Expand Your Consciousness with Monica Berg

In this Episode

• [00:39]Stephan introduces Monica Berg, the author of Fear Is Not an Option and Rethink Love, and she co-hosts the Spiritually Hungry podcast with her husband, Michael Berg.
• [05:02]Monica discusses the impact of not believing in suffering on expanding one’s consciousness.
• [10:05]Does Monica have access to her past lives?
• [15:53]Stephan and Monica talk about the possibility that children and parents, through past lives, can show up in different roles.
• [19:38]What is a Tikkun, and what are examples of it?
• [25:21]Stephan tells a Kabbalah story about a man who paid his karmic debt for leaving his bride at the altar.
• [31:04]Monica points out how everything in our lives matters, and it all adds to who we become.
• [35:47]Monica shares how she got her divine inspiration and found her path at 17.
• [40:13]Monica explains the two types of light; surrounding light and internal light.
• [43:59]Visit Monica Berg’s blog at rethinklife.today to learn more about her, check out her books, and listen to her and Michael Berg’s podcast, Spiritually Hungry.

Jump to Links and Resources

Monica, it’s so great to have you on the show.

It’s great to be with you today.

First of all, let’s talk about fear. I heard this great definition of fear, that it’s essentially the opposite of love. I used to think that hate was the opposite of love, but then I heard that fear is the opposite of love. That resonates more for me. I’d love to hear what your definition is and a little bit more of your perspective around fear.

I think that’s interesting because if you are living a fear-based life and that informs your decisions, you really aren’t fully loving yourself because to live a life that is fear-averse is joy-averse. I was inspired to write a book because I would give a talk in London on fear. I was hopelessly lost. Uber was very new then, and you’re much safer taking a taxi. This ends in the streets of London.

Anyway, we were in the car and the radio was on. This woman was talking about how you need to learn to cope with your fear, navigate your fear, live with it, and control it. I thought, no, you’ve got this all wrong. Of course, meanwhile, I’m worried that I’m late, but I thought we really want to eradicate fear from our lives. That was really inspiring and powerful for me.

In my book, I break down the different ways to do that and to really live in a way where fear is no longer in the driver seat. 

What does it look like having fear in the driver seat, which a lot of people have been experiencing during this pandemic? What does that look like?

Especially the way the world is today with the pandemic, it seems like everything is so dividing, whether it’s what’s happening in Israel and Palestine. It’s just one thing after the other. It’s really easy to start to be even more fearful because there are legitimate reasons more than we had two years ago. 

Even then, it seems like a waste of a life to live in fear because it stops us from enjoying this moment, from being present in our lives, to really being able to go after the things that inspire us to challenge ourselves, to really move aside the worry, the doubt, and the negative thoughts we have in our head and put forward our desires to really live the reason we were meant to come here, to really fulfill and find our potential.

Let’s talk about the reason why we’re here in this incarnation. How do you determine what that is? How do you step into that?

There are many hints along the way if you’re paying attention. When I came into the world, I really remember vivid memories at age four or five of having tea parties with God. I really felt like I was part of something greater than myself. Of course, I lost touch with that a little bit later in life and then I found it again when I was 17. 

I remember looking around in my family feeling very alien and foreign because nobody seemed to have answers to life’s questions. Everybody seemed to still be figuring it out and suffering really quite honestly. I remember making a choice that I want to really find why I’m here. 

In order to do that, first, you need to ask specific questions and really wait to hear the answers. Very often, we have belief systems that this is as good as it gets. There’s nothing else out there, so we stop hearing our internal voice and we stop connecting to something greater than ourselves. 

For me, because I don’t believe in suffering, when challenges occur in my own life, I was really set to find the meaning of it, the purpose of it, and expand my consciousness to understand what could be the gift in this thing that seems like the last thing I want. That’s the beginning of it. 

I don’t believe in suffering.

The second part is to really be able to look at what’s coming up. If you have many things that reoccur, if you have a challenge with this person, it happens again with your boss, and then again with somebody else and you start to connect those, then you can really start to identify the certain areas that are coming to you in your life for an opportunity for you to grow, evolve, and ultimately embrace joy and happiness that lasts and that isn’t fleeting. 

