It’s already here in this room. It’s like that song looking for love in all the wrong places. They’re looking outside of themselves for abundance when the abundance is inside of them. – You don’t say they are abundance. – That’s what I’m saying.

– You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled, and it is an interview episode. I love this episode. It’s with Cathy Heller and the episode is titled Abundant Ever After. And by the way, Cathy is also a podcast host.

She’s an author, educator, speaker, and Instagram personality. She’s a content creator, social media personality. And in my experience, she is an amazing teacher. She wrote a book called Abundant Ever After.

And then all the people that I’ve ever talked to, whether it be on the podcast or in other places in life, she gets it. She really does get it. And again, her book is called Abundant Ever After, and it was inspired, which we’ll talk about in the podcast episode. Her content and her book draws from ancient Jewish wisdom and mysticism.

Her podcast itself has something like 45 million downloads, which means it’s a blockbuster podcast. It’s a top 100 in the spirituality category as well as mine is too, but hers is obviously more entire than mine. But I’m going to tell you right now, this episode in my opinion is one of the best episodes we’ve ever done when it comes to the topic of spirituality and manifestation. I really hope you enjoy this episode because I’m enjoying bringing it to you.

Okay, so Cathy, I really appreciate you visiting with me today. I know the audience, my audience is going to love what you have to share today. We’re gonna talk about abundance and the conversation we just had, no idea where this conversation might go, but I’m sure it’s gonna be interesting for people listening. So thank you for being here today. – I thank you.

I had you, a pleasure of having you on my podcast. And it was so beautiful and I’ve already repeated so many of the things that you said. I’ve just been sharing like at dinner, to my family, to my friends, like I just think you have such an uncanny unique ability to have really embodied what you teach and you say things in unique ways that I think really help unlock the concepts for people. Thank you for that.

And you know, you and I doing podcasts, I know that you’re podcast and I’ve listened to it. You just share what you wanna share. I share what I wanna share. My audience knows, some people have said I need to go to finishing school. I might need to learn a little tact.

What’s something, and you know, for people listening, your team thankfully, but it didn’t matter, sent me a list of potential questions to ask on our time together. But you’ve been around the block and you’ve done very well and you’ve made a huge impact. Let me ask you this. What is something that you really, from like a message of yours, you want to share with people, but you normally don’t?

Oh my gosh, that’s such a cool question. I’ve never been asked that. This is what comes to me to say. When I first started my podcast, um, I was a little hesitant to go all in on my really deep specific beliefs, right?

I wanted to, I think we all do, we all want to be pleasing, we want to belong, we want to somehow trim things a little bit so that everyone can hear it as they need to. But I have had an experience on my path. And I, I, after college took this trip to Jerusalem, I was supposed to be there for three weeks and I stayed for three years and I, I lived in the old city of Jerusalem.

I’ve been back many times and I have the same teacher, kind of like what you have your relationship with your brother-in-law. I have this incredible rabbi who lives in the old city of Jerusalem who has been pouring into me for 25 years. And when I first started my podcast, even though that is the spiritual technology and the spiritual language, which is the blueprint of my life, I would share it in pieces, but I wouldn’t share it fully, overtly.

And it’s actually interesting because today… Wait, wait, hang on, hang on. How come you wouldn’t share it fully and openly? I think there’s a couple of reasons. I think that’s also a good question. Number one, I think that the Word God is a very burdened word.

And that word has been just so sort of twisted and contorted that I don’t think we all always mean the same thing when we say it, you know? My rabbi says that if you were to go to Alaska and you were to talk about snow, there’s actually many words for snow because they’re all different kinds of snow. And so there is this one infinite intelligence, but sometimes the words people use, they’re saying one thing, but they mean something totally different than what you mean.

They mean a dogma of what they’re saying, not the purity of the divine mind and divine intelligence. Yeah. Like when I met Deepak Chopra, the first thing I asked him was, “What do you think is the meaning of life?” And he said to me in Hebrew, “It’s the Ein Sof.”

The Ein Sof means the endless light. And so even though he uses different language because he was born in India and he has gone through the world of Hinduism, which he does such an amazing job of explaining, he knows that both of our rivers led to the same ocean, right? And so initially, I was a little hesitant to use words until I had the courage to explain and share and express what those words mean to me.

Eventually, I just leaned in more and more and more. I also think that part of the reason that I didn’t share is because those of us who came to the world to truly lead and inspire and manifest, I think from a young age, there’s a part of us that knows that for some people were too much. And the fact of the matter is that the people we’ve all looked up to our whole life, they stand out.

And the reason they stand out is because they don’t fit in. And I think that the primitive parts of us, not the soul level of us, but the human level of us, wants to belong so badly that we’re self-abandoned so that we can fit in and not stand out. And I think, over time, our spiritual path will give us permission to follow our soul instructions, even if it means standing out and not fitting in.

And eventually, what’s really beautiful is we realize that every single soul is unique in its design and wasn’t meant to fit in, but it was meant to complete a bigger puzzle by standing out as its essence. And so eventually, I had the courage to stand out and not fit in, which was a beautiful, liberating thing because it allows actually everybody else to maybe have permission to do that for themselves.

Yeah, before we get back to your rabbi, I was gonna say, I think you’ve recognized that when we are authentically speaking our truth, and we’re not afraid to do that, people are gonna throw rocks at us. You know, I’ve had people say that, which is not true. I went to Texas Lutheran College, which is a Christian school, but I’m a spiritualist. And again, that was 30 years ago.

But people said, like one of my reviews on my podcast says, “Jim hates Christians.” I never said that. – Of course not. – People are going to hear what they want to hear. My question to you, have you found that you impact more people and more people resonate with you when you just authentically speak your truth.

Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And everybody has these two aspects of ourselves, you know, we have sort of like where we come from when we’re caught in the mind, we’re caught in lack, we’re caught in the stride, our identity as whatever the heck script, our identity thinks it is, you know, it went to this college, it’s worth this much and it has it.

But then there’s the soul, right? And everybody has that place inside of them. And you can speak to people from the place of trying to impress their ego, or you can just go right to the part of them that’s willing to really hear you when you speak to them, because you trust them with the truth. When you say the truth, what you’re really saying is, I trust you that I could actually share what’s true for me.

And the truth is that people can decide that they don’t agree, people can decide to go where they want, but there is something really whole and something that creates tremendous peace in the world. When you are who you are and you say what you mean and you do as you’re meant to do, it really gives everyone else the autonomy that you’re not trying to manipulate how they think about or perceive you, you’re just being yourself.

And really, what that’s saying is, I’m letting go of needing you to perceive me a certain way. I’m gonna be here as I am. And that’s actually a very loving thing to do. And it’s liberating for everyone. So I do think that it is powerful. And I think that on some level, everybody truly wants to be unapologetically –

Yeah, and I think he’s been on your podcast. He’s a good friend of mine, Gary Zukav. – He’s lovely. – I love Gary, we chat, he’s just an amazing friend. And I was talking to him recently about something and he said in one of his books, some lady wrote him a nasty email telling him how wrong he was.

And he said to her, “You may be right.” And I loved that approach because he was telling his truth. She didn’t resonate with his truth because she came from her dogma, which is what you’re saying. And he’s like, you know, I’m just speaking my truth and that’s the end of that.

But I wanna share one thing before we go back to the rabbi because I’d love to hear that story and I know people would. Have you ever read any cry on? I guess so. Not only have I not read it, but I’ve never even heard that word, so now I’m like super intrigued what that is.

– Really, cry on the seven cosmic laws. And one of the cosmic laws is that everyone is spiritual, even if they don’t know it. And you look at the planet, most of the planet is still asleep. They don’t know, because I look at the political conflict in the world and the left identifies as the left, the right is the right as U.S. and they’re fighting, but they’re fighting themselves because we are all of one.

– Right. – But I thought you would like that I wanted to share that and I’ve not mentioned that on my podcast. Okay, let’s go back to your rabbi. – That is so beautiful. Thank you for that. The story is that I was really thirsty and my heart was really open for something mystical to happen happened to me growing up in my house, my parents spot all the time, my mom actually tried to commit suicide and my parents eventually had a really horrible breakup.

My dad was living a double life, eventually left for that woman and then has been married multiple times since and recently passed away. So it was a very tumultuous, like difficult struggle as a kid. I saw a lot of deep wounded people around me and I started asking big questions from the age of like 14.

When friends of mine were thinking about what were they gonna do on Saturday night or who were they gonna date? I was like looking for answers and reading Wayne Dyer and trying to figure out like why do we even exist? Like if my mom doesn’t wanna live anymore and she’s in and out of this institution, like what is the point of being here?

Like why are we here and why is she so sad? And what is she missing that is making her so sad? And what I came to was she was missing the spiritual beingness in herself, right? She had, I did have so much with being this person’s wife who then he left that she felt like she failed versus like, no, you’re on a soul mission and you actually are connected to the divine and you are worthy enough of yourself and there’s a purpose.

But I didn’t know those answers yet, right? I – I’m sure. – But I was very much up at night, really wondering what the reasons were that we would be here on the planet. And one thing led to another and in college, I was a world religion major. I was studying world religions to try to make sense of things.

I wrote my senior paper comparing the Buddha and Moses because they both actually grew up as a prince in a palace and then they both actually left the material world to go into the wilderness. And then they both actually led people to what they said was like a middle path, right, where you put the both together. And I thought that was such a stark, like those paths were similar to the two of them that I wrote this paper about it.

But I was still just like kind of reading things. I hadn’t yet experienced anything. And so after college, a friend of mine said, Oh, I’m going to Jerusalem, you should come, it’s a three week trip. And I thought, great, I’ll do that. I’ll check off that trip and then I’ll go to grad school or whatever.

– Hang on, were you raised Jewish by chance? What was it you were? – I’m both of my parents, all my grandparents, but we didn’t have any spirituality at the house. It wasn’t like we didn’t have any rituals. We didn’t do anything. We were just culturally, I knew who Mel Brooks is.

I could eat like bagels and lox, but like didn’t have any, you know, connection to the fabric of this mystical tradition. – So when your friend said Jerusalem, you’re kind of like, yeah, okay, okay. I mean, it’s kind of my heritage. – Yeah, it was like, yeah, it’ll be cool.

Like we’ll see it and then we’ll leave. And we went on the trip and it was absolutely beautiful. And I was ready to leave at the last day. And the last day of the trip, she said, you know, there’s a class by this rabbi who’s also, you know, he’s, he’s a Kabbalist.

He’s really interesting. We should go to his class. And he was really the real deal. Like he’s not associated with – Understand. Yeah. There, you know, when in any kind of, in any kind of vertical, there’s always like things that kind of make it Mickey Mouse, you know what I mean?

And like try to commercialize things. Like he’s just like the real deal, you know, sweet, kind, long beard, like a million children, good wife, like good people. Anyway, we go to his little class in the old city of Jerusalem. And I’ve never taken a class like that from anyone or really met a person who’s truly, I guess I would use the word holy, like kind and really evolved and sweet and present.

Did he charge you anything? – No. – Okay, see, that’s what I wanted to ask because he’s working from spirit. He is representing. – The spirit. Exactly. – Vanity. Perfect. – Yeah. – He’s not like, oh, by the way, if you come in, it’s gonna be $197.

– Exactly. Hell, there was, yeah, exactly. No, and he has freckles and red hair and he’s just adorable. Anyway, he wrote the word in Hebrew for the Sabbath, which is the word Shabbat from Hebrew. And he said, “Does anybody know what this word means?” And I’m thinking, “Not really.”

I mean, I heard the word, I don’t know what it means. He said, “Well, we know spiritually that the first time a word is used in the Bible is the context for the word.” That’s what the word means. So he said, “The first time this word for the Sabbath is ever used is when Abraham is meditating.”

And so he said, “The Sabbath is a meditation. It’s a day of meditation, and I was blown away by that. And then he said, “So it’s not just stillness.” He said, “People translate the Sabbath as rest. It’s not a rest, like sleep. It’s presence and stillness.”

And he said in the next line in the Torah, in the Bible, that helps you understand what happens when you’re in that kind of stillness. He said, “So Abraham was meditating and then God appears.” So he said, “When you get quiet, when you find that kind of stillness, you will meet the divine.

It is right there waiting for you, every one of us.” And then he said, “We are each a masterpiece. We are each a piece of the master. And we are each someone because we’re some of the one.” And I was completely transformed in that moment because everything inside of me said, “I know that that’s true.”

Everything felt true and I wanted more of it. And so it’s funny you asked me, “Did he charge you anything?” Because not only did he not charge me anything, he wound up inviting me. He said, “Oh, we have a spare bedroom in our place. If you and your friend want to stay, she needed to go back.”

So I stayed. Turned out he has seven children, thank God, and they didn’t have a spare room. His kids bunked up in one room so that I could have a room. – Wow. – And then he let me stay with them for three years.

And I said to him several times in that journey, is there something that you’re gonna ask of me? And he goes, do you know that love is just a gift? It’s not earnable. I don’t know why I asked this of you. I don’t know why I offered it, but I meant it.

And you can stay and we adore you. And that’s been our whole relationship since I was, at the time I was 21 years old, down 45. And what I learned studying with him and what I learned just watching him, just being in that home, about love, about peace, about kindness, it was a complete software recoding of my whole system.

And when I left Israel, when I was 24, I moved to Los Angeles. I’ve continued to study Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah since then. And I’ve continued to study other things as well. And I find all of it so beautiful, you know, and I became friendly with John Kabat-Zinn and Marianne Williamson and all the, and I just find everybody to be adding different pieces to the puzzle, which is just so cool, but–

Hang tight right there. So I was talking to Gary Zukav about where he gets his information. This is when I first met him. And we’ve had a lot of personal conversations over the last couple of years. And everything he says, I’ve heard the same things, but differently from my brother-in-law who is the real deal is a shaman.

And then I look at, I wrote a note here. So then I look at you and then you bring the same thing, but from Kabbalah. So Gary comes from his school and he said to me, he goes, “Well, we say the same thing with a different vernacular because we had different teachers and we’re saying the same thing.”

And I want people listening to hear that because even when people are preaching fire and brimstone, they’re saying the same thing, but in a different context, meaning they’re talking about the divine-ness and connecting with the divine, but they’ve wrapped it in dogma, which is what a lot of people do, because I’ve told people that many times people take spirituality and they turn it into a religion.

And it’s not the pure spirituality, which is love that you’re talking about with this rabbi. So three years, it’s extremely, but we live on a big planet, as you know. And I mean, we have all these different places that we come from. I’ll also just say that, you know, there’s eight billion people in the world.

And I think that there are a lot of people saying the same essence with different language. And then there’s a lot of people who just speak a lot of contrast, right? There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of the opposite of truth that people tell. And what’s really powerful, though, is that you’ll know if it’s the truth because it either feels like a love or it doesn’t.

– And if there’s shame or fear that’s coming from someone, it’s not the truth, right? But why that’s still interesting is because Kabbalah says that God in his infinite wisdom created an equal amount of light and an equal amount of shadow so that we on our divine spiritual path would actually have the satisfaction of having free will to choose between them because if there was more light than darkness then we would just choose right and Rabbi Aaron says something really powerful which is since God is one all there is is this divine what’s fascinating he says is that human beings are actually the sort of highest,

they’re higher than angels because angels only do good. They’re never gonna not, they’re never gonna speak gossip, they’re never gonna go off their soul path, but human beings actually get distracted for themselves, they get off their path, but when they get back on their path, it is like the heavens are cheering because God will only do what is the perfect thing, but God created us,

which is actually the highest possible creation, because we can choose. We can actually choose to use our energy for good or not. And so there’s something so magnificent about watching human beings on the path. And that’s why even when there’s things in the world that feel that there’s darkness in the world,

that is also an invitation for us to reveal more light. That is actually there so that we actually know the difference between the light and what is not light. And we then get to continue to create more of what is the light. And so pretty cool how, you know, sometimes when you get triggered by somebody,

maybe that’s a gift is what I’m saying, because it’s always a gift that shows you something in yourself. And something that maybe is now your invitation to do something about. Yeah. And I want to, I want to really want to get to the book in a moment because a lot of people are struggling with 3D things.

But I would assume that you’ve brought all of your Kabbalistic learnings and all these kind of things into the work you do, you do now in manifestation. 100%. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you wrote a book and the book is titled Abundant Ever After.

And I get tripped up on that name a little bit. And the reason why is nothing can do with anything. But there was a movie like 20 years ago, I remember, it was called Ever After with what’s your name? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So when I read When I read the title, the first place my mind went was to that movie because I just know that from that movie. I may already know the answer and people listening may know, what inspired you to write “abundant” ever after? I think everybody who I meet on some level is looking for abundance, but it’s like that song “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.”

They’re looking outside of themselves for abundance when the abundance is inside of them. You don’t say – They are abundance. – That’s what I’m saying. – Yeah, the example I use is you look for your car keys in your pocket and you’re looking and looking and looking.

I mean, I’m sorry, you’re looking for your car keys in your pocket the whole time, but you don’t know they’re in your pocket. I’m sorry for interrupting. – You didn’t interrupt. No, it was beautiful. It’s actually Gary Zukav, your friend who said to me, I’m sure he’s told you the story.

It’s so beautiful when he tells it. He told me that story. I think it’s a, What’s the name? There’s a Native American tribe that tells this story about how when God wanted to sort of hide the answer to the universe, he said, “Where should I hide it?” Right? No man will find it inside.

Exactly. Yeah. Let me add there. I think he’d be okay with this because he’s very authentic. Gary and I were having a, I think it was private conversation, but he was talking about how much he had changed after Linda transitioned.

And he said that I’ve learned to open my heart. You know, I’m sharing this. So we all learned that we’re all on the path. He said, I’m opening my heart even more after Linda transitioned because it’s about money.

He said, his exact words were, I used to be a little stingy with money, and I used to hang on to my money. And when Linda transitioned, I took everybody to dinner and I gladly just paid the check for everyone. And I really just opened my heart. And I wanted to share that because I don’t think he would mind because we’re all on the path and we’re all learning.

But he also had his struggles with money also, even though he was a famous author and Oprah, he still managed money from lack as opposed to managing from abundance and expansion. Okay, so you wrote the book, when you sat down to write the book, you could have written about a lot of things. Why abundance?

– We should teach what we actually have results in. And I feel like I, that is one thing that I have results in, right? Like I have a life that really feels very abundant. And when I say that, I mean it in every way.

Like I feel like I have an abundant of creative energy. I feel like I have an abundance of people that I adore. I love loving them. I love being loved back by them. I feel like I have an abundance of possibility in my view all the time.

And I also feel like we live an abundant life. You know, we’re flying first class with our kids to Paris and I was raised with no money. Like my dad left didn’t have money to pay the electric bill, when my mom and I drove my sister to college, we were walking on the freeway because we ran out of gas.

And like, she couldn’t even get gas in the car. And I mean, these are the experiences of my life. So the fact that I have this really abundant life, and I have always, since I left, since I got to Jerusalem, since that whole chapter in Israel, like, since that time, I have literally turned the switch and tapped into what feels like abundance.

And I never looked back. And so I wanted to teach it because it’s so uncanny to me how most people, instead of, this is what they’ll say to you, you know, the reality is. And I’m like, reality, you’re not reality where the capital R is the most abundant, expansive, net positive, delicious, whole connected geometric pattern that’s moving you into synchronicity all the time.

Which reality are you talking about? Like reality is magnetic. It’s incredible. And when you create the electromagnetic essence of yourself, when you tap into your coherent resonance, when you just become the music, and I’ll talk about it in a second, what I learned from Kabbalah, you realize how much has been an escrow for you, how much abundance, and I don’t just mean the abundance of physical riches, you can have that.

I mean, in addition, the abundance of the rewardiness, the nutrition, the satisfaction of your day, the fulfillment, what you get to feel that you contributed, who you got to meet, the conversations you’ve been to have, the places you’re invited, the way your mind’s opening, the clarity you’re receiving. It’s like levels and levels of so much abundance that I feel like people walk around and it’s almost like having a waffle iron that’s not plugged into the wall so that they’re not making breakfast.

And I’m like, what do you think it’s used for? Like, it’s a paperweight. I’m like, no, no, no, plug it into the socket. Now you’ve got electricity flowing through you. Now you’re making breakfast. So I wanted to write this book ’cause I’m like, if I could just show you how to plug into the outlet, you would realize the outlet’s inside of you, and then the world around you comes to life in such a way that you are blown away every single day.

You are like, “How is it that I just met this person? How is it that I feel this good?” It’s because you are always at the right place at the right time. That is exactly where God will meet you when you are actually present in that space. And people have just not learned how to do that. We’ve been conditioned to not know ourselves, as I often say, know yourself as God.

Let me ask you, are you passionate about this? You’re very, very passionate, and it’s so interesting. You’re so cute, oh my God, you’re so cute. We say the same thing, but differently because the metaphor that I use is, I’m gonna take you to the Four Seasons.

It’s a $75, $100 brunch, and we’re to have whatever you want. You can have king crab legs and you can have, you know, caviar and steak tartare, whatever you want at the Four Seasons brunch. Most people come back with a plate and they’ve got one piece of cheese and a little olive on it.

And I’m like, but there’s a whole buffet over there, but they don’t know they could have the entire buffet. I know. I’ve said very often to people, you can have everything you want if you’re willing to give up the beliefs that you can’t have it.

I’m not even going to say I said the same thing, but I say the same thing. Exactly. You’ve got to give up who you are to get what you want. It’s just wild. The way we’re so… Yeah.

So what I learned is that people talk about all different kinds of laws of manifestation. And this is the language that I speak. Sure. And I’m not saying… I mean, I love Abraham Hicks, and all these people can lead you to the same ocean, but this is my vernacular.

So basically the word Kabbalah, that word, lekabel, that word Kabbalah means to receive. So Rabbi Aaron would explain that manifestation, life, the mandate of life is the law of reception to receive, to be a receiver. So his incredible analogy is that a radio, another word for a radio is a receiver.

And if you turn on a radio, all of a sudden you’re going to hear music. Where was the music before you turned it on? It was hidden in plain sight. It’s already here in this room, right now, literally. Once you turn the radio on, you can select different sounds.

You can select jazz music, classical music, pop music, the experience of what’s being broadcast in the room is decided by what the receiver is tuned to. It’s not choosing itself, you’re choosing it. So when we are tuned, when we realize that we are a vessel, in Hebrew it’s the word “kli” is a vessel, okay?

When we realize that we were made to be a vessel for the divine music within ourselves, okay? When we realize that we are a soul having a human experience, and that this soul can play a love song all day long when it is attuned to the divine channel. What happens is then we become a radio.

We are now tuned to love, we’re tuned to divinity, we’re tuned to compassion, we’re tuned to possibility, we’re tuned to the mystical, And then everything in our day reflects that. But most people, they’re tuned to either static, or you hear no music, or they’re tuned to lack unworthiness, feeling as though if they could only achieve more, they could feel like more.

Or if only they had stuff, they could feel like more. – I want to ask your opinion. I was talking to my podcast editor yesterday who lives in Venezuela. And I said, “How you doing?” And he goes, “I’m doing a lot better because every morning when I wake up, I’ve decided not to look up my phone for the first 30 minutes when I wake up.”

So you talk about the tuning. Have you read, it just was published a couple of days ago, where Facebook ran an experiment in 2012 and they ran it for seven days. And what they did is they posted, like, to a certain group of people, they posted very negative posts, and the people’s responses were more negative.

And then they switched it and then posted only positive posts, and the people’s posts were all positive. Social engineering through social media. Now, the question I’m asking, and I’d love to hear your thought on this, is that many people can’t, for lack of better words, hear God, or connect, or see that light, or feel that light, or know that light, because they’re so distracted with the outside world, and now the artificial outside world, they don’t know themself.

Do you find any, give any thought on this? – Oh, I mean, 100%. – I’ll do the same. I’m sure you have a thought on it, knowing you now. It’s like, I got, I know you don’t know. – Yeah, it’s really so fascinating.

I know that so many people have addressed this topic. Zone, which means desire. And all day long, people will tell you what it is that they desire. And so often, that’s not the desire of their soul. But they’ve wired themselves, as you said, to everything the world told them to desire.

And so they’re now wondering why they’re exhausted and burned out and depleted. Because if you really get quiet, the desire of your own soul, it might have a totally different instruction for you, right? Like recently they posted on Instagram a list of the most spiritually influential people of this year.

And I thought so wild, right? Because Rabbi Aaron, who’s deeply involved, He’s not on that list, right? – I get it, yeah. – Like the people in this world who are actually creating enough cosmic coherence that the world is standing straight as it needs to, it’s coming from such pure deep devotion to what is their soul assignment that they’re not worried about if the book’s gonna be a best seller.

They’re not worried about how many followers they have on Instagram, they’re waking up every day and saying, before the sun goes down, have I achieved more of my essence? Have I mastered more of what it feels like to really lean into the beingness that was my actual truth and assignment of my soul?

Your Neshamah, the Hebrew word for soul is Neshamah, then the soul does not get any reward from how many books you sell. It gets no reward from the outcome. The reward it gets that it takes with it to the next place is the courage it had to show up for whatever the real assignment was.

And sometimes the real assignment is getting quiet. Sometimes the real assignment is something I did three months before my father died, which is being willing to tell him the whole truth. That conversation wasn’t published on Instagram. I didn’t get any reviews for it, but that was a soul assignment.

And that changed so many things in my life when I had the courage, and when he died, we were on really good terms because we had this really deep, really deep connection before he passed. – Because of your courage? – Because of my courage, yes, which I didn’t even think I’d have the ability to do, which I did, and when he died, I realized the girl who was his daughter,

she gets to also die. The part of me that was the adaptation of myself before I knew I could trust myself fully and have the courage to be myself. And when we achieve those kinds of things, that’s a very different kind of reward than hitting a New York Times bestseller list. And so it is amazing how much we are wired into what the external world has told us to get busy working on all day long.

And everyone’s busy. People talk, “I’m so busy. What are you busy doing? I’m busy doing this.” And it’s like, how much time have you given to what you’re really deeply desiring, right? Do you think… Yes, thank you for that.

I understand everything you’re saying, and it doesn’t matter if I do or I don’t, but I agree with experience at. Let’s say, for example, we know your podcast has, I believe, what, 45 million downloads. I would assume that your motivation is partly ego, partly just soulful motivation that you’re supposed to be doing it.

If you only had one million downloads and you weren’t getting traction, would you keep doing it? Yeah, because, you know, when I started it, there’s a line in the Talmud that says, “Words from the heart enter the heart.” And I think I just knew that growing up, especially for me, I actually went to speech therapy when I was a kid.

Right now I’m wearing an Invisalign, which is why I’m sounding a little like this, but as a kid, I couldn’t speak at all. I literally couldn’t talk. My father’s deaf and as a result of having a deaf father and some other things that were going on at home, I didn’t really talk.

I didn’t know how to really speak. So I was in speech therapy. And I also very much created an identity because I didn’t want to rock the boat at home because there was so much going on. There was a lot of turbulence.

And when I decided to start a podcast, it was me going up finally to take my seven-year-old self and tell her that she doesn’t have to carry what she’d been carrying, that it’s time to just speak and start to live fully authentically. And that was an assignment that I knew that I needed to do.

And I also felt as though, because my mom had struggled with suicide, what I came to find out, which I think is so powerful, is that the opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s purpose. That when we are in a state of purpose, there’s a level that’s beyond happiness.

And I’ll give you an example, is when I was in labor with my three daughters, I was in pain. But there was so much purpose attached to that pain, I was happy in a way that it’s beyond happy. It’s so meaningful, right?

And when I sat, I mean it makes me cry. When I sat with my dad in hospice, even though I wasn’t quote unquote happy, I felt so deeply in purpose that I felt transformed. And so what I realized is that what my mom was lacking, the reason she had spiraled into such a deep depression is because she didn’t realize that there was a purpose for her existence.

She had gotten so into a shame spiral. She didn’t realize that every single day she was needed, she was assigned to contribute to the world, even if it just meant having a conversation with the gardener or being there for her child. There was such purpose in her life.

And so I wanted to tell that message to whoever would listen. And so when I started my podcast, it is initially called Don’t Keep Your Day Job. And the premise was that your day job, whatever it is, is not your soul assignment.

And that your soul assignment is really why you’re here. And you never know what that reason is, but you being you is going to change the world for one person every day. If you understand that’s how needed you are in the world.

And so that to me is why I felt like I would do the podcast, no matter what. You know, it’s interesting. Thank you for that. And what’s interesting is I’ve never mentioned it.

And I hadn’t even thought about it in probably 40 years. I don’t know. My mom told me that I don’t know why I went to speech therapy also as a kid. And I find it interesting that I literally use my speech to live my Dharma, you went to speech therapy and you use your speech.

– All I do is get people to speak. – And then I look at what were our soul lessons, meaning we had these obstacles as kids that even we had the consciousness in us, we had never come that as kids to develop, to be the beings that we are, to do what we do. That’s pretty interesting.

– It is interesting and also living in Los Angeles, I became friends with Cheryl Heinz through my podcast, and then we wound up becoming neighbors with she and her husband, Bobby Kennedy. And he’s had this really challenging spasmodic dystonia, which affects the throat.

And I think it’s so interesting that when there are people in the world who have a deep desire to speak, sometimes there is a way in which we are invited to truly overcome whatever is scary about actually fully speaking. And there’s a rite of passage sometimes around that.

– Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting to add to that a little bit. And then I’ve got two more questions for you. I know people are gonna wanna hear. Is his father was by far one of the most eloquent speakers on the planet?

Beyond. I mean, and then he’s the junior. If people go back and watch Bobby Kennedy senior speaking on YouTube, honest to God, as much as people loved his brother, John Kennedy, who was Bobby, it was Bobby.

I’m telling you, his brother, the way he spoke, it was like church. I’m like his capacity, the love and the, It was like, I mean, it was just mesmerizing. – Yeah, but if you’ve ever watched the night Martin Luther King was shot, it’s on YouTube.

Have you seen that when MLK was shot and Bobby Kennedy was addressing it proud? And what came out of his mouth was just mind blowing and it just, the tone and the frequency to it. – Yes, I know that speech and what he was able to do literally healed the nation because there would have been complete and total rioting and chaos and pain and division and his love that evening actually it’s historic what he was able.

– Brought people together. – I know, brought everybody together. Yeah, incredible. Yeah. – So two questions here about money and then we’ll send people over to your book wherever you want to send them.

So I’ve been asked this question a lot. I also, and it’s nice ego-wise. When you have money, you always fly first class. I mean, I ain’t flying unless I fly first class anymore. I ain’t going back to the plane.

– To me, that is literally my favorite thing about it. Like everything, mom, I’m like, that and organic food. Those are like the two things that make a real difference in my life, you know? ‘Cause otherwise I’m pretty happy whatever house it is.

As long as there’s like sunlight and a patch of grass, it’s those two things that are real game changers. – Oh, gee. – In food and flying first class. – Yeah, those are mine.

As if I’m traveling, I ain’t traveling unless I fly first class and I’m not eating junk food. I mean, I’m gonna eat good quality food because if not, it’s gonna affect me later and I just enjoy it. But secondly, there’s nothing like flying good first class.

So the trappings of that. But I grew up poor also, we didn’t have any money. And a lot of people say, because they’re struggling with money, how did you make that change? And for me, it wasn’t the, aha, aha.

I used to watch lifestyles, older than you, 15 by 15 years, when we had TV, three channels. And I would watch on Sunday night, lifestyles of the rich and famous with Robin Leach. And I always was a kid was like, I want to be like that.

– Yeah. – And I don’t know how I made the transition, but I think I made it through the process of stopping chasing money and wanting money and serving with an open heart and then charging my value and my worth and then being in what I call any reciprocity of life.

And then which is ancient Incan for reciprocity of life, that pulled me out of being poor. How did you make that leap from no money to being very wealthy, though? Yeah. First of all, what you teach is brilliant.

Whenever I listen to you, I’m like, “He’s really mastered how to really help people make a breakthrough around that,” which is usually so truly proud of yourself and you go to sleep at night. You’ve literally helped people out of that because you get it so clearly.

By the way, when I hear you, I’m like, “Damn, she says it a whole lot better than I do. I wish I could say it like her. She is so eloquent. I need to go to finishing school.” So, so kind.

That’s so generous and kind. So what really helped me is that I think growing up, first of all, people put money on a pedestal, right? And as Abraham Hicks says, she goes, “You have way bigger dreams than piles of cash. You want a mystical experience. I mean, you have way bigger dreams.”

So that’s another one. But number two is people have made money so evil, right? In fact, they quote it wrong. They say money is the root of all evil. It’s actually the Bible verse says the love of money, which means that when people money.

I mean, that’s, that is weird, right? And who would worship their car or a pile of bills? That doesn’t make any sense. The time I do, and people do, but people, the, the Talmud says that money is like rain that falls in a garden, and rain is a great activator.

So rain falls on weeds, weeds grow. If rain falls on roses, roses grow. So if there are people who have money who have integrity, they’ll just do more good with the money. They’ll donate a hospital, they’ll open a theater, whatever it is, they’ll give money to causes.

If somebody doesn’t have integrity and they have a blessing of money, they’ll just do more things out of integrity with the money. – I tell people money doesn’t corrupt, is money just expand to who you already are. – That’s right.

So what I learned, one of the things I think is really interesting is that people think you can either be a good person or have money, like that’s the choice, which is true. And then I think about King David, who wrote “Hallelujah.”

I mean, all these songs, you know, that we have read for a thousand plus years, and he was so wealthy, and he didn’t have to make a distinct, he didn’t have to make a choice between, I’m either gonna have wealth or I’m gonna be spiritual. It’s actually both, right?

And what I came to realize, you know, when, when Abraham, people say Abraham is the father of monotheism, right? And this is really important because the central prayer in Judaism is (speaking in foreign language) meaning God is one. We say that every night, we say it every morning.

What Abraham meant is not that there’s one God, which there is, but something deeper than that, which is everything is one. We’re all part of and it didn’t line stream. So when you’re looking at a garden and something is thriving and there’s a redwood tree that’s super tall, right?

Or there’s something that’s pollinating and beautiful. It’s giving to the whole ecosystem because it’s one ecosystem. My kids and I were in the May River and we were tubing through the May River and our friend said to us, do you see that?

My kids were looking, he goes, those are oyster beds. If those oyster beds were not spitting and filtering the water, they’d be red tide and eventually we’d all die. Those oysters are why you’re alive. And we were like, oh, we’ve never learned about oysters and what a waste.

They’re like a, you know, a Brita, water filtration system, filtration system, but people eat them also in their filtration systems anyway. I know. But the idea is like, it’s literally one ecosystem. So the law of abundance is that the more you create of abundance for yourself, you literally just created that for everybody else.

If I plant a cherry tree in my own yard, I just gave birth to the possibility of thousands of other cherry trees ’cause that cherry tree will create seeds that will create cherry trees. If I improve my house, let’s say I paint my house and I redo it, my neighbor’s house immediately just went up in value because I improved my house.

If I opened a store on Main Street, now other people can open stores that would be even more profitable because I’m opening up a store. There is a line by a rabbi from the 17th century, the Maharal, and he said, “If you took a candle, one candle can light an unlimited amount of other candles and not lose its own flame.”

That’s how abundance works. So you’re not serving anyone by being depleted. It’s the opposite just by having money before you even invest it before you even become as a holy steward. If you have money in the bank right now while you’re sleeping while you’re going through your day, that money is allowing other people to take out loans that money is furnishing people’s mortgages.

So just having it is creating it for the ecosystem. When we think about this we realize that we each have a story about money that we have to change. And also what’s really fascinating, and I think this is really cool on a spiritual level, is that years ago, it was Christmas.

And even though we’re Jewish, we love Christmas. Christmas is magical. And in fact, so many Jews wrote Christmas songs. But anyway, we love it. – I remember in New York many years ago, it was Jewish and he gave me a Christmas present.

He’s like, “I’m a bad Jew.” But he was – For Christmas present. – You know, it’s also interesting because, you know, all of the rabbis from Moses, you know, before and after were Kabbalists, including Jesus. So I’m like, why don’t Christians know Kabbalah?

Like if Jesus was sitting here, he’d be speaking in Hebrew and teaching you Kabbalah. So I think it’s so interesting that we don’t all put all of it together because it’s so woven together. – Because Jesus was also a fakir. Did you know that?

I mean, I feel like we could do like a four hour episode on that. Look it up, you’re gonna be like, okay, now more pieces are coming together. So not that I have more than you, but I just like we’re meshing. And he was a fakir.

So anyway, I didn’t interrupt your story. Go ahead. One day for Christmas, we wanted to put a lot of lights around the house, okay? And so we hire this guy. I get every box of light from Home Depot that I can find.

My husband’s like, it’s never going to work. I’m like, why is he being so negative? Like of all the lights. So we get the buddy, the out blow up doll. We get a root off the red nose, reindeer blow up doll.

We get all the lights on every tree on every part of the house. And we go to light it up and it doesn’t work. And my husband is right. And he’s looking at me, kind of just like rolling his eyes.

And then we try to get it on again, try to get it on. And finally it goes on, the refrigerator turns off inside the house, the lights turn off inside the house, and then the lights only stay on outside for like 40, 45 seconds. So I’m like, what is going on?

My husband says, can I show you something? So we go to the breaker system, which I’ve never looked at in my life. He goes, do you see this breaker panel? This is how much wattage the house is wired for.

You’re trying to put more light through this system, it can’t hold it. It doesn’t have a capacity for that much light. We would have had to call the electrician and add it to the panel to put all of these lights. I love this because it’s the perfect metaphor for why people have their relationship with receiving that they have.

And here’s what I mean. People say all day long, oh yeah, I want more money. I want a million dollars more, $10 million more. Your vessel, what is your vessel actually energetically holding for right now, allowing for right now?

And very often, I’ll say to people, the last time you went to dinner with a friend and she offered to pay, did you say, sure, thank you so much? Or did you say, no, no, no, no, I got it, no, no. When someone went to hold the door for you yesterday at the bank, did you say, “Thank you so much,” or did you say, “I got that,” and if somebody gives you a compliment, do you say, “Oh, I received that,” or do you say, “This? This stress? I hate that.”

Your capacity to allow in abundance has to do with what amount of you is wired into your soul, because if you were to close your eyes and find your truth, your soul, it’s unlimited. It can receive an unlimited amount, guess why? Because it can give an unlimited amount.

Most people are identifying with the ego that has a certain feeling of worthiness. And when it receives beyond what it thinks it’s worthy of, it starts to feel that it’s shame ’cause it doesn’t feel worthy or now it’s obligated to do something for someone that it doesn’t know how to give back.

That’s egocentric. When we’re soul-centered, not self-centered, but soul-centered, we realize that all this is, is a loop of energy. And I become like a lightning rod that allows the energy to move through me and back into the collective.

So it has to do with moving out of the wiring of what the identity, the ego feels that it can expand to receive and moving yourself to the identity of this is my soul. And thank you so much. Yes, I’ll take the first class.

I receive that and let me now give back that energy into the world. And yes, I receive that. Let me receive this money over here and then give it over here and enjoy it and just keep moving it like the abundant number eight sign.

It just goes around and around and around and around. So it’s both a, it’s both a cognitive thing that we have to change the way we think about money as we were talking about money is not the root of all evil. It’s just a school.

And it’s also energetically, our nervous system is usually wired into what the ego says is safe to receive. And the more that we understand that our nervous system can actually be an extension of our soul, and we can say it’s safe to receive because I’m also safe to give.

There’s never a time where I don’t have a smile to give to a stranger. There’s never a time where I go, “No, I know nothing else to give.” Same reason. There’s never a time when my soul says, “I can’t receive any more love. I can’t receive any more light.”

It’s an endless supply in both directions, giving and receiving. The heart pumps the blood to the body by taking all the blood in and then moving it all the way around. And our job is to be on behalf of the collective a full open vessel to receive the greatest amount of love, resources, abundance of all kinds, which then becomes for the collective, on behalf of the collective, it becomes a generator of that.

– You know, everything you just said there, I find it so interesting from the Kabbalistic perspective and that shamanism that I’ve learned in working with a shaman for 28 years says the same thing, just a little bit differently, a little bit different vernacular, but it’s the same thing like I’d mentioned the word “ayni,” ancient Incan, which is the flow of life.

Everything is a flow and people hoard, I had a silver coin here on my desk, people hoard this and this has no value until I give this value. The value is in me and me as a reflection of God’s divine. When I find it so interesting how different schools of thought, when people go to the essence and the profoundness of the thought, they’re saying the same thing just in a different vernacular.

Okay, so we know that a lot of people are challenged with money, and with your content, your material, where should we send them first? To your book, your podcast, where do you want to send them? Whatever feels like it’s your way of, the way you like to receive content best.

You can, the book and the podcast are both called Abundant Ever After, and if podcasting is something you’d like to listen to, we’ve done over a thousand episodes, and there’s so much to just absorb. The book, if you go to cathyheller.com/book, there’s a free meditation.

And then on Instagram, I post, you know, these little brief Kabbalistic insights every single day that people seem to find really nourishing and– – Very good, I like ’em. – But you’re so sweet. – Well, let me ask you this question now about this, okay?

So you’ve given, in my opinion, extreme value in our together. Now, I know you don’t know where I’m going to go with this. But what if somebody’s listening and they’re dead broke, and they keep taking and taking and taking, and they don’t return any energy back to you?

What’s your thought on, and don’t personalize it, meaning, oh, they’re bad. What’s your thought on why they keep staying broke when they’re not returning the energy? And I want to tie that into your book. Just the question alone, And I think it comes from things that you heard people say.

We think that the way that we can be valuable is if we have the money in order to be valuable. When I was living in Jerusalem, I asked Rabbi Aaron once, “What’s the holiest thing I can do while I’m here?” I thought he was going to tell me to go to some temple or cave or I don’t know what I thought ritual he was going to tell me to do.”

And he hands me a piece of paper with an address. And he said, “I want you to knock on this door, and I promise it’ll be the most spiritual thing you’ve ever done.” I go, “Okay.” He goes, “When you get there, this woman who lives in this house is a widow. I want you to offer to do her dishes.”

And I got the message. You know, we think that we have nothing to give because we’re measuring what there is based on funds, right? Right. And it’s just, while I’ll just tell you this quickly, my dad died in July and a week later, we had just finished sitting Shivah, which is like a seven day process that Jews do.

After a death of a loved one, you kind of shiver means to sit. You kind of sit in your home and let yourself kind of grieve before you go back out into the world. And a week later, we go back out in the world and the cars are driving really fast and everything feels really loud after having been in hospice and going through the funeral and all of that.

And we’re sitting at this restaurant with my kids having sushi and I was feeling pretty down and fragile. Sure. I realized, you know what, the best way for me to come back to life is to love somebody for no reason. It’s just going to pick me up.

So there’s a couple sitting to our left and I could hear them and it sounded like they were on a first date. So I said, “Can I get you dessert?” And the woman said, “Sure, how come?” I’m like, “I think you’re on a first date.”

And she said, “How did you know?” I’m like, “I could just tell. Right. You know. So I ordered them dessert and she said, “Can I get your Instagram or your email?” I said, “Yeah.” So two hours later, she sends me a note and she said, “I just want you to know that was extremely kind of you and the dessert was delicious.”

So I said, “Are you going to go on a second date?” And she said, “I want you to know something.” She said, “I actually am a widow and this is my first date in five years. Wow.” And what you did for me tonight felt like a sign that I’m allowed to open my heart and that this is good.

And there’s good people in the world and that it’s safe to love again. And I said to her, you know, it’s fascinating. I said, this is my first night out since my dad died July 3rd. And she said, you know, it’s really interesting.

She said, my husband passed away five years ago on July 3rd. And I tell you that because we measure by such an interesting yardstick, what we have to give, what is expected of us. And then there’s the spiritual lens of what’s happening all the time, all around us, right where we are, where we can be so valuable to someone by doing something so simple.

And I think people don’t recognize that our heart is literally an electromagnetic device. Your plants and animals will actually have a biological upgrade by you being loving to them. Which means that when you realize how valuable you are, you realize how much you just being alive and awake, and this energetic source of energy in the room is so impressive and inspiring.

Abundance, first of all, comes back to you. But all of a sudden, you’re not valuing yourself based upon a bank account. You’re realizing that the real bank account of wealth is inside of your heart. And when you open it and mine for that treasure, you realize that you have so much already to give.

Thank you. Club in Harlem where Ella Fitzgerald was a singer and my grandmother became a dancer there. – The Apollo? – It was called Roseland. – Okay.

– And anyway, it was like famous. I think there’s like, yeah, but that’s another one. And it’s so interesting because she and my grandfather met at that club and it’s also interesting ’cause the club was restricted to Jews so they both pretended to be Italian so that they could dance there, and eventually they admitted to each other that they were both Jewish, which was a relief, because they had fallen in love, and they realized, “God, this is actually, we can be ourselves.”

My grandfather only had one shirt, so he did something interesting. He used to put cardboard in the collar of his shirt. Next thing he knows, because he couldn’t afford two shirts or three shirts, he wound up inventing the cardboard that goes in men’s dress shirt collars.

– Yeah, I hear. – Which turned into so much abundance for him and his four siblings. What’s so fascinating is, had he opted out of dancing, because he couldn’t afford a shirt and felt embarrassed and laugh, he never would have had the ingenuity to develop what he needed, ’cause he couldn’t afford three more shirts, he didn’t have the starch to afford it.

So he took cardboard and put it in his collar. And next thing he knows, everyone’s asking him for it. And next thing he knows, he’s feeding cardboard into a machine in what is now Soho and selling it to Bloomingdale’s. And it becomes a whole thing.

And my mom winds up having a different life and going to college and having a car when she turns 16, all these things that my grandparents never believed that they could do. So my grandmother used to say to me, our greatest resource is our own ingenuity. It’s our own resourcefulness.

That’s the abundance. And so when we get into the abundance that we can unlock inside of us, Jim Henson can turn a sock into a puppet that makes it $80 billion. So what I’m saying is, you’re looking so much in the wrong place for the abundance.

And once you start to look for where it actually is, there’s no end to how much abundance you can create. – Yeah, and where I was going with that, and then we’ll wrap up here. Where I was going with that is, I learned from my school of thought that in Native American times, you would never go to an elder and ask for wisdom or guidance without making a reciprocal offering of anything.

It could be a loaf of bread, it could be anything. But in Native American times, you respect the elder and the energy of the elder. And I look at the wisdom you’ve brought. And when I was going to infer, I don’t believe in obligation, making people feel obligated to do anything, but be in exchange with you because you’ve been in exchange and opened your heart.

And if we’re not in exchange with people, then we actually, we’re working in a vacuum. Meaning if I keep taking and taking and taking, the universe is going to reflect that because it’s going to reflect who we are. So I can’t work in a vacuum.

So what I’m saying is people listening, do something to give the energy back. Go subscribe to your podcast, buy your book, but give the energy back for the extraordinary amount of energy that you have brought us. – That is incredibly deep and kind and inspiring and so generous.

– Thank you, thank you. We could talk forever. – I love you. You’re so lovable and smart, and I want to learn so much more from you. So I’m in. I’m in.

I see the same thing about you that we’re going to talk when we’re done here. Thank you. Thank you on behalf of all the people listening for the gift you have brought them. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for sharing. We’ll see you soon.