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Living Without Fear - Open-Heart Surgery and the Moment Everything Became Clear · LIVING WITHOUT FEAR

0:08
Hi, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the 100th interview
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on this podcast. I'm your host Esther from
0:16
Switzerland, author of Living Without Fear and Co creator of
0:21
the Amazon bestseller Inspired Journeys.
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You might be needing a moment to pause, to breathe, to feel seen.
0:31
Whatever brought you here, we are honored to be with you.
0:37
And if today's interview speaks to you or brings someone to
0:41
mind, please pass it on. Let's keep spreading light.
0:47
And I'm so excited to introduce you to Reagan from the US.
0:54
Reagan Carruthers is a writer, yoga teacher, and spiritual
0:59
guide whose work reaches deep inner practice with real world
1:05
life. Her path was shaped by early
1:10
contemplative training, her time at the Heart Math Institute, and
1:16
years at the Corporate Executive in Silicon Valley.
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Out of life, lift, experience, healing and courage, Reagan now
1:28
guides people toward inner stillness, clarity, and a more
1:34
intimate relationship with themselves.
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She's the author of Tragic Magic and the founder of Asset Yoga
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Center in Missouri. Welcome to the show, dear
1:49
Reagan. No, thank you for having me.
1:52
It's a pleasure to be here. So let's start with my favorite
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question. What has been your turning
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moment or moments in life, Reagan?
2:04
Oh, goodness, I I've had many. Early in life, as a young girl,
2:10
like my mother, I was highly sensitive.
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I could hear people's inner thoughts.
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I could see things that, you know, most people didn't.
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And it overwhelmed me. And so the first turning point
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was at the age of 9, when this entity, for lack of a better
2:29
word, used to kind of follow me around and terrorize me.
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And I said a dramatic goodbye to him.
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And I demanded out loud that it all stop.
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And the veil came down. So that was turning point #1 not
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to have that overwhelm on my system and for whatever reason,
2:50
for my audible command to actually change, you know, what
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I was connected to. Because later at 27, that same
3:03
entity revisited me and changed my life.
3:06
So that's turning point #1 might as well go to Turning point #2
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which was my awakening at 27 as a junior executive in the
3:15
academic publishing industry, at a sales meeting of all places.
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And that same entity visited me in the middle of the night.
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I knew someone was in my room, opened my eyes.
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There he was. And I sat up in bed and said,
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oh, it's you. It's only you.
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I'm not afraid of you. And I went back to sleep.
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When I woke up the next morning, all I could feel was divine
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love. I had nothing but forgiveness
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for the abuse that I had known as a child, the abusers, all of
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it. I just, I just had nothing but
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love. And that consciousness lasted
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about three years and and changed the trajectory of my
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life. I think becoming staff teaching
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at the Heart Math Institute in the 90s a little bit after my
4:03
awakening was another turning point.
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I mean, I've had so many. And then more recently, probably
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the most profound was being told I was dying after, you know,
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being told in meditation to urgently move home.
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I mean, I was living at the beach in Santa Cruz, CA, one of
4:24
the most beautiful places in the world.
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And when I received that guidance, I mean, I knew the
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truth of it. I know that voice.
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It's been leading me since I was a young girl.
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And I, you know, move back to Missouri within three months.
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Everybody thought I was nuts. Got here and was told again in
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meditation to urgently go to a doctor.
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So I was like, OK, did. And what do doctors do?
4:50
They listen to your heart. So this country doctor, because
4:53
I live out in the country, listens to my heart.
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And he says, Reagan, there's a loud murmur, something's really
4:58
wrong. Got an echocardiogram the
5:00
following day. And the day after I was told I
5:03
was dying. So I had a congenital heart
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defect that I wasn't aware of and it had my aortic valve had
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become so calcified that the only solution was emergency open
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heart surgery. Well, God had called me back to
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Missouri because Barnes Hospital in Saint Louis, where I was
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born, where my oldest son was born, just happens to be one of
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the best places in the world for aortic valve replacement.
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So, you know, there's a, an old country song that's titled Live
5:37
like You're Dying. And I, and I must say, when you
5:41
are confronted with your mortality in such a dramatic
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way, it's a profound teacher. I, I didn't happen to have any
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fear of death because of things that I have directly experienced
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and known kind of like within the yogic tradition, Yogi's know
6:00
how to leave their body and return.
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Well, I learned that too in my 20s.
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So when you have that direct experience of being able to
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willfully exit your body and return to it, well, you don't
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fear death because, you know, you're not your body.
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This is just a temporary, you know, container for the energy
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that is you. So yeah, I guess that's enough
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turning points, though. There's a long list, many of of
6:30
of which are are detailed in my memoir Tragic Magic, though.
6:34
Let's stay with the last one. You said four years ago that was
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the heart surgery. What transformation did you see,
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feel, experience after? That, well, I mean, I, I think
6:52
my relationship with with God and my devotion to God not
6:58
within a religious construct. I mean, just the direct
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relationship is much deeper and and devotional when you're told
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that there's no medical explanation of how you were
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alive, which is what the head of cardiovascular, you know, and
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thoracic surgery said to me on my day of discharge, which was
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literally four days after my open heart surgery is like I was
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breaking records in there. But when you learn that there's
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no rational explanation of how you were alive, right?
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And then you have, you know, successful outcome of the
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surgery itself. Boy, I mean, it didn't feel like
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a weight, but it certainly felt like deepening that relationship
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with that energy just was a natural extension of what I had
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had known and experienced. And you feel, I don't know what
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the word is. I mean, I feel saved in a way,
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you know, like, something saved me.
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Something kept me alive. So I think that's God.
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And so do I then, as a result, want to devote myself more
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completely to that? Yeah, absolutely.
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And how did it transform the relationship with other people?
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I'm not sure that it did. I mean, I I've always had a
8:31
deeply grateful spiritual practice.
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I guess what it does change is you don't want to waste any
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time. So, so I think you become more
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authentic. I think you have stronger
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boundaries as a result of a near death experience.
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You realize how sacred and precious it all is, so you don't
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want to waste it. So instead of it necessarily
9:00
becoming something that brings you more towards humanity and
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all the things, for me, I've spent more time alone in my
9:12
spiritual practice. I feel also one other change is
9:19
more devoted to service. So I may not want to, like, hang
9:23
out with you as much, but I do want to serve you in the time
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that we are together. So I want to share what I know.
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I want to be that beacon of light and of hope.
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And you know, I carry a rather unpopular message in that
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discipline matters a lot. Discipline of spiritual practice
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is essential. You don't develop that kind of
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devotion and that kind of inner freedom in the absence of it.
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And you know, here in the States, I don't, I've never been
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to Switzerland. But you know, we're a quick fix
10:04
culture. You know, we would rather take
10:07
an injection or take a pill then change our diet or go to the
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gym. We've been enculturated to want
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quick solutions. Well, your personal evolution,
10:21
your spiritual evolution does not happen quickly.
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You might have a breakthrough moment, right?
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That becomes a new baseline for how you sort of return back to
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an energetic state that you've known.
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But you have to be disciplined. Can you give some examples where
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you set stronger boundaries for example?
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Yeah, do you have examples? Maybe this can help our
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listeners. Yeah, less time in social
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situations where alcohol is the focus again in the States, you
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know, I mean it is a very alcohol driven centric place.
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Yeah. So I just, I, I spend less time
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out in public, I spend more time at home because that feeds me.
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And I think for all of us, regardless of where we are on
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our journey, it's important to understand and connect to how
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you're feeling, What, what situations are draining for you,
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What, what are in what situations, contexts, things
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that you do enliven you right? And and take that as data and
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and be informed by it. And so the boundary is the act
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of not just knowing what feeds you, but saying I'm going to do
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less of this and more of this. Your practice with your
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spiritual guides or guiding? How did it change in in time or
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also the way you you practice? You know, I mean, I've, I've,
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I've accumulated a lot of wisdom and practice along the way,
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right? I'm on the cusp of 60, but I
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learned meditation at the age of three.
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I went to a grade school where and a nursery school where
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meditation was something we did every day and we did Tai Chi as
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an alternative to gym class. We photographed our energy field
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with Carillion film. We sang devotional songs about
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the power of the divine and of that relationship and that I
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mean, I I still know all the songs anyway.
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That that your thoughts and your feelings are your choice.
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That school was governed a man named Maxwell Maltz.
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I don't know if you read psycho cybernetics, but he birthed the
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positive psychology movement in the 1960s and he was on the
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board of my grade school and a mentor tour the founder.
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So a lot of his research and point of view was in in the
13:29
pedagogy. So I mean, I started there.
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I would say that I I'm just more devoted to what I know.
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That's the that's the biggest change is just more devotion.
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What's your moaning practice today, Reagan?