I love that. These tea parties with God that you had as a young girl, what was that like? Did you see angels? Did you hear voices inside your head or a booming voice from a nearby bush? How did that manifest to you?

No. For me, it was a feeling of belonging, safety, and security. I was aware that there was a presence. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t hear it. Thank God, I think I would’ve been terrified actually. It was just this knowing. I felt completely whole, safe, secure. 

I remember sitting there and serving tea. I had this record player that holds stories on the screen. We’d watch it together. When people have imaginary friends, I wonder if it’s connected to that. I never had it like that but that for me was the feeling.

I read a book called My Invisible Friends. It’s by a psychic, Michelle Whitedove. It’s all about a young child seeing angels, not being afraid of that, and not having adults dismiss that and dismiss you as imagining things. These are very real. The tangible world feels very real, yet the invisible world, the unseen world, is actually more real.

A hundred percent. One of the premises of Kabbalah is the 1% world we live in versus the 99% realm. The 1% is our five senses. It’s the part that we take most seriously and it’s the biggest illusion of all. 

I write about that in my other book, Rethink Love, that very often, when people choose a mate, they’re doing that in the 1% realm. It’s just their five senses—how does that person smell, how do they make me feel, and what’s the attraction? While those things are important, they’re not what will stand the test of time. I’m going on 25 years of marriage. It’s really the aspects that you can’t see that are the glue-like kindness, empathy, compassion, purpose, and sharing that together that really grows love even more in the later years.

How did you end up finding your soulmate 25+ years ago?

We were really young, too. I started studying Kabbalah. That was what I found at 17. His parents had founded the Kabbalah Centre. He was born into it. We’re just a year apart, but in the 1%, we were so different. He was very schooled in his wisdom. He could read Aramaic, Hebrew, and really a scholar. 

I went to Beverly Hills High School. I had a very different upbringing. I was born in Thibodaux in Louisiana. That’s why we actually were drawn to each other. Somebody told me that this is who you’ll marry at some point in life. I said, “Absolutely not. No way.”

It started out really quite honestly as more of a thud than a bang. It wasn’t like these great fireworks and passion. I didn’t even really notice him. Then two years later when I had been doing a lot of spiritual work and a lot of work on myself, it was like the veil was lifted. We both saw each other in that way and we were married nine months later.

When you said the veil was lifted, how does that manifest? How does that show up?

If you live a fear-based life, you don't fully love yourself. Because to live a life that is fear-averse is joy-averse. Share on X

Oftentimes, souls are waiting to find one another again in this life. I think there has to be a process of earning that. It’s not that a person is bad or they’re not worthy. I’m not saying that at all. I think everybody is worthy of love, but to be in that kind of relationship, a soulmate relationship doesn’t mean that you’re so compatible and everything is great all the time. 

There will be challenges. The person’s a mirror for you, but you have a very unique purpose in coming together to do things that are for yourself but also greater for the world. For me, to have found him again and also for him, we both had to go through different experiences of growth in those years that we were in the same environment, the same vicinity, but to be able to recognize each other, something had to shift and change within ourselves.

You said find him again, so you had other lifetimes with him as your soulmate?

I believe that, yes.

Do you have access to memories of past lives?

Yeah. It’s interesting actually that we’re going in this direction of the conversation. My father died a month ago. He was sick with Alzheimer’s for eight years. 

I’m so sorry.

Thank you. In a way, I had honestly prayed for the day to come sooner than later because I felt like there were moments where he was suffering, although I do feel like he was in a different reality. What do we know, really? I just felt like he was trapped in his body and he really wanted to leave, but something was holding him back.

When he passed actually, I was so surprised because, in those eight years, I hadn’t created any new memories with him. When he passed, it was like all of these things I had forgotten, I felt them so completely. He even had a moment where he was very lucid—he almost was never sick right before he passed—with me and one of my sisters. That was really powerful. 

I started to revisit because my father was actually the one that introduced me to Kabbalah and also to reincarnation. The first spiritual book I ever read was Many Lives, Many Masters. I reread it this past month. 

I remember the question now. I found this book because I was helping my mom clean her house a year ago with my father’s belongings. It was really hard for her to be reminded of the past all the time. I had found that original book. It was all marked up, so when I read it, I had thought that it was my father’s markings, but when I looked at it, there were things highlighted and underlined. 

I still do that to books to this day. I love marking up a book. I realized that those remind us from 30 years ago. The things that still made me light up when I was reading it were the passages that I had highlighted. It talks a lot about that process that the soul goes through, past life regression therapy, and the different stories, which are so relatable and so inspiring. I have in fact have had access to two past lives of mine. 

It’s interesting because you’re talking about psychics earlier when we’re talking before. I went to this woman. I always want somebody who doesn’t know my name at all and who’s never heard me. I don’t want them to have any information. 

I’m very particular if I’m ever going to take advice. I also really like to connect my own intuition to the creator and find my own way. That’s the work that I do all the time. I don’t really rely on psychics, but once in a while, if you hear there’s a really great person, it’s nice to go to somebody that may or may not confirm what it is you’re already doing. They don’t go there waiting for some kind of direction.

Anyway, she asked me the question, and I have four children. I think I asked her if I was going to have more. She said, “Do you want?” I said, “Yeah, no matter how many kids I have, I always have a longing for another one.” I don’t really understand that feeling. I’m so overwhelmed with work and balancing everything already in my life. 

She said, “You know, it’s because in the past life, you lost a child, and you think that they drowned.” That’s all she said. When she said this, all of a sudden, I said to her, “Wait a second. I’ve had this recurring dream at least 15–20 times in my life, the same exact dream, but they stopped once I got married.” 

I started telling her the dream. As I’m telling her the dream, we’re having a conversation like she’s had this dream too. She hasn’t, but through her psychic ability, she’s seeing the dream. The story is like these Venetian paintings of a woman in a robe dress—a robe that ties as a belt—and her hair is curly. There are those columns. Often, they have their hands on the columns and they’re looking out in the ocean. I’m that woman in the dream. I’m looking out into the ocean every morning and every evening. I’m longing for something. I’m searching for something and I never find it.

Then, later in the dream, I’m now in the water. I’m in a different body and it’s a child. I am so scared that I’m going to drown. I’m trying to hold on to the side of the cliff, water keeps coming over me, waves keep splashing me, and then eventually, I’m able to get out and climb. But I look back across the ocean and I am worried about somebody else now who won’t know I’m okay. 

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Basically, she tells me that the reason you always long for a child is that this is one of your past lives. You don’t realize that your child didn’t actually drown. They made it out. In the dream, I was able to have the perspective of both the mother and the child.

Wow, amazing. Did you communicate with that child that was lost that you never found in that lifetime?

I have not. I’m not sure how I would go about that. I don’t know why I feel like somehow, that’s connected to my father’s passing for some reason. My father was afraid of water and drowning, so much so that we went on a trip to Israel once. We were in the Dead Sea. I kept saying, “I have you. Just relax. It’s impossible to drown in this water with all the salt. It’s impossible,” but he panicked and he ended up cutting his leg on one of the rusty things. Imagine all the salt.

Anyway, I feel like I have closure with that. Perhaps, my father is proud of that story.

I’ve heard that children, parents, and so forth from past lives can show up in a different role.

That’s interesting because that dynamic would make more sense if I look back at our relationship. Even once he passed, the overwhelming feeling I had was a worry for him, like how is he transitioning? Is he okay? 

Even when he was in hospice the last two weeks of his life, I was just showing up there. It’s all about nurturing him, making sure he feels safe and secure. We’re three sisters and I was the only one that approached it that way. That very much makes a lot of sense. I only had that full awareness in talking to you at this moment that that’s the end of that part of that lifetime.

Wow. Amazing.

Yes, very amazing.

I’m curious to come back to the whole concept of reincarnation. This is a foundational concept, not just in Hinduism, but Judaism and Kabbalah as well. There are other religions and spiritual belief systems that include reincarnation and some people are not buying into it. 

You mentioned the book, Many Lives, Many Masters. I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I just, two days ago, had the inspiration to send my uncle—who’s got a terminal illness, cancer—that book. I actually bought it for him on Amazon and made sure that he read it. He’s like, “Oh, I’ll check it out from the library when I get a chance.” I’m like, “Can I buy it for you and send it to you?” He said, “Okay, sure, I’ll read it.”

I have goosebumps. It’s so powerful because when I was with my father in the hospital, I kept reminding him of what he had already studied and what he had learned. My husband and I did a podcast on this in the last month or so about reincarnation. I kept saying I’m not sure how many people believe him. My husband’s like, “No, I think more people buy into this than not these days.“

I kept telling my dad there’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re going to be free. Your soul just wants to leave and this is who you’re going to see there. I was talking about the journey of the soul and all of the things that are in the book as well. It really helped me and I could feel it. He did wake up as if he was really healthy again. I knew he heard me. 

What I truly believe is that the way we understand life and death is all backward because we understand that when a baby is born, it’s in a baby’s body. Then, that child will grow into a toddler, a child, a teenager, a young adult, then they’re old, and they die. 

I actually don’t think that. I think they shed the body and then the soul goes on to continue growing. We just didn’t have access to that again in this 1% realm so we don’t fully understand and we think they’re gone. In fact, the soul keeps learning and growing, and then it can choose to come back into a body to complete its correction, or in Kabbalistic terms, it’s Tikkun.

We’re going to get to Tikkun because it’s very powerful and important. You mentioned goosebumps a couple of minutes ago. What’s the significance of goosebumps? 

The gut is really the first brain. Then, we have many more neurons and nerve endings there that send signals to our bodies. For me, when something resonates, I feel it there, and then it goes through my body. I just see it as a truth that’s been said. Even though your mind can’t fully access that perhaps at the moment, your body certainly recognizes the truth. 

The gut is really the first brain.

It’s a signal from the 99% reality that you’re tapped in, plugged in, and part of the fabric of creation and you’re receiving the truth. Cool.

Let’s talk about the Tikkun. This is something that is an important concept. It’s more than a concept. It’s part of why we’re even here in this incarnation so that we can address our Tikkun, our soul correction, elevate, and progress in our soul’s journey, not just in this lifetime. 

It gives us an opportunity to exercise our free will and put in a situation that is difficult for us, challenging, or that is a struggle for each person uniquely—because my Tikkun will be different from yours—by having to go through that and be given the opportunity to face something that is difficult for you because it’s something that you come in and with your blueprint from a past life you really didn’t resolve. These opportunities will come up again and again so that you can choose differently hopefully than the last time. 

In doing so, then you elevate your soul. You grow, you become more and more aware and conscious, and then hopefully live a more mindful existence. That is how the soul elevates to different higher levels of understanding consciousness, which then stays with you.

I learned from Kabbalah classes at the Kabbalah Centre that the Tikkun is something that we’re probably the last ones to be clued into to see. Everyone else around us sees it. “Stephan, you’re pretty judgmental. I don’t see it. No, I do see it.” 

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That’s something that I’m working on addressing, clearing that Tikkun around judgment because I can be very judging and I didn’t see it. Now that I see it, awareness is the first big step in the journey. Now that I’m aware of it, I can start to correct it, but until I’m aware, I’m completely clueless like a bowl in a China shop. 

Right. So many people aren’t even open to that feedback. Very often, ego gets involved. It’s like, oh, I know best. Don’t tell me what to do. You never hear me. Why don’t you just listen to me? I’m not all bad. The victim mode sets in. 

I don’t want people to misunderstand this either. It’s really important to be able to learn to love yourself, to love all of you, and then from that space be able to say, okay, I love myself but these are aspects of my character that don’t really serve me. It’s time to shed them, to release them, and drop them. 

That’s where Tikkun can be really useful because I’m sure you as a whole are a beautiful person, but if you’re busy judging everybody, listen, you’re not going to be truly happy because you’re judging yourself more than anyone else. Anybody who judges others, the harshness is the one that is looking within. That’s the beauty of it. That’s where the expansion comes from.

When you’re judging, you stop loving.

That’s so true. Another thing that helped me through addressing this was the realization that when you’re judging, you stop loving. While you’re judging, you’re not loving, and vice-versa. If you’re truly loving, you’re not judging. 

That realization, which again I learned from Kabbalah classes, was very freeing because it’s like, I want to be loving all the time. I don’t want to cut that off. If I’m judging, I’ve cut off the flow of love to others and to myself.

With judgment, since we’re on the topic, the mistake people make is that they don’t realize that when you judge 10 people on this day, you’re now inviting 10 aspects of judgment into your life because what you see and what you put out there is exactly what you experience. People could understand that it’s not removed from them. It’s not like, “Oh, I judged that person. They don’t even know what I’m thinking. They have no idea. It doesn’t affect me.” You couldn’t be more wrong if that’s how you think it works.

When you referred to the lifting of the veil for you earlier in your life when you met your soulmate, I had a similar lifting of the veil, but in relation to seeing my life, how it plays out, how there are many lifetimes, and so forth. This just recently happened earlier this year. 

When you get that glimpse into the bigger picture, then you can make huge leaps in your soul path if you listen to the little hints, to use another term that you’ve used in this episode.

By the way, it’s rewarding then because your life makes sense. Everything starts to come together and you see it as this master plan that is set up for you. You start living a life that you feel like working for you. It doesn’t mean that everything you want is going to happen or manifest—and it doesn’t really matter—but it means that everything is purposeful, even the challenges. 

For me, that was really so profound and it got me really hooked. I call myself a “change junkie.” It’s not how I came into this world. I really do like and I still do a schedule. I have a daily planner. I like all of those things, but I’m also equally invested in being flexible and say, “Okay, if it doesn’t go the way I planned, what’s next? What are the other options?” It’s the most freeing way you can live because truly, it’s the way we’re meant to live.

Our actions have such incredible repercussions. Just the little thing that we think, I am totally in the right on this, can end up with a lot of karmic debt that you have to pay in a future lifetime.

For example, I remember hearing a Kabbalah story in class one time and it was so powerful to me. It stuck with me. That was the story of the man who left his bride-to-be at the altar, the chuppah. She was absolutely devastated. He ran off and didn’t come back. Years later, he and his wife are trying to get pregnant.

I love this story. I cannot believe you’re telling it because there are lots of Kabbalah stories you’ll hear, but I want you to keep going with it. This is one of my favorite stories. It’s so funny.

There are no coincidences. They’re trying to get pregnant, it’s not working. He goes to a rabbi and asks for guidance. He says, “Well, to the women you left at the altar, under the chuppah, you’ve got this karmic debt you need to pay. You need to resolve this with her so that you can have a baby in your current marriage.” 

He’s committed that he’s going to go and do this. He’s getting instructions from the rabbi. You got to go to Germany. She’s going to be there for a festival, et cetera. You have to bring a certain amount of money. It was most of his money. It was a pretty clean amount. He goes to Germany and this huge festival, many thousands of people there. He’s just looking for her everywhere. He doesn’t see her 

Then, the festival finally finishes. He still doesn’t see her. He’s like, what am I going to do? He sat at a bus stop well after everybody else had left and he saw her. He goes and talks to her. She tells him, “I’ll forgive you, but you need to go and give X amount of money,” which just happened to be almost all his money that he had left after the cost of the trip. “He’s in the U.K. He’s going to get married. You can give him this money as a gift for his dowry.” He’s like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” He shows up in the U.K.

He apologizes to her when they have this exchange.

Yes, he does. Very important point. Yes, he apologizes. To further clear that karmic debt, he’s committed to go and give this dowry. Knocks on the door, the brother answers, slams the door on the guy. He’s so angry with him. He’s like, “Please, your sister sent me here and told me about the wedding. I have a dowry for you.” He opens the door and he’s like, “How dare you? She died years ago from a broken heart from you.” 

He had no idea that it was her lightbody, her ghost, or her soul that showed up and not her physical body at that bus stop in Germany. The brother did forgive him. He gave him the dowry and they spoke about it. His wife did get pregnant. 

It ended up with a happy ending, but what a powerful spiritual lesson and what a journey it took to clear that karmic debt. Rather than waiting for the next lifetime where they’re going to have to meet again and go through this whole thing, just clean it up now. That stuck with me. I knew there was something. 

After that veil was lifted for me on January 22nd, after I prayed for God to give me a job, that next morning, the veil was lifted. I realized that my ex-wife’s father—my ex-father-in-law—who was about to pass that I had a karmic debt with him. There was this thing where I had loaned him a domain name, let him use it for many years. Then, he is going to shut down that business and give it to my oldest daughter. 

He figured out that the domain wasn’t in his name so I’m like, if you recall, I just loaned it to you. It’s not yours. I didn’t give it to him. 

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That was the mistake because I was in the right, but I wasn’t coming from a merciful or understanding place. I didn’t see it from his point of view. That was this karmic rift between us that I needed to clear before he passed. 

My oldest daughter was willing to raise this with him and say that my dad’s giving me the domain name. She had this most incredible experience with him the last time she saw him. He had dementia, so he was not really present, but then when she raised it, boom, complete coherence. 

That’s what I’m talking about. My father had that moment. It sounds like no, it’s not possible. But he made facial expressions he hadn’t made in eight years. He responded to things he should respond to. He looked around the room and he was making eye contact and tracking.

My father-in-law actually spoke. He looked grateful and relieved. That was something that I felt very grateful for because I was able to connect the dots and see, oh, this is not something I should just leave. It seems like a small thing—it’s just the domain name—but it’s huge.

People don’t realize how much everything matters.

It’s important to him. It’s interesting too. What really gets me excited about meeting different people like you that are like-minded, joining in a different podcast, and just to expand the reach is because I think people don’t realize how much everything matters. It’s not that everything’s a big deal, but everything matters. 

Yeah, it’s about a domain name, but it’s not that. It’s that if we know that we hurt somebody or that we didn’t act in a way that was to the best of not just our ability but our potential, our soul. When we go around and we do that day in and day out to different people, in little small ways, we write them up as being inconsequential. It wasn’t such a big deal. It’s not like I slapped them across the face. Okay, I’ll learn. I’ll do better next time. Sometimes, we say sorry, we don’t mean it. Sometimes, we don’t say sorry at all. 

Those kinds of things, it’s like you put shells and coverings over your light, over your soul. Before you know it, that is how you express yourself into the world. That is how your exchanges are. That’s how you actually live your life and that’s who you become. It becomes your character. 

It doesn’t matter if that’s where we find ourselves today—whoever’s listening to that—because we all make mistakes, but our job is to look for the opportunities like you did with your father-in-law—to peel back the layers, to remove the veil over and over again. Because if you have one small veil, you can see through it. You put another one and you can see. Eventually, you can’t see, you can’t even breathe because it’s just black now. That’s the real significance of doing any kind of spiritual work. 

In Kabbalah, the klipot are the shells, those coverings that darken our soul’s light and don’t reveal our true beauty in its glory. Addressing and breaking apart that klipot is part of the soul’s journey.

What year was this when you had this awakening, you started your job, and you studied Kabbalah? How long ago was that?

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It was three months ago. I’ve been studying Kabbalah for five years, but I did not get the veil lifted until three or four months ago. 

It was specifically in preparation for another podcast interview that I came to this discovery. I was preparing for interviewing Sheila Gillette who channels 12 archangels, they go by the name of Theo. I watched some videos of her beforehand and she describes how she had this near-death experience from childbirth. She was praying to God, “Please let me stay on the planet. Let me raise my kids. Give me a job.”

That really stuck with me. A few months later, I’ve decided I’m going to start praying for that. I don’t want to have a near-death experience in order to get it. 

The next morning, I woke up with this clear-seeing, with clairvoyance. This is something I’ve been praying for—clairvoyance—everyday as part of the Ana beKo’ach prayer, line five, for many months and I finally got the gift. 

I had been receiving so much intuition and so forth. I didn’t realize it was from God. I just thought that was my subconscious. I didn’t realize all these times when I had been saved by the Creator and by angels. I had a car crash and walked away without a scratch when I was in my early 20s. I could see how those were the angels intervening. I would’ve died otherwise.

Everybody can become their own guide.

That incredible gift was given to me, but it’s a lot of responsibility because I actually do have a job. It’s not about SEO-ing people’s websites and getting them to the top of Google, which is what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. This is much bigger and much more important, so I’m readjusting things in life to accommodate for that. Make this job my number one job. I have a COO now. I have an EA, executive assistant, now. Everything is going to be different because I am taking this job that I was gifted.

That’s really beautiful

Thank you. Do you have these kinds of moments where it feels like a without-a-doubt sign that you need that path, that directional nudge to help you on your soul path?

I surrendered a long time ago. Again, when I was 17, I remember people in high school were like, “Oh Monica, what happened to her?” For me, the veil was already lifted then. I looked around at everybody and I thought this just cannot be it. That you go to school, you get great grades to get the best job, you get a great car, you get a great house, and then a family. I’m just like, this cannot be it. If this is it, I’m done here. This doesn’t interest me. 

I really found my path then. Of course, how I was able to offer myself has changed through the years. That’s the part that I keep pushing and asking for divine inspiration and to make sure that I just never feel complacent, content. I hope that tomorrow, I don’t recognize the version of me today. That is really my commitment each and every day. 

When things start to feel a little bit unaligned, I’ll stop and say, okay, what is it that I need to learn here? What should I be doing differently? Constantly checking and going back to the source. That for me is just a way of life. 

Very cool. There is a course that I was led to on kabbalah.com about receiving messages, receiving signs. I started going through that and that was so amazing. It’s called How We Receive Messages. It’s taught by Mordechay Balas. 

Everybody can sharpen that intuition. Everybody has all the answers they’ll ever need. The problem is they’ve gone through life really quieting that internal dialogue, which then connects you to something higher. They’ve made the outside opinions, the external feedback, the need for validation, approval, and acceptance the louder voice. 

When you live life like that, you’ve dulled all of your true senses and then you can’t access them. That’s why people feel like they can’t make decisions. They don’t know what’s right or wrong. They need to go to appoint somebody to tell them what to do, somebody who’s more knowing than them. Often, they’re very misguided in that. So 1000%, everybody can become their own guide if they do the things that we’ve talked about today.

There’s this one minute of wisdom from David Ghiyam that I was meant to receive. I told the story in a past episode, in episode 300. When I dropped that sim card as I was trying to put it in my phone and so forth, that’s the one message that pops for me when I look at the phone. I get this huge barrage of messages coming in from putting in the sim card. 

That was such an important one because it was about how to protect your eyes and the importance of protecting the eyes in order to receive messages. I’m curious what your thoughts are on that, the protection of the eyes in order to not dull the ability to receive the messages.

The thing is this. I think it would be your eyes, but also your ears and also your mouth. The thing that stops us from being able to really see from a place of truth is that we look and we see what’s wrong in people. We use our mouths to slander others and spread rumors about them. We use our ears to listen to gossip. All of those things. 

When that becomes your reality and that’s your environment, then how can you really access truth? You’ve basically put a fog. It’s like if you look out the window, it’s really dirty, and you can’t see through it anymore. Or you have water on your ears. 

That is what you’re doing every time you participate in those things that we think are not such a big deal. Is it really that bad? I wasn’t the one doing the talking, I was listening. If that person had no one to talk to, it wouldn’t have been said at that moment. It’s about taking responsibility for all of your being no matter what

If you’re the one speaking it, even if it’s true, actually especially if it’s true, and it’s not of the light, it’s not beneficial, it’s gossip, what’s known in Kabbalah as evil speech, then, you’re creating negative angels at that moment. That floored me the first time I heard that. I was pretty surprised.

Because you’re thinking what’s the harm? They didn’t know it, but you’ve created that energy. Then, you need extra light, then you will need a miracle, which angels were around you? The positive ones you’ve created through positive actions or the negative ones you’ve created through negative actions? Because that’s really how it works.

To have the most positive angels around you because you have that purity of thought, word, and deed. The combination of the three creates the most amazing angels. You’re getting the best guidance instead of the ones that are maybe a positive intent but not really, but then you went through the motions and it looks good from the outside, what you did. 

Your own surrounding light becomes brighter. It’s not just that you have the protection of the angels, but you start to act in unison with them. There’s that evolution where it doesn’t feel separate or foreign anymore, just part of your being.

The surrounding light concept is a really important one. Could you distinguish the two kinds of light for our listener who doesn’t know what that is?

The surrounding light is what you envelop yourself in based on your actions. It’s like a forcefield I guess would be the best way to describe it if you could imagine that. The stronger you are in action and deed and it’s all positive, the stronger your surrounding light is. Those times where we really do need extra help, if a person has a health challenge or whatever it is, you draw in that light that you have now accumulated, surrounding you to support you through those challenges.

The other type of light, help me refresh my memory around that one. Is that the internal light?

Yes, the internal light. 

We’re all given opportunities.

That’s what we can reveal more of when we’re more merciful, for example.

Yes. The more you do for others, the more we do actions of sharing that are uncomfortable. It’s really easy to be somebody that’s kind. It’s not so easy when somebody’s difficult. The more that you do that with external, the stronger your internal becomes.

One more question. What is free will? How do we exercise this gift of free will in the best way for our souls?

It’s really amazing when you understand this. People think that very often they say, “God is punishing. Why do bad things happen? I don’t deserve this.” In actuality, we’re all given opportunities. We’ve all heard about parallel universes.

You can have opportunities set in front of you. You can choose this one or you can choose this one. You’ll end up somewhere, but you were given the choice because in choosing what to do, that’s really how you’re able to jump to the next level of growth and elevation. If everything was just handed to us and we never had to actually choose between good or evil, then it’s just a life of circumstance. That’s not really what it is. By having a choice and making better ones over time, exercising your freedom will really dictate where you grow and how you grow.

I was aware that there was a presence, but I couldn’t see or hear it. It was just this knowing.

Did you ever see the movie Sliding Doors?

Yes, a long time ago.

I love that movie. Where do our listeners go to learn more from you, to learn more about Kabbalah, to get your books, all that great stuff, and listen to your podcast?

Thank you. For everything Kabbalah—classes, books, information, content—go to kabbalah.com. I have classes there too. My books you can get at the Kabbalah Centre but also on Amazon, Fear Is Not an Option and Rethink Love. My husband and I’s podcast is Spiritually Hungry. You can get that wherever you get your podcasts. My blog is rethinklife.today. 

Awesome. Your husband is Michael Berg who is also an author. Do you want to share your favorite Michael Berg book with our listeners?

He’s a great author. He actually translated the Zohar, which is the main Kabbalistic text from Aramaic to Hebrew to English when he was 22. Like I said, he’s a real scholar. His layman books I love Secrets of the Zohar and The Way. 

Is Dialing God one of his books or was that different?

No, that’s just a general prayer book from the Kabbalah Centre that has angels. So funny you say that.

You have it right there, don’t you? That’s awesome. I love how the universe works. It makes me giddy.

I know. It’s very synchronistic, all of what we spoke about today.

Very much so. Thank you, Monica. 

Thank you.

Thank you, listeners. I just love that you listened to all the way through this podcast. I know that lots of synchronicity is heading your way, so we’ll catch you on the next episode. In the meantime, have a great week.

Thank you.

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