Your Soul Is Speaking to You with Catherine Ann Jones

0:00 Welcome to Next Level Soul, the place where we deep dive into the mysteries of existence, uncover hidden layers of consciousness, and explore the journey of the soul. I'm your host, Alex Ferrari, and every week we sit down with the world's leading spiritual teachers, mystics, scientists, and truth seekers to illuminate the path towards awakening. Here we ask questions that truly matter. Why are we here? Where are we going?

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1:18 by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or positions of Next Level Soul, its host, or any of the companies they represent. Now let's dive into today's episode. Catherine, thank you so much for coming on the show. I truly, truly appreciate it. We had the pleasure of getting to know each other on one of my other shows, and we just started talking. We're like, well, I think you'd be a great guest for the Next Level Soul podcast. So thank you so much for coming on.

1:47 Glad to be here.

1:49 So I wanted to dive right in and And this is a heavy question to start with, but I'm going to start with it anyway to see where our conversation leads. What do you believe is your mission in this life?

2:04 Well, in India, where I've spent several many years, there's a word, Sanskrit word called Dharma. And Dharma means the law of your existence. It's more than career or job. It's what you were kind of what you came here to do. And if you can be fortunate enough to hook up with, you know, to know what that is, life really becomes magical. So I think my Dharma is writing and teaching. I love both. And I'm fortunate that I've been able to do both.

2:45 And you've been able and you've done so much in your life. Start, you know, acting and playwriting and, you know, playing in the shark and festive waters of Hollywood and.

2:56 And survived.

2:57 And survived with a smile on your face, no less. Did you how long did it take you to find that path? Because I'm assuming when you came out, you don't like, well, I'm going to go right and teach. I'm assuming it took a minute to get there.

3:12 Well, when I was 12 years old, I wanted to raise Arabian horses.

3:18 Okay.

3:20 When I was 18, I wanted to be a missionary in foreign lands. That lasted my first year of college. Then I read and thought too much, became an agnostic. And so I had been acting, so I switched to universities, to drama school. And then my passion was acting, which I did for several years in New York. But I always had a parallel passion, I guess what we called it, finding the truth, whatever that is, you know, at that point.

4:04 So those parallel instincts pulled me each way, the passion to dramatically express myself and the passion to go to India or wherever life took me to find the answers to my questions.

4:21 And is that what you asked?

4:25 Yeah, that answers that. But let me ask you, do you think that we have to go through– figuring out what we don't want to do in order to find what we do want to do, or do some people just find what they want to do in life? Because, I mean, so many of us have to go, I think every one of us, almost every one of us, does things, like you said, acting. You enjoyed acting, but that kind of led you towards the writing world.

4:50 Yeah, that was all connected.

4:52 I think I said, when you interviewed me last, about the writing. I can't think of a better background to write plays and movies and television than to be a professional actor. Moliere and Shakespeare started as actors, after all. Not that I'm quite on that level. Anyway, I think it depends. Everything is individual. One thing I believe passionately is there's no one way to write it. There's no one way to live your life. It varies person to person.

5:31 So the search is really to find yourself and discover your own path and process and honor that.

5:40 Yeah, and that's the thing. It's taken me 40 years to find my path, though I dabbled a little bit in it. And I would see hints of it, and I'd be like, and I would reject it. Which is another thing that we do as human beings is like, no, I don't want to do that because I have my mind. Like, I want to be a missionary. I can't go teach and stuff. Or I want to be an actor. I don't want to go teach and stuff. And I've had that happen. But the moment that I ran into my calling, which is what I'm doing now, is I became so much more happy. Because I was angry and bitter.

6:22 Right.

6:24 Oh, my God, I was so angry and bitter at people. And I felt that I'm like, I need to do this. I need to do that. I need to be this. And those those wants and needs, by the way, haven't gone away. And I think they all still work within the world that I'm in. But I'm much happier now because I've fallen into this.

6:41 That's what I call one of my exercises in Heal Yourself with writing both the workshop and the book. is I call it the coming home exercise. And finding your dharma is a coming home experience. You know, there can be other coming home experiences. Meeting someone for the first time and you feel you've known them all your life.

7:09 Acting was that for me when I first acted. It would just seem almost too natural, you know. So coming and what you described when you found what you want to do, that's a coming home. You're coming home to yourself. Your capital S-C-L-F.

7:28 Yes, exactly. And it's so funny because when I first picked up a microphone to be a podcaster, which is an insane thing, I liked it. And then I was like, wait a minute, I kind of really enjoy doing this. And I actually really kind of enjoying talking to people and And meeting people, and it's just, and then I'm able to help other people and things like that. But it took me a minute before I accepted it.

7:53 It doesn't matter as long as we get there. Some people lead their whole lives and haven't found what it is for them. Right. I think the thing to remember, there's a saying in India, it's better to be a good servant than a bad king. So it doesn't matter what it is your dharma is. There's no judgment on that.

8:19 It's just finding what's right for you.

8:21 And connecting with it. And when it does show up, not to reject it.

8:28 Well, my word would be honor it.

8:31 I think that's the word.

8:32 Serve it.

8:34 Because it's true. I think that most of us go throughout life walking against the current. And we fight what our instincts are, our nature is, and things like that. But the moment you sit down and let that current understand that there is a current taking you where you need to go, life becomes so much easier and so much more happy you become.

8:58 It's a kind of surrender, really. Like when you find your spiritual path, when you find your dharma, Once that's in place, there is a kind.

9:11 Of surrender of the ego.

9:13 And then the invisible and visible allies magically appear to help you on that journey. But when you go against it, the opposite. Right.

9:25 It's like swimming upstream.

9:28 And I love that term you use, invisible and visible allies show up because … Yes, because there is definitely forces of things that happen. You're just like, how did that happen? And in my journey, just with my simple podcast, I've had access to talk to people who are just insane kind of people that I've been able to get access to. And sometimes it's just like, oh, an email dropped.

9:54 And you're like, how did that happen? Like, how did that connection happen? Like, it's mind blowing. But I would have killed... years earlier to have a sit down conversation for an hour or two with some of these individuals. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. And now they're asking me for this conversation, which is mind-blowing.

10:24 Yes, but it's made you who you are. Maybe you wouldn't have done it as well as you do it now if you had done it 15, 20 years ago.

10:33 Who knows?

10:34 That's very true. That's very true. Now, one of the things we've been talking a little bit about is finding that inner mission, that inner purpose of yours. How can you... better connect with the inner voice because we all have that inner voice that thing in the gut which we ignore a lot of the time how do you in tune yourself to.

10:58 That well it just so happens i wrote a book about it that it's that book called heal yourself with writing it's got double themes it's about self-healing grief and trauma my graduate degrees in depth psychology, Jungian psychology. And it's about deepening the dialogue with the self, capital S. Not the ego, but the self, that deeper part of us.

11:31 And I've created short exercises, prompts, that I use in the workshops and the book. And that seems to... It's amazing, people... have come out of that workshop and say this was life-changing because they find parts of themselves they didn't know they were there and they read what they've written and they say where did that come from so they're writing from a deeper place so when.

12:01 You're writing you're almost tapping into that inner voice because you're just kind of letting it a flow of consciousness almost like.

12:09 That yeah it's i call it in a way an intuitive inner voice you know it's inside it's a kind of thing i know an example i give and i also have in the book heal yourself with writing anecdotes from my own journey to illustrate the points i'm teaching and shall i tell you one yes it's a pretty good story true story I was living in New York, what I call my theater years, and an actress friend of mine had just come back from making a film in Europe and invited me to her flat, her apartment on Central Park South. So I went there, and as soon as I walked into her apartment, I felt very uneasy.

13:02 There was no logical reason why I should. I'd known this woman for years. There was no problem. But I felt very uncomfortable, like I shouldn't be there and I should leave. But of course, my logical left brain came in and said, oh, that's nonsense. So she placed me in a big chair by the window overlooking Central Park, where she ordered out for tea and snacks and things.

13:32 I sat in that chair and then it was even stronger. It was like get out of Dodge now. And I stayed about five, ten minutes more struggling with that. And it became so overpowering. I suddenly stood up and I said, Patricia, I have to go. I'll talk to you later. You know, which was quite rude of me. And so I got home about 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later. I live not far away over by Lincoln Center. As I was walking in the door to my place, the phone rang.

14:11 I picked it up. It was Patricia.

14:14 She says, Catherine, you won't believe what happened five minutes after you left. I said, what? Now, these old buildings in New York, they often have AC, you know, big, huge box the size of a room on top of the building. It was a very windy day in the winter. Somehow that big, huge thing, as big as half a room, fell off the roof, crashed into her window, Landed on the chair I had been sitting in. I would have been killed. So the moral is, listen to that intuitive voice.

14:59 It may even save your life.

15:01 True story.

15:04 So from then on, I was in my 20s then. From then on, I never doubted if my inner voice says something. Like it might say, don't walk the usual way home. Go around. I just follow it. It never lies.

15:22 It's always got your best interest in mind.

15:24 Yeah.

15:25 Well, the thing is, when dealing with the inner voice or gut instinct or whatever you like to call it, how can you balance the voice in your head with the feeling in your gut? Because that mind is the most powerful and wonderful thing, but it's also your darkest enemy sometimes.

15:46 Well, they're both allies. We don't want to throw out one.

15:51 The other is a question of integrating the two, giving, because we're conditioned in a way and educated in a way to only listen to the logical left brain. Right. And the intuitive voice gets short shrift. So the work is bringing, you know, listening to both at least equally.

16:14 But there are moments where that brain, when you overthink something and your gut's telling you, just do this, and then you start making excuses, or there's fear involved, which there's generally always fear involved, things like that.

16:30 Fear or desire.

16:32 Fear or desire.

16:33 Those are driving forces in the life.

16:36 Exactly. So if your mind is creating, let's say, fearful thoughts or fearful things, like Take that job. No, don't take that job because if you take that job, this will happen or this will happen or this will happen. But your gut's telling you, no, idiot, take the job.

16:52 Well, there's an interesting something in Jung's autobiography. It's a wonderful book. He wrote it when he was in his 80s. And one of the things he says that always stuck with me is that You know, that intuitive voice gives you little murmurs like do this or don't do this, like little whispers in your ear. And when you don't listen, sometimes you need to be hit over the head with the stick. I had a feeling for about three years I should leave New York. But logically, my son was still in school. I wanted him to finish high school before I got out of the city. And I did a Fulbright year, took my son with me, came back, and my apartment was stolen by a student I had let stay there. Now, there's a saying in Manhattan, people

17:53 will kill to get a great apartment, right? You know, she didn't do that, but she changed the locks. And anyway, that was my hit over the head. So it was a terrible thing to happen. But in the end, it was a blessing because I realized this was my hit over the head. It was time to leave New York. And about that time, I won an award in Los Angeles for one of my plays. And it was optioned by MGM Studio. So I had a reason to get out, you know. But for three years, I had the gentle whispering in the ear. from that inner voice, but I didn't listen. So it had to be something extreme too.

18:45 So, yeah. And, and, uh, yes, the search of the universe will try to teach you lessons. And if you don't listen to the, when it's a gentle, they will sometimes literally will crash into you, literally a car, a car crash or something will happen that will force you to, uh, go down the path that you need to go or learn the lesson you need to learn.

19:07 I hear all the time from participants in my workshops that like someone got cancer because they were doing a job they hated or in a relationship that was not positive. And the cancer woke them up and they lived and they said the cancer is the best thing that happened to me. It changed my life. My life is so much better now. I would recommend, though, listening to the.

19:36 Gentle murmurs of the voice and not.

19:39 Go through having your home stolen or cancer.

19:43 There is so much pain that we as humans go through. Unnecessary. If we would just be more connected within ourselves to go inward as opposed to go outward. There's so much. We look for happiness outward. We look for peace outward. Everything's outward. But all of that lives within us. Do you agree? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

20:16 But not only that, psychologically, I think there's a fear of change. I had lived 20 years in New York City, you know, and to suddenly start a new life, a new career in Hollywood, it's daunting, you know, in a way. So sometimes even though the current status quo doesn't make us happy, it's familiar.

20:40 It's habit. It's habitual.

20:43 But going on to what you're saying, you're going up to the higher level here. And yes, I think the most important part is inner. And the external will express the inner.

20:58 Yes, without question. Now, you wrote the book, Heal Yourself with Writing. How do you see writing as a potential healing force in a person's life?

21:11 Well, first of all, I developed the workshop at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, where I'm going Monday morning to teach a live.

21:19 Class with real people.

21:21 I know, right?

21:22 I'm so happy. So I developed it there because I wanted to do, I had done the Way of Story workshop for years and the book, which is for people interested in writing all forms of narratives. This was different. This is a course I wanted to do for writers and non-writers, to use writing as a healing modality, a self-healing modality, especially for grief and trauma. And anyway, I had very powerful results from the participants at Esalen, and that led me to write the book. So it's not about learning to write. it's just letting, I do it in such a way, these short five, 10 minute exercises, where you write from the unconscious, you know, and it's sort of automatic, but it's specific, I call it focused journaling.

22:23 It's not about write whatever you want, you listen to the prompt, and you write whatever associations arise. And people are amazed what comes out, which is It's also never the same because everyone's story is unique. So lucky for me, it's never boring.

22:46 Now, I know a lot of people out there, you know, when we're born, people are always telling us you have to find a career, you have to make money, you have a stable life and all of this kind of stuff. How do you, how did you balance a career in Hollywood, which is, I have a lot of experience in Hollywood, so I know how hard that is. The very kind of physical or egocentric world of Hollywood, or of any career for that matter, and a spiritual path. And I think a lot of people have trouble balancing those two.

23:25 Not from Hollywood, but just as general career.

23:27 I hear you.

23:29 Thanks to the pandemic.

23:31 The last two years, you know, these years I usually travel all over the world teaching workshops. Thanks to the pandemic, all of that was canceled. I had to stay in Ojai, California, and I had no excuse not to write. I had been asked to do my memoir over the last few years, and I kept putting it off. And so this year I wrote two memoirs, and they were published. And that's the theme of the main memoirs, which is really more an autobiography, starting when I was living in Japan at the age of four. The book's called Buddha and the Dancing Girl. And that became, it was two experiences I had as a child in Japan. And that became an archetypal metaphor for my whole life. Buddha is the search for the spiritual. dancing girl is the compulsion to express

24:36 dramatically through acting and writing. So these two seemingly polar opposites were the driving force of the last several decades. And at some point they had to merge. And when they become integrated, to use Jung's word, then there's no out and in. It's sort of one, one, one. I don't know if.

25:05 That makes sense. That's my experience.

25:09 Fair enough.

25:11 So it's like I was always having some success in New York as an actor and later as a playwright. And the first thing I do instead of opportunistically.

25:25 Make something out of the success, I would get on a.

25:28 Flight to India to my teacher and spend three months, two months, whatever. It's not the best career move to do that, but it was my way and it worked. And then when it merges, there's nowhere. I realized there's... Nowhere to go.

25:50 There's nothing to do. There's no one to be.

25:53 You've mentioned that India is one of your favorite places to visit in the world.

26:03 No, no, that's not exactly what I'd say. The climate's the worst in the world for me.

26:09 All right.

26:12 I get terrible jet lag. I said India is my spiritual home.

26:17 That's okay.

26:18 So I used to dream, I told a friend of mine who also went there later, I said, if only our teacher had been born in Hawaii, but you know.

26:32 You do what you gotta do. So you do what you gotta do to find, you know, inner peace and enlightenment. Uh, so when, can you talk, can you talk a little bit about your journeys in India? Um, meeting either sages or gurus and what they've taught you along the way.

26:52 Wow. Okay, I'm going to start with a dream. I'm a Jungian at heart, too. At the age of seven, until I was 21, I had a recurring dream all those years.

27:02 Simple dreams.

27:14 I write about this in the Buddha book, but the dream was this. I was in the backseat of a car. The car went into a hot desert and there was no driver at the car. The car was driving itself.

27:30 Suddenly the car stopped.

27:32 My door opened by itself and I looked up and on higher ground there was a huge rock and a dark-skinned man appeared He was wearing a white shirt and a white sheet wrapped around his waist that went to his ankles. And there was a feeling I've come home. That was the dream. This dream reoccurred over many years.

28:01 When I went to India, I went to South India to a sage I had heard about. It's what they call a householder sage, not a monk. He had wife and children. And the taxi drove up. I was in the back seat. I opened the car door. I looked up, and on a higher ground, out of a big white house, this man came out with darker skin, a white shirt, and a dhoti.

28:38 A white dhoti wrapped around him. It was the same man. Yes, in my dreams.

28:47 So I never searched anywhere else. That was decades ago, and I was very fortunate in that. So there was no question this was the right place for me.

28:59 It may not be for someone else.

29:02 Now, what were some of the things that he taught you along the way?

29:07 It's not like this, that, I can make a list. It's not a lecture. He didn't lecture. He used a Socratic dialogue. That means if there are no questions, he just sits silently. If there are questions, he would respond not only to the question, but the questioner. In other words, if you and I asked the same question to the sage, we would get different answers. That's one thing that struck me right away. He was answering the person who was asking the question.

29:44 So can you explain that a little bit? When you mean he answered the question and the questioner, was he answering the question?

29:52 What the questioner needed to hear, what he needed to know. Because the sage, of.

29:58 Course, has those cities or powers. Interesting.

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30:13 And it's more the presence of a sage. It's not just the words. The philosophy is a Hindu philosophy behind the religion. There's no God concept. It's called Advaita, Advaita, Vedanta. Advaita means not to. And anyway, Bhagavad Gita, all these great Indian Upanishads, Ramamaharshi, Yogananda, Paramahamsa, Ramakrishna. These are Nisargadatta.

30:54 These are former sages with them.

30:58 So is there something that he said to you that changed your path in life? One thing.

31:07 It's not what he said. Sometimes I used to worry because after a talk, I would totally forget anything that was said. Because just being in his presence, you would kind of dissolve. You weren't there. So I couldn't. And I said that. I'm trying to be attentive, but why is, you know, I was 23. So I asked a lot of stupid questions. But I said, I'm trying to be attentive, but I can't recall what you said.

31:39 And he said, that's good.

31:43 Interesting. Very interesting.

31:45 It's a very different process than like being in a lecture at the university.

31:51 No, of course not. Now, I know from our last conversation that you meditate, and you've been meditating for a long time. What has that practice done for your life, and how has it changed your path?

32:07 Oh, my goodness. Well, first thing, my worst trait is impatience. I'm an astrologer on the side, and I have nine planets and fire. So... It's good for teaching. It's good for acting. It's not so great for the personal life. But, you know, so to meditate for the last 40, 50 years, which that's how long it's been, you know, you have to sit still to meditate, right? And it's given me, I'm not home free, but I'm certainly a lot more patient and tolerant than I.

32:49 Used to be with that, so.

32:52 So, yeah, so it definitely– I'm with you 110% because I'm a very– I was a very impatient person. I still am and I'm not 100% there either. But meditation in my life has definitely calmed me. It has slowed things down a little bit as opposed.

33:08 To– Something else, Alex. I got a phone call half an hour ago.

33:12 A friend I've known since I was in the drama department, undergraduate– And she lives in New York, working at her, she and her husband.

33:24 She called me from the hospital.

33:27 She has cancer and will face surgery. And so I told her, I said, let the surgeons do the external work. But you have inner work to do. I said, well, they're putting you under treatment. meditate take deep long breaths and visualize something beautiful or whatever your spiritual orientation is i'm a firm believer in the power of thought and that you can't just expect the doctors to do everything the inner work can help you heal i i've seen this enough times that uh you know and um she responded very positive to that signal.

34:21 When you say inner work, what do you mean as far as, because we all have inner work to do, so can you kind of define inner work for me?

34:28 Sure. Well, the deep breathing helps make you still if you have anxiety or fear. And then to place your mind on something positive, I would think about my teacher. I would visualize him sitting in the chair, walking, whatever, eating a meal, whatever. And it can put you in a state of bliss. And then if you go into a surgery in that thing, it can make a lot of difference. I've heard too many examples to confirm this.

35:11 So visualize, if you have a mantra, do that, or practice. If you're a Christian, the Lord's Prayer, whatever works for you. Someone asked Frank Sinatra once what he believed in. And you know what he said? He said, whatever gets me through the night. So whatever gets you through the night or the dark night, which surgery would be. So anyway, I just thought of that because it was half an hour ago.

35:42 Of course. Now, so many... I think that the world has an epidemic, and I think we've had it since we were put on this planet, is dealing with the fear. Originally, it was the fear of the tiger eating you around the corner. And now it's the fear of your boss or the fear of failure or the fear of being not accepted. Do you have any tips on overcoming fear?

36:10 Because it's something that every human being on the planet deals with.

36:15 I have an anecdote to share. Please.

36:20 Life is story to me.

36:22 Sure.

36:24 Years ago, my first long play was produced in Aspen, Colorado at the conference there.

36:33 And I met James Salter.

36:37 James Halter, who died not long ago, is a novelist. I think his most famous book is Downhill Racer, which Robert Redford played in the movie years ago. He said something I'll always remember. He said, most of the things I've worried about never happened.

37:00 And I had an example of that a week ago. I've talked.

37:05 15, 16 years at Esalen. But of course, I haven't for over two and a half years because of the pandemic. So they asked me to come back and teach. So suddenly one day I began to worry. I thought, you know, because of the pandemic, we may not get enough people to make the workshop. And if we don't, they'll cancel the workshop. And so I worried for one day. Then the next day I got a call. Because I told them I don't want over 28 people at the most because I like a lot of one-on-one. So Esalen called me and said, this is a month before I was to go there. And they said the workshop is full and there's 19 on the waiting list. And I worried one whole day. What a waste of energy, right? It is true.

38:02 It is true. Worrying– I heard this great comment. Worrying is like trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

38:12 I like that.

38:16 Isn't that a good one? It's like it doesn't– it's useless. It's useless. I mean there's a certain level of worry. Like if you're in a bad situation, you can worry about what's going to happen to you in the next five or ten minutes.

38:27 Well, you can be concerned.

38:29 Concerned.

38:30 That's the difference. And you can think, what can I do? Is there something I can do to make sure this doesn't happen?

38:38 You know, that's a good concern. Worry something else.

38:42 Yeah, worry is a waste of– I think– because if you're worrying about something you have no control over, like your perfect example, you had no control over.

38:51 Who and how many people– And it never happened.

38:54 And it never happened on top of it.

38:56 That's the point.

38:58 I think you should– if you're going to be concerned or worried, only be concerned about things you have control over.

39:03 Exactly.

39:05 It makes no sense to be worried about something else that you have no control over. Now, going along with fear– so many people live their lives even based on the opinions of other people, the good opinions of other people, as Wayne Dyer used to say. Do you have any advice on how to ignore that kind of thinking and trying to break away from other people's, not only other people's opinions, but other people's thinking? I mean, it starts with our parents. You know, we're born this way. glob and then and then all this stuff is thrown on us.

39:44 The first chapter and wait and heal yourself with writing is what is your story what story are you living and i say it starts at home usually so one of the exercises is are you living your life or the life a parent wanted you to live.

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40:15 That's one of the things.

40:17 To tell you the truth, I don't know if it's a good, positive, or negative thing. Maybe it's because I'm an only child. Maybe it's because I'm an Aries, astrologically. I've never really cared what other people thought. I love my friends, but I just feel strong and Whatever it is I am, you know, that I've never been swayed.

40:43 But I do know I've had friends that are swayed to such a degree they never follow their dream. They're so afraid of not having. I can't tell you how many people come to my way of story workshop here and abroad all over the place. And like they wanted to be a writer. And they ended up writing political speeches in Washington, D.C. They ended up working in advertising.

41:14 They made good livings. They had families. And now they're 45, 50, 55. Now they want to write the all-American novel or whatever.

41:25 The great American novel.

41:27 So dreams don't die easily. And they can lay dormant for decades. Mm hmm.

41:34 I get that all the time in my in my other career, talking to filmmakers all the time. I have 65 year old filmmakers like I just retired. I want to make my first feature film. I've always wanted to be a director. And you just like, wow, like I was a doctor because my parents pushed me into that. And I've been a doctor for the last 40 years.

41:54 And now I want to I want to follow my passion.

41:57 I actually I had a play open in New York. And it got good reviews and they gave a party. And at the party, I met a doctor. He was a doctor on Park Avenue. That's where the high level, big money doctors are in New York. And he said, my father was the doctor. He always wanted me to be a doctor. I'm good at it. But I always wanted to be a playwright. You know, I had a I had a I didn't even have a. fraction of what this man earned, but I was happy.

42:34 And that's something that's, I think we should talk about really quickly is finding that bliss as, as, uh, your, your old friend, Joseph Campbell used to say, follow your, following your bliss. It doesn't matter if you're not super wealthy, super rich financially, or have millions of dollars or anything like that. You can be happy. I think, I don't know where I heard this story, but the story of the fisherman and the businessman, that the fisherman was in the Caribbean somewhere and this New York businessman showed up and took him out for a fishing journey. And he's like, oh my God, how many fish do you catch a day?

43:16 He's like, oh, I could do this. He goes, well, you could do this to build the business up and then you can get a couple more boats and you could do this, this, this, and this. And he's like, at the end of that, he's like, no. He goes, well, why wouldn't you want to you know, why wouldn't you want to be bigger, happier? He's like, I get, I catch enough fish to feed my family. Then I get to sit down, drink a beer, hang out in the ocean.

43:38 And I have time with my family. I'm happy. I don't need any of that stuff. And that's what, and I think that's what in general, the American ideal is all about more and more and more and more and more. And I need to be rich, rich, rich, rich, rich. And that's the American dream and all that kind of stuff.

43:54 But how do you, How can you like kind of any advice you can give for people to understand, like finding happiness first? And oddly enough, things follow when you find your hat, when you find that bliss, things follow.

44:10 Well, I guess I was lucky. I never really cared about money or fame. That was never the driving force. I was I had ambition, but my ambition had a different hue. My ambition was I wanted to work with the best people. I got to write movies for Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Jason Robards, Julie Harris. That's my... I didn't write thrillers or action films. I could have made more money because that's where the big money is. But... I wouldn't trade it for the world. So I was never drawn.

44:52 You were talking about people who are overly influenced by other people, starting with one's parents. So they may be living a life unconsciously to satisfy something the parent failed at and wanted them to succeed in. That's one example of this first exercise. I'll be doing next week. And sometimes it's unconscious and people don't realize it until they write the exercise. And I've heard, oh my God, for 30 years I've been living my father's dream, not mine.

45:33 That's pretty profound. That's a pretty profound realization 40 years later.

45:40 And sometimes it gets more complex because Sometimes the unconscious dynamic can be because a parent failed, there's an unconscious pressure, an unspoken unconscious pressure on the child to succeed up to a point, but not to succeed beyond what the parent did. Nothing spoken, it's just an unconscious, and it's felt.

46:12 You know, I'll lose their love, the unconscious is saying, if I go beyond my father or whatever.

46:19 So it's complex sometimes.

46:22 It's very complex. I mean, I truly want my daughters to be much more successful than I was, without question. And I want them to succeed.

46:32 That's good.

46:33 I want them to succeed in anything they want to do. But I understand that. Your point of view. I had to deal with that with my father as well. There's only so much. It's a weird conversation, but that's a session for another day.

46:48 We could do a session on parents.

46:52 Well, I mean, parents, look, our parents are everything for the first 15 years, 18 years of our life. That's our world. That's our world. And then when we get thrown into the real world, Hopefully we've been prepared and have enough knowledge and are armed enough with things to protect ourselves to deal in the real world because the real world is going to throw things at you that your parents didn't many times, other times not, but, but your parents are, I mean, it's me being a parent.

47:24 Now I see what my, my mother had to go through raising me. And I see so many of her bad habits and, That I might have picked up. Or my father's bad habits. I might have picked up. As well as the good ones. That I picked up. Things that they were really good at. That I also drew on. But children are sponges. Absolute sponges. And you don't have to say a word. They just. They sense it. They just absorb it. They absorb everything all the time. From their environment.

47:58 And sometimes they rebel against it too.

48:00 So.

48:01 Alex, could I read just the opening of.

48:04 The introduction from Heal Yourself?

48:07 Yes, please.

48:08 It would give a sense because you said you wanted to talk about this.

48:12 Yes, go for it.

48:15 I start with a quote from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling. It's all right.

48:23 It's over.

48:24 It's just a memory. And then that's the end of the quote. Our lives may be determined less by past events than by the way we remember them.

48:39 I'm going to say that again. That's kind of the theme of the book.

48:44 Our lives may be determined less by past events than by the way we remember them. If we learn how to reframe the pieces of our past and revision our life story, So that suffering becomes meaningful, we can radically boost our chances of self-healing, empowerment, growth, and transformation. Focus journaling, short writing exercises designed to facilitate self-healing is an extremely powerful tool. to achieve this aim. There were two inspirations to the book and the workshop. One was a Native American parable I read years ago, and it was about an old Native American grandfather who, speaking to his eight-year-old grandson.

49:43 And he says this. He said, there are two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is generous, loving, and kind. The other wolf is greedy and violent and mean. And these two wolves are fighting in my heart.

50:06 We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

50:16 Then the little boy looks up and says, Grandfather, which wolf wins the fight in your heart? And the grandfather answers, the one I feed. So in a way, the work in the workshop, or if you do the book, or there's an online course, is how can we feed the good wolf?

50:41 Mm-hmm. It's very profound. I've heard that before. It was a great, great parable.

50:47 The other inspiration, there was a great Jewish psychiatrist in New York who was a Holocaust survivor. He was in Auschwitz. And he was called Viktor Frankl. And he saw his entire family wiped out in Auschwitz. His wife, his children everyone dead and he had this epiphany he's he realized he had no control over the external situation none the only power he had was how he perceived it how he focused his mind and this became the basis of his amazing work as a psychiatrist in new york When he died, the New York Times gave him a full-page obituary.

51:47 Wow.

51:47 Great man. And he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It's a small book, but a powerful book. But that stayed with me because it was very close to Vedanta, the philosophy that influenced me. So part of the work in the workshop is shifting perspective. Like if you've had a trauma... You see life as a victim sometimes, sexual trauma, say. So if you can shift away from the perspective of the victim, your whole life changes. I don't know. I'm sort of simplifying it, but that's the nature of the work we do. So it's deep work, you know. It is inner work.

52:33 Oh, no question. And it can be scary work because when you start knocking on those doors, those doors will open.

52:38 Yeah.

52:39 Sometimes you might not want to see what's behind it, but you're going to have to deal with it.

52:42 The first time I did this workshop at Esalen, I got a letter from, I think she was in her mid-30s.

52:53 She was very successful.

52:55 In Silicon Valley, but she had carried a sexual trauma with her for years. When she was 15, she was sexually abused by her brother and her brother's friend. She did the exercises. She never shared what she wrote. She kept to herself. So I didn't think more about it. Then I got the letter, and she said, I've been in therapy for 20 years. Nothing has worked. After this workshop, I feel I've returned to myself. Now, listen to those words, I've returned to myself. Because when you have trauma... there becomes a split between your soul and, you know, the outer world. You're cut off. That's why often people who walk around with trauma, say soldiers or whatever, they don't feel anything. They're numb inside. They've been split off. So

53:56 finding a way to return yourself to yourself, that's a mighty work.

54:02 That's pretty powerful, pretty powerful. Can you tell me what the biggest lesson you have learned in your life so far is? Is there one that you can point to?

54:18 Well, what comes up is parenting. I've had one son. Now I have two grandchildren.

54:25 Oh, nice.

54:26 But I think.

54:31 I had my son when I was 21, so I was very young. And I had been an only child, so I didn't have a lot of experience with babies or children. Right. And I loved being a parent. It taught me as much as anything else in my life. But if I had to do it over again, I think sometimes I rushed in too quickly to try and fix things for my son. You know, like if he was going through a problem, I'd say, well, you could do, you know. I tried to have the answers. If I had to do it again, I think I learned it's better to just listen and just be there for someone going through something.

55:17 Instead of trying to fix it.

55:19 Yeah.

55:20 Good.

55:20 That's a great answer.

55:21 That's what came to mind anyway.

55:23 How do you think people can connect more with God in today's world?

55:27 Oh.

55:30 Well, you're talking to an agnostic, first of all.

55:34 The universal energy. I would call.

55:37 It the absolute pure consciousness. There is a force.

55:41 That force, absolutely.

55:43 May the force be with you.

55:44 Yes.

55:46 I don't think it's a white man with a beard looking down.

55:49 I agree with you 100% on that.

55:52 I just wanted to clarify.

55:53 Sure.

55:55 Well, I just finished a new book. And I found this quote. It's an unknown source. I think it's, I can't remember, some unknown source. And it says, I went in search of God and I found myself. I went to India in search of God or the truth and I found myself. But not the ego self. Again, the capital S. I think I shared with you when I finished.

56:27 this book, Heal Yourself with Writing. And I was just about to send it off to the publisher. I did a read-through, and I kept looking at the title page. Because, you know, heal yourself with writing. Yourself is one word, usually. And I kept looking. I knew something was missing, but I didn't know what. And then it hit me. And all I did was separate... So it's heal your self, capital S self, with writing. And then I knew the book was done. I compare it to a painter has to learn not to over paint the canvas. He has to instinct or intuitively know when to stop and lay the brush down. And that kind of changed things for me.

57:24 Why do you think we're here? It's a general statement.

57:27 To find that self, not the ego. In other words, I think we're here for the growth of the soul. I could answer it like that. I think the purpose of each life is for the soul to grow. And the soul can be rather ruthless. Some people may grow when terrible things happen in their life. Cancers. death of friends, whatever.

57:58 Or it can be positive things. But I think we're here for that, for the evolution of the soul.

58:08 And where can people find out more about you and the work that you do and the books that you've written?

58:15 My website, I guess, wayofstory.com. And there, my online courses are They're on the homepage. I do writing consultant. I've done psychic readings for 40 years on the.

58:32 Phone mostly now.

58:34 And I do a blog once a month and some interviews.

58:42 Maybe we'll put.

58:43 This interview on the thing. So wayofstory.com and they can email me through that too.

58:50 Catherine, thank you so much for doing this. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and doing this deep dive into soul work, if you will. And thank you so much for all the work you've done over the course of your life to help people and with your books and plays and stories and teachings.

59:09 And everything.

59:10 So I do appreciate you and thank you so much. Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today. If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll find the show notes for this episode at nextlevelsoul.com forward slash zero one three. And if your soul is craving an even deeper journey, step into Next Level Soul TV, our streaming sanctuary for spiritual films, documentaries, original shows, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks, and transformative teachings. It's a space created to support your awakening, your healing, and your return to the truth of who you really are. Begin your journey at nextlevelsoul.tv. Until next time, keep expanding, keep seeking, and keep walking your path towards the next level of your soul.