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Yeah, so before I get out of bed, I either sit up in bed or
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continue to lie down, depends on what I feel.
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And I begin that sacred journey in into the heart, right.
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That's, you know, when, when Jesus, one of my teachers said
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the Kingdom of God is within you.
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Well, when I asked people with their eyes closed, where is that
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Kingdom? Do you think everybody puts
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their hand on their heart? Nobody puts their hand over
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their head, you know, So I start there.
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It begins with breath through the heart, and then I connect to
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God to to that energy. Depending on how restful my
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sleep is, sometimes it takes me a little longer to get there.
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So yeah, it can begin with me just feeling the energy of the
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most profound love that I've known, which happens to be God.
14:56
You know, like starting there and just sitting in that energy,
15:00
like continuing to breathe through the heart and just
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soaking it. So I start there and then I go
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make my tea. Depending on what I have going,
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I usually just walk down my driveway to my yoga center and
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do more there. So I'll meditate for a longer
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time either on my meditation cushion, on my yoga mat, by my
15:22
altar, or I have some beautiful sofas.
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I also am a douse, A douser, so I work with a pendulum if I feel
15:30
like I really need just some certainty, like I have a felt
15:37
sense of something, but I kind of just want to check in.
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So I'll call in all my peeps and then just use the pendulum and
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have a conversation with them that that's typically something
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I do every day. How long do you sit for
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meditation? You know, it depends.
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I love a lot of meditation throughout the day.
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So I mean, I'll, I'll do at least 20 minutes towards the
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beginning of the day. But like prayer and, and what I
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would call like micro meditations are a part of my
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day. I mean, I'm probably praying and
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connecting and speaking to the divine probably more than a
16:21
couple of times an hour. I mean, it's a pretty, it's a
16:24
pretty constant thing for me. What's a micro meditation
16:28
Marigan? I would like just a moment of
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mindfulness, right? So you, you don't have to
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meditate with your eyes closed. That's better to deepen the felt
16:40
sense of meditation, right? To get into that truly conscious
16:44
union with with God, which is from a yoga tradition and I'm a
16:50
Yogi. That is the point of meditation.
16:55
So you can have a little micro moment, right?
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Feel your feet on the earth if you're standing, connect with
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your breath. Just notice the breath, notice
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how the air feels on your skin, how the light is reflecting from
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wherever you are, and just have a moment of inner quiet.
17:20
Nice. On your website you have this
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beautiful letter to your mom. What?
17:29
What's your mom nowadays? She she passed away, but she's
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still here I guess. Oh, yeah.
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Like if I ever want, you know, just some intense, don't hold
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back truth telling. Like, yeah, she's the guide of
17:49
many of that that I connect to. And I know that she'll always
17:54
tell me the truth, you know, sometimes if I don't like, I
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don't know all my guides names, you know, I can feel them.
18:01
And they all have different personalities in a way.
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But she just can cut to it. If she did that when she was
18:09
alive. I mean, she was my most profound
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teacher, the greatest love I've known and the greatest source of
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my trauma, too. So, yeah.
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And I know it's so much easier for her where she is now.
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You know, she was born in 33 as a brilliant psychic woman.
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I mean, her young life reads like fiction.
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She dated a king. You know, she lived all over the
18:42
world. She spoke 9 languages.
18:44
I mean, she, she had a remarkable young life.
18:48
But the access that she had, she didn't know how to manage it.
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She didn't know how to turn it on or off or up or down.
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It just was running all the time.
18:58
And that ultimately, yeah, didn't end well for her.
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It was hard for her. You know, she'd say things like,
19:09
honey, when you walk, do you feel like you're 5 feet off the
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ground? I'd be like, no.
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I mean, she just had a completely different experience,
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I think, than most people of what it means to be human.
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How old was she when she had you?
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She was 33. Yep, she said.
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I was the only one strong enough to make it.
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She had delivered a deformed baby that lived just a couple of
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minutes. She had multiple miscarriages.
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And I think she was right. I mean coming through her would
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probably be really difficult for for most souls.
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What's a memory you've got from when you were 5 or 6?
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Of her. Yes.
20:01
Oh God, every day was like magic with her.
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I mean I think probably what what sticks with me the most.
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She had this big, beautiful bed where the bed frame was carved
20:14
with wood that looked like ivory.
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And it was just like, just this gorgeous thing.
