or pain in your immediate environment, right this moment? The question is not asking, do you want to do that? But do you see that you have the option to do so with your voice? You can speak unkind words, right? This moment, we could choose to do that. We could choose to pick something up and smash it and break it. We could run out in the garden and pull up all the flowers, we have that ability. And then it says the truth as unnatural. As all this may sound The truth is there’s never a time that the option to act destructively is not available to you sit with this for a moment, and absorb the impact of what we’re saying. The only thing stopping you from behaving in this manner is you and you alone, you are in charge of the choice, you are choosing not to, to speak or act in that, that fashion. Now why is it? Why is it so difficult for people? If if we can all agree on that we have no doubt that we have the power to destroy and to be to cause harm? Why do we then why are we so resistant to the idea that we can also create marvelous, wonderful things. The same voicebox that can harm someone with cruel words is the same voice box I’m using right now to try to speak about light and love. So I’m trying to find that one. Do you? Do you sense a hesitation in yourself when you consider this? In comparison, consider the fact that you can create beautiful things in comparison to the absolute certainty you feel when you looked at your power to behave violently. Why is it easier to ignore? To your ability to create chaos and pain than it is to acknowledge your ability to create peace, joy, and harmony. So I just think I talked to people sometime about who are depressed are having these kinds of issues. And I try to point this out because the life they’re living that they find so miserable is one they have created or agreed with others to participate in, in some way, shape or form. And yet, they, they just say, I can’t I can’t do any different. I don’t know how to change. I don’t know how to build a new life. I don’t. And yet, if you make somebody think, well, do you have the hands to go smash everything? Yes. Do you have the voice to do this? Yes. Use the same hands in a different way. Use the voice in a different way. Because we always have both options before us,

Brian Smith 51:02
bro. Well, I would even go beyond that. I think a lot of us are doing a lot more good than when gives us give ourselves credit for I find a lot of times people who are depressing. I’m of no value. I’ll point out to the Are you a parent? Well, yeah, I have kids. are you raising your children? Are you taking care of them? Are you Are you loving? Well? Yes, I am. Well, that’s that’s a lot. I saw a comic if there was it was so simple, but was so profound. It’s just two panels. And the first panel was a guy just pouring lots of water into a bowl who’s standing on a rooftop. And he was saying, I’m just a worthless person. I don’t I don’t really serve anything. Anybody. I’m just not I’m no good. The next panel is two pigeons. And they’re sitting there at the water. One pinch, it goes, thank God that someone put this water out. And the other one goes, Yeah, I was so thirsty. I wonder who did this. And a lot of times, we just don’t give ourselves, you know, the credit for the things we do in the world that we consider the little things that might be life changing to someone else.

Frances Key 51:58
This is so so, so true. Again, the vastness of the picture. We don’t know why we’re carrying a burden. We don’t know that the big the big, the trickle down effect exactly, like he did, of our simple efforts. I mean, we don’t have to go, we don’t have to do enormous marvelous things in this world, to be to contribute light. And I think that’s where people forget, they don’t realize that if they sit on the porch and just radiate love to the neighbors, as they walk by, they are contributing, and contributing something very, very valuable. They don’t have to feel that they that, that it’s required to to enter the mainstream of life and do some phenomenal thing or read about people who do these amazing things. That’s not the path for everyone. Right?

Brian Smith 52:56
Well, and that goes back to the spheres of influence, right? If I’m, if I sit on the porch, and I’m radiating love, and I have the intention of contributing to that spirit sphere of influence, then that is an act of creativity, as you said, that’s an act of raising the vibration of all of us.

Frances Key 53:12
It is and when you think about it, I mean some of the very devout meditators, monks, nuns, of different Buddhists of all religions, cloistered people who live very introverted lives. And some, some people choose to simply pray all the time, they stay, they stay to themselves, they meditate, they pray, they don’t go out into the world. And I’m not saying that’s needed. I’m just saying that as a path that is chosen that is has incredible value. And then you have leaders who, people whose destiny is to stand up and be a world leader, and to work from that platform. So there’s just infinite the number of ways there there are to live on this earth. Right? Right all have value, we can make them valuable. That’s exactly

Brian Smith 54:08
what I was gonna say. And we and we’ll set as humans will rank them and say, Well, this is more valuable than the other. But it’s Yes, it’s not true from the spiritual perspective. It’s just simply not true. We’re running out of time. I want to get to a couple of things I want to ask you about. It’s been it’s been about 10 years, I think, since you wrote the team books. So what’s it like for you now in terms of are you still hearing from your mother? Or is that channel still open?

Frances Key 54:39
You know, it isn’t open in the same way. It isn’t open in this constant bombardment ment of information because they really took advantage of that first year and a half. Yeah, which is the team did to get this written. And then I released the books over the coming year. So it isn’t necessary for that to go on. When I read the information or speak about it, I’m fully aware of her presence. And I’m fully aware of the team. There are events and moments throughout my life where I do feel guidance and communication directly from her now, and then I’ve heard a direction or her voice, but it isn’t necessary. And so it doesn’t occur in the same manner. If it ever is needed. I’m sure it could happen again.

Brian Smith 55:35
Yeah, I think that’s an excellent answer, I think, to broaden out to everybody else, because I know sometimes when our loved ones pass, people feel like I feel them close, you know, now and then now they’re gone. They decide the same, do they not care about me as much anymore? And I love what you just said, cuz that’s what I tell people. I’m like, I think we get what we need that I was go back to that Rolling Stone song, you can’t always get what you want. But I think we get what we need. And it’s not necessarily more so people might say album, Frankie, don’t you Don’t you miss that. But it’s, you know, that’s, that’s just that what’s meant to be right now.

Frances Key 56:10
You know, I have to tell you, at one time, when I could feel it kind of fading away. And I went through, I went through a feeling of some loss and grief. And like, I really did. And I sat with that kind of thing. And I finally came to a place where I was able to say, if this never happens again, this wasn’t about me. It was to get these books here. And I accept that. And I’m grateful for what happened. And I release all my clinging to the need for that. And it was it was tough Kyler to do that. But I really did. And then not long after that test a few months, I was asked to sing a song I wrote called instrument of peace about St. Francis of cc’s prayer. And I had to go out of town to do it. And I sang it. And I spoke about it at this place. And I went to a little meditation room afterwards that they had there. And I had the most profound spiritual experience out of almost all of what I’ve described, not communicating with my mother. But the top of my head opened up and it was like the top of the room opened up and I went straight out into the, into the galaxy that was a complete out of body into the entire glorious galaxy. I didn’t ask for it. I was shocked by it. But I was propelled out there. And I knew it was because I had released my cleaning. desperate need, you know, just to hear or see any of that again. Wow. It couldn’t have happened. I knew it when I came back to Earth. I knew that’s why it had happened. Wow. So I think if we can just know. Even if even if we just let things go. Because there’s no time. But there’s going to be an earthly time where we might feel a lack of communication or something. But it will, it will. Nothing’s ever gone. Not really. So it will return in its own way in its own time. And not cling not cling to that.

Brian Smith 58:53
Yeah. Wow. That’s Wow, I like to end on that by doing ask you one more question. I know you’re working on a novel. And I want to I want to hear about your novel. And because there’s some team concepts in the novel. So tell me about that.

Frances Key 59:07
Yes, two things that are going on, I and two other women are narrating the books and working we’re working on book one. So that’ll be coming out. It’ll probably be a good three or four months before that’s ready. And then we hope to do the other books narrate the other books too. But the novel was written actually over the course of about a year and it’s been finished for about a year and I keep editing it, but it deals with the strands of possibility chapter and the present past chapter in book four, which talks about time, we see time this way, when time is actually this way, and that everything really is happening at one time but when when we’re on in a connected to our body. We see it This way, it says these simultaneous events occur in this book. And the the awareness that the concept that used is that our evolving awareness and spiritual growth takes us to, to a new level, and we shoot out, we drop a ripple into time, so to speak. And but when you drop a ripple, it goes in all directions, it doesn’t go just forward, we think, oh, I’ve done something, it’s affecting my future. It’s the idea that I’ve done something and it’s affecting the past. It goes out in all directions. So the events in this story of two women, one in world war two and one a modern woman, they are in separate timelines, but they’re really not when they’re their decisions. alter the past, and the future for each of them. Wow. It’s hard to describe. So I’m trying to get it published with a publisher. And if it doesn’t happen, I’ll Self Publish publish it, probably later this year.

Brian Smith 1:01:11
That sounds that sounds fantastic sounds these concepts are. They’re simple, but they’re profound. And they’re mind boggling. You know, and, and it’s something that’s why I’ve read the books, I don’t know, three or four times now. And I’ll probably read them again really shortly. Because every time you read them, you kind of go like another layer deeper. And you can start to kind of apply the things to your life in terms of like, the idea of impacting our past, we all think time is linear and time goes one direction. But again, this is not this is not a unique concept. To the team books, physicists tell us this. They’re like, you know, there’s no such thing as time Einstein said, time is an illusion. It’s a persistent illusion. But it’s it’s an illusion. It’s something that that our brains kind of generate. And once we can start to understand that it just changes everything about our lives.

Frances Key 1:02:00
Yes, I’m gonna read one little short paragraph to end with, okay, yeah, be great out of that chapter. To be very clear, what you call the past, is continuously being rewritten by the present, not once. But instant by instant. There’s actually no past and existence as you remember it to be. Because the wisdom you have gained today has reached back through the portals of time and literally transformed past events, rendering them equal in quality to your present state of understanding. In other words, the vibration of a past event is raised, causing the original event to transmute into an event equivalent to your new perspective. And it’s definitely mind boggling and take some time. And that’s why I wrote the novel, which is called the train to half house in a German town. I made up the train to half house and it’s the name of it, and I wrote it to to help people see how that might work in real life.

Brian Smith 1:03:09
Yeah, well, I can’t wait for the come out when it does. Let me know. And I have to have you back on to talk about that. Because sometimes, analogies and fiction, this is why you know, when I watch movies, like I think about the movie, the matrix, I mean, that is just so mind blowing. And these guys wrote it. And I’ll say to people, there’s certain things I think were channeled. I mean, I don’t know if those guys even had that in him. I think that that was channeled from somewhere else. And there’s, there’s music that comes through and we’ll listen to a song that will give us a very deep concept and like four minutes, you know, just that reaches in or touches our heart. So I’m looking forward to that novel. Yeah. Frankie, again, it’s been really an honor to have you on thank you for doing this. I want to let people know where can they reach you to find out more about the books or about you or anything else.

Frances Key 1:03:56
Everything is on the website, the team books with the s the team books.com. And I also have a personal website that links to that and to other projects I’ve done, which is my name, Francis key dotnet. And it’s fr A and C II s not is francisci dotnet. So those two websites, and you’re welcome to write to me, I write people back I I’m just right here if anybody wants to connect.

Brian Smith 1:04:27
Yeah, thanks so much for doing this again. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you, you too. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe. So click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai