Tapping into your Creative and Divine Self

[00:03] Intro: Welcome to the Heart Soul Wisdom Podcast, a journey of self discovery and transformation. Moira Sutton and her amazing guests share real life stories, tools, and strategies. Strategies to inspire and empower you to create and live your best life. Come along on the journey and finally blast through any fears, obstacles and challenges that have held you back in the past so you can live your life with the joy, passion, and happiness that you desire. Now, here's your host. Create the life you love. Empowerment. Life coach Moira Sutton.
 
 [00:58] Moira: Welcome to season three, episode 62, tapping into Your Creative and divine Self with our very special guest, international retreat leader, author and women's coach, Emily Pereira. Emily is an international leader, as I just said, a yoga teacher and a women's coach. She treated her perfect lifestyle in L.A. for one, in the middle of the jungles or the jungle of Costa Rica. Wow. Through her exotic journey, she found the true light within herself in the true meaning of love. It took Emily periods of despair, utter confusion and soul searching to now reach over 5 million people worldwide to help them reinvent their own love lives. Emily has become a symbol of hope, love, and discovery for women all over the world. She lives in Santa Teresa, a seaside village along Costa Rica's Pacific coast with her partner and two smart children. And she's also the co-founder of the Sunrise Mountain Retreat and Wellness Center. She's a best-selling author and wrote the memoir The Quest. And we're going to dive into a lot from that beautiful book today and her life story. She has learned that by tapping into your creative self and turning resentment into compassion, a powerful transformation, a sense of gratitude will fill your life. Emily is passionate about assisting women and finding their true passion and purpose in life. She does this by teaching women that they are deserving of giving themselves permission. Two words that are going to come out in today's heartfelt conversation and to start over and truly become their divine selves. So, without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Emily Pereira.   Welcome, Emily.
 
 [02:38] Emily: Hi, Moira. Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here.
 
 [02:42] Moira: Oh, we are soul mates, and this is so much fun. Thank you for sending your book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. You spoke from the heart and really told your story.
 
 [02:54] Emily: A lot of courage to publish that.
 
 [02:56] Moira: Book, I think when they say the truth would set you free, did you feel that even went through deeper healing by writing this book and sharing your story?
 
 [03:05] Emily: Oh, my gosh. I have found writing to really be the master healer at our fingertips that is available to all of us. And the writing of that book was so cathartic. I had moments where I just felt uttered joy, other moments where I burned in shame, other moments where I sobbed uncontrollably this hugely alchemical experience. Yes.
 
 [03:32] Moira: And, your body releasing that, like, wow. I know that with here. Well, just recently, the Queen, as you know, passed, and our family is British, but I always thought very highly of her in the family and what she's done in her life. And when I heard it that she passed, I just saw, like, any time I talked about it for three days that day and two days after, I just was crying, and I could feel it in my heart. And I said to my husband, what is that? Because I'm pretty in touch with my feelings of that. And it was just something bigger than myself. I think it was more like on a national level as an empath, just that sadness, but also the next step in our history and our world. So, yeah, you must have gone through a lot. I want to start by just a little bit about your family, your dad and mom, and when did this trying to be perfect all the time start for you? Because that keeps you in, like, a stressful, anxious, very exhausting state, I would think.
 
 [04:29] Emily: Oh, my gosh, absolutely. Give me just 1 second because they just started making a lot of noise outside, and I don't want them to just close the door. Okay.
 
 [04:39] Moira: Yeah, for sure. And Emily is coming to us from her home, as we said in the beginning, and it's a beautiful home. We're going to talk about Emily's retreats and how you can be part of her writing retreats and her retreats in Costa Rica Pacific Coast.
 
 [05:00] Emily: Okay. Hopefully that would work.
 
 [05:04] Moira: So, it's about your family, briefly, perfectionism, and how that would really take a lot out of big toil on your body and your physical, mental, emotional states and spiritual.
 
 [05:15] Emily: Yeah, it's an interesting concept to really dive into and think about. And I thought about it many times, like, where did this really begin? Did it begin with the women that have come before me and that perfection programming was passed down through the lineage? Was that the beginning? And then it was compounded by the media and the advertising and the way that in America, North America especially, that women are portrayed. There's not a lot of permission for women. There's sort of this energy in the white space that we're supposed to show up and just get it right the first time that we're supposed to show up in slay. And if we're not going to do that, then maybe we shouldn't do it at all. Maybe we're not even allowed to do it. That was kind of how I felt. I think part of it, too, is I did get a lot of accolades as a young child for many things, and on some level, I could see how happy that made my family, how happy that made my parents. And it was so like, oh, gosh, if I do something and it's not good, is that going to be super disappointing? To them? Is that going to change the image that they have of me in their minds? And I think what ended up happening was by the time I got to my late twenty s, I had this life that looked really good from the outside and it didn't feel very good from the inside. And what I have come to see from being on this path for 15 years and working with many, many women, is that's not an uncommon thing that women are very good at kind of getting all the externals of life and making things look really good, but they feel like something big is missing. And I felt like something big was missing too, but I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what it was or how to go about finding it. So, thank goodness for spirit. It speaks the language of soul and knows that in my small, conditioned mind, the things that I thought I wanted were not actually the things that I wanted. And so many of all of the externals were ripped away from me. When I was in my late 20s, when I was in the Saturn Returns, boyfriend cheated on me, I lost all my friends, I had to move out of my beautiful home. It was like life; the tectonic plates of my universe were really moving to align me with what was true in my soul. And I think that it's really important that people understand. If you're going through what I call, quote unquote, a spiritual death where everything is sort of blowing up in your face and everything, quote, unquote, isn't working for you. It's actually just spirit coming in to realign you. And there's this beautiful portal that opens to what I call the quest. And the quest is this epic inner journey to find the jewel inside, which is the essential self, the spiritual self, the self that knows who you are, why you're here, and the exact steps to take to have the epic life that you came here to have.
 
 [08:27] Moira: Well, you covered a lot there. I love the question, the BIG journey, and the epic life, because we all are here to have that epic life and to add to all there is. How do you help people truly find their authentic self and their passion, their purpose?
 
 [08:49] Emily: This is one of those things that we all come with passion. When we're born, there is passions woven in our spiritual DNA that want to be expressed this lifetime that have come from other lifetimes. And we see this like Mozart, for example, right? Four years old, five years old, being able to play these incredible pieces on the piano that came from a recent lifetime, right? Where he was already this incredibly accomplished pianist. And so, we have passions. And so really, it's about getting out of the thinking mind and into the body through embodiment activities that's embodiment practices. That's how we can move from the small, conditioned mind that tells us, oh, I need training to do that, and moving into the intuitive place that lives in the body. And so, I have found writing. I say it's the gateway drug to all creativity. Because regardless of if you're putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you're a storyteller. You tell stories to your friends and family all the time. And so really, just putting that onto paper does something so powerful. I mean, you mentioned that I leave these writing retreats in Costa Rica I say is the soul of the retreat. We also do a bunch of other things. It's sort of a mini quest unto itself, but everything is set up as different embodiment practices and rituals to connect you with that inner knowing and those jewels, that huge treasure chest of jewels that are inside of you. And the writing is very powerful because we bring you into the schematic body via meditation. And then there's a writing prompt. And in the prompt, what you can access in the somatic body is going to be different than if you're just like sitting in front of a blank page, like, I should write something right now. And then we read out loud just from doing that. That's a huge detoxification of old pain, of what we don't need any longer. And then when we read out loud, we only focus to what has power, strength, and energy in the pieces. And we're not doing this just to be nice people. Even though it feels like this epic love shower for you and your creativity. We're doing it because in the brain we have something called the reticular activating system. And the reticular activating system amplifies whatever gets attention. So, like in traditional MFA writing programs, they do something similar, but they focus on what isn't working and what needs to be fixed. And what they found in the neuroscience studies is that when we focused what needs to be fixed, we actually unconsciously do more of that. So, by focusing to his power, strength, and energy, that becomes more present in the peace and takes center stage in the peace, while what doesn't get acknowledged starts to fall away. And from a spiritual perspective, when we create that space in our heart and then what's reflected back to us is power, strength and energy, what fills that place in the part is empowerment. And you start to see that it gets easier to write each day and it starts to flow. And then it's like, okay, the floodgates are opening. And in my personal experience, you know, from the book I started, I didn't think I was a creative person, okay? I really didn't think I had a creative bone in my body that really wasn't nurtured in me. That was like my sister's thing and our family. Once I started writing, it was like the **** burst open. And I started to play guitar and sing and write songs and paint paintings. I started later on doing improv in Burlesque, and I just started to really see that, wow, the creative is so closely linked to the spiritual. I don't know why I thought that was a genetic thing that some people were blessed with, and other people weren't. But really, creativity is like the lifeblood of the human experience. And I can say this very clearly now, being on the other side of it, I was walking around like a part of me was inside, was dead before I tapped into the creative, because.
 
 [12:57] Moira: We are here to co-create with the universe. So, one thing you learn and we're going to talk about James in a minute here, but as you were speaking, one of the things when I read your book that Jamie taught you was the power of the beginner's mind.
 
 [13:12] Emily: Yes.
 
 [13:13] Moira: So, tell us a bit about that exercise. I know you talked to her about the creative and the divine self and the questions. A few things you just said with writing that. Is there an exercise other than what you just said right now that people can start with this beginner's mind? My impression is that it opens you up to those possibilities and opportunities versus closing yourself down. But I love this power of the beginner's mind. Can you share a bit about that?
 
 [13:39] Emily: Absolutely. This concept of the beginner's mind, it's so simple and so revolutionary at the same time. And I credit this understanding with all of the wonderful things that I have in my life right now. And so, everything's energy, right? Everything has an energy vibration attached to it. And so that vibrational frequency of perfection. Perfection is really judgment, right? Because perfection does not exist in the natural world. Like, a tree isn't perfectly straight. A flower isn't perfectly symmetrical. It is so gorgeous in its imperfectness. And we are part of the natural world. So how or why would we be perfect? We cannot be. But to constantly be referencing ourselves to something that does not exist means we're walking around in a constant state of judgment of ourselves. And that is a very dense energy frequency that pushes down on the light free, fast frequency of creative passion. And so, this wisdom mom that my teacher at the time, James, passed to me was, you don't have to be perfect to participate. You just have to give yourself permission to be the beginner. The beginners are supposed to be know anything anyways, so the beginner can never fail. And I remember, like, all these light bulbs in my head at once, and I was like, Wait a minute. Like, I leaned in real close. I was like, I can do that. I can just be the beginner. I really felt like I had to be the best or I wasn't allowed to do things. I know that sounds crazy to me now, but I was sort of like, Stay in your lane, girl. It actually took me from learning that insight that incredible spiritual insight. It wasn't instant for me. It wasn't like, okay, cool, I'm going to be the beginner. It took me a couple of years before I could really own that. And I also before I went to bed, I don't know if you guys can hear the rain. There's a huge tropical storm that just blew in.
 
 [15:50] Moira: No. Nice though.
 
 [15:52] Emily: Okay, it's coming down really strong. So, I started working with directives and intentions. So, before I would go to bed there's a lot that can happen on the astral plane when we're sleeping. And before I would go to bed, I decided that I was going to set let me go back 1 second. So, as I mentioned during my Saturn return, all these things were ripped away from me. And I found myself in a very dark, dark place. And that's when I walked through the portal of the quest. And I met this teacher, and this is back in 2006, so it wasn't like social media the way that we know it now. And having a spiritual teacher was kind of like a weird thing. Not to you, Moira, but that was like, you're doing what? But I just knew I felt better in this man's presence. And I would soon come to understand he had information that wasn't in books and hands that can heal your body. And so, none of it really made any logical sense. But I just was like, I'm going to keep showing up. I'm going to keep implementing this wisdom that he's passing to me. And one of the key things that he passed to me was because I thought all these bad things were happening to me, right? He's like, no, you are the Creatrix of your own life and you are working with the universe. Everything is being created for your benefit and evolution. And if you adopt that, everything is working for you. That you're going to not vibrate as a victim anymore. And you are going to carry an empowered vibration of gratitude, right? Because if there's a gift in every situation, we feel grateful. And so, with that shift, my life started to change pretty quickly. And I got all these wonderful things starting to come into my life again. And I created a beautiful new man and a beautiful home and a beautiful dog. And I was finding myself waking up in the middle of the night shaking with anxiety. And it was really confusing for me because I was like, wait a minute, I got all the things that I thought I wanted, and I was just like shaking. And finally, I was like, what is this? What do you want? Like, feeling, what is this? And I just heard this voice, and it was like, when are you going to do something that really matters to you? And it pushed me to my core because I've been doing so many things, running around the planet, working at this Fortune 100 company rising to the top, going to every party and every event and all the stuff I was doing, and it wasn't enough. And really that's the tagline of the book. The quest from the Hollywood Hills to the Amazon jungle. One of the searches for enough. And so, this question I've been dodging for a long time because I knew I would have to do some things that really scared me, and I didn't want to do those things. But at that point, I was so uncomfortable that I was finally ready to set that intention. My teacher at the time, he's clairvoyant and he said, I see you're a writer. You need to write your story. Even if you never show it to anybody, it's going to heal your heart. And when he said that I felt like someone was tap dancing on my heart. Like I felt like a tap for real. And I was like I just blurted out, okay, I think I am a writer. Now keep in mind I've written nothing, I mean nothing in eleven years besides emails and I don't know, maybe the occasional thank you letter. But something inside me had been doing all of this spiritual work, was starting to open up to be able to listen to my souls calling. And so, I started to set intentions. So, if you're listening and you want to tap more into your creative, if you know there's some door within the self that's closed and you want to open it, you can set intentions before you go to sleep and you can set directives. I decided to set a directive for 30 days, and that was I am recovering my innate creative option. Because as children, we are all creative. There's an organization, it's called Creativeminds.org, and it reports that children of five operate with 80% of their creativity. And by the time we get to twelve, it goes down to 2%. And children, they're beginners and everything that they do right, and life is full of wonder and curiosity, and I think that's why we're so enthralled with little children. I set that directive and finally, maybe it was a little bit more than 30 days or a little less, I don't remember exactly. But I just said, today is the day. And I flipped open my shiny MacBook air and I set an intention and I said, I give myself permission to be the beginner. Start at the beginning, tell the truth, and have fun. And I put my hands, like an inch apart right in front of my heart, like a prayer position, fingers pointing outwards. And I felt the frequency in my hands. And as I did that, I visualized the color between my hands and the vibration shot up, like I felt something there. And I pulled it into my heart. And I was amazed that by simply suspending judgment, the words flowed freely. First, I had a sentence, and then I had another sentence. And then I had a paragraph, and then I had a page, and then I had a freaking chapter and like a chapter of a book. What's happening? And it just began, the love affair that I have with the word. And I always loved reading and looking back, it's actually a part of myself that I loved writing as a little girl, too, but I had kind of, like, put the noose on that girl. Maybe somewhere, I think probably in junior high school, where I started to try to kind of conform and fit in and kind of put my focus on things that were very external, that I would get external validation for. And I sort of lost that creative self. But my mom was moving a couple of years ago, and she pulled out all these old boxes, and there were all these papers that I'd written, like, in third grade. That where they had a plot, they had an arc of the story. I was like, okay, so this was in me.
 
 [22:20] Moira: That's quite lovely. I think we can all do anything that we have a desire to do. And if we have a desire, it's put on our heart for a reason. It's now, are you going to take action? And I always talk about inspired action in spirit to follow through with that. And when you talked earlier about improv and different things, I started doing improv. Not on stage, just around the house and things, because I'm older now. I was too scared to do that, like, in junior high school or that I thought, oh, I wasn't in the in crowd. I couldn't do that. But now there was this one about give permission. So, let's dive into right there, by the way, because I want everybody to hear this. Your mantra about, I give myself permission to become a fearless, passionate creator. You use that permission mantra many times not to become a passionate creator. And where else do you do this? Do you do it every time in your life? I give myself permission to you can.
 
 [23:16] Emily: Use it for anything that you're scared of.
 
 [23:20] Moira: Yeah, I think it's a biggie for people to give them some permission, because I think the biggest cricket for ourselves is sometimes us. We get ourselves.
 
 [23:29] Emily: And I remember when I first learned about this concept, my teacher was like, the permission levels have been really low this lifetime. And I was like, what do you mean? I'm a 29-year-old woman. I can do anything I want. And then he was like, so why aren't you? I was like, what do you mean? Make me a passion list. And I think I came up with cooking and dancing at concerts were like, my only passions. And skiing, maybe. And he was like, there's so much inside of you that wants to be expressed. And I think that's actually, I don't know if there's enough conversations about this kind of circulating. I think a huge pain level for so many of us is that we are not fully expressed. And there's something inside of us that wants to be expressed. And we're too afraid to express that, whether it's writing a poem, or singing a song or dancing or whatever it is. And so, I've really found when we are not connected to the intrinsic passion that is living within us, really, it's like permission leads to the passion and passion leads to the purpose. And when we are living a life full of passion and on purpose, what it does is it creates a little something called sovereignty. And sovereignty means I really like myself, I enjoy my own company. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to not over consume in all of the ways, whether it's alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, internet, and it allows us to really carry a certain magnetic frequency that attracts so many things to us. Because a vibration of neediness and lack is the opposite of sovereignty. And if we're vibrating from meaningless and lack, that's not going to magnetize abundance to us. So, it's really interesting how people can be struggling or sick in many ways. And really the antidote, the remedy is passion and purpose. And it all starts with that permission. Permission to be the beginner.
 
 [25:41] Moira: Share with us how anger is a big part of healing and how do we forgive and release resentment, which has a very low frequency. You have this exercise called the Swish exercise. Can you share that with us today?
 
 [25:55] Emily: Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, that's another thing with anger with women, we don't want to admit that we're angry because it's like that image, the caricature of the angry woman. And nobody wants to be that, right? So, it's like I remember the first time that I was called out on like that I need to express my anger and I was like angry. I'm good. And so many women I work with too, they feel the same way, they say the same thing. But it's really just been so suppressed within us. And that anger can end up being really toxic. But we can release the anger. We can release it in sacred rage ceremonies. The one that I talk about in my book, I'm banging the pillows on my bed with a tennis racket and just feeling the power that comes with owning that. And if you haven't yet allowed yourself to let that rage run through you and just own it, there's an opportunity there. Because really when we let it flow through us, it's like liquid drain out through the body, like removing so many blocks and things that have gotten stuck and allow yourself to scream and beat the pillows. You can scream in your car if you live in close proximity to other people and you don't feel like you can do that and feel comfortable doing it. But everything's energy, right? We want it to flow. Being on the quest is a fluid it's a fluid experience. And so, we always want as much of the energy to flow as possible. And of course, there's going to be things that make us angry. It doesn't matter how long you've been on the path. It doesn't matter if you're the Dalai Lama. Anger is part of the human experience, and if we weren't meant to feel it, it wouldn't be there. Right. So, allowing yourself again, I give myself permission to feel my anger. Right. Permission is available to us all the time. And after you do that, oftentimes you get to a place, and I found you forgiveness. There's a time and a place for forgiveness. You need to be ready for it. And I have found that we become ready to forgive when we feel really good about the present moment in our lives. And what the creative does is it brings us into the present moment. In moments of inspiration, we feel connected to who we are and why we're here. And in those moments, lack falls away. Resentment alkalizes to gratitude because we realized, oh my gosh, I had to take all of these steps, all of those painful steps to get to this moment where there's no place I'd rather be. And usually then is when you're really ready to forgive because you start to see, oh, gosh, I've been holding on to stuff that's just like a rusty anchor on me. I don't need to hold onto anymore. So, when I experienced that and I got ready for that, there's a scene in the book where I'm in the bathtub and I start to go through like, the movie screen of my life, of all of the people that I've been, there's still some energy there, like slightly resentful or that it's just sort of energized. Maybe the resentment has sort of started to fade away, but there's still some energy there that needs to be released. And so, I just did this mantra that you can do too. And it's just right now, you can do it. Right now, you can think of somebody that you're ready to let go of, that you're ready to neutralize that energy, and you can say, I forgive myself. I forgive X. X, forgives me. I forgive myself. I forgive X. Ex forgives me. And you can also say you can take personal responsibility if there's any part of that interaction that you want to own up to. Because anytime we take personal responsibility and own up to somebody. Something that is a very powerful healing frequency and vibrational frequency that really allows us to take quantum loops in our life. And then I would just go swish. Because I visualized that energy just swishing down the drain. And so, I think I did that for, I don't know, maybe at least ten or 15 people. And I continue to do that when I want to neutralize the energy. And you. Have more power than you know to shift and neutralize energy between you and another person.
 
 [30:36] Moira: You talk about the entourage of people. Would that be the people that you were? Well, maybe define that for our listeners and those would be some of the people that you either took responsibility or did the forgiveness swish exercise with and that we all have an entourage.
 
 [30:51] Emily: Yes. Well, my teacher, James, at the time, we worked together for eleven years, and then it was time for me to spread my wings and fly my own way. But he is a clairvoyant, and he would speak to the understanding a lot that human experience is a very trans-venational experience. And that spirit, spirits are all around us. And the energy of people that we have agreements in our lives come around us, they come around us. And that energy can influence the way we think and feel and act. And it can even be energy that's coming from a spirit that doesn't have a body and that can impact the way we think and feel and act. And so, to really tune into our truth and to have clarity, it's helpful to clear that entourage, right? And so, you can do that through transmuting. And so, what you can do is you can pop balloons. You can see like balloons around your crown, around your head, and you can just see energy from like, let's say, let's say you've just been kind of obsessing. Let's say there's somebody in your life that you've been obsessing about. It could be like a lover or maybe like a business partner that screwed you over or something that you're obsessing, and you want to release that energy. You can just see all of the energy going into the balloon so it's filling up bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And then you can just pop it. Or you can send it out to the middle of the universe and pop it. Or if it's easier for you, you can see all that energy going onto a glass window and slam the window with a hammer and see all of the shards go onto the ground and sucked up by the earth and alkalize and send that energy back to the individual. And after you've cleared yourself from the energy, one other way to do it too is to visualize a grounding cord from your first energy center spiraling down through the crest of the Earth and diving down through the many layers of soil into the center of the planet and just visualize the color. So maybe there's an individual in your life and a color pops into your mind for this person. And just like there's a hole in the bottom of a glass, you just see that color draining completely out of you, down your grounding cord and back into the center of the planet where it can be returned to that individual. And then afterwards you fill your body up with a bright color. So those are definitely three ways that you can clear the energy of others that get in your space.
 
 [33:27] Moira: Wonderful. Now, do you feel like when you teach this, that you teach the colors in alignment with our chakras? Or you just ask people to choose a color that comes to them intuitively?
 
 [33:41] Emily: For chakra meditations, I do colors the chakras, but when people are just they're just doing it by themselves and they just have a color that they really feel the best, like their high vibe, I just say pick the color that would describe you when you are vibrating in your highest place.
 
 [34:00] Moira: Wonderful. Let's talk about the patriarch programming. And literally, the feminine doesn't agree to the patriot programming. She retains the essence of her spiritual nature today. How can a woman be divinely feminine within a patriarch culture and the programming?
 
 [34:22] Emily: Such an important question for our times. In my experience, in my perspective, really, every single woman on this planet is inherently divinely feminine. But most of us feel disconnected from this because we've been raised by an overarching culture, the patriarchy, that has told us in overt and subliminal ways that we need to alter ourselves, to fit into boxes, to receive approval and acceptance. So, what we really need to do to embody this power and beauty that is inherently us is to remove the obstruction, which is really the false beliefs that have been passed down to us, that is preventing us from embodying this fully. So, this is really the heart of the work that I do with women. And when they do this, it is so incredible to watch women just find the light of liberation and personal power on the other side. It's stunning. This is the work the women that come to me. It always makes me a little bit sad when I see sort of like, coaches and people out there talking about, like, there's sort of this concept that you need to fix yourself. Okay. No, you don't need to fix yourself. We need to remove the obstruction and allow your magic to shine forth because it's already there.
 
 [35:49] Moira: I was sure. Like yourself, Emily, we're not broken. We are a whole, and we're beautiful spiritual beings living a physical life. And to realize instead of judgment on ourselves that we're broken or we're not enough and we need to be fixed, like you said, remove what that is. Let it be a belief system or something generational.
 
 [36:13] Emily: And I really have found that the natural world, especially being here in Costa Rica, and probably you have to say, too, in the Wisconsin world, is always the greatest teacher in helping us better understand who we are. Mother Ocean, for example, she's the bringer of all life on the planet. She's nutritive, life affirming, and some days she's calm and peaceful, and other days she's wild and messy and stormy and angry. Right. She is quite literally the softest and the strongest element of anything we know and most of all, she's wholeness. And so just what you said, the Divine Feminine. What happened is we've had to cut off parts of ourselves to survive in this patriarchal culture. And the real power of being Divinely Feminine is coming back into that voice of women, coming into the truth of who they are, whatever that means to you. It can mean someone sitting pretty in a rose garden or a woman in combat boots, right? But when we tune into the truth of who we are, that's when we are divine.
 
 [37:20] Moira: And that would be also moving into living in the heart so we can totally find joy and passion and purpose.
 
 [37:30] Emily: Absolutely. We are meant to know what lights us up inside that's part of the human experience. In my own personal experience from the beginning of the book, like a wild and crazy party girl looking for meaning in all the wrong places, when finding passion and purpose, the desire to consume things that weren't good for me just naturally fell away. It was like effortless.
 
 [38:04] Moira: I'm sure it did because you were aligning. You did the work for one thing. You did the sacred inward journey to do your healing. Do you continue to do a lot of these rituals when you have challenges and obstacles and things that maybe get you angry or anxious? Do you do all this work daily or weekly or when things come up?
 
 [38:25] Emily: Yeah. So, this December will be 15 years on my quest and so things have definitely gotten easier than they were in the beginning where I had to say everything is right now, 100 times a day because I have so much anxiety and was in such a shaky place. But I think things call to you at different times on your path. I've been working for the past eight years now with a new teacher who actually channeled the methodology of gateless writing that I teach on my retreats. And I am finding my soul being called to women teachers at this time. I'm finding nature to be one of my biggest teachers at this time. So really grounding in nature, doing ceremonial type rituals in nature, walking barefoot through the jungle, dawn, connecting in the ocean, like putting down grounding cords when I'm surfing. And yeah, I'm finding that nature at the moment is really taken center stage as one of my main teachers. And I always in giving myself permission, I'm always taking personal responsibility, I do say through rage rituals, and I find that the creative is just the gift that keeps on giving. If I feel disconnected, whatever it is for you, find that thing, right? It could be dance; it could be writing. For me, my big ones are dance writing, surfing and being in nature. Those things just connect me to the great mystery so quickly. And I think that if we can connect with that great mystery, we are reminded that we are that that is expressing itself through us. And it's like the not enough Ness that wants to creep in from society, it kind of pushes it back out. And it's not something it's not one and done, you know, it's a practice. We have to continue to do these things. And the more you do them, the better you feel.
 
 [40:43] Moira: Yes, I know that. As you were saying, as of, I think it was yesterday, we were a year that we moved into our home in Nova Scotia. And we were Ontario before. And I also knew as a young girl, I was brought up in Toronto. That when my parents bought 100 acres of farm. That's where my joy was as a twelve-year-old walking along the land and the streams and the cows and just the freedom of being out with nature. And nature is also very huge to me. And such gifts that we can have because we are at one with nature, as we say. That at one with nature. Closer to the end of the book, you had a question asked you from James regarding consciousness and the decision that you made. Are you willing to lose everything to get consciousness? How did that come up for you? Like, how did that unfold for you at that time?
 
 [41:37] Emily: Oh, my goodness. Well, yeah, I mean, it was like I'd been through the ring of fire. I did all of this spiritual work. I had this happy life. I had this beautiful home and this loving husband and this beautiful dog. And I was at an art studio, and I was just finishing my book and going to get it published and starting to work with women, and all of these things were, like, on track. And I started to feel the very unnerving feeling of apathy start to creep back into my life, which I felt very apathetic before I discovered the creative, okay, just like, you know, I could do that, but I don't know, maybe tomorrow. And I didn't understand that apathy is a direct descendant of fear, of failure and perfectionism. And so, I was feeling that start to creep back in. And that's when my teacher was like, you need to unfreeze your heart. And I was like, what are you talking about? I've been on this path for six years, and every single day I've done probably 200 body healings. I've written a book; I've opened up my creativity. I've forgiven all of these things. What do you mean I haven't unfrozen my heart? And he was like, maybe a symbol of, like, a quarter with his fingers. And he was like, you’ve unfrozen 25%. Then I was like, My gosh, how the heck do I unfreeze the rest? He was like, just real blasé. Shrugged his shoulders. He's like consciousness. I'm like, oh, consciousness. Okay, no big deal. I was like, well, I want consciousness. And he kind of, like, backed away into the kitchen. I remember his nose his glasses slid down his nose. He looked at me eye to eye and said, are you willing to lose everything to get it? And I don't know what was swirling inside of me that day, but I remember, like, putting my little fist in my other hand, kind of in defiance. And I was like, I want consciousness. And he was like, Buckle up, sweet pea. Things are about to get really interesting around here. And I remember lying in bed that night, like, biting a nail, but I don't bite my nails and being, like, scared. I could feel something had shifted. I had done something real. And I was like, oh, my gosh, am I going to be, like, on a park bench like Eckert Toll? What's going to happen to me? Well, exactly three months later, my seemingly perfect marriage, my husband sat me down. He said, I'm depressed and suicidal and moving out. And that just started a spiral of all sorts of things happening. I ended up freezing my eggs, getting extraordinarily sick. Like, incredible chronic illness that lasted years and years and years that had me spending all of my savings trying to regain my health. Everything started getting ripped away from me to get me consciousness and what I've learned about the quest. If you say a resounding yes to this path, you are going to experience a series of spiritual deaths and rebirth, because that's how spirit delivers what you're wanting. And so now, this whole year, I feel like I've been in spiritual death number four. And it gets easier because you know what it is, and you welcome it. And at the same time, there can be a lot of tears and a lot of feeling like you're losing a limb as you are letting go of another false belief that had carried you for some time. But you also have passed evidence to show every time that you've been through one of those deaths, then in that void, a beautiful rebirth happens. And that's really what it's all about. It's a series of deaths and rebirths along the spiritual path, and you get more skilled and become more fluid at letting it just happen, surrendering to it.
 
 [46:01] Moira: I think that would be a beautiful nick spoke for you to write. Emily.
 
 [46:06] Emily: I think a lot of people that's the sequel.
 
 [46:11] Moira: I think it is a sequel. And I would think that just you talking about it, you've done all that healing work, and then what happened? And then when you said yes, and three months later, you're partnering, that a lot of people who are going through that spiritual death and think they're losing things in their life or changing, they probably don't even know what that is. Like you said earlier, which I believe that everything is happening for our highest and our best, even if we can't see it.
 
 [46:40] Emily: Very true. And it's so important if you're in that right now to just treat yourself with so much compassion because there's so much on the internet right now. But if you're not making a million dollars a month and don't have this life and whatever, that your vibe is off. And that is not true. Like there are times it's just like a slingshot. Sometimes we need to go back to be shot way forward. So, if you are in that period, just surrender to it. Ask for the gifts. And so much blooms in the palace of Humility. Truly like that palace of Humility that I was crawling around and for a few years, right as 20 straddled. 30 gave me so much compassion for other people and myself that I really didn't have before. So much perspective and so much gratitude. Things that are very important elements to a life well lived. And so know that there are gifts in this time and that the seeds are planted in the dark soil.
 
 [47:42] Moira: I love that. Also in your book, when James shared with you just looking at a flower or I don't know if it was James or your other teacher Jody, if we just shut down the chatter and the noise and just be at one with whatever's in front of you. If you start to create that way of being, like you said, all these gifts can show up for us in our life. It's just being more conscious.
 
 [48:14] Emily: It's really bad too. Like neuroscience affirms this because the reticular activating system in the brain is going to amplify whatever gets attention. So, what we focus too does grow. So just remembering this is actually a practice I forgot to mention, this is something I do as much as I possibly can. I used to do it religiously every single day. But since having two children, I don't always get through it. But writing down ten things you have gratitude for and why the why is so important usually shifts your energetic frequency by around like items six or seven. You're like, I have an amazing life. And if you do it consistently, I've had periods where I've done it for like 30 or 60 days in a row. You start to really be aware of like electricity hot shower, your blender, you know what I mean? Just like things that we really take for granted. You start to be like, wow, I'm really grateful for that. And that vibrational, frequency of gratitude, that's the foundational building block of all abundance. Like if you're in a place where you're feeling scarcity, where you're feeling like life's rewards are taking the slow lane to get to you, the fastest way to switch things up is to start practicing daily gratitude.
 
 [49:32] Moira: Definitely. I was well, I used to do the Attitude of Gratitude dance at workshops. And when my husband and I, we spoke on cruise lines for many years and people love that dance. Attitude of gratitude. Attitude of gratitude. And I would just raise it higher and higher and get them moving. Faster and they just were laughing, and they've just shifted their vibration.
 
 [49:55] Emily: It's so simple. Well, all of this wisdom, right? It's so simple in theory, right? It's just we just have to do it. So, it's just that consistency. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes. And when you find yourself in a hard situation ask yourself what is the gift here? I know this is for me, I know this is happening for me. So, what is the gift? And the gifts will start to appear and sometimes the gift is realizing the role that you may be showing up continuously in your life and you're like maybe that's not serving me. Thank you for illuminating this gift.
 
 [50:31] Moira: It's one of the biggest questions through coaching that my clients really love. What is a giftedness to the point that I purchased the URL. It's one of my books in those series that I'm doing because they really said they taught their children it so it would just change their reframe a situation how you look at something. Again, James shared in your book with you that our planet is traveling through an expanding universe which is very challenging for people but also an opportunity to wake up. I totally believe those. I would love to hear your thoughts on people waking up and becoming more conscious and to really start to embrace who they truly are.
 
 [51:15] Emily: Yes, well it's been going on for some time, but I think with the past few years with COVID it's been a massive awakening for so many people. There's just a little microcosm in the town that I live in. I live a one small little fishing village. Surf Village is now like kind of a booming place because so many people left their countries and moved here, and they said I don't want to live life the way that I've been living it. As is with everything. Of course, there's hardship and devastation with Covid but at the same time there's been tremendous gifts of people being able to slow down and pause and really re-evaluate OK, how am I living my life? Is this actually what I want to be doing? And so as more and more people wake up it shifts the energetic frequency for there to be permission for more people too. We're like we're like rocks in the pond, right? And creating this ripple effect where the ripples out and out and out tow it to our family, to our friends, to people in our communities. And the conversations about energy and frequency I think are a lot more common now. And of course, the internet to exploding the way that it has in the past twelve years. The spread of information is obviously helping too. It's getting information to the far corners of the globe that would not have had access to it.
 
 [52:46] Moira: And exactly what you said. I call it the snowball effect. Not that there's snow here right now but the snowball effect as we do our own healing and generational healing, and as we're speaking our truth to give other people the permission to speak their truth. And my whole thing is creating a life you love on your terms. That's been a tag that I've had a long time with creating your life. Emily, can you share a brief excerpt from your book? I love my authors reading because they get to hear your voice and to leave our listeners with inspiration and empowerment.
 
 [53:25] Emily: I would be honored. Okay, so this is from a chapter when I went down to the Amazon jungle 18 hours by boat and did an Ayahuasca ceremony with the Matses tribe curled up on a hammock, immersed in the intricate web, overflowing with more plant and animal species than anywhere else on the planet, confirmed that the natural world thrives in an unhampered state. If we're part of the natural world too, why aren't humans thriving? I wondered. Could it be that all of these fragmented ills of society from racism, rape, war, poverty, dolphin, child trafficking, GMOs drugs, climate change, poverty, the banking crisis, even unfaithfulness, are really just branches of the same tree called Not Enough? Suddenly it is startlingly obvious. But the same patriarchal machine that oppresses, annihilates, destroys, and exhausts resources all in the name of acquiring money and power, is the same machine perpetuating the war on women with clarity I've never experienced before. I see that for the planet to evolve into wholeness and harmony, the feminine spirit needs to rise. But first we need to find wholeness and harmony within ourselves.
 
 [54:49] Moira: Beautiful. I know we didn't get into that part of your journey, but that's beautiful. Thank you so much, Emily. We're at the part now that if you could share the gift that you like to give to our listeners today, the links will be below in the show notes for the gift, and I know you're going to have some surprise gifts there and how you can connect up with Emily. Find out more about her wellness center and her Sunrise Mountain retreat and her writing clinics and time with Emily and her skills. So that's going to be below, but if you could share the gift or gifts, Emily, that would be wonderful.
 
 [55:26] Emily: Yeah. Well, first of all, since we've been chatting so much about the quest, I would love to offer you the first three chapters for free. So, the link will be there to read the first three chapters. And I alluded to the retreat that I host here in Costa Rica. At the retreat center that I built. It's called the Mermaid Sisterhood. And like I said, it's really this mini quest that you go on to find the jewel inside. And we do that through a series of carefully curated embodiment practices. Writing workshops is one of them. But there's also yoga, and giving, surf lessons, sweat lodge, breathwork sound, healing dance, bonfires, nature spa day, and many more amazing things. And so, if that calls to you, if you feel a spark in your heart hearing about that, I am offering 10% off if you're listening today.
 
 [56:24] Moira: And this will be up for many years, so you might hear somebody in a few years from now, go. I want to go do that with Emily.
 
 [56:31] Emily: That's okay. I'm down to keep honoring that.
 
 [56:35] Moira: Thank you, Emily. Thank you for sharing from your heart and your soul your wisdom on tapping into your creative and divine self. Namaste.
 
 [56:47] Emily: Thank you so much.
 
 [56:56] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Heart Soul Wisdom podcast with Moira Sutton. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please join our community@moirasutton.com and continue the discussion on our Facebook page. Create the Life You Love you will be part of a global movement connecting with other heart-centered people who are consciously creating the life they love on their own terms. Together, we can raise our consciousness for the greater good of humanity and our planet.