Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / Shamanism, Parapsychology, and Personal Transformation - Dr Angela Faith, PhD
Transcript
- Andrew Heacock: And we're live. Dr. Angela Faith, thanks for joining me. Dr. Angela Faith: Thank you for inviting me. It's pleasure to be here. Andrew Heacock: Thank you. When you meet someone new out in the community and they turn to you and say, so Angela, what do you do? What's your answer for them? Dr. Angela Faith: Well, I will say that has been such a conundrum for me over the years, getting it succinct. Now, today, I say I support others over a period of time and stepping into their new way of being. It's not something that we do. It's learning to be. And I think we can both agree that people are waking up really fast in the world right now. A lot of things are moving. We're moving very fast, very loud. And I support those that are some use the term waking up, but becoming aware that what they've maybe always done just isn't working anymore. And I'm never here to tell anyone what to think, or believe, but to support and facilitate in people remembering is the word I like to use. I'm not teaching you, I'm helping you remember what you already know, but has maybe been programmed out of you or forgotten through this human experience that is quite a quite a ride. So that's a long answer. But yes, I support people one-on-one. I like working one-on-one with individuals in rediscovering their innate awareness. Andrew Heacock: Why do you think that like in current times there seems to be this increased interest, this paradigm shift towards reawakening? Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, well, it's not by mistake. And we've been living very long in an unnatural way. And when I say that, I do mean we're living too busy, too loud and too fast, right? Even when people gather with me and I always take a moment for what I call to let the rest of you catch up with you. We're not designed to go 80 miles an hour. And often when we arrive somewhere, we hit the ground running, right? maybe you can relate to this or the listeners can. Do you sometimes feel like you're always in a hurry, but there's no urgency, whether it's to get to the grocery or get, I'm always rushing and we lose that innate navigational system. We have our own internal map and navigational system. And many of us have surrendered that for comfort, right? We could even say Amazon has become God to many. If I need anything, I ask Amazon. And we've a little lazy with our own sovereignty and our own abilities. So things are moving. I don't get to know why, but I do believe that since, well, really since the seventies, but moving forward, more and more people have been waking up and saying, wait a minute, this paradigm doesn't work for me. And I feel that the world is going through some really big changes right now. And that is why it feels like time has been accelerated. And some of us feel that we are, an awakening to me is just becoming aware that you're not an individual. An awakening is becoming aware that I'm not a body, I'm not a human, I'm a soul having a human experience. And so then we start questioning everything we've learned in school. everything. We've learned even from our parents because they learned from the same system that we are being taught from and their parents. And we're starting to question those things. Kids are starting to question authority and we call it disorder and we call it conditions and often we medicate them. But it's an exciting time for humanity right now. And I come and again support individuals that are finding that awakening or that experience. overwhelming because it can feel like a, I call it an ego death, a metaphorical death. Everything you've ever believed is no longer working for you. That can feel very discombobulating. And I'm sure you understand this. I sense that you understand what I'm speaking of there. Andrew Heacock: Well, I don't know if I understand it, but I think I know what you're referring to, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, that's a better way to say it. Yes. Andrew Heacock: I was just sitting here thinking like, man, I'm not sure I understand exactly what it is, but I want to know more. I was thinking the term was dark night of the soul. That's the term that's kept coming to mind that Dr. Angela Faith: absolutely. Andrew Heacock: we to describe this kind of ego death or like a crisis of faith or what are we doing here? Like, is this all this is supposed to be? Like, is this what life is supposed Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: to be about is more products? And yeah, there does seem to be and also Dr. Angela Faith: No. Andrew Heacock: I think you're like you're right you said that like does time feels like it's accelerating such a fascinating thing to say because I Do feel that sometimes sometimes I do feel like I'm gonna be late when I have nowhere to go I have nothing to do but so much stimulation happens per minute in a modern life that it feels like time is happening faster But really we're just not present, you know, and so when you can't be present time just flies by and you're like, where did it go? Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Exactly. We're jumping in other people's timelines and, you know, with the phone, with all of the distractions. And it's unnatural. We're not designed to live this way and we're suffering from it. This is, I mean, it is apparent that humanity, but the good news is, is everything is cyclical and we are cycling around. And Dark Night of the Soul is a term I do work with as a shamanic practitioner. Also a term that I work with is initiations. And dark nights of the souls are often just that, an initiation, an expansion, if you will, an expansion in your awareness and your abilities to be present. And dark night of the soul can happen more than once in one lifetime. We can have a spiritual dark night of the soul where we start questioning. And I wanna divert a little bit there. One of the things that I'm very passionate, Andrew, is I'm aware and I will speak openly that there is a lot of church and God trauma in the world today. Goes back a long, long time. I personally have studied in depth and worked with a lot of North American Indian cultures and you don't have to look far today in documentaries and such to understand the assimilation and annihilation. What you were taught in American history is just a bunch of false facts. It is, it is, I have often said, and I don't want to sound dark, but this country was built on blood, lies, and corruption. Nothing built in that energy is sustainable. So we've watched it just get. more, I don't want to say worse, but more of that corruption lies and deception. And so the veil is being pulled back. This is exciting to me. So this is a dark night of the soul of spirituality, of belief systems. We can also go through a health dark night of the soul, a health crisis. many people that you know that have gone through a health crisis, it actually brought them to an awareness that they're more than their body. They were able to realize what was really important to them or how maybe their constant state of stress and worry was affecting their physicality. So we can go through those. We can go through relationships that are dark nights of the soul with ourself. So it's part of the experience here on this school earth. And that's what I understand. Why is it like this? We come here because we want to have an embodied experience. We want to have the polarity. we also, some of us, again, souls come for different reasons, embodied souls, but many come also to teach, to support the changes and evolution of humanity. But one thing never changes, and that is... whatever words you want to use, creator, divinity, God, higher power, Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: universal intelligence, Jesus, those things never change. But we are in a state of change, cyclically, coming back to the ultimate truth, if that makes sense. And so we're living in a time where a lot of noise, lot of mirrors, smoke and mirrors, things are being revealed. But I think this is exciting because I never believed it all anyway. Andrew Heacock: I agree with you that I do find the change that we're going through now as a species to be exciting. It's scary. There's changes going to be hard. And of course, Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: things with technology now, the way that things are moving there, there's a lot of fear, think, rightly so. know, the one thing that stood out to me is what you're talking about. It's just like the role of like religious trauma and oppression and things like that. And I've come to I had a medical crisis at one point 15 years ago and kind of had a dark night of the soul. I actually kind of had a deconversion experience as a result of that. And because I was raised in as a Catholic and I just realized that in that, like during that experience that the explanations I was given for how the world works just did not add up at all to me. like they were not the one I've my view of how the world actually works was inconsistent with monotheism. And because of the internet, of technology, there's all this new information and people can get exposed to all different kinds of ideas and different kinds of spiritual practices and teachings. mean, that's what's happening right now. You know, there are undoubtedly people that Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: might not be familiar with shamanism that will learn about it from hearing this interview with you. That wasn't a reality 50 years ago. I think that was the dawning of that started happening in the 70s, really, you know, and there are the 60s in the counterculture and bringing people like Sachin Ananda and Ram Dass back here to the United States. so it is a, Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: an interesting time because we have so many more options in life. We have so many more spiritual Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: vehicles that we could could hitch to. And then the question becomes, well, how do I pick? What would you say to that? To someone who has that dilemma of like, I'm not really sure what's the right one. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, I don't think it's finding the right one. It's being open and because I love this saying and I've heard this from someone else, a traveling monk that came and visited our sanctuary. We are all on, it's the same mountain, but we all might be taking different paths to get to the top. And here's what I would say. Here's what I would say. If it incites fear, ignore it. If you are studying anything that tells you to be afraid, ignore it. If it Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: expands your heart, if it feels love, if it feels true, and I don't mean to the ego, like, yeah, I think that sounds good. If I speak positive, I get everything I want. No, life is not that way. so, but the ego be like, yeah, yeah, that's the religion I want, right? Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: And so it's, I am kind of speaking, I call it the manifestation movement that started with the secret and all of that, you know, all of that hype Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Yep. Dr. Angela Faith: around that. We are always manifesting with our words and our thoughts, but we don't get to create a world that is only serving to us. Shamanism is not a religion. It's the oldest spiritual practice. And let me be clear, I'm using it as Michael Harner termed it or coined it to speak of the practices that were practiced around the globe. Shamanism originally is a... Siberian word and we're not using it in the literal definitive term in that way, but they discovered because asking which one to believe they discovered that around the globe many different traditions had similarities and they had no communication with each other. They didn't have the internet. They didn't have Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: these ways and they had a respect for nature, a respect for all of creation and a respect for elders. That's just three principles, there's many more. And you think about that right now, we have no respect for nature. If we can put a parking lot on it, we're there. We cut down trees without asking permission. We have lost our relationship with our waterways and our land. And so that is kind of missing. Our respect for our elders, well, especially in the United States, the elderly are pretty much. dismissed, right? We don't really, Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: we're missing the tribe. We're missing the tribe that takes care of the elders. I'm not speaking of your personal relationship. You may love your elderly grandmother. That's not what I mean. You may also be seeing how she struggles with a fixed income and healthcare and people to help her clean her house and mow her yard and basic needs. And if she was in her tribe, all of those needs would be met. That's part of, we're missing that. And we're grieving that also on a deep soul level. And A respect for the land, respect for nature, a respect for all of creation, a respect for the elders. All of creation, we are so disconnected from our connection to, I'm gonna just use the bee, right? Like you are related to the bee, even though it's not in front of you and you can't see it. You are related to the trees that are on the other side of the world. And indigenous cultures were not so separated. from their higher mind, they slept on the earth, they had to be in relationship with the earth to survive and also to maintain that conscious contact with the creator. When you look back at Puritan cultures and things that started encouraging people not to trust their internal navigational system, don't listen to your internal navigational system, Andrew, follow me. And then I start telling you to be afraid of your internal navigational system. it's gonna drive you off a cliff. You better follow me. Right? And we've got so many generations and the old ways, shamanic or shamanistic ways, again, I've studied this greatly and it's so heartbreaking. People that tried to practice those principles were murdered. Like there's no other, there's no nice way and I don't want to sugarcoat it. So we have to look at, okay, what was that about? Well, we can look at the current situation, maybe some power. I want to mention too, and you know, I'm not scripted, so I'm just going where I feel led. Even the drum, I work with the Native American drums and the drum is the oldest instrument known to humankind around the globe, not just one culture. And in early Christianity and when slaves were brought to America, Drums were forbidden. And in shamanism, the shamanic journey, we work with the drum and drumming to put your mind in a trance-like state to allow you to get guidance. Now, again, some Christians will tell me I'm getting guidance from demons. No, I am not. I am receiving guidance. It's not outside of me. It's an extension of me. All is connected. But I am tuning into my... my divine right to get this divine guidance. Does this make sense? Somewhat. Okay. And how do I know it's divine? No, go ahead. Andrew Heacock: Well, I know was going to say I was about to say something of that nature of like, you know, I'm not sure if I completely understand it all, but I'm just trying to like, feel into what you're saying, which I think is the right approach. I think that's what you're telling me to do. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, are my words making sense as I'm speaking them? Not does this all make sense because we're Andrew Heacock: Yes, yeah, they're very clear. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: not capable of comprehending it all. I do not claim to understand it all, but I have accepted that I'm not capable of understanding it all. It's very much like a goldfish in a goldfish pond. It cannot comprehend beyond its pond. Its pond is its whole world and to the goldfish, there is nothing beyond the pond. but we are aware there's a lot beyond the pond. So we're the goldfish and we have the comprehension, but we have an innate awareness. That's the, cause the goldfish also has an awareness that it's interrelated to the water and the growth, the other animals, the algae, all of it is family. And we have the separation, the ego and our culture. has really fed that ego for a bigger plan that's not really sustaining or supporting us. And we're waking up to that. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, you, you, there's so many things I'd like to say in response. mean, the, mentioned waking up and the idea of the ego a few times. And I'd really love to kind of explore more about what those are because at one point a friend who's also a shamanic practitioner told me you are not your thoughts. And I was like, what, how could that be? What do mean? I'm not my, well then what am I if not my thoughts? Like, how is that possible? I have the best thoughts and It is a confounding question. It's like, of course you're not your thoughts, but then it does lead to the question, then what are you? And there's Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: a lot of different ways to answer that question, but it is, that's one of those kind of like dark night of the soul kind of questions. It's like, well, wait a minute, the foundations of reality have just been kind of pulled. The veil has been pulled back a little bit and it is kind of like waking up. Buddha means the one who is awake, you the one who has become awakened. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: And I read a book at that time that my friend told me that called waking up, which is the name of Sam Harris's, meditation app. It was a book that he wrote about spirituality. And it sounds like what you're saying, you're talking about this awareness, this innate awareness. Is that what you think people are calling consciousness? Like a goldfish, just the awareness that we're aware, the connection to everything. And then Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Andrew Heacock: the ego kind of perverts that almost. Dr. Angela Faith: The ego is the false you. The ego is the name Andrew. The ego is the person that identifies as Catholic. The ego is the person that identifies as a person. And sometimes Andrew Heacock: Mm. Dr. Angela Faith: it's as simple as just thinking the word hello. Just think the word hello. Who's hearing it? Right? Like you're hearing it in your head. Hello, hi. Andrew Heacock: I mean, who's saying it? Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: Who's hearing you say hello? And the thoughts are often about the past or the future, yes? And the ego is always in the past and the future. And the ego is always attacking and always loud. And the ego can die, but the soul cannot. And this is why we're so afraid of death, because death isn't even a thing. Humans are the only ones that die, because we're the only ones that think that we are gonna end. Ducks don't think that. And so... The ego is like, no, we have to avoid death and we spend so much of our life avoiding that. But we are also in a culture by design that has gotten so loud that it keeps the ego engaged. The consumerism, the ego thinks if I have that car, I'll be fancy, people will love me. Because ultimately we are looking for love because we have forgotten we are love because the ego separates us from that belief. And it's I don't know why of the separation other than it is part of, again, this planet. We come here to experience the polarity. And also, this planet is influencing everything else in creation. If you want to think of other planets, other galaxies. And some say that what happens here is also affecting other places. And this is where we come to learn and other planets are learning from us or other. cultures or, I'm looking for the words here. Give me just a moment. Andrew Heacock: civilizations. Dr. Angela Faith: Thank you. English is hard sometimes. Andrew Heacock: It works. Dr. Angela Faith: Other civilizations, yes, are learning from us and we do choose to come here. We are here learning from each other, teaching each other. Yeah. It's not meant to be easy, but someone sold us that idea of the American dream. It's not supposed to be. Andrew Heacock: That's reassuring because it isn't. Yeah, it's not. Well, so a lot of the things I'm interested in as an artist and as a filmmaker, I go that route ever, which I hope to do, is on this problem of the American dream and the death of the American dream or the idea that it was always a false dream or something like that. we do have, for a number of historical and cultural reasons and economic reasons, we have kind of a society that is built around individualism. And I have this bias that like, that's great because like with individualism comes freedom. Like the, the, the less of collective repression you have, the more freedom you have to be who you are. But that's also a very egoic way of saying it. Cause it's like, I need to be me. Right? Well, what is that? You know, that's the ego wanting to wanting to self actualize. And it's been a surprise to me as I've just been thinking a lot about this problem of like, why are people so restless and unhappy? Why is there such a problem with mental? health like in our society and why is it growing? You I mean, you can track a line of mental health diagnoses and drug prescriptions and it's a one-to-one thing and you'd be like, well, of course, you know, we're giving more drugs because there's more mentally unhealthy people. And it's like, well, maybe not like maybe there's more unhappy people because we're treating this like a medical problem. And instead of a spiritual or social problem, which I think is more likely to be the cause. And it is because we don't like we're so individual. You're saying that Amazon has become God. That's so brilliant. it's the thing that you ask you ask for things and you asking you shall receive they just magically appear on your doorstep and Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Yep. Andrew Heacock: We also don't like the death of community is another thing that that concerns me a lot I mean like dating is Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: a mess now because people want to do it on an app and That you can't interact like there's nothing there's a nervous system attunement. There's a limbic attunement that can happen that way and But where else would you go? Like it's one of the things it's a kind of a double-edged sword the church has definitely lost its cultural imperialism, cultural force in the United States. I think that's a force for good. think there's more human freedom because people have other options. But with that, we've lost community. Like we have lost like an easy solution to where do you go when you want to be in community. And we haven't yet replaced that. And what we've got instead is kind of what Scott Galloway calls a reasonable facsimile of a real life that happens online. you know, you know, in the metaverse online. Dr. Angela Faith: Well, and that's an ego pool too. The ego on Facebook, we're going to, I'm going to use, let me reframe on social media. I don't want to call out Facebook on social media. That's egos meeting egos. So it's none of it's real. It's a false world. And yes, we are, we are under this illusion that we are separated, but we're not. And so if I hurt you, I hurt me. And this idea that I have the freedom to have more It's the idea that if I have it, someone else doesn't. We all have everything we need provided by our sweet mother earth, but it is the ego gives the illusion that I'm separate. And if I have it or if someone else gets it, I can't have it. So we're fighting each other for, you know, toilet paper and, Andrew Heacock: Right. Dr. Angela Faith: we're believing we're so gullible to believe others and what they're, you know, they're telling us. And I want to speak to Andrew on, yes, people are looking for other things and there's a lot of information out there, but you got to also use discernment because a lot of it's gotten diluted and. A lot of it, sometimes it leaves God out of the dialogue. Like in my work, in the communities, I hear people use the word spirit a lot, a lot. Spirit told me, I heard spirit. What is your relationship exactly? I I got questions because Andrew Heacock: Mm. Dr. Angela Faith: if you are hating on yourself and you're badmouthing your neighbor and you're angry at your mother and you are, you know, filled with resentment and rage. Is spirit, is that relationship serving you or is it just a bypass? Because I'll meet people that if they have any original thought, they're like, spirit told me I should do this. Well, spirit doesn't really care what you do. It's not what you do, it's who you're being. Are you being love? Are you extending love or are you projecting fear? Because ultimately that's all there is. Everything else is just illusions. And so the... And that's where a lot of people find their way to me. They may have rejected or felt rejected, which is my story, felt rejected by Christianity or the church. And so they're out here feeling godless and they're in survival mode and they're not tuning in to their navigational system. Their nervous systems are stuck on fight, flight, freeze or fawn. And it's exhausting, it's exhausting. And so it's... And yes, all of those components, the people are getting sicker, but if you're just focusing on the physical, because think of the medicine wheel, it's physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. If I'm just focusing on this physical body, but I have no spiritual connection to my higher power, my source, my guardians, my spirit allies, I'm sick. I'm sick in my mind, right? I can go to the gym eight days a week and drink all the things, but if my mind is... and my spiritual is out of balance, I'm still sick. So we're very out of balance. Yes, we're being told that this will make us happy and it's not, many of us are missing the spiritual. And this is generational. I don't mean this personal like, you're not spiritual. We're many generations removed. Even the indigenous cultures are many generations removed from their principles and practices because again, they were, they were. killed if they held ceremony. They were killed if they burned a piece, smoked a piece pipe or did their sweats. So it is a time of everything's moving so fast. People are getting exhausted. But the good news is, is when you get so exhausted, you just throw your hands up and give up and surrender. You're open now. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, there's Dr. Angela Faith: You're open now. Andrew Heacock: this principle that you hear in 12 step programs around recovery of hitting rock bottom so that you can have a transformative spiritual experience. there is a certain degree of Dr. Angela Faith: Yep, unfamiliar. Yes. Andrew Heacock: like, after having exhausted all other alternatives, there's just a Dr. Angela Faith: Yep. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: willingness. I want to ask about... Dr. Angela Faith: And you will hear the voice of, yeah, you will hear the Holy, what some call it the Holy Spirit. I call it that innate awareness, that internal, that higher power God source. Absolutely. May 11th, 2006, I was sitting in a jail cell planning my suicide. And I heard that voice that I had been too busy and too loud and too numb to hear. It's always there. And it's not your voice. It's not the ego's voice saying, I don't know what we should do today. Andrew, I think we should try to figure everything out. It's something else. It's something that's loving. And it's just like this, no baby, this isn't how we do this. I got you. You okay? You ready now? Yeah. Andrew Heacock: How do you know the difference between your ego's voice and the other voice? How do you tell? Dr. Angela Faith: Ego is always attacking and ego is always afraid. The ego is always attacking and always afraid. Yes. Yeah. And that's it. Andrew Heacock: That's clear. That is so refreshingly clear. afraid, fear. I think that's probably what the ego does. I think that might be why we have an ego, so that we'll live long Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: enough to procreate. You know, got to be afraid, at least afraid enough of death to live long enough to pass your genes on. think that's why we have this ego. I, Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew Heacock: you know, you mentioned a lot of this word God. And it's always been a challenging thing for me because I think the word God implies agency and implies an ego. Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: I've always, for the last, I out in 15, 20 years, I'm like, that can't be how it works. That's what we would think. Like we have egos. So we think that we, you know, we think we're people. So we think that God would be like a person, but I think it probably wouldn't be that because the less, the less egoic we become, the more spiritual we become. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, I personally don't like the word God. I use it because people understand it. I have a rejection of it. It's a conditioning. I like using higher power source, great mystery. But I want to stress because some people, when I say I'm a shamanic practitioner, they assume I'm a godless woman. I absolutely, I have faith in a higher power, but I rejected words like father, son, because... because my God isn't human. My God doesn't have the human ego and that separation. And I have a deep relationship with Jesus. I journey, I work deeply with Jesus. And again, some people think because I'm not Christian, I don't believe in Jesus or have a relationship with Jesus. I've even had a Christian tell me that my relationship with Jesus is wrong. And that was the word she used. And that's okay. You can think that I know because I've come from I've come from a life where I didn't have a relationship with Jesus or my higher power. And I know the difference. I was always afraid. I was always in survival mode. When my life was going good, I took full credit for it. When my life was going bad, I blamed everyone else for it and what they were doing to me. And I thought that life was supposed to be easy. I thought my mother was supposed to be good. I thought that fathers were supposed to stay. Who said? Right? And so it's that just an awareness of waking up to, a minute, I've swallowed everything hook, line and sinker without really asking any questions. And same with God. I loved church of the community, but when they start preaching things of fear and certain things, I was like, ooh, don't know. So I rejected all of it and I've been rejected. I have come to understand that I wasn't supposed to be sinless or guiltless or all of those things. I am love, period. I'm not better than I was. I'm a soul on a human experience and I've always been pure love. My awareness of that has just shifted at different times. And you Andrew Heacock: I am. Dr. Angela Faith: as well. No, you as well. When I say I have always, I don't mean like I love and you're not. No, we all are pure love. And when Andrew Heacock: Right. All of us are. Dr. Angela Faith: I see it in myself, I can see it in everyone else. Even those that project fear and spew hate and divide, create divisiveness and run countries. can still be like, wow, bless your soul. Bless your soul. Absolutely. Absolutely. Andrew Heacock: actually mean it. Yeah, because like we're both from the south and people say bless your heart like they generally don't mean that. Like that's it's really what they don't mean when they say it. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, bless your heart. Yeah, no, I mean it truly compassionate bless your soul, bless your soul, because you're lost, you're lost, you're grabbing on to power thinking that's love, you're so lost and I have compassion for that. I also understand that we don't get to understand everything and some souls come into this human experience to shake things up. Some souls come to create a collective awakening. or to shift things in a big way. And we can look at them as the issue, but it's a whole bigger experience. And if we can practice, because here's what I believe, or let me reframe that, because believe is a lie, right? Be lie. Here's what I understand. If everyone in this country was to write a love letter, not a romantic love letter, but a compassionate love letter to whatever politician they don't like, I don't even care. It would shift everything. It would shift everything. But when we stay in fear and hate and fighting each other, because when I fight you, I'm fighting me, then we are staying asleep. It's not even real. So we can't access, we can't tune in to that higher frequency. In our culture, we often medicate things. And I'm not, I want to be clear before I start talking about this. I'm not against pharmaceuticals and I think they're overprescribed. I think we can see that in this country that it's an issue. And often when someone is going through an awakening or an experience, if it doesn't fit the agenda, it's medicated. And that can actually be someone having an awakening or learning to use discernment and experiencing the world in a more natural way, which is going to seem unnatural in a culture that's very fast and loud. buying up everything commercial. Andrew Heacock: I know you mentioned this experience you had in the jail cell and I'm just curious, you know, what your journey was like to getting to that place and what you've done since. you be willing to give us kind of more of your background and how you began your life? Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things I've come to understand, like many people, my parents divorced when I was eight. That's a big deal. And here's why, because we don't have our tribe, right? If you were in a tribe and your parents split up or one of them passed away, the tribe would come around and your aunts and your uncles and your grandmothers and your cousins and even the people that aren't blood related, but they're part of the tribe, they're gonna raise you up. Well, many of us were raised by single moms. I was raised by a single dad for part of it and then a single mom from teen years up. And neither one of them had the capacity to raise a child all by themselves. Most of us don't. That's unrealistic, right? It's unrealistic expectation. I've always been, the word I use is... Exactly, exactly, without the village. Absolutely. Andrew Heacock: seems hard for two people to raise children on their own. mean, that seems hard enough to have to two parents without any other further support. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, without your tribe, without your tribe. I mean, even, I don't know why I'm diverting to this, but I'm going to, even women when we're on our moon, it's called the curse, it's called all these horrible things. And in indigenous cultures, women were supported during their cycle, during their menstrual cycle. Other women would help with their chores, their laundry, their cooking, their cleaning, their families. Today, women are like just smile and bear through, you know, and... That's a whole experience we go through every month. And so our culture just is not nurturing our innate. So I, like many of us, was pushing through life. My mother, I was also very sensitive. So I could feel what people were feeling. I'm an empath. And so I feel people's feelings. can know things and not know why I know them. I've always had spirits around me. I'm an only child. So I was always playing with my Unvisibles is what I call them. And it wasn't until I started school that I got very lonely and started trying to fit in. And I never did. I was weird. I was always a weird kid. Very intellectual, loved school, failed U.S. history because I knew it was all BS even as a young child. Fast forwarding, my mother was also a mystic so we were doing seances and different things, but there was also a lot of alcohol, a lot of recreational drugs. a lot of inappropriate lifestyles. And as a parapsychologist, I bring in the understanding of energy. So now I understand it wasn't good, bad, or indifferent. was energetically, this was a low frequency environment for me to grow up in. And as a result, I did turn to alcohol and pharmaceuticals to make me not so sensitive so I could fit into the world. Andrew Heacock: To numb out. Dr. Angela Faith: And with that, I was able to go to court reporting school. I'm a single mother of twins at 19. I was able to, you know, I just, I was in survival mode. was doing awesome. Went to school, became a court stenographer and made, you know, was doing all right. And my mother passed away May 4th, 2003. Dark Night of the Soul. Everything fell around. Everything fell away. The whole world that I had built on my own came crashing down. The brick house, the minivan with leather interior, and I'm saying these things because see, I thought, I've got all these things. I'm happy now. I have arrived. And I lost all of it. I lost everything. that was my Dark Night of the Soul. And that was when I ended up in a jail cell. Because I started drinking every day. I was just in a spiral I was in a spiral and anyone I am familiar with 12 step recovery. I'm not a participant any longer, but I'm very familiar I spent probably eight years as in the fellowship and The steps are I think everyone could benefit from the steps because we are all addicted to suffering Yeah, and it is a spiritual program as it you may be familiar And so it opened that door because I had shut God out, see? The church had rejected me. I was raped when I was 12. I'm impure, right? And I took on the belief after that experience that I was dirty, was impure, I was all the things. And it wasn't the event, it was the belief systems that got planted as a result of the event. and I didn't have my tribe around me to tell me any different. I didn't have anyone to plant the beliefs. I didn't have anyone safe to go to, to tell me that that doesn't define me. So that seed was planted and then that just kept growing. Those beliefs, because anyone that can understand believing that you're dirty and unloved and broken, that was my words, I'm broken. I'm broken. Can't change that. And so I learned I can't change what happened, but I can change the beliefs that I adopted as a result of what happened. So that jail cell on May 11th, that night I was at a 12 step meeting. I don't know how I got there. I have no memory of how I got there. And that was where the door to God opened. A new relationship with a higher power. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: And since that time, I mean, what has the process been like for you of making sense of things like the assault that you lived through and all of the challenges that you've shared? I'm sure many more that you haven't shared. I what was that process Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, yeah. Andrew Heacock: like from, from getting to that bottom? What was the climb back up like? Dr. Angela Faith: Opening my mind to something to a higher power. It's that simple. mean, I again, I don't love the word God, but God could and would if God I don't like using he either. So creator Andrew Heacock: Mm hmm. Right. Dr. Angela Faith: could and would have creator was sought. How about that? So it doesn't take a whole lot. That's why I say people often in prison in jails will say, you know, I heard the voice of God and I've heard other people say, well, I know God was in prisons. No, God is within you. And when you get still and quiet, you can finally be aware of it. It's no great feat, but sometimes it takes being incarcerated to make someone sit still and be quiet. Right? And, not using substances to change and alter the mind, right? So now I'm in a jail cell. I don't have anything to numb myself with. I'm alone. It's quiet. There's nothing else. And gosh, I wish I could say, Andrew, that this is what my road, it has been. Hmm. It has been an adventure. It hasn't been easy, but it's been meaningful. And that's what I've learned. I don't chase anymore. I don't worry about what other people and I tell I I'm my greatest advocate. I speak to myself with only love and that has been a practice. It took years, but I started recognizing that voice that told me I was ugly and dirty and not worthy. That's not me. I'm not my thoughts. That's that ego attacking me. And so I started using my intuition to differentiate the difference. And here's what I learned. In the past, I would tell that voice to shut up. Shut the hell up. Let me numb you with alcohol. me put on loud music to drown you out. Now I tell that voice, I see you. I hear you. I love you. And we're okay. We're safe. You don't have to worry right now. I'm okay. We're good. When you speak to that voice that's filling you with fear, with love, it goes away. But when you tell it to shut the hell up, it gets louder. And I don't take advice from that voice anymore. Have you ever thought about calling someone and you feel maybe to gossip or maybe to tell them something that doesn't need, maybe you tell them something that isn't true or tell them something that's scary. And you feel a little bit of a, like, don't do that, but you do it anyway. Have you ever had that feeling like you're going to say Andrew Heacock: Yes. Dr. Angela Faith: something and you kind of feel a hesitation, but you just dismiss that hesitation and you say it anyway. And then you Andrew Heacock: Yep. Yep. Yep. Dr. Angela Faith: realize like, man, I wish I hadn't have said that, wish I hadn't have called that person. That's the ego Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: overriding the higher self. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, yeah. It's like you knew that's the it was a weird experience because it's like you knew better but did it anyway. So it's a specifically it's an interesting thing. Yeah. And it's like the thing is, you know, I asked you earlier, like, how do know the difference? And it is hard sometimes. And your answer was so beautifully clear. And when it comes to things like psychology and understanding the mind, answers frequently aren't that clear because it's just kind of it's not it's not easily explicable. That is a good way of thinking that if the voice is really fearful and critical and self-critical, that's probably your ego and trying to keep you from changing. And if it's loving, it's probably something greater, like your highest self, your truest self or consciousness or Atman or whatever. Yeah. So you started, I mean, you became open to that idea, to that feeling. What was your Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: process of like spiritual development like? as you've become a shamanic practitioner, mean, what was the road to that in parapsychology for you? Dr. Angela Faith: Well, of course, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous was my first spiritual book. And it opened that door for that relationship with a higher power and also the concept of love and fear and resentments. I was eat up with resentments, justifiable resentments. And I started learning that I didn't have to hold on to those. I didn't know. I know that sounds really naive, but I really thought that I... had to hold on to my resentments to, I don't know, to defend myself from other pain. I don't know. Because we do that. think, we bring ghosts. think, that person hurt me, so now I have to shield myself up so you don't hurt me. So you're walking around all the time shielded up, but then we're not extending love. So practicing loving myself and the roads just started opening up. I started having my dream time, I started getting visits in my dream. And the word shaman, I didn't even know what a shaman was. But my great grandmother had introduced me to what I now understand are shamanic practices. She started every day with a, in prayer, but in meditation. She ended every day in gratitude. She talked, literally talked to her animals. I don't mean just like. Hi baby, I love you. I mean, she communicated. She knew when they were sick, she knew what they needed. She had hens that came in the house and sat on her lap and had breakfast. So I didn't think that it was odd to talk to animals. I didn't think that she taught me about talking to nature and being in relationship. So that started, she was also called a medicine woman. The family called her the medicine woman in the community. I also got inspired. I have the book, but it's over there. I read a book about angels and guides because one of my teachers, one of my earth teachers, when I went to her and I said, you know, I have all these abilities, but I shut them off because I had bad experiences, meaning spiritual. and, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: yeah. So she told me to buy a book on angels and guides and I did. The author of the book was a doctor and on the back, she had told where she'd gotten her PhD, university of Sedona. I went down that rabbit hole. got my bachelors in metaphysics. Again, that is all about the Christ consciousness. Because I had no understanding of what Jesus Christ was, other than it was someone on a cross that I was supposed to give my life to. I didn't understand any of that. And so that started building my relationship with Jesus and the Christ consciousness. So the door kept getting wider and wider. And I just kept... exploring more and my personal experiences that I can't, I could sit here all day and tell you about the signs and synchronicities and patterns that started happening. And they are all miracles. They're all miracles. And so I started having dreams, a shaman coming to me, this is often how it happens. And I met a human shamanic practitioner and started studying with them. In my experience, most of my teachers are in spirit form, are spirit allies. They teach me first and then I meet a human that affirms or deepens that teaching. But I have found that humans can only take me so far. Andrew Heacock: But you have like a sense of like you could call it an intuition or something where it's just like you get a do your spirit teachers come to you in like a form like an animal form as totems or is it just more of that voice? Dr. Angela Faith: Both, all the above. Yeah, it's all the, I do have a power animal and I wanna be clear when I speak of power animals and totem animals, I'm not looking to a source outside of me. They are extensions. They are in relationship with me. They're not, I'm not surrendering my sovereignty and asking, you know, the horse where to go. It's an extension, but it's a way of communicating and being in relationship. So yes, I do work with and teach others to work with. When I work with others, it's very experiential. I don't tell you who your power animal is. I support you in meeting your power animal yourself. And when you have the experience, you can't deny it. That's one of my favorite things in my work is that session when the person has their experience and they're just like, whoa, like you can't make it up. And it's so much more powerful than if I were to say, your power animal is the tiger, you know? You don't have a relationship there. And so, yes, and spirit guides. I have spirit guides that some are in human form. Many of them are in animal form. But if you consider that you are in relationship with all that is, that doesn't just mean on this planet. And you can also communicate with the animal in your world because you are always in relationship with, but it's not with words. And that's the ego only talks with, you know, words. Andrew Heacock: Lots of words. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. When the ego is quiet, there's no Dr. Angela Faith: It's loud. Lots of words. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: more words in your head. Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Yeah. And you can just be with a tree, a flower, an insect. And I love spiders now. And I grew up during the movie Arachnophobia and my mother was scared of spiders. So I would kill a spider just for being a spider. Little things like that started changing. And now I will catch a fly and let it outside. I will not kill anything because that's my sibling. That's my family. I can't do it. It's not even about, want to be good. I can't do it. So these things started changing and again, I'm not better than I was. I'm just more aware of my relationship with everything, with you, like everything. Yeah. It's changed my whole life experience. Andrew Heacock: So you mentioned what it sounds like it. Yeah. mean, it's, it's mind blowing basically. I mean, that's, that's what it sounds like. I think that that might be. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, I get excited. Yes, I get very excited. I suffered from debilitating anxiety, meaning there were days I could not get out of bed. I would be so anxious. And suicidal ideology and depression, a lot of my young life. So I get really excited when I'm able to support others that are struggling with depression, suicidal ideology, God trauma, church trauma, ADHD. All of the things and I want to say I'm not in place of Western medicine I'm never wanting to imply that but Western medicine is not the whole picture and so a lot of times we're missing that component that can get us to a feeling of wholeness Andrew Heacock: I'm wondering, you mentioned those challenges you had when you were younger that you no longer have, and I can relate to this experience of having had lots of issues with, quote unquote, mental health and then now having been free of them. Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: What meaning do you make now as a shamanic practitioner and parapsychologist when you look back on the challenges that you had? What meaning do you take from them and how would you explain the causes of them from your perspective? Dr. Angela Faith: meaning of the events that happened. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, why did, why for you? Like why you and why did you Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: have those particular challenges? And also like what causes anxiety or suicidal ideation or depression? mean, or at least in your case, I'd Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: just be curious for your perspective on. Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely, absolutely. So I believe that the things happened because we have, I understand that we have sole contracts and we have people that we are going to engage with. have sole groups. So people that you are in your family, like blood related, you've had multiple lifetimes or parallel lifetimes, whichever. We can either say past lives or parallel lifetimes. Same thing to me. It is, so nothing's by accident. My mother, my mother had a lot of challenges. I recently wrote a blog on my website about her if anyone's interested. I have a great relationship with her. She's in spirit now. And so many people and things tried to keep her from raising me, but yet I ended up with her and it was just me and her. Everyone moved away. Like all the people that were really adamant on not letting her have me suddenly. And I look at that and Of course, my ego was like, they abandoned you. They left you, they abandoned you. Nobody loves you. That's what the ego said. My higher self was like, this needed to happen. This relationship needed to happen. And the idea that it was supposed to be easy and good and rainbows and butterflies is where I got stuck. And also the idea that my mother's actions determined whether or not she loved me. Whatever your mother has done to you, I can promise you, you have expanded her capacity to love because she is loved. She's just forgotten to express it. And I've learned that how we come through our mothers, it's not so that she can bake us brownies and be all the things. It's a teacher and a student. And the things that happened with the men, because my mother, I was raised in a world where I was groomed to be solicited to powerful men. Isn't it interesting what's coming into light in the world today? This is not new to me. I've known this for a long time. Things going on behind the scenes that people don't want to look at. And I now see that all of those things were giving me now an opportunity in my own journey. I'm not angry. I'm not resentful. I forgive and I wish for them all that I wish for me. I don't even forgive because I understand that they were just projecting their own pain on me. Andrew Heacock: Mm. Dr. Angela Faith: And I'm not saying that it was okay. I'm not making excuses, but I no longer look at things as black and white, right and wrong. I honor my journey and my pain and I also honor theirs. What happened to you? And I can either turn into that and keep projecting my pain all over the world or, ooh, if I love me and I love you, then I can extend love. It's just a practice. I don't know honestly, Andrew, where I got the... the moment, but I found when I started practicing love instead of defending my my misery. Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: life just changed for me. haven't been suicidal since May 11th, 2006. I do not, I get a little anxious, but not like paralyzing anxious. And I will also say, I wanna share this story. I have a student and I've had many students, but this is a story that I love to share. When she came to me, she was a wife, a mother, and she had so much anxiety, she could not drive a car. Her first session to me, her mother dropped her off. And again, grown woman with a family. Can you imagine how isolating that would be? The shame on that, not being able to drive, how small her world was. And after a few sessions, and now this has been years ago, she drives everywhere. And it was simply creating the space for her to become aware that she's not alone. She's not. None of us are. You have unvisibles, we all have, and she had the experience of interacting. And once you have the experience, the ego suddenly doesn't have a whole lot to offer. And you start realizing like, ooh, this is possible. This feels real, this feels love, this feels like what I've been missing. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: or what you didn't know you were missing. mean, that's the thing that's kind of revelatory Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Andrew Heacock: about. There's like spiritual experience. I think that to me, the most interesting way to study spiritual experience is just basically from the point of view of like phenomenology or just psychology. But like Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: what's happening? What does it feel like? Like what's that like? And it's just kind of the way that I've heard of people that really study consciousness, the only thing that makes any sense is experiential. Like that's what consciousness is. It's the experience of having an experience. And so there's this famous essay that Thomas Nagel wrote, What is it like to be a bat? And the answer is we don't really know because we're not a bat. But if in order for a bat to be conscious, there must be something that it is like to be a bat and spiritual experiences like that. And if you haven't had it, it's like never having been a bat. it's just something that has to be felt really probably before it can be understood, if it could be understood. One thing that's coming to me that seems to be consistently coming up, you're saying about how you could forgive the people that have hurt you, the people that abused you and victimized you is as long as you're stuck in this illusion of separateness, which is ego. Of course you hurt people because I'm me and they're them and they hurt me, you know, and they didn't get hurt by that because they're not the same thing as me. And the more that you can free yourself from that, from like the kind of the shackles of ego, of the belief of separateness, it makes resentment and grievance kind of impossible almost, because it'd be like you'd have to hate yourself. And there are people that do have a lot of self-hate and self-contempt and things like that. But again, that's the ego. And it sounds like what you're saying is the ego's telling you to hate yourself. But without that and Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: that sense of separateness, I've experienced a little bit of that through, through contemplative practices and meditative practices, some shamanic practices as well. And, you know, that's basically the ego does seem to be the lever that, that kind of directs how happy you're going to be. Like the less ego you have, the happier Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: you're going to be, the less you're going to be worried about the problems of little old me, because what is that? There's nothing to, there's nothing to have problems. There's nothing to worry, you know, and it's a, it's the damnedest thing. because how do you explain that to someone that's never felt it? It just sounds like mumbo jumbo. Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Andrew Heacock: I mean, it, and I was definitely one of those people would be like, that's preposterous, you know? Um, and, but you know, I've, after having practiced meditation for many years and especially in the Zen tradition, you know, I definitely have, and also in Kundalini yoga, some profoundly non-ordinary moments, states of consciousness that were like, okay, wait, there is, Dr. Angela Faith: Thanks Andrew Heacock: okay, so there is a veil there and there's something on the other side of it. And I have no idea what that is, but there's a veil and that veil is part of that is the experience of this illusion of being a self of being a person. And that was going back to what I was saying earlier about this word God. That's to me, that word implies a self implies that there's a self out there, a magic self, a person that has a will and plans and machinations and gets jealous and whatever. And I've always just been like, that's exactly what a person would think. Like that can't be right. Like of course that's, you know, Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: whatever it is, I'm not saying there's nothing out there, Dr. Angela Faith: Punishing and judgmental, Andrew Heacock: right? Like it's very, it's like, and it's a hymn, which is weird because it's like, why would you need males if there were no females? You know, like if there's only one of them, you wouldn't need sexual dimorphism. And it's just, it's an interesting, and I've always just, I've kind of felt like this idea of like monotheism or theism is that there's an agent, there's a person out there that is like us, but magical, essentially. And I don't Dr. Angela Faith: Mmm. Andrew Heacock: mean to be disrespectful of that idea, but. It's basically like a person that has supernatural Dr. Angela Faith: Great. Andrew Heacock: and has magic powers and lives forever. everything I've ever felt that felt like it was like I was getting a peek behind the veil was basically the Dr. Angela Faith: Hmm. Andrew Heacock: absence of that. Like I think the absence of that, that personal, that personhood is what feels divine to me. And, so I can resonate with what you're saying. And it is interesting. the kind of person that loves to, to quantify and collate and classify and explain and define and Dr. Angela Faith: Me too. Andrew Heacock: there's some things that just, because I'm like, people that don't, that haven't experienced this, if they've made it this far, are gonna be like, what the hell are these people talking about? And all I can say is that Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: like, if I've had personal experiences to say that like, there's definitely a there there. And beyond that, who knows what that is. Dr. Angela Faith: You've reminded me of the one, if I had to put a, if I had to name one thing that has been the biggest. support in my journey. Meditation. Meditation, meditation, meditation. People hate that word sometimes. I find resistance to that when I teach it. I created a course called 21 Day Meditation Foundation because my meditation practice is the foundation of my spiritual practice. As you said, I cannot stress enough and I'm not going to get a whole lot into talking about meditation because I get excited about that too. It is not about stopping your thoughts. It's learning to observe your thoughts as an observer because you are not your thoughts. And when you start observing them, you're training yourself to be observant out in the world. And often people will say, well, I'm meditating, but nothing's happening. It's not a doing, it's a being, and you're just being. And often your meditation, nothing happens there. It's when you go out into the world, you start noticing the signs, the synchronicities, the... patterns, you start feeling your intuition guiding you. I also want to speak to I want you to think about the first time that you ever stood in line. Think about that, Andrew, and tell me what do you remember, where were you the first time that you can remember right now? And it may not have been actually the first time, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: but the first memory you have, where were you when you were told to stand in line? Andrew Heacock: sure it's not the first time, but my first memory would have been my first day of kindergarten. Dr. Angela Faith: And you're told, and I want you to consider that the first time or the time when you were told to stand in line, that is when you stop trusting your own internal navigational system. That's when you stop trusting your soul to guide you because we are told as children to get in line. And what happens if you get out of line? You're shamed, you get in trouble, you get sent to the back of the line, you might get left behind. So now you never are going to get out of line because you're going to get in trouble. That's not good. And you're told to what? Follow the kid in front of you who's following the kid in front of them, who is now going where the teacher is telling them to go. And we now all know that the teacher is going where she's told to go. But we are no longer trusting. So now we're followers and we haven't been taught or supported. What if we were all told to meet at the lunchroom in five minutes and find your own way there? Imagine how fun that would be. Like you and little Johnny would skip down the third hall and know, Sally Sue and Katie would go outside and take the long way and talk to a butterfly. But everybody would get there and we would trust ourselves so much more. We would trust ourselves so much more. And meditation is where I started learning to trust that innate, that feeling of, no, you don't want to do that. No, you shouldn't say that. No, you don't have to let them, you don't have to take what they think of you as truth. See, that was a big one for me. I would let you tell me who I was. And then I would dress all this up to try to make you think I was something good. One of the things I did last year, I quit wearing makeup on purpose. And it's because I, and I didn't get as much attention as Pamela Anderson did. I don't know why. Andrew Heacock: When she stopped, I didn't know Pamela Anderson stopped wearing makeup, but that was, there was a scandal over it. take it. Yep. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, she did. It was just all a big thing. Like, no, Pamela Andrews. Like it was a good, like she was praised. Like, she's, I'm just Andrew Heacock: Good, good, yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: being silly. I'm being silly. But I'm doing less and less to try to be an image that the world tells me I need to be to be loved. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I, it was just funny. kind of got off on a little mental tangent just now about like makeup and how I feel about it. Cause, I think a lot of women are surprised to hear men say, like, we really prefer less or no makeup, like a more natural look. And it's just, you know, like they're, so surprised. I'm a photographer as well. And, so I think a lot about this kind of thing of like, and there are some times where I see someone's makeup and I'm like, I really respect the artistry. Like I respect some people have some incredibly elaborate theatrical. you know, things that they can do. I'm like, that's, it is absolutely these people in the film industry are called hair and makeup artists. And they absolutely are. I mean, it's amazing, Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: but, you know, what I'm most interested in, like as a photographer is naturalism, know, like, I mean, I'm interested in like the human face or someone with lots of freckles. That's amazing. You know, like why would you hide that? Why would you airbrush that out? And, Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: and I imagine it's, it's always interesting as a man, as someone who's never worn makeup, I think I've had a little bit of whatever to this, make this shiny spot go away. but like I've never, you know, I've never worn makeup for beauty. And it's interesting to hear about what that experience is of cause like you've got to put a barrier between you and the world and put a barrier over your face. Yeah. You're putting on your face that some people Dr. Angela Faith: Yep, yeah, you're putting on your face. Putting on your face. Andrew Heacock: say that I've got to go put on my face and it takes three hours in the morning, you know, and it's like, why you would have so much more time. Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely. So many women, and I grew up this way, my mother, well, it's that and it's exhausting. And honestly, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: all it took was for me to get used to seeing me without makeup. Because I don't ever meet a woman and think, I can't believe you didn't put your mascara on today. I don't think that, or I can't believe you didn't straighten your hair. I mean, of course I'm clean. I tidy myself up, but I'm not. I'm not putting on, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: and I went through a lot of physical things around that as well, body mutilation. And again, it makes me sick that we live in a culture that normalizes a woman mutilating her body to look a certain way. And I fell under that as well, and many, many years ago, absolutely, yes, yes, yeah. Yep. Andrew Heacock: You mean like cosmetic cosmetic procedures and things like that. Men are doing it now too. Are you aware of this? Have you heard of this thing looks maxing? Have you heard of that? It's a new Dr. Angela Faith: No, no. Andrew Heacock: trend that is some like very 20 year old men young men are doing to create a, it's Dr. Angela Faith: Mmm. Andrew Heacock: got to be a form of body dysmorphia or something. They're taking all kinds of drugs and steroids and having procedures or they'll like one guy, like he'll hit himself in the face with little hammer, like just a little bit to make his cheeks a little puffier before he goes out because he thinks that's, there's Dr. Angela Faith: cheese Andrew Heacock: like this weird aesthetic ideal. And it is, Dr. Angela Faith: Yep. Yep. Andrew Heacock: and from what I've hearing, body dysmorphia has always been an issue for women. or at least as long as we've had a Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: term for that because of the way they're portrayed in media, it's on the skyrocketing among young men just because of concerns about, you know, not meeting some aesthetic ideal and then therefore being ineligible, Dr. Angela Faith: Right. Andrew Heacock: you know, for to mate. And it's, Dr. Angela Faith: Right. Andrew Heacock: it's incredibly dark and sad. And the thing is there, was just commenting, you know, yesterday you mentioned gossip and I don't, I do my best not to gossip. I do comment on things I'm seeing on TV with other friends that are filmmakers. And there is a show that I've been watching Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: for years and there's some of the people have just had a lot of work done. And it's sad. Like when you see someone that's like this woman was so Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Yes, I agree. Andrew Heacock: young and she looks so ghoulish almost now because of the ozempic and the Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: whatever in the cosmetic procedures. And then you need a bunch of cosmetic procedures to try to reverse what you've done. And And then you see people like Andy McDowell who like looks amazing, you know, and she just doesn't dye her hair. She doesn't wear makeup or whatever. And it's, it's sad that people feel that pressure, but men and women, whatever that to feel the pressure to, to look more beautiful according to some ideal that doesn't even really exist. There is no one commonly agreed upon definition of what's beautiful or not. Trust me. Like I look at that. I think about that all the day, all day. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, yeah, I'm getting old enough now. The stars that I grew up with are all either aging naturally or they're trying to stay looking as they did when I was young. And they don't, they look, like you said, look, I don't even know what they look like. They don't look human. And it makes me sad that they, yeah, and the lips, I know for women it's the big lips. And I'm like, that Andrew Heacock: wax. They're wax like they look like wax statues of Madame Tussauds. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: doesn't. That just does it. And you can tell that it almost becomes an addiction because they just keep going bigger and bigger. I like I said, Andrew Heacock: Right. Right. Dr. Angela Faith: I in 2014, I decided to get breast implants and because I had lost a lot of weight and I had always had large breasts. So again, it was very natural and the doctors were happy to do it. And I won't go too far into this, but that was part of my journey. And in twenty twenty four, I was suffering greatly from breast implant illness and Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: No doctor wants to talk to you about that. They want you to think it's not real. Andrew Heacock: Can you tell us about what that involves? Dr. Angela Faith: my gosh, it's awful. It's awful. You feel like you're dying. You feel you start getting a lot of autoimmune diagnoses with no cures. There's lots of information out there that I have found. It's so much information. And there are doctors who now specialize in explant surgery. I went out to another state to go to a specialist Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: and the dialogue implants are toxic and they used to be banned. And then they got as many things because of the money. they were allowed to be back Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: in Western culture. And the dialogue is saline versus silicone. It doesn't matter. The dialogue is leaky implants. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they're silicone, saline, or if they leak. Putting them in your body creates a shit storm. Your body Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: now, it creates a capsule around them with blood, and it's now trying to protect the rest of the body from this foreign object. And I had brain fog that was so bad, I would be in the middle of a song that I know and I would just not know the words. The Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: feeling you have when you walk into a room and you don't know what you walked into the room for, I would have that for days. I would get a burning right here in my head. So many symptoms. And when I found a list and I was like, my God, I have all of these. And I told my husband, even before that, I said, my intuition is telling me what's wrong with me, because I kept getting sicker and sicker. And Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: so I finally went through the surgery, went out of state, did all the things, and I immediately felt better. And I have continued to get healthier. And again, I had to go through that. Why did that happen? I went through a beautiful, beautiful coming home to myself, because see, I had to forgive the version of me that thought that was a good idea. I had to forgive the me in 2015 that said yes to that doctor to mutilate Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: my body because I thought that my breasts did not look okay. To who? To who? Andrew Heacock: Right. Dr. Angela Faith: I don't know, right? And if you look at women in history, even the goddesses that are carved on cave walls, women were curvy. Their breasts sagged, their hips were big, their bellies were voluptuous. That's how we're made. And yet we are... told that we're not lovable. And I also goes back to the patriarch because women for many years had to be chosen. People forget that it wasn't too long ago. Women could not own property, couldn't have a credit card, couldn't have anything. So you had to get chosen by a man if you wanted to have anything or children, if you wanted to have children. And so we started making ourselves look different than each other and competing with each other so we could get the man. And times are changing. Yay! Andrew Heacock: Times have changed rapidly. Yeah, think people are still not trying to make sense of it. I'm working on trying to find someone who's like an expert in modern dating to come on and just talk about like to make sense because there's rapid social change and finding a partner, finding a loving partner and mate is a big part of the wonderful part of the human experience and being happy. And it's become very, very challenging because of a lot of the social disconnection things we've been talking about. But I want to go back. Dr. Angela Faith: Well, and it's going to look different too. Your partnerships are going to look different because the woman no longer needs you to own her or protect her, or it's going to be coming more together as equals, right? And Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: I think that's the shift also that's happening is this idea. And we're seeing more more women choosing to stay single because they have the option. Right? And, but I also see that they're gonna have relationships with partners because yes, we need to continue, but they're not gonna be so consuming. It's not gonna be like, I'm yours. It's we're together and we're cohabitating and I'm witnessing your successes and failures and you're witnessing mine, but we're also keep remaining autonomous, right? And so I think that relationship dynamics are changing. And that's also influence, yes, the online dating, but the structure of relationships. It's no longer trying Andrew Heacock: All of it. Dr. Angela Faith: to get the relationship your parents and grandparents had. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Right, right. there I've been there's something been been on my mind for a while. You mentioned it some time ago about, you know, having just understanding that a lot of the messages that you get that someone hurt me. So therefore these people are going to hurt me. And just, you the way that you you mentally or you explained working through that was was to me seemed like kind of a mental thing or like like a, you know, an open mindedness to it. But Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: it's in my experience, a lot of those things are sub conscious. they're there, they happen in the body and there's just kind of this response and you're like, my God, I'm having kind of a panic response. I don't know why yet. and I've, I've tried every way I could think of to think my way out of it. And I can't like you've got to kind of start with a more bottom up approach, body up approach. And that's been on my mind. And it's just come back up since we were talking about, people mutilating their bodies and, thinking about the relationship that we, as people have to our, our physical bodies. and all of the challenges that come with having a body. And I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on that. And also from a shamanic perspective, I mean, the idea of having a body is kind of egoic, right? There's you and then there's your body. There's this thing. And Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: do you think that we have bodies? Do we think we are our bodies? And how do we have better relationships? Okay. Or spirit. Okay. Dr. Angela Faith: We are not our bodies. are a spirit. Yeah, we're a spirit that is having a human experience and you are not your body. And the more we get attached to this body, the more we suffer. The more we get attached to this physicality, the more again, it kind of takes our eye off the bigger picture. We get very focused on this that we forget to look up and see. you know, our bodies are like trees in a forest. No two trees are alike. You got some trees with big growth on the side of them. And I don't say, ooh, you're ugly. You aren't being a good tree. They're all beautiful trees. And I look at everyone's body in that way. And many times we are given opportunities to recognize that we are more than our body. I want you to think of this. Your body is a learning instrument. That's it. It's like your pencil in school. You use it to learn, but that's all it is. It's not who you are. But when we start thinking that we are our body, that's when we start being separated and competing with each other. One of my favorite teachers is Christopher Reeves. Are you familiar with him? I'm a bit older than you, Andrew. But yeah, Christopher Reeves. mean, yeah, that man had a body. Andrew Heacock: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I definitely remember watching Superman as a child many times and I was a young child, but I remember, I remember when he, when he had his accident and I remember where I was when I read about it or heard saw it on TV and it was so tragic. Dr. Angela Faith: And you saw what he did after that. He found himself. He found himself. His body was distracting him up until that point, but he was a sex symbol. He was Superman for Christ's sake, right? Like he was the man's Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: man. And then he became someone that couldn't move from the neck down. So if he was just his body, he would have ceased being. He would have just been like, there's no point in me being here anymore. There's a great documentary called, I think it's called Still. by Mike, it's about Michael J. Fox, same thing. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: He got this illness and it brought, it was his dark night of the soul, but it expanded his awareness that he's Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: so much more than his body and his abilities and what the world thinks Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: of him. yeah, being attached to this physical body, I practice loving mine every day. And I'll be 55 this year, my body is changing. And my poor breasts do not look like they look like, you know, I've had a lot of surgeries and I'm very forthcoming. I trust I'm not making anyone uncomfortable, but you know, my stomach is different. My hips are different. I've got scars. I've got dimples. I've got cellulite. And I love, I tell my body all the time, I love you. I love you. And cause I didn't use to do that. I used to be like, you know, constantly, I used to work out, do CrossFit six days a week. It's insane. And I was so focused on my diet and the body. And I understand food is medicine now, right? Because that's another thing that we've been fed to be attached to this body because the health industry is a gazillion dollar industry. I'm exaggerating the number because I don't know what it really is, but you understand what I mean. So we are waking up to all of these distractions. Many of us are. People are waking up very fast. And for those that you... of you that are waking up and you have loved ones that are not because people I work with that I mentor, that's what I observe is as they start becoming more aware, their relationships become more challenging. Like maybe the friend they've had for 30 years that they go for a walk and vent every day. Well, now my students are thinking, well, my words become things. So I don't want to bitch about my life all the time. So now their 30 year friend is not. jiving with them. And so it's real important as we start awakening to have compassion and patience because everyone is waking up in their own time. It is not our place to try to make someone wake up faster than they're ready to. And then we can get in that place of judgment. Well, she's negative. She's toxic. No, she's she's a spirit having a human experience. And if you are in love, you can love her in spite of herself, because toxic people need love too. Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: I guess they're arguably they're toxic because they haven't had it. Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly, they're screaming for it. Yeah, and I'm not saying to get all trying to save them. You don't get the toxic people like, well, they need my love. Exactly. Andrew Heacock: such a hard distinction. It's such a detachment with love. It's a hard thing. I've heard the idea and I'm working on it. But it's hard. It's so hard. Yeah, it's hard boundaries and things like that. Dr. Angela Faith: Well, it's called boundaries. Yeah, it's more boundaries. Andrew Heacock: And it's hard. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: yeah, I think not detachment, but loving, a loving container for yourself. So Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: what that can look like is, you know, my ex-husband, