28: Get Serious(ly Happy) About Healing Anxiety

Get your pen and paper ready to take notes! I was recently a guest on the show “Align with Laina.” The host Laina Orlando and I had such an uplifting time together we decided to share the replay with you here! We chat about all things related to healing anxiety, spiritual insights, and transformation we have both experienced because of our commitment to a spiritual pathway

Transcript

This is From Anxiety to Love Radio,

The show about undoing anxiety through a course in miracles and other pathways of love.

Gain insights and tools to deepen your awareness of the peace that already exists within you.

I'm your host Corinne Zupko,

Author of the award-winning and best-selling book From Anxiety to Love.

Hello spiritual family,

Welcome to today's episode of From Anxiety to Love Radio.

I'm doing something different that I haven't done before.

So I was recently a guest on a different podcast called Align with Lina.

This podcast is hosted by my new friend Lina Orlando,

And she and I had such a fabulous supercharged conversation on her show about anxiety that I felt moved to reshare the whole interview here for today's episode.

So we are going to dive into and out of anxiety.

I felt so pumped up about healing.

Lina made such beautiful points and I can't wait to share my takeaways with you at the end of the episode.

So in just a moment you're going to hear Lina introduce me to her audience.

So right now I want to introduce you to her.

So Lina Orlando is a modern-day mystic.

She simplifies spirituality for today's seeker of truth through her fresh,

Fun,

And intuitive perspective.

She's the creator of the Power of Awareness Transformational Workshops.

She's also a teacher of A Course in Miracles.

And as you will hear,

Lina is awesome.

Her website is LinaOrlando.

Com.

I will have a link to that on the show notes page.

In addition,

I will share links to the video version of this interview,

To Lina's podcast,

Align with Lina,

Along with any links and my takeaways.

And you can find all that on the show notes page for this episode at FromAnxietyToLove.

Com forward slash 28.

So let's listen in to my interview on Lina's show.

Welcome everybody to another episode of Align with Lina.

And today is April the 20th.

It is 2020.

We're in the midst of an amazing year.

And I am super excited to bring to you somebody that I know you're going to truly enjoy her story because it touches on everybody's issues,

Anxiety,

But that is not all that Corinne is about.

I'd like to bring to you people who have undergone spiritual awakening so that you can see ordinary people like Corinne,

Like me,

Like all the guests that I've brought so far,

So that you can see that you're not alone on your journey.

So without further ado,

Let's get right to it.

Corinne,

Thank you so much for joining me today amidst all of our wonderful opportunities to connect here.

Yes.

Oh my goodness.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's an honor.

Oh,

This is very exciting.

So let me just start with the same question that I ask everybody.

When did you begin to realize that there was more to life than what you have been taught is what life is all about?

I was young.

And to be honest with you,

I don't remember the exact age where I started pondering a question of,

If God is love,

As they say God is,

How can a loving God create things that die?

I remember being in fifth grade,

Learning about a pretty horrific animal abuse story and being just like,

That moment when your innocence is lost,

When you realize that the world is not your happy little playground.

It's got a lot of problems.

And I already at a very young age had had lots of anxiety issues.

So I was first diagnosed at the age of two,

One and a half,

Two years old with separation anxiety disorder.

That morphed into phobias.

It morphed into a lot of fears of sickness.

And I feel like my turning point,

My big moment of awakening came through a lot of pain when I was a sophomore in college and a student who I didn't know died very suddenly,

Was fine the night before,

Passed away the next morning.

And I was just like,

What?

Like that question again of how,

If God is love,

How can a loving God create things that die?

What is this?

Like I always had this intuitive sense that something was weird with the idea that like you could be born and then you could die.

Like something just deep down intuitively to me always felt real.

That felt strange.

Like how could something not be and then be and then not be again?

Like it just didn't make sense to me.

That's amazing that you could even think that as a young person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

I mean,

Thank goodness that I was asking these questions and I have to tell you that there were many times when I was like,

I think life would be so much better if I didn't have like all of this,

Like all these questions and like beyond this spiritual pathway.

And I could just be like blissfully ignorant,

But now I don't,

I don't agree.

You know,

We're way better off with awakening,

With consciousness.

And anyway,

So the turning point for me was that night,

That day when I learned that that student passed away suddenly,

I remember that day feeling just a spike of fear come through my body.

I talked myself out of it,

Got on with my day,

Went to bed and at three o'clock in the morning,

I literally felt like a punch in my stomach of stress hormones.

It was my first panic attack.

I was gasping for air.

I was,

My whole body was shaking.

I had just these like shock waves of anxiety coming through my limbs and my core.

I thought I was dying.

I thought I was having a heart attack.

It was so scary.

And I remember climbing down my bunk bed,

Grabbing our campus phone,

Which had a wire.

We didn't have cell phones back in that day.

And I called home and my mom who slept with earplugs and a white noisemaker,

She heard that phone ring at three o'clock in the morning,

Through all of that,

Picked up the phone and helped me figure out that I was having a panic attack and helped me have hope that we were going to somehow find our way through this.

And it was then that she reintroduced A Course in Miracles to me.

And I was like,

I will try anything.

And if you say it's going to help with peace,

Like,

Okay.

And quick side note,

Up until then,

I was,

I wanted nothing to do with A Course in Miracles.

I wanted nothing to do with spirituality.

She would try to talk to me about it like a loving mom.

And I'd be like,

Speak to me in English like you used to.

Like,

I was snotty.

You sound like my daughter,

Like all three of my kids when I started on my spiritual journey at the end,

Especially A Course in Miracles.

Yep,

Yep.

I wanted nothing to do with it.

And I still apologize to my mom,

But,

And thank her just for,

You know,

The role that she's played in helping me.

But the Course,

You know,

Those questions of like,

What is this?

And like,

How can a loving God create things that die?

And,

And how can we be born?

And death doesn't make any sense.

When I opened the Course and started reading it,

I did not understand 90 to 95% of what I was reading,

But something in my heart was like,

Yes,

No,

Thank you.

Like,

Finally,

It felt like,

You know,

You were like,

Really thirsty for a long time.

And you're given this like,

Really,

Like,

Icy glass of just delicious water.

That's how it felt.

And so I've never put the book down.

That was back in 1996.

And it's just been this ever deepening experience of being a Course student where,

You know,

You think like,

You know what the Course is about,

And then like,

Wait,

You can go deeper.

So that's,

That was how my journey started.

Oh,

My goodness.

Well,

I,

So many,

So many things.

I was here taking all kinds of notes and may not even get back to them.

You were talking about,

You picked it up in 1996.

That's when my youngest son was born.

And he's 20.

He'll be 23 this summer.

So that that's pretty amazing.

Or 24.

I can't,

I can't remember how it's gonna be.

It's their dog blending together,

Right?

Yes.

But that is absolutely incredible that all of those years you have had the Course as your companion to help you work through things.

But let me go back to when you were a kid.

So here you are in this incredibly intuitive child.

Because that is intuition.

You,

You knew truth,

That how can something that's eternal die?

And you're facing the human experience and questioning its reality that that cannot be that something that was just here a minute ago is not here now.

So you're one of those,

Those people who came in with that,

They might call the Indigo kids,

That already had truth so close to the surface for you,

You didn't have to go digging in so deep.

But what was it like living with all of that anxiety?

Because that's where I think it's going to be so helpful for people to hear.

What was your life like?

I never really experienced anxiety.

That was just not not part of what I came to to experience in this lifetime.

But I did have three anxious children.

I had two,

Two kids that were severely depressed at times suicidal often,

And for a period of quite a few of those teenage years,

And maybe even beyond the teenage years.

And that that growing up living underneath what I'm going to call that heavy blanket of anxiety must have totally completely gave you a perspective of life that is unlike somebody who doesn't have that.

So take us into your world for a little bit.

Anxiety sucks.

It sucks.

It feels like the world is caving in on you.

It feels you get this this this feeling of like constriction and tunnel vision where all you know,

Is the fear all you know is the worry and you feel powerless to it.

It feels like it's in control and you have nothing that you can do to kind of rein it back in.

It's not fun.

It's very painful.

And it makes you you know,

Look out from a fearful perspective and you see witnesses for fear everywhere.

You see reason that your fear is justified.

You see you know,

Cause for like why you should be anxious and why you do need to worry.

But the thing is that and this is where the course has been so helpful for me is just like it comes from where you begin.

So if you're coming from the anxious place,

You're going to see witnesses for fear.

If we can start tuning into the truth in us,

The love in us,

Then you start to see the witnesses for that show up in your life.

So just to take you into my anxious world a little bit more anxiety exists on a continuum.

It can be on the low end of the continuum where it feels like we just can't sit still.

We feel restless.

We feel like we have to constantly be busy.

We might have occasional worries.

Then you know,

Crank up the dial.

That worry can get more intense.

We can constantly be like,

Oh,

You know,

Like what do I need to do?

What do I need to plan for?

We can just like fixate on certain things,

Whether it's worry about others,

Worry about ourselves,

Worry about worried about health concerns,

And then crank up the volume even more.

And then you're seeing the diagnosable anxiety disorders.

And I was diagnosed,

I can't even tell you,

I think it was like four or five different anxiety disorders that I've had throughout my life.

Oh,

Wow.

Yeah.

And those,

When it reaches the level of a disorder,

It interferes with your functioning.

There were times when it was hard for me to eat because my stomach wasn't such a nut.

I couldn't function.

Literally,

Like I was a pile on the couch.

It's completely debilitating.

So I lived at that high end of the continuum for most of my life a lot of times.

And so I felt like I was in the low end of the spectrum.

And I felt like I was in the low end of the spectrum because of what I was doing in life.

A lot of my fear was about sickness and about dying and about the health of my body.

Now,

I feel like with what's happening with this current pandemic,

I almost feel like even people at the low end of the spectrum now have an understanding of what's happening.

And I feel that that anxiety,

It feels like it's so constricting.

And the fear can be so great that if we don't look for another way,

It feels like it's just going to cave in on you and you're going to be lost in it forever versus what happens with a diamond,

How a diamond's and then boom,

A diamond can come out of that.

And that's what I feel like the opportunity is that we all have right now is for that anxiety to be repurposed and transformed as a means of helping us awaken.

And so the anxiety didn't leave.

It would still be here,

I am sure,

If I wasn't looking for another way,

If I wasn't open to a new way of thinking,

To a new thought system.

And I feel like that's the gift that anxiety can give us.

It can push us and be there until we can find that new pathway,

So we can find that new perception.

Oh my goodness.

Oh wow.

Such beautiful,

Powerful things that you have shared.

So let me kind of tie this together in the way that I often like to do with people's experience to tie that directly to the spiritual awakening because you basically summarized that when we're operating inside of our fears,

It is tunnel vision and we will see the projected images out there that we fear within us because how else are we going to know we're in fear?

So that instant mirroring happens.

And the only way to get out of that situation is to look for another situation,

To look for another way.

So whether it's because anxiety drove you to that,

For me it was the pain after my mom passed away,

Sent me,

And it wasn't so much the grieving of her death,

What it turned into was my fear of my death.

And that is what really drove me to find my other way.

It was like there had to be another way.

And then of course from there things began to accelerate.

But the spiritual journey,

I mean I've been teaching now for about 14 years and it's the same for everybody.

There has to be a willingness to look at things differently because if looking at things the way you were looking at them was working,

Who would look for another way?

Exactly.

It's good.

So you begin to get,

You must have come to the place that you were sick and tired of being afraid.

Talk to us about that,

That decision to give up trying to solve a problem with the same mind they created it on.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

That's it.

So yes,

I did reach a point where I was like,

I will do absolutely anything to find my way out of this.

And what I mean by that is that every belief I held,

Every perception I held,

Every way that I thought things are,

I was willing to question.

Everything now I started holding it lightly because clearly the way that I was functioning,

Like you're saying,

The way that I was thinking was driving my ship into the ground.

It was,

You know,

The train was being wrecked.

It was not working.

And for me to try to find a way out of it on my own,

Like you're saying,

In the same thought system where the problem was born,

It cannot be that thought system where we find the answer.

It has to be something outside of that.

And that is where I started opening to this idea of another way of an internal teacher.

I call it,

In my book,

I call it your inner therapist.

I open to this idea that there is something in us that knows the truth.

There's something in us that can lead us out of our closed loop,

Fearful thought system.

And so we do have to make a decision to heal.

It is a point when I'm like,

I'm done with this.

I'm willing to try anything.

And I'm willing to question every perception I'm willing to question every perception that I have.

I'm open to being taught.

And so even though I made that choice,

It doesn't mean that the anxiety went away right away.

It didn't.

Oh,

No,

It lingered.

It lingered for a long time.

But my willingness was so great.

My willingness to keep trying,

To keep going,

To know deep down that there is really a way out of this.

There really is.

And not a way that,

Again,

That I can come up with myself,

But because I so resonated with the messages of A Course in Miracles,

I knew that that was my way out.

Now,

If I can just add,

My first big anxiety episode was the 1996 one that I mentioned.

I went through another really bad one in 2009.

That was triggered at the time by a job that I no longer fit in,

A very stressful job.

And I had already been a course student for a long time.

And when people hear me say that,

They're like,

What?

You were doing the course,

And then you went through this big downward spiral again.

But what I realized at that time was that I was using Spiritual Pathway,

A Course in Miracles,

As a Band-Aid.

So in other words,

I was getting anxious.

I'd run to the book.

I'd read something that made me feel better.

I'd put it down,

And I'd go back to doing what I was doing.

There wasn't a fundamental – I mean,

There was a fundamental shift beginning,

But I was still largely keeping intact my sense of self as Corinne,

My separate identity,

Some unquestioned beliefs,

Some unquestioned perceptions.

And so in 2009,

When I realized that,

That I was like,

Wait a second,

Something's off.

If I'm still suffering this much,

What's going on?

And what I realized at that time,

Specifically for anxiety,

Was that I was running away from it as fast as I could.

I was using the Course to try to tamper down that anxiety rather than face it with spirits and allow that anxiety to be seen differently,

Allow it to be repurposed.

I imagined it as like I'd be sitting with spirit,

My inner therapist,

And rather than trying to push away or run away from the anxiety,

I'd sit there and we would look at it together.

And it was as if like when there's like a fog bank and the sun starts to shine and the sun just like burns away the fog.

That's how,

In a sense,

It was by starting to look at the anxiety with spirit rather than trying to run away from it or tamper it down on my own.

So that was the big shift that came in 2009.

And that was when I was like,

I have to write down what's helping me.

And that is when,

That's when I started my book,

From Anxiety to Love.

Oh,

That's so beautiful.

Well,

Again,

You're just saying so many wonderful things.

It's primarily because you are what I'm going to call a serious student of the Course.

To me,

I have,

Because of all my years of teaching and also I'm a student of my own journey,

So I pay attention to what I've gone through because the clues,

We all leave the same clues behind.

And if you just pay attention to that,

It's like Hansel and Gretel.

Those are the breadcrumbs that will lead us back out of this insanity.

And one of the things that has become so clear for me is that I can put all of my students,

All of my clients into two camps because I was in these camps.

One is we get curious.

We really get curious because we want to get rid of the pain and we want to be pain-free.

And that curiosity does lead us to find the best to find the band-aids,

To find the ways of shifting things,

To find whatever it is that's going to give us relief,

But it will always be temporary because it is dealing at the level of the surface.

But it is necessary to see it on the surface even though we will enter,

We will see the wound,

We will be able to look at the genesis of it.

We can do a lot of amazing healing work with curiosity.

But then you got to move from curious to serious because you got to be really serious about your freedom because to accept your sovereignty,

To accept your eternalness,

To come from the place from which there is absolutely nothing that is missing within you where you accept your holiness,

You've got to be really committed to give up that separate sense of self.

And that's what I hear you began to encounter in 2009.

Oh,

I love everything that you just said.

And you're absolutely right that we have to go from curious to serious.

And I love what you said that we must be serious about our freedom.

Yeah.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

Like that got me so excited when you said that.

And that's it.

You know,

Getting serious about our freedom and getting serious about being pain-free,

We can try to search for ways to be pain-free while still keeping everything,

You know,

My sense of ego identity as Corinne while still keeping that intact.

And that is the equivalent to trying to plug a leaky rusty pipe.

We're going to find a remedy with gum.

We're going to find a remedy that seems to plug one hole in the rusty leaky pipe.

But then another problem is going to spring out elsewhere.

And that's going to keep being our pattern if we're just being curious.

When we get serious about allowing our identity to be transformed from a sense of small s separate self into a capital S self,

The self that we all share,

That's the equivalent of like replacing the pipe.

And,

And you know,

It being like a solid clean pipe that doesn't have leaks in it.

There might still be things that pop up here and there,

But those are just layers of the fear coming up that still remains in our minds that are coming up to be,

To be healed.

So you're absolutely right that getting serious means that you're willing to even question,

Who am I?

Yeah.

Who am I?

And let's,

Let's,

Let's just shift the conversation to present day coronavirus because again,

Another one of those beautiful opportunities to see everything clearly when you have a,

When you've gained enough perspective and God knows how much more I'll gain for the rest of my lifetime.

But for today,

What I get to see from where I've climbed up to on the mountain is really pretty remarkable because I've had the,

We all on this journey have our guides,

Our intuition,

Whatever we want to call it.

For me,

It was really clear.

I was,

I was hearing Jesus was speaking to me and,

And it started very early on and I was feeling the guidance and that's who gave me the workshops that I teach.

That's who's given me the only process that I teach and everything that I,

That I was led to,

To read,

To start,

I was told to not open the Course in Miracles.

I'm thinking about the Bible,

Until I was ready to open the Course in Miracles.

So I kept hearing this,

Go stop,

Do this,

Don't do that.

So I got really in tune with,

With that voice,

That Holy Spirit,

Whatever you want to call it.

I,

To me,

It's like it doesn't matter.

You can call it Baba,

You can call it,

You know,

Buddha,

You can call it Bambi,

Does not matter.

But that voice was very,

Very clear and it guided me towards the recognition that I came to the place where I had to realize that there is no separate line up.

And that sent me on an entirely different way of doing the journey.

And what I came to realize from that,

And it really came,

You were talking about your two big,

Big experiences.

Basically,

You face the,

The death of your friend and then,

You know,

Your job situation.

I faced the death of my mother and then,

I don't know,

It was about almost 10 years later,

I had to be open to the possibility that my youngest son might die from an overdose because he entered a four-year drug adventure that absolutely turned my life around.

Upside down,

You know,

I was doing all kinds of spiritual and egoic flips to try and make sense of what was going on because it's not what I thought I had written into the script of my perfect life.

But that's when I had to make a decision.

Am I going to be shifting between love and fear or am I going to accept that love could be the only way?

And when I made that decision to see everything only from how does love see this,

I mean that old saying,

What would Jesus do?

What would love do?

It became really clear that my quality of life changed dramatically.

The peace that I began to feel,

That peace that passes all understanding,

The judgments of other people,

As those things were coming up,

Letting them go became as necessary as breathing for me because to hold on to something that blocked my ability to feel the,

The deliciousness of the energy of love moving through me was no longer acceptable.

That's when getting serious becomes,

You know,

It's like,

Like I said,

It was as important as breathing for me.

So here we are in the midst of this coronavirus and the Course makes it really clear.

One issue is no different than any other issue,

Whether you stub your toe or whether you think you've got cancer or you are facing the electric chair.

And for anybody who's hearing this and you're not familiar with the Course in Miracles,

We're going to dive into the depth of the Course in Miracles.

So please put your seatbelt on because this might get a little bumpy for you if you haven't heard things like this.

Corinne,

Share what did you learn from the Course that you have experienced in your own life that has helped you see that every,

Everything is the same?

Again,

Another big question.

The deepest Course teachings and just like you just said about stuff on your seatbelt,

Here we go.

I had to get hardcore.

Like I had to go to the deepest messages of the Course to find relief because of the extent of the anxiety.

Like the anxiety pushed me to go as like deep as I could into this work.

So it has taught me this world is a dream.

This world is an illusion.

I've had experiences,

Little experiences here and there that have made me feel that way.

For instance,

Really quick example,

About two,

Three months ago now,

I was driving on the highway at like 65 miles an hour,

Fully present.

Suddenly,

I was still.

I wasn't moving anymore.

I was still and the picture as if it was like movie screens around me,

The picture was moving,

But I was still.

I've had little experiences like that here and there that have just really reinforced this idea that we are dreaming right now.

So it's almost like those experiences of lucid dreaming.

When you realize that you're dreaming,

When you realize that you're the dreamer of this dream,

The Course teaches us that we are safe at home in God right now.

We have not left.

We are there.

We are as safe right now as we were before this seeming separation began as we will be after this seeming separation is over.

We have not left our source.

My lesson yesterday was in A Course in Miracles.

So A Course in Miracles,

For those who are totally new,

There are three parts,

A text,

A workbook,

And a manual for teachers.

The workbook has 365 lessons,

One for every day.

My lesson yesterday was Lesson 110,

I Am As God Created Me.

If we drop into that and really feel the meaning behind the words,

I Am As God Created Me,

Listen to this.

I didn't expect to share this,

But I was so blown away by this line.

By the way,

For those who might be new to the Course,

Or maybe if you are an experienced Course student,

You can relate,

That you underlined something years ago in your book,

And then you get to it again now,

And you're like,

Whoa,

Really?

I read this before?

I'm getting at a whole new level.

And that's what happened yesterday.

This idea,

I Am As God Created Me,

It says,

This idea is therefore all you need to let complete correction heal your mind and give you perfect vision.

And then it says,

It will heal all the mistakes,

Which any mind has made at any time or place.

So like,

By dropping into this idea that I Am Still As God Created Me,

And it says in the lesson,

His Son Can Suffer Nothing,

And I Am His Son,

We are connecting with that truth that we are eternal beings,

That we have not changed the truth,

Despite what we might seemingly perceive here.

And as we drop into that,

That corrects not only any mistaken perceptions in our mind,

But it corrects,

It reaches out,

It touches others too,

From the past,

From the seeming future.

It says those yet unborn.

I mean,

Oh my gosh.

So this is big stuff.

So it's these deep lessons of the Course,

And the Course is teaching too,

That there is no depth.

Yes.

That death is a central dream that holds this entire world together.

It's the one thing that we don't question,

Like,

Oh,

Death is just a fact of life,

Everything dies.

The Course is saying,

No,

You made death,

You need to question this.

Look at it,

You know,

Hand it over.

And the Course says,

And again,

Strap on your seatbelt,

That Jesus elected to go through what He went through to demonstrate that life,

That we cannot take away life.

No matter what the seeming appearance is,

Life cannot be touched.

And I get goosebumps,

Because what a beautiful message.

You can't get any more of like an anxiety-busting message than that.

No,

No,

It is absolutely beautiful.

And that's exactly what I was being shown.

When Spencer was doing drugs,

I was hearing this guidance that was saying to me,

Because everybody,

You know,

His dad,

Who happened to be my ex-husband at the time,

His dad,

His,

Everybody that loved my son,

Siblings,

And my family,

My sisters,

Aunts,

Uncles,

And friends,

They really wanted what was best for Spencer from their perspective,

Which meant he had to go to rehab,

We had to do a drug intervention,

We had to stop,

Take everything away,

Take all the privileges,

We were going to lock him down,

So that he would be without all of these things,

And then he would just realize that they were not good for him.

And I'm hearing Jesus say to me,

Not only are you not going to do a drug intervention,

But all you can do is a spiritual intervention,

You're going to do a soul intervention.

And this is what that's going to look like.

You're not going to take anything away.

You're going to focus on what is already eternal in him,

And you're going to remind him that he's powerful,

That he is making every single choice that he's making,

And whether he likes it or not,

You will not take responsibility for anything that he is choosing to do.

You will not be sad because of him,

You will not be angry because of him,

You will not be fearful because of him,

You are going to let him know that you see him as your peer,

Soul to soul,

You're going to remind him that he is eternal.

And if he wants to deny his eternalness,

And he chooses to kill himself,

Well,

He will remember his eternalness pretty quickly.

Because once he crosses the veil,

He will remember that and he will go,

Oh,

My gosh,

I was eternal.

And so you remind him that he gets to play the game that way,

But you are not going to go into fear because of what he does.

Now,

My ego side was like,

What the fuck?

I'm his mother,

I'm supposed to be afraid,

I'm supposed to be worried,

I'm supposed to control him.

So I had crazy,

Crazy talk inside of me.

I'm hearing these two voices.

But by then,

Jesus had been my homie for so many years.

I mean,

He had been my partner through divorce,

Through bankruptcy,

Through a new,

You know,

Getting remarried,

A divorce and remarriage all in a short period of time.

So I had had this constant companion that I had come to trust.

And that's when he said,

Okay,

Now we're going to start.

Now we're going to open up the Course in Miracles.

And when we started in the Course in Miracles,

Spencer was very,

Very clear that I was not going to accept for one second that he wasn't the creator of his own reality.

And we studied the Course in Miracles together.

My first year in the Course in Miracles together,

My first year in the Course in 2012 was with my son.

And he,

You know,

Had his journey and stopped doing drugs,

I don't know,

Maybe two or three years after that,

And then had been pretty much drug free since then and has elected to start drinking but on a social basis,

And he feels very comfortable that that has no power over him now,

Because he understands his mind that child at 23,

That young man,

That soul,

That old soul at 23 has has a lot of clarity.

And if you were to ask him,

What was the one thing you hated that your mom did while you were going through drugs?

And he said,

I just hated that she always said,

I was in charge of my own reality that I was doing this to myself,

Like I really was choosing to do this to myself.

And of course,

I would always say yes,

I'm not the one doing it to you.

I'm not the one thinking your thoughts.

And if you ask him,

Well,

What is the one thing that that helped you the most that your mom did?

She told me that was great in my own reality.

And then when I heard that a million times,

I finally had to go,

Okay,

What if I am?

And that that question allowed him to begin to see how powerful he was.

And when we enter into this journey,

And we realize because that's when I that's when my fear of death went bye bye.

It was totally and completely gone.

I have no fear of death at all.

So here we are in the midst of this coronavirus.

And I realized this past week,

That for me,

I am drawing a line in the sand with who I am going to be working with,

The level of my teachings.

I only want to work with serious students who want to claim their eternalness,

Because once you claim your eternalness,

What is there to fear?

So speak to you claiming your eternalness and coming to the place where you you're dealing with what's going on in the world today,

From that place of your awakened state.

I think that you just,

My goodness,

Your story is so incredibly powerful.

And yes,

We have to claim our eternalness.

Like,

Yes,

Absolutely.

We do.

And even though we might like,

For instance,

It started out for me as like,

Okay,

I'm an eternal being.

Yay.

Like,

You know,

Just like,

Okay,

I'm gonna,

And you know,

Of Course Miracles is a mind training program.

That's the lessons we go through.

There are things to repeat,

There are things to do in your meditations.

And it's training us to shift the I am an eternal being from here into knowing,

Into just knowing it through experience.

So,

For instance,

I'll give you an example.

And this is an example that I share in my book.

And it was one of the key experiences that developed my trust in the fact that I am an eternal being,

That I create my reality that,

You know,

I'm the one dream in this dream.

I mentioned that one of my biggest anxiety triggers were health triggers.

And I do want to say more about Coronavirus,

Because this situation would have been my absolute nightmare,

My worst nightmare years ago.

And now it's like,

I'm in just such a different place.

But to just share this one quick story,

Health fears being my number one fear in the past,

I bruise easily.

I always have my entire life.

And one day,

I just decided to start worrying about it.

So I went to a doctor,

He's like,

Oh,

You should go like to this specialist.

So I went to the specialist and that doctor,

I was in the office,

They were doing some lab work,

Joint blood,

And I won't share details for anybody who feels squeamish.

But the nurse was like,

So why are you here?

And I told her,

She's like,

Well,

That's not good.

And then I was like,

Well,

It's a symptom I've had my whole life.

And she goes,

Well,

That's not good.

And then she goes,

Don't you pass out on me.

And guess what I did.

So like,

What she said was such a fear,

Like,

You know,

It was such an anxiety that it threw me into nearly passing out.

Now,

I could have pointed the finger and have said,

You're a lousy nurse,

Which I had those thoughts.

You're a lousy nurse,

What are you doing saying this kind of thing to,

You know,

Somebody who's so sensitive,

But rather than go there afterwards,

Because now the doctor,

After I went through that,

The doctor was like,

Oh,

Here,

You need to go to a hospital outpatient clinic and get more lab work done.

So it was even a bigger anxiety trigger.

And I was like,

Okay,

What,

I was already coming from fear.

She showed up to witness to my fear.

That came from me.

All right,

I have to go to this lab.

I want to witness for love.

And I was still terrified.

So I still was really nervous about it.

But I just kept saying,

I want to witness,

I want to see the witnesses for love,

I want to see the witnesses for love,

Not for fear.

I walked into that lab in the hospital.

Behind the desk was the mom of one of my college roommates.

Had no idea she worked there.

I thought she was a receptionist.

Turns out she's a nurse.

Without my asking,

She escorts me in the back,

Draws all the,

You know,

The vials.

We're chatting the whole time.

It was fine.

And the biggest thing that was like,

I still get goosebumps,

As I was leaving,

It was a Monday,

As I was leaving,

She goes,

Oh,

Corinne,

She's like,

It's really great,

You know,

That I was here today.

She's like,

I don't usually work on Mondays.

And I got called in 30 minutes before you showed up.

And I was just like,

Yeah,

I want to see witnesses for love.

So it's experiences like that,

That help us shift from I am an eternal being into knowing the truth.

And then when we go forward,

And let's say like right now with just the situation that we're in with coronavirus,

You know,

From a course perspective,

The way that I see coronavirus,

It's the perfect ego storm.

It is the perfect ego tactic to keep us focused on our bodies,

To keep us identified as our bodies,

To keep our safety out there by like,

Wiping everything off and you know,

Everything that it is that we're supposed to do.

And I'm obeying,

You know,

I'm going along,

I'm washing my hands,

And no problem there.

But the fact is that it is an ego tactic to stay in fear.

And it's an amazing ego tactic.

It's invisible.

It's everywhere.

It is on surfaces,

You know,

Or I mean,

Not for long,

They're saying but like,

You don't know,

You know,

Where it is.

And the symptoms are different for everybody.

Like,

It's kind of unpredictable.

It's a perfect ego storm.

And so here,

Again,

We have an incredibly big opportunity to be willing to witness to the eternal beings that we are and to know.

What I love about the course is that it's true.

It's a perfect ego storm.

And what I love about the course is that it's training us to see beyond appearances.

So my practice right now is to connect deep down with the fact that it is well,

Deep in me.

It is well.

There's a song that I've been listening to lately called It Is Well by Christine DiMarco and it is well with our soul.

That's the lyric,

One of the lyrics in the song.

That feeling of it is well with my soul.

We can look out from that place,

From that knowing,

To be willing to see past appearances,

To witness to the eternal truth in every single one of us,

Despite what seems to be happening on the level of form.

And that is our job right now as Miracle Workers for those of us who feel called to be on this pathway.

LYNN HIRSCHBERG HIRSCHBERG Hallelujah.

Hooray for President.

KATE JOHNSON Oh,

Gosh.

No,

Thank you.

LYNN HIRSCHBERG H But isn't that the whole,

The essence of the course in miracles is to remind us of our superpower.

And our superpowers to create the reality that we want to experience.

And all of these people who don't want to get sick are giving their power to fear.

Yes,

What they're going to have to experience,

They have to experience the sickness or aversion of the discomfort,

Whether it be the lack of money or the inability to get out of their house or whatever it might be.

Because we have put ourselves in bondage to this thought system that tells us that we're not the eternal superpower that we are.

And,

But nobody can be convinced otherwise,

Because to decide to not claim our infinite nature with that decision,

I'm not going to be infinite.

We make the decision that I am finite and something can happen to me.

And as long as we are not even curious,

There is no way to unravel that thought system.

But it is just such a beautiful thing to hear you express what you have expressed because,

You know,

We're in a time when there's a lot of spiritual people out there.

And spirituality,

I mean,

To me,

It's like grades in school,

Depending on where you are in your journey from curious to,

You know,

At the Jesus level,

Where you know exactly what you are and you live at that level of freedom.

I'm not there,

But I know it's possible for me.

I have no doubt that that's my,

The benchmark for me.

Because if Jesus could do it,

So can I.

That is what the teachings are all about.

So wherever we are on that continuum of trusting,

Trusting the truth,

We experience different degrees of comfort,

Different degrees of freedom,

Different degrees of,

Frankly,

Play.

Because for me,

And this is something that I know I can share with you,

I can't say this to every person that I interview with,

Because most people that don't understand this would be very offended by this.

But once you realize that you are the creative child of the infinite creator,

And you're here because you want to experience life on planet earth,

It really is just a wonderful adventure.

And I told my son,

We're going to look at your four years through the,

We're going to call it a drug adventure,

Because it was an adventure for me.

I've never done anything like that before.

So I ventured into his drug journey.

I ventured into now my life experience.

As a curious explorer wondering what interesting things are we going to do today?

I'm going to wash my hands.

Yay,

Let me enjoy washing my hands.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to put a mask.

Okay,

Like where can I find a mask?

Because those things don't have power over me.

I am enjoying the experience of bringing my embodied loving self to that thing.

And it's so liberating.

It's so liberating.

And if I catch the virus,

If that's the way I'm supposed to experience it,

Bring it on.

I'm going to love it.

If I don't catch it,

How cool is that?

Either way,

My performance is going to get an Oscar just as everybody else's will.

And then we exit stage left.

And if we decide to come back into the dream,

We come back again.

But how empowering it must be for you to realize that you are eternal.

And here you are,

Moving about,

Moving about,

People scared,

People truly,

Truly,

You know,

My heart goes out for their pain,

Because I've been that crazy person.

I've been that scared person.

I've been that mistrusting person.

I've been that person afraid of money,

Afraid of my job or whatever it might be.

So I understand that.

But when we realize that we're all one,

Every single person is a representation of an aspect of the potential of disconnection that I can experience,

From super disconnected to barely connected.

And some days,

You know,

I do have my egoic fears.

I just don't believe my own thoughts anymore,

Which is so liberating.

Just because I have them doesn't mean I have to believe them.

But that is just so beautiful to hear you find your peace.

So how are you going about day to day with your clients because you're a coach.

You know,

You teach,

Don't you?

Well,

I'm not working with individuals.

I do have some group programs in the works and I have a study group,

You know,

That I work with every week.

And so it's been mainly through group work.

But I actually just want to speak,

If I could just go back for a second,

What you said about this being an adventure,

Because it's funny,

In my book,

From Anxiety to Love,

I talk about this being a separation theme park.

It can be like,

You know,

A twisted funhouse or like,

You know,

A really scary roller coaster,

But repurposed.

Yeah,

From ego purposes to awakening purposes.

It can be a loving,

You know,

It can be a beautiful encounter with truth as we go through this dream.

And you also spoke to what the course calls the transfer of trust.

So we're fully trusting in the beginning in ego,

In our small s self will,

Our,

You know,

Our own strength.

And slowly we're starting to shift our little feet,

We're wiggling them over into the Holy Spirit's camp,

Into Spirit's camp and just really learning how to stay there.

So with everything that's happening with Coronavirus to be completely transparent,

I've had fear spikes.

Like when this all started happening,

I was like,

Like everybody,

What is going on?

Are we going to have enough food?

Is my family going to be safe?

So what I did,

Every time I noticed a fear spike,

I looked at it as an opportunity to see that yet again,

I've tried to plant my roots here in this world.

I've tried yet again to make this world my home.

Rather than planting my roots in eternity in a solid foundation,

The only solid foundation is by planting our roots in eternity.

This world is quicksand.

Like try to plant roots on sand and it just is not going to work.

So any opportunity that I have had where I've been like,

What's going on?

Any fear there I have looked at as my own reflection of still,

You know,

Identifying as my small s self as Corinne,

Trying to make this home.

And it's just been a beautiful opportunity to question all that,

To say,

You know,

Spirit,

I'm willing to see this differently.

Like here's another layer coming up.

And so I,

When the H1N1 swine flu outbreak happened in 2009,

Around that time that I was having really bad anxiety,

I was a mess.

I was terrified out of my mind.

And here we are in a situation that's worse,

You know,

It's way bigger than that was.

And,

You know,

I'm so different.

I feel like that stark contrast between 2009 and now with these pandemics is just evidence that this pathway works.

There really is.

We really do have the capacity to identify with our eternal nature and function from that place.

It doesn't mean we're going to stay there.

It doesn't mean that we need to even do it perfectly.

But it's something like you said,

We can always be working towards and it reveals itself to the extent that we're ready and willing for it to do so.

So,

Yeah.

Yeah,

I love that.

Let me add what I'm experiencing now,

Because as you were saying,

Doesn't mean that we're going to stay there because we have egoic thoughts.

My mind is filled with information about the world.

So there is a level of reality that I have given to the world.

I still brush my teeth because I think I have them and I still go to the store because I believe I got to feed this body.

But where I am is that recognition that I don't have to believe those thoughts that instill that level of fear and anxiety and separation and makes the world real and powerful over me.

I have begun to play with,

This has been happening for a couple of years now,

But coronavirus is supercharging this game for me.

And it's the game of,

What if I am as powerful as I am and I actually can go ahead and start giving thought to the reality that I want to experience?

And that is just as powerful and as amazing as the old reality that I created.

But there's one twist to this game is that the story,

The world,

The life,

The game that we have played was a game where we came in here and we took from the game.

You got to give me safety,

You got to give me money,

You got to give me love,

You got to give me this,

You got to give me that,

You got to give me a degree,

You got to give me accolades.

Now the game is,

What am I bringing to the world?

If I know I'm an eternal being and I am the director and I am the direct descendant of all that is-ness and I am here and I've got the superpower of creation,

Co-creation because I'm using the mind of God,

How do I want to play that game?

And now it's like how can I bring love to this?

Because what are the things that I get to bring?

I get to bring my love,

I get to bring my joy,

I get to bring my fun,

I get to bring my attention,

My kindness,

My gentleness,

My defenselessness,

My that's what I get to bring because this world doesn't have anything as you know,

The Course teaches us there's nothing of value in this world,

That's why we can't take anything with us.

But as babies we bring all of that,

We bring the trust,

We bring the gentleness,

The kind,

All of that,

We bring that in.

That's what I want to give to the world because we got to return to being like little children to enter the kingdom and now it's simple,

Shift and lift that thought,

Move out of that fear,

Move into that love,

Move from that judgment,

Move into that joy,

Move from that blaming,

Let's move into something beautiful and it's that shift that allows us to feel,

Allows me to feel that instantaneously I can in a nanosecond like what was his name,

Robin Williams is to say,

Ork from Ork or Mork from Ork,

Whatever his name was,

You know,

Nadu nadu,

Okay let me shift,

Let me change it,

Let me have the experience that I want because this insanity that we should be suffering,

We all want to be well but why are we giving all of our attention to the suffering,

We all want to be happy,

Why are we talking about what we don't like,

We all want to be abundant,

Why are we talking about not enough money in the checking account?

It is so amazing how powerful we are and don't even freaking know it.

I'm right there with you and I have to speak to what you said with that shift of like what can I get from this versus now what can I give,

That's been a huge shift for me in my journey as a core student is to recognize that that miracles are expressions of love,

They're not just shifts in perception,

It's not just,

It's part,

This is part of it,

It's you know,

The shift is part of it but to give and to receive are one in truth,

That's a course lesson.

So as we give miracles,

As we give love to our brothers,

To the world,

As we give miracles,

We immediately get that back,

We admit that that giving of love awakens something in another person which in turn awakens it in us which this is a part of the course that like I wasn't tuned into for a long time,

The interpersonal nature of miracles and miracle working and it goes from you know my peace,

Like I want to be peaceful,

You know I want my peace and I don't want to disturb my peace to a recognition that as I give love I recognize that peace is all there is,

I help another connect with that peace and that reinforces it in my own mind.

So yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

Well it's like when people say I want to be peaceful and then you know I'm coaching or whatever and they're telling me how upset they are and I'm like well why don't you give your peace away?

What do you mean I give my peace away?

Well you had to exchange it for the anger,

Who exchanged that for you?

Who took it from you?

Well they did blah blah blah,

They did but you decided to give your peace away because of what they did,

What about you keep your peace and let them do what they did and you know call it a day but we're just not trained that way.

It's just so fascinating how convoluted the mind has gotten and you know you've written a book and I want to give you time to talk about your book and what's in it and how can people find it.

So obviously through Facebook they can connect with you but I've got your website fromanxietytolove.

Com.

Let's go ahead and put it up here so anybody that is watching this and let me spell it out for those who are going to hear this is a podcast and the book is called or her website is called fromanxietytolove.

So spell all of those words out dot com.

But Corinne tell us about your book.

Well that's also the name of my book from anxiety to love.

It's the subheading is a radical new approach for letting go of fear and finding lasting peace and as I said earlier when I started really healing in 2009-2010 I knew I had to write about what was helping me.

I didn't set out to be an author to be like okay I want to be an author what am I going to write about.

It was literally through my healing there was this like compulsion to have to put it down on paper and the book has all of the steps that I took to heal from anxiety to return to peace.

It has lots of exercises meditations and lots of stories to demonstrate.

I love sharing stories because I feel like stories just really can help us see how practical these teachings are and how we can put them into practice in our day-to-day life.

So that's you know it's a self-help book it's meant to be a guide.

I've had many people tell me that they have gotten the audible version the audio book and then later went back and bought the physical copy because they just wanted to keep engaging and actually reading you know some of it and having the the exercises in print.

The meditations in the book are available also as they were recorded professionally to some beautiful music and so it really is like it's not the type of book that you just read once and put down.

It's really meant to be used as a tool in healing.

There are mind-straightening mantras so again things that we can remind ourselves of and mantras healing statements that I used in my own healing journal prompts so it's really just loaded with a lot of tools to work ourselves out of fear and back to peace.

Oh my goodness how wonderful because that is we're leaving breadcrumbs so that others can follow leaving pointers so how wonderful that you've written that book with so much detail in it.

My son and I are going to be writing a book but it's not going to be filled with all of those those helpful things that you have so I cannot wait to to hear some of my own peeps that are listening to this that you have gotten from Anxiety to Love by Corinne.

That is so awesome.

So you're you're working with some people than in groups.

What are you going to be doing that allows others to come in and bask in your your wisdom and I know you have a podcast don't you don't you do some?

I do yeah it's called From Anxiety to Love.

It's available on Apple podcasts and I also publish it on YouTube so it's on all the podcasting platforms and the whole show is focused on anxiety and healing anxiety through course principles and so I do that I have a Sunday night weekly Course in Miracles study group it's free it always has been for eight years and it and it will continue to be and that's that's people can find the link to that on my website fromanxietytolove.

Com and I do have my From Anxiety to Love master class coming up in the next several in the next few months it's being built right now and that will be for folks who have you don't have to read the book to be in the class I highly recommend that people do read the book who get into the class because the class will go beyond the book it'll be based on the book but but we'll go beyond it so it'll be a chance to work with me more more you know in a intimate setting.

Oh what a treat what an absolute treat you know as I was saying earlier so much of well everything that I've gotten to teach came to me through my connection with Jesus and and I was guided to create what he said to me now this was now this was before I really entered into this journey so he was giving me a road map to follow and what what I was told was that we go through six phases from conception to enlightenment and it's what I call the soul's journey the three phases in which we descend into densifying our ego and the three phases that we go through to lighten up and reclaim our you know lift our vibration shifted into the higher frequencies of love so I offer a free master class and so anybody who is watching this if you go to lineorlando.

Com just sign up and you'll get that soul's journey and and it is going to be a very eye-opening way of simplifying what we're all going through and you'll be able to see exactly what Corinne and I have been talking about you know we get we pick up all these fears in this life experience and then we do the work of releasing them and the release it doesn't seem like it's an easy process but it is a simple process you're always choosing to love yourself enough to not suffer that that is a prerequisite once you decide that you're worthy enough to be happy to be peaceful to be joyful you will not tolerate suffering you will not tolerate anything inside of your field that is uncomfortable so I hope that that Corinne has served as an example of why you would want to do that for yourself because you can see how happy she is but Corinne let's go ahead and have you have the the final words share your words of wisdom so I want to share as we as we wind down some words that my stepdad actually said to me when I was like totally wiped out with anxiety this is around the 2009 episode I was I remember like lying on I was over at my mom and stepdad's house like lying on their couch because my husband was traveling and I didn't want to be alone and I just remember I was like I had like you know the mascara stains down my cheeks and just in that state of just not functioning and he looked at me my stepdad and he looked straight past the picture the sorry picture of me in a pile on the couch and he said the light in you is too bright to fail and so I say that to everyone listening the light in you is too bright to fail no matter what it is that you're going through no matter how challenging things get the truth in you has not changed it has not changed it's there and the light in you is too bright to fail so I've just been so filled up by those words and that has led to I have another practice in my book about connecting with like getting a picture if you connect with Jesus or an angel or even like you can use a picture of a baby because babies just like exude love if you can get a picture where you can make eye contact with that picture you can imagine that being looking at you with the eyes of perfect love and that awakens it in you that allows you to really connect with that feeling of what it is like to have someone see only the truth in you the truth in you and that's just a beautiful place to to be able to get reconnected with with the truth so those are some some thoughts that came to mind I did actually also want to mention as well that if anybody I do have on my website at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash crash course there's a three-part video series where I talk a bit about just this journey of healing and that's that's totally free too oh that's so wonderful well I love your generous spirit not only sharing so much information in your book and sharing your crash course and your course in miracle study group how that is absolutely beautiful that is precisely why I am so excited that the world is where it is right now we have an opportunity to come inside get quiet get still realize that there's nothing outside that's gonna ever ever going to make you happy happiness is inside of you when you find it share it let's spread it's just as contagious to be happy and laugh as it is to be you know fearful and and scared so thank you so much you are the light of the world by the way miss Corinne thank you as are you Lina thank you so much thank you everybody it's takeaway time I hope this episode has inspired you to know that healing is possible I'm going to share three takeaways so takeaway number one move from curious to serious I love how Lina spoke about this we can stay curious and just dabble with spirituality or we can get serious about our freedom serious about our spiritual studies and commit to healing and just dabble with spirituality or we can get serious about our spiritual studies and commit ourselves to doing the work so it's time to get serious while of course still having a lot of fun takeaway number two look at your current situation as an adventure I love how Lina spoke about the adventure of her son's drug journey we can see anything as an adventure we have the power to even what we're currently facing with the pandemic and this to me just shifts the energy behind what's happening from something horrible into something lighter into something that's a little bit easier to handle and it can help us move through whatever that challenge is takeaway number three anxiety can help you recognize that you are a magnificent diamond I shared this in the beginning of the episode and it's worth repeating the pressure of anxiety can feel crushing yet repurposed through spirit when we hand that anxiety over to spirit to our inner therapist and we say I'm willing to see this differently this has the power to help us awaken to the radiant light the sparkling light that we are all made of it's already there you are already that diamond so that is it thank you so much for listening today if you're helped by these episodes please consider telling others about this show to spread the word anxiety is rampant now more than ever before and there are going to be more and more people who are opening up to ideas like this and are looking for deep healing on a really deep level your recommendation of this show is the highest compliment that you can give come on over to the show notes page to find links to laina's website to my takeaways and you can find the show notes at fromanxietytolove.

Com forward slash 28 thank you so much I love you I am with you in your journey of undoing fear I'll leave you with the last few sentences from my book from anxiety to love I believe in you we're healing together every gain that I've made is a gain for you and every game that you make is a gain for me my gains are yours and yours are mine because we are one we're going to make it the light in you is too bright to fail if you buy a copy of from anxiety to love make sure you take advantage of your free bonus the from anxiety to love summit which features six interviews with experts in undoing fear get access at fromanxiety to love.

Com forward slash summit thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode