This is Kabbalah 99.
I'm Deborah Sofia.
Let's lend our hearts to our guest today,
Karen Newell,
A true sister on the path.
Welcome Karen.
Well,
Thank you Deborah so much for inviting me.
Well,
Karen,
You have spent a lifetime seeking wisdom through esoteric teachings and firsthand experience exploring realms of consciousness.
What does that mean to seek wisdom and firsthand experience exploring realms of consciousness?
Well,
I think the main message there is that just reading about spirituality or learning about it from someone else really wasn't enough for me.
And I learned that when you can experience these things firsthand,
Then you develop this knowing within.
And so that's how experience came to be a very important part of seeking wisdom.
Beyond your personal development,
You seek to empower others by demonstrating how to connect to inner guidance,
Achieve inspiration,
Improve wellness,
And develop intuition.
And to fulfill that purpose,
You co-founded Sacred Acoustics and co-authored with Dr.
Eben Alexander,
The book,
Living in a Mindful Universe.
So we'll discuss Sacred Acoustics and your new book,
Living in a Mindful Universe in a minute.
But first I would like to ask you about your earlier work in the magazine and newspaper publishing field.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Well,
Yes,
For 26 years,
That was my career.
And for 25 of those years,
I worked for the same company and I kind of grew with the company because in the print world,
Everything started changing when technology started to advance.
And so first we started out with typesetting equipment and then Macintosh computers and desktop publishing was invented.
So we had to move along with that.
And I kind of led our company through all of those changes all the way up to when the internet was invented.
And we had to learn how to then deliver a message through the worldwide web.
And so I was able to learn many,
Many skills during that time.
And yet I felt something was missing.
I wasn't really satisfied with the type of content that I was helping to support.
It didn't really interest me personally.
Of course,
It interested many other people.
Eventually I wanted to move on and use my skills to support a different type of message for the world.
That's a very rapid period of change.
This kind of work,
You're project manager for web development.
That's pretty heavy left brain type of work.
And so how did you go from that kind of life to the life you have now?
And what was the transformation that you experienced?
Well all the whole time I was working for that company,
I also got married,
Raised a daughter,
Living a life just like everyone else,
At least here in America.
And I had this other interest though.
Like so many of us,
We have our hobbies and mine was the really the existence of sacred sites all over the world that seemed to suggest that we used to have greater knowledge than we have today.
I really had this driving passion to learn the truth.
And so I was constantly reading,
Reading,
Reading all kinds of information,
Esoteric texts and other types of,
I would say alternative archeological research and things like that.
And I eventually learned that that firsthand experience was really the key to understanding how all of this works.
And so while I was still working at my job,
I started taking courses.
I would use all my vacation time to go take these courses.
It started with the feng shui course because that was really helpful for me to understand how time and space work together to create energy in any given time and location.
It moved on from there.
I learned how to do Reiki so that I could feel energy.
People in these esoteric texts always talk about this kind of energy force.
And so I wanted to learn how to feel that.
And so I took courses in Reiki,
Eventually astral travel and all kinds of things.
And I was interested more in why are we here and what is our purpose?
And so as I was taking all of these courses,
My initial drive was again,
To like feel energy,
To understand these experiences,
But meditation was really the sort of the ground floor of all of this.
And meditation was incredibly challenging for me.
As you said,
I had a very left brain focus and I'm a natural project manager and organizer.
So lists going through my head,
You know,
Kind of making sure everything's getting done is what would happen when I would sit down to meditate.
I couldn't turn off that mind.
And that's when I discovered the power of sound to help quiet the mind.
But all of this led to a point where I left my company.
And with the purpose of being a web developer,
I was going to turn my career into being a freelance web developer.
So I collected all of these clients of my own and set off to do that.
And it was about six months or so later that I met Eben Alexander.
And that's what really changed my life into something I never,
Ever,
Ever could have imagined.
I understand that you are an innovator in the emerging field of brainwave entrainment.
So what is that and how did it help you?
Well,
It helped me a lot again,
When I was trying to learn how to meditate,
I found,
You know,
I tried all kinds of things,
Breathing techniques,
Mantras,
It just wasn't really getting me to where I thought I needed to be.
And certain types of sound would really help quiet the mind and not just music with melodies.
This would be sounds like tuning forks,
Or crystal bowls or brass bowls,
Or gongs,
Those kinds of sounds really helped me to kind of get into a quieter state.
And so it was through that that I discovered very deliberately creating these types of sounds using digital frequencies.
So they're known as binaural beats,
And those crystal bowls and brass bowls are emitting binaural beats,
Just a natural form of them.
Anything that makes that kind of wah,
Wah,
Wah,
Regular sound is producing a binaural beat.
And so what that is,
Is it's one frequency in one ear and a slightly different frequency in the other ear that creates that sort of warbling sound.
And it's that difference between the two that seems to match up with our brainwave states.
So when we're like in the state we're in now,
We're talking and we're active,
We're in the beta state,
That's 12 hertz up to 30 hertz.
That's what's measured in an electrical signal that comes out of your brain when you're getting an EEG.
And so going down lower than 12 hertz,
That alpha range is between seven and 12 hertz,
Theta is between four and seven hertz,
And delta is zero to four hertz.
So the lower you get,
The more relaxed you are.
So zero to four hertz is deep sleep or even being in a coma.
Theta,
Just up from that,
Is more of a meditative state and alpha is more of a relaxed focus state.
So when I would listen to these types of recordings,
They serve to bring me from that active beta state of awareness with that racing mind down to a lower state of awareness that's more associated with meditation.
And specifically,
We very often focus on that four hertz border between awake and asleep,
Between delta and theta.
And this is what's known as the hypnagogic state where you're kind of in between those states asleep and awake.
And all of us know what this feels like when we fall asleep each night.
We kind of,
Our body's getting relaxed,
Our mind maybe gets a little softened as we fall asleep.
And when we first wake up in the morning,
That hypnagogic state,
That state between awake and asleep,
This is really a sweet spot.
And we're all in that state when we're falling asleep at night and when we're waking up in the morning.
And sometimes when we're waking up in the morning,
Say in a hotel or someone else's home,
We sometimes don't realize where we are and we're kind of confused and we're in this sort of dream state and yet we're more awake.
So that's that hypnagogic state.
And very interestingly,
This is precisely what people like Albert Einstein,
Thomas Edison,
For example,
Who are responsible for so many scientific concepts and inventions that are so useful in our world today.
They both intentionally would put themselves into a hypnagogic state in order to open their minds to these creative inspirations.
And so I think Albert Einstein would go out into a boat and that gentle rocking of the boat would put him into that state.
And Thomas Edison would hold weights in his arms.
And then as he felt his arms kind of,
You know,
In a seated position as his arms started to fall,
He knew,
Oh,
Goodness,
I'm falling asleep.
And he would be in that state.
And so binaural beats or brainwave entrainment help to get into that hypnagogic state.
It's just another form of support to help people access that part of our awareness that is really,
I'll say,
Beyond or behind our thinking mind,
That automated thinking that seems to go on.
There's something else behind that.
And these types of sounds or other types of techniques can help you to get into that state more easily.
And someone with that left brain active mind,
That was a godsend,
Because then I was finally able to quiet the mind.
And at first,
You know,
I would listen to binaural beats and just fall asleep.
So that's another benefit of binaural beats if you have trouble sleeping.
But on the other hand,
I wanted to really stay in that more aware state while my body was profoundly relaxed.
And so with a little trial and error,
I found different combinations help to engender different kinds of effects.
And it just kind of all went from there.
Karen,
You've been so generous as to allow me to play a little bit of that for our listeners.
This is brainwave entrainment,
The binaural beat.
Is there a name for this that you're going to play for us?
Yes,
This will be a sample of our Sacred Acoustics OM recording.
And if you like what you hear here,
Go on and go to our website,
Sacredacoustics.
Com,
And you can download a 20-minute version of this same sample.
Oh,
That's fantastic.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lovely.
I can't wait to download that sample.
I really want to try this.
Now my tradition is through Sufism.
And you used a phrase that even though I've been in Sufism for a long time,
I've never heard,
Although I can intuit what it means.
You mentioned Sufi heart rhythms.
Now what are Sufi heart rhythms?
Yes.
Well,
This was a form of meditation that I learned from Coran and Susanna Baer,
Who teach a particular form of what they call heart rhythm meditation.
And so I had read their books and it was very interesting to me.
And so I started taking trainings from them.
The basics of it is that you focus on your breath and you consciously match your breath to your heartbeat in different types of patterns.
And so maybe you'll breathe in for eight heartbeats and then breathe out for eight heartbeats or whatever it is.
And then other times we would imagine that our breathing was moving in and out of our hearts and it seems to trigger emotions in your system.
This was really interesting to me because when I first thought,
Well,
Focus on the heart,
That should bring me a lot of loving feelings or lots of support and comfort.
And that's not what happened.
In fact,
I discovered a lot of anxiety and fear when I would do these types of exercises.
And what I eventually realized is through a lot of,
You know,
Assistance from facilitators is that these were emotions that were already inside of me.
Somehow I had never really processed them from long ago.
Interestingly,
The audio recordings of binaural beats and sacred acoustics seem to have a similar effect.
And so both of these activities I think were very critical in finding that way to first release all of these emotions.
And then once you start to release them all,
You find they start getting replaced.
And what they get replaced with is this more authentic essence of who you are.
You recognize it when you feel it.
And this is where that support and connection comes in.
But first I had to kind of work through the layers of anxiety and frustration and whatnot that I had sort of put into my system.
And so that's why I combined these two techniques in some of our recordings with some guidance that invites people to breathe in and out of their heart in different ways while listening to these recordings.
I found that all of the different meditative techniques that I learned over time,
I could while listening to these binaural beats,
Enact some of those same things.
And so usually that's a visualization.
We often say that passive listening will get you somewhere.
And that's where I'm not sure I mentioned you will want to wear headphones for the greatest effect.
But if you're wearing those headphones,
If you're just passively listening,
You can certainly get some relaxing effects,
Especially if you're using them to help with sleep.
But it's when you engage your mind,
When you use your mind to imagine,
To create something inside your awareness,
That's when you really start to have the ability to interact with that consciousness.
And I think that's what people like Einstein and Edison were doing when they would open up their consciousness and all of the facts and ideas that they had would be presented to them in different ways.
And they were able to,
From that more expanded perspective,
Put it together again in different ways.
And so for me,
It was really that heart rhythm meditation and the sound that really helped give me my greatest breakthroughs.
Well,
This is really interesting.
You seem like such a calm,
Clear person.
You talk so beautifully.
Can you give me a sense of the before?
We see the after.
We see how you are.
How has this changed?
What was the before and what is the now?
Well,
I would say that I appeared outwardly to other people very similar to how I am now.
I've always been balanced.
And when I would bring that sort of calm balance to that deadline environment of the publishing industry,
People always commented on how that made them feel calmer.
That's sort of a natural quality that I have.
But what was vastly different is what's inside of me.
I have a much better alignment,
I think,
With my purpose,
With why I'm here,
With my level of comfort.
Talking about these kind of topics has changed.
I used to be really in a state where I didn't like to talk to people.
I didn't,
Except in the workspace,
I could do it.
My coworkers,
Helping people with technical support and so on.
But outside of work,
I didn't really like to do public speaking or have anything to do with the public in general.
I was always very uncomfortable with that.
That has changed significantly.
And so anyone who knew me before would know that I would absolutely avoid public speaking.
And after all of this work and of course the opportunities that were presented to me,
It's much more comfortable now.
And so some of those changes,
Some people would say,
Oh,
That's just the same old Karen.
But on the other hand,
It's a different quality of that same Karen,
If that makes sense.
Yes,
That's lovely.
I am very touched by you finding things in your heart that you didn't even know that you hadn't processed.
And by breathing and engaging in that,
You were able to transmute it.
Well,
I'd like to give you an example.
Sure.
So one of these that I that I over time I realized was really holding me back is when I was seven years old,
And my parents were getting a divorce.
Now my father had been in Vietnam for two different tours.
So for two years of the first seven years of my life,
He wasn't even there.
And much of that other time he was training and doing other things to do with the military.
So he really was an absent father.
And so when my parents were getting a divorce,
I was,
You know,
I wasn't too too upset with it on one hand.
But on the other hand,
I thought,
Wait a minute,
He's my dad.
And what my parents did is they sat me down with my two brothers,
One one year older one one year younger.
And they said,
Who would you like to live with after the divorce?
And my brothers were like,
Oh,
My gosh,
You guys,
Oh,
My gosh,
We can't pick how can we decide Oh,
My gosh,
They were so upset.
And I very matter of factly said,
I will live with my mother.
And it was because I had no faith in my father to be there for me.
I just didn't realize as a young child,
What a father would really mean.
If he was there all the time.
And part of me desperately missed him.
And the other part of me decided,
I don't need my father,
You're going to go away.
That means I don't need you.
When I shut something down inside of me,
I shut down the need or the desire to be loved by a father figure by a man,
I completely shut that down and decided I didn't need it.
And so as I went through life,
And it really didn't,
It really didn't occur to me that I had done that it was a decision I made as a child as a defense mechanism.
And it's when I got older and sort of realized that there was this inner child in me that was so sad,
So sad to not have had her father.
We're all reconnected now and we reconnected in my 20s.
But just that reconnection wasn't enough.
Just being back with my father and having a relationship wasn't enough because in my formative years,
I had made that really fatal decision that I didn't need to be loved.
And so as I went through life dealing with relationships,
It became very clear that I really had a very easy time leaving relationships because I never really allowed myself to get fully integrated into it.
At any rate,
I made practical decisions about who I would love,
Who I would marry,
Instead of a heartfelt decision.
And that's because of that disconnection,
I truly believe.
And so through all that work,
I was able to realize,
Oh my gosh,
I do want this love.
I do want to feel this connection.
The abandonment that I felt when I would do this Sufi Harvitha meditation,
Terrible,
Horrible abandonment when I would activate this,
Eventually got replaced when I now go inside to my heart,
I feel this force of love there ready to support me.
And so that's what made the difference when I found that childhood decision that affected me through my whole life.
That's quite a discovery.
So why don't you tell us now a little bit about Sacred Acoustics?
Well Sacred Acoustics,
That's the company that I created with Kevin Kossi and he's an mechanical and electrical engineer who became an audio engineer.
So he's the one who really creates all these recordings.
We created Sacred Acoustics after meeting Eben Alexander.
And for those who don't know,
Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who wrote a book called Proof of Heaven that was published in 2012.
And all of this took place before that book came out when we met Eben.
And he listened to these recordings and found that they helped him.
He was the first one besides Kevin and I who had listened.
We decided to make our own just because we thought we could make them better.
But at any rate,
After we met Eben,
He's the one who encouraged us to make them available to other people.
And after his book came out,
And that book Proof of Heaven was about an amazing near-death experience that he had that totally changed his worldview.
But after his book came out,
He invited me to then teach other people how to use these recordings to get into these expanded states of awareness for all kinds of purposes.
There's many,
Many,
Many purposes.
But our general theme is really to make people realize that the dominant Western worldview of reductive materialism is not correct.
And it's holding all of humanity back from really discovering the powers that we really do have as humans.
And then I also teach with Eben Alexander.
Our message is really very broad and we love to deliver it to large groups of people.
Eben when he had that near-death experience,
Because of the condition of his brain and as being a neurosurgeon,
He knew that his brain could not have produced that experience as a hallucination.
So he knew that it was real.
And I,
Of course,
Knew that the spiritual realm was real just from my own reading and practices and firsthand experiences of feeling that amazing love that so many near-death experiencers talk about.
So when Eben and I first met and began speaking about these things,
He would talk about this amazing love.
And I said,
Well,
Okay,
Do you love yourself here on earth?
And he said,
Oh,
No,
No.
Oh my gosh,
I can't do that.
And he,
Of course,
Had his own little,
I call it a baby wound from being adopted.
He was given up by his birth mother at 11 days old.
And so he was left alone for several months until he was adopted by his adopted family at age four months.
But at any rate,
He couldn't love himself.
And so I said,
Wait a minute,
You know,
You can bring that love here and you know,
It comes from within you,
Right?
And he didn't know these things.
He had been to the other side,
Felt that amazing love that he did not know how to generate it and feel it here on earth.
And so that's where our collaboration really started when I really wanted him to know,
No,
You can have that here because I've had it.
You have a reference point.
Eben had that reference point of being there.
And so that's when we started to develop these ways of teaching people how to engender those feelings for themselves.
One thing I want to point out to your listeners is that practitioners have used these sacred acoustics recordings in all different ways.
But I've learned from two different acupuncturists who work with teenagers.
And these are teenagers who have attempted suicide and failed.
So they felt bad enough to end their own lives,
But they weren't able to succeed at that.
And so they're now in therapy.
And these two acupuncturists have begun playing sacred acoustics recordings while they're giving their treatments.
And they used to play other types of music,
Even other types of binaural beats.
But when they play sacred acoustics recordings,
Their patients start telling them things like,
Oh my gosh,
I feel this amazing connection to the universe.
If only I had felt that before I tried to kill myself,
I never would have tried.
And so that kind of statement is incredibly powerful.
It makes me really have so much compassion for people just like me,
Who I never really got to the point where I wanted to kill myself,
But I did not feel that connection to something greater.
I didn't feel it firsthand.
And when people don't have that in their lives,
You really don't realize what you're missing.
Even when people do feel those connections,
Say you're out in nature,
Or maybe someone has died,
And you feel their presence or something like that.
You're so often kind of trained in the Western world to dismiss all of that as some kind of hallucination.
And these materialist scientists will tell us that,
Oh,
Love is just hormones interacting in your brain or neurons combining.
You have nothing to do with that.
And that's just nonsense.
That type of worldview that is really the dominant Western world,
Secular worldview now,
Is really damaging our sense of being human.
If we think that we don't have any ability to manage our lives,
We're really disempowered.
And then we wonder,
Then why are we even here?
What is the purpose of it all?
And so they've really stripped the kind of humanity out of being human.
And I feel and Evan feels that it's really our birthright to feel this feeling.
And our hearts are very much set up to,
You know,
Heart math research tells us that the hearts electromagnetic field expands and contracts around the body.
It seems to be gathering information from out in the world,
And also radiating information from within you out to the world.
And these heart fields between us,
They're interacting all the time.
And they're at we're actually influencing people around us without even realizing.
And so that science really,
I think,
Needs to become more commonplace,
So that we realize whatever is in our hearts is actually affecting people around us.
And so I really took that knowledge to heart literally,
When I realized that my angst,
My anxiety or uncomfortableness is making others feel that way.
And so it's kind of like what I call the ultimate golden rule,
Where if you hold peace and calm within your own heart within your own body,
You're actually helping other people around you without having to say a word.
And now I realize that's exactly what I was doing.
Back in that production room,
With all the busy deadlines going on,
I could hold myself in a certain way for other people.
And so that's what we're up to.
In Sufism,
We talk a lot about how we can affect the environment around us and beyond.
An analogy was given recently with all the germs of the pandemic,
That we could see how that spreads and affects the world.
Well,
What about the germs,
In quotes,
Of our good feelings?
What if those spread,
We allowed those to spread?
These are the practices we learn,
Which really brings me to another topic,
And that's the topic of alchemy.
So you've long been interested in ancient cultures,
Especially the ancient Egyptian mystery schools.
And so what have you learned about life through those studies?
Well,
What I learned about mystery schools really intrigued me,
Because the promise of the mystery school back in Egyptian times,
And other cultures had them as well,
These types of mystery schools were meant to put someone through an initiation so that they could actually,
You know,
How it's stated is they could understand the secrets of the universe.
And what I've come to realize over much,
Much,
Much,
Much time and understanding is that they were all they it's like they were giving people their own spiritual experience or near death experience,
Somehow putting them into a state where they could feel that connection.
Once you feel that connection firsthand,
You're forever changed.
You can't go back to not understanding what it feels like.
And so,
You know,
I knew that they were learning knowledge,
But I also knew that they were cultivating experience.
That is probably one of the biggest drives that made me realize I want to have an experience,
I want to have what they had.
And that's what sent me off to taking all of these courses.
Now I've since realized that quite possibly back thousands and thousands of years ago,
Especially further back,
Maybe then the traditional Egypt archaeologists will acknowledge that it's possible that our physicality as humans was different,
Was more malleable,
Was more able to connect with the spiritual realm,
That thing that exists beyond the physical world.
And we've had more capacity for doing that,
I believe,
And I believe we've lost it.
So it's not quite so simple.
The remnants are there of mantras and other types of things that can be done to connect with spirit,
That our bodies maybe are more dense than they used to be.
So it's turned a little more challenging for us here,
Especially in the Western world.
You know,
The Indian culture and the Chinese culture,
Unique from the Western culture,
They never separated their science from their spirit.
Back in the Inquisition days,
When the Roman Catholic Church decided that scientists couldn't talk about anything spiritual,
Or they would be killed,
That kind of sent a message to our scientists not to go there.
And it really got separated,
The spirit from the science.
But this didn't happen in India or China,
They still feel that energy.
And while we may be more advanced technologically,
In the West,
We've also lost some of that spirit.
And so what Mystery Schools used to provide to us,
I believe are coming back now as we sort of move out of these darker times,
I believe we're going to regain this ability to more easily interact with the spiritual realm.
But once we gain those abilities,
It's highly critical that all of us here on Earth are working from a higher sort of consciousness,
Where we won't use that ability to harm others.
And this,
I feel is what we really need to work through as humanity before those abilities will really become more commonplace.
And so can you talk a little bit about this human propensity to think we're separate versus what reality is?
Right.
Well,
This is again,
That divorce from the spiritual realm,
We're told we're just physical bodies and nothing else.
And so when we come into our physical bodies from that spiritual realm,
There's this,
What we call programmed forgetting,
We forget our spiritual natures that seems to be part of the system.
And so it's really what I call a universal abandonment wound,
You know,
I sort of experienced it through that disconnection with my father,
Eben sort of experienced it through the abandonment of his mother,
His birth mother,
And somehow we all seem to have some experience that sort of validates that feeling of separation.
And that seems to be part of the experience that we came here to have is that feeling of separation.
But in reality,
We're not separate,
We're all part of one consciousness.
And yet we each have this unique spark from that one consciousness,
You were using some good analogies and another one is drops in the ocean,
Or facets on a diamond is a very special one,
Rays of light is enough.
So if you think of this big giant diamond that we all comprise,
And each of us is one facet of this beautiful diamond,
What it tells us is that we're separate in a sense,
Because we're each a unique aspect of that divine energy.
And yet we all share this connection,
This same sort of energetic quality of soul that we all have.
And when our soul departs this physical world,
Its awareness continues.
So this is kind of a heady concept to get around.
It's not easy to kind of apply in your life,
Except when you're feeling in service to others.
And so sometimes it's really interesting.
Many of us are very focused on others to the detriment of ourself.
And that is one extreme and others only pay attention to their self and not others.
And how I would put this is that any time you focus on yourself to clear that energy,
The kind of energies we've been talking about to align more with that essence of who you truly are,
You're actually helping others as you're helping yourself because of that natural influence that takes place.
And on the other hand,
If you're feeling depressed or down about something,
One of the greatest cures for that is to help others take your mind off your own problems and help others.
And somehow in the act of service,
You end up bringing such wonderful qualities back into yourself.
And so there's a lot of ways to look at this service to self and service to others.
And we really need a balance of that.
We can't forget ourselves in this process,
But we also can't only think of ourselves.
And this really speaks to really a responsibility I think we have as humans.
Once you realize we're all connected this way,
We're responsible for our unfolding reality.
We may not necessarily know the mechanism of how that works,
But we can experiment in our own lives if we behave a certain way that leads to these kinds of things happening.
If we behave another way,
It leads to a different set of things happening and we have the option to choose.
And so it really is our birthright as humans to tap into that essence of who we are,
Really become that essence.
And that essence,
Honestly,
Anyone who goes and finds it finds that it's a very loving,
Warm,
Benevolent essence that is there and available to all of us.
And each of us who takes the time to do that,
Really bring that energy within is serving the world because as soon as you do that,
It radiates out to all others.
That's a beautiful explanation of what I think of as the vertical and the horizontal.
We need to draw from the infinite and yet connect with others.
We need to develop ourselves and yet serve others.
That's a beautiful way of putting it.
It sounds like you believe humanity is evolving.
I do believe humanity is evolving.
When we hear evolution,
We often think of Darwin and physical evolution,
But what we're speaking of is the evolution of consciousness because experiments from a hundred years ago in quantum physics have clearly shown us that the observer in an experiment is having an effect on the result of that experiment.
That is very clear to anyone who studies that the problem has been scientists admitting that this is actually real and how this applies to our lives.
Now I believe that this happens in a cycle as well,
That it's not just a linear progression.
I believe that we go through these kinds of cycles and that each time we go through the cycle,
It moves us up a notch on that evolutionary scale.
And we can look at our own lives just to see how that works.
So if you notice there's patterns in your life,
Maybe it's through relationships or you're not holding a job or the same thing always happens,
Those kinds of patterns.
Once you start to tackle those patterns,
You move a little forward and then you might run into that same problem again,
But it's not quite as challenging.
You're able to get through it a little more easily.
So you're evolving in a spiraling way because you face those issues again,
But each time you do,
You manage them and hopefully a more mature and evolving way.
So that's kind of how I see evolution,
Not as a linear scale,
But more as a spiral,
Especially in this pandemic when we're separate from each other.
I think that the real angst of separation is becoming very,
Very clear.
And this idea that we can feel separate,
We can feel together,
Even if we're not physically together.
This is something that I think will really help us and that humanity is crying out for,
I believe,
Meaning and purpose for it all.
There seems to be so much suffering going on and lots of people just get,
Why do we have to suffer if there's this benevolent force out there?
Why do we have to suffer?
And we believe that the suffering has to do with learning and growth and look at your own life.
When did you learn the most,
Especially personally or spiritually?
Usually it's through some type of hardship,
A loss of a relationship,
An illness,
The loss of a loved one who's died or a job or economic tragedies.
All of these things,
These hardships,
If you look back on them,
Very often we can see if I hadn't had that experience,
I wouldn't have learned what I know now and I wouldn't be the same person.
So all of those things add up.
So what's going on now is really what we might call a collective gift of desperation.
And that's a term from the addiction world where say someone who's addicted hits bottom,
Hits such a low bottom that they have no choice but to cry out and start to make that turnaround.
And it's possible that this COVID pandemic and the climate change and the racial tensions and economic disparities,
All of these things we're seeing in the world,
Just like when we listen to the tones and our feelings,
We didn't realize that we suppressed long ago,
Start to become visible to us.
I think that's what's happening now.
A lot of these problems in our world,
We've kind of just been brushing aside in the name of just keeping on moving forward and advancing.
And this is really putting a big spotlight on these problems.
So if we do it right,
If humanity comes together to start to solve some of these problems,
That's where we'll really start to see that spiraling evolution take place.
And we may not see it in the next few months or the next year.
It might be 10 years from now that we look back and say,
Oh my gosh,
That was a huge turning point.
I can't imagine 2020 being anything but a turning point given what the entire globe has been going through.
As Hazrat Naikon would say,
Raise us from the denseness of the earth.
Thy beauty do we worship.
Beautiful.
Well,
Thank you,
Karen.
This is so much to listen to.
I encourage everyone to listen to it more than once and to go to your website,
Sacredacoustics.
Com,
And download the longer audio file.
Can you say again how they will find it on your website?
Go to the website and look for a free download.
You'll need to enter your email address and then we'll send you that link.
I enjoyed thoroughly speaking with you and I look forward to being in some of your classes in the future.
There's always more to learn.
Thank you,
Deborah.
It's been wonderful to be with you.
For more Mind Heart Awakenings like these,
You can follow us on this podcast and on our blog at Kabbalah 99.
That's where we discuss the weekly Torah portion through the lens of today's challenges and offer practices to stay sane,
Grounded,
And connected.
If you like this episode,
Please remember to tell one friend about it.
Next week,
We'll hear from another thought leader who will help us to explore our experience of life and our place in this universe of wonder.
Thanks for listening.
I'm Deborah Sophia.
See you next week.