20:20
And she spent a lot of time in bed watching, like, Tom
20:28
Schneider at night. And anyway, just being held by
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her, like, literally, like the energetics of the love that she
20:38
was so naturally not just connected to, but embodied in
20:46
the comfort that I felt in those quiet moments.
20:53
Yeah. I don't really have words for
20:55
it. It's something that I wish all
20:56
people could have the experience of feeling that quality of love.
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And what was the darker side? You said she was the origin of
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drama or trauma. Well, she tried to kill herself
21:15
when I was 2 years old. I don't think it probably gets
21:17
any darker than that. And then, you know, she would
21:24
spend time in the mental hospital either for depression
21:28
or mania, usually because she either didn't take her
21:34
medication or took some other thing that counteracted anyway.
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So those times when she was gone were really hard.
21:46
I mean, I don't, I can remember at 2:00 staying with family
21:53
friends for what seemed like forever after that.
21:59
And then, you know, sadly, she met one of the loves of her life
22:05
in the mental hospital, right? Not a great place to find a
22:09
stable partner, but that's exactly what she did.
22:13
And that choice is fine now. Like my stepfather and I are are
22:24
good friends. But then as as a child, he was
22:29
the epicenter of of my trauma. He was violent, he had issues
22:36
with alcohol, he was emotionally abusive.
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I mean, it was, it was hard. And so I spent most of my young
22:45
life trying to be anywhere else but home.
22:51
Yeah, I'm sorry. And how did all this, your story
22:56
with your upbringing, determine you as as a mom?
23:02
You have two sons, right? Yeah.
23:05
Yeah. Well, I think I've tried to
23:08
consciously do the best, not only that I can, but taking the
23:15
gold of both my parents and leaving the rest.
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I mean, I am absolutely devoted to my adult sons and they know
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that. And even when they had darkness
23:30
in their adolescence, for all the reasons adolescence stupid,
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but particularly my boys, they're very sensitive and tuned
23:40
in. I just responded, I would say
23:45
95% of the time with unconditional love.
23:51
Like I wasn't punitive. I didn't punish them when they
23:54
made mistakes. I I don't believe that's how
23:59
that stops, right? It, it, it, it, it stops when
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you begin to remember the truth of who you are.
24:08
And yeah, I mean, I have amazing communications from my son's
24:15
particularly, you know, on the eve of my open heart surgery,
24:19
you know, 'cause there's a chance they were never going to
24:21
see me again. And what they communicated to me
24:27
both before the surgery and when I was in the ICU, like I knew
24:33
I'd always thought, but I knew after receiving those
24:36
communications that I mothered incredibly well.
24:43
Beautiful. Yeah, in my track, in my memoir,
24:49
there's one letter that I wrote to them on the eve and then
24:54
communications from them during that, you know, time in our
24:59
journey. Yeah.
25:02
What do they tell you about you? Oh, well, they tell me lots of
25:09
things. Sometimes they tell me I'm
25:11
bossy, but it's just about the love, right?
25:17
About, about the unconditional love.
25:20
They never, you know, and it was hard when it when I was an
25:22
executive in Silicon Valley. And that was something that
25:26
began because I didn't have a choice or I didn't seem to have
25:31
a choice. Perhaps I had a choice, but
25:35
there was a financial need for me to to to work because of the
25:40
circumstances of my ex-husband anyway.
25:44
But my younger son, who's 25, said to me recently, because I
25:48
often think about that, you know, I had a nanny who was
25:52
fantastic, who worked for me for a decade.
25:54
But he said to me, he said, you know, mom, I always felt you
25:58
like you were there, like I never felt abandoned by you.
26:03
And I had a very high pressure job.
26:05
I traveled a lot. But in his felt experience, I
26:11
was there and that that that was really profound to receive.
26:18
I was. I was glad to hear it.
26:22
So sweet. Yeah, yeah.
26:25
And my, my older son, Connor, he wrote me a beautiful text when I
26:32
was in the ICU following the surgery.
26:36
And, you know, I was unconscious, of course.
26:39
And I often go back and reread that if it really fills me up
26:46
because it's exactly what I intended.
26:49
You know, it was my intention to love that way, to mother that
26:53
way. And so then to hear it back
26:56
without me prompting or asking that just them freely sharing, I
27:01
was like, OK, all right, I did that well.
27:07
Beautiful. Let's go back to our listeners.
27:12
You said unconditional love. Where?
27:16
How? What's your idea?
27:20
How can we get there to feel unconditional love for ourselves
27:27
because we need it the most. Well, I think it starts with the
27:33
source of that energy. Where does that quality of love
27:38
come from? So for me, it's about that
27:43
devoted relationship with the divine to connect to that
27:48
quality of love because that is the same energetic condition
27:56
basically required for you to love yourself that way.
28:01
And you can't love anyone else unconditionally in the absence
28:08
of that love for yourself. So to me, it's like hang out
28:13
with God, really connect to the felt sense of that quality of
28:18
love and then bring that in to your system into your being,
28:26
really know without reservation what the felt sense of that is.
28:31
And you know, I have this process that I've called loving
28:34
witness, where in my inner life coaching, you know, we do some
28:39
deep unpacking of the traumatic moments, particularly early,
28:47
getting really honest about what what you've known and what the
28:52
belief about yourself or the world or others was created,
29:00
either consciously, but mostly unconsciously as a result of
29:04
what you've experienced. Right.
29:06
So you do all that unpacking and you get really acquainted with
29:11
all the wounded identities inside.
29:14
What's a good question to start with?
29:19
Oh, just just looking back at childhood and what do you
29:24
remember that hurt? And then you bring that quality
29:32
of divine love, that energy into those wounded aspects of self.
29:38
You can name them. You know, I, my inner toddler
29:41
has a different name than my inner adolescent, right?
29:45
And my inner toddler who confidently proclaimed at like 1
29:52
1/2 my first sentence was, I want to do it all by myself.
29:57
I had already determined that I didn't have anyone I could rely
30:01
on, right? So that inner toddler who's
30:05
fiercely independent has significant issues around trust,
30:11
right? What she needs is to feel loved
30:14
and safe, so I bring the energetic condition of love and
30:18
safety to her. What do you tell her, for
30:22
example? I'm not trying to change your
30:25
mind that that's one thing Like like her point of view is valid.
30:33
So I'm not trying to convince her of anything.
30:35
I'm just trying to come to her. I tell her often, I'm never
30:43
abandoning you. I'm always return.
30:45
I'm always returning with this quality of love.
30:49
For you. So that's probably the only
30:54
thing I say. It's mostly the energetic
30:59
condition of me now that I'm bringing to her.
31:05
And in, in that right, in that quality of love, she begins to
31:10
feel safer. She begins to understand that
31:14
she can at least rely on that. And then that helps her
31:20
recognize it in someone else, right?
31:24
So there are people that are trustworthy.
31:27
There are many who are not, but there's some that are.
31:31
And so it helps her have clearer scene around that and not be
31:37
just reactive. Yeah.
31:43
And my inner adolescent who's just looking for an exit and an
31:46
escape from all the chaos at home.
31:50
Right. So what do you do when you're a
31:51
teenager in a traumatic home? Will you find a way to feel
31:55
better? So marijuana, alcohol, like
31:59
whatever, cheerleading, like any, anything that can get me in
32:03
a different state than what I felt when I was home, right?
32:10
So she's on the run. So I help her when I love her,
32:15
feel like she can kind of settle and be still.
32:22
Nice. Yeah.
32:24
Does that make sense? Yes, very beautiful.
32:28
No thanks. What would you like to tell our
32:32
audience as a closing part? Develop a disciplined inner
32:41
life. It is that relationship with
32:47
self, informed by your relationship with the Divine,
32:53
that changes everything. It it can transform your health,
32:57
physically, emotionally, mentally.
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It can help you just manage the complexity of what it means to
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be a human being on this planet right now.
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This is not an easy place. So figure that out and, and, and
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stick with it and understand that your body is think of it
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like a, a receptor, a receptor of light.
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So the quality of the connection that you have with the divine
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has nothing to do with the divine.
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It has everything to do with the quality of your receptor system.
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So don't poison yourself, right? Eat organic food, you know, eat
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well, mostly plants spend time in nature exercise like tend to
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this vessel because if it's poisoned sedentary, right
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overweight, inflamed like all the things that is going to
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interfere with being able to hear and be guided by the
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divine. The guidance is always there.
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The the variable part in that equation is you.
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Thank you. Thank you so much for having
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taken your precious time. Sure, I was happy to do it.
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Thank you for having me on. And thank you, dear listener,
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for spending your time with us. You're amazing, and you're a
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gift to everyone who crosses your path.
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And if no one has told you this today, let me say it again.
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You're worthy, you deserve to be loved, and you matter.
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Have an amazing day and I'll talk to you next Thursday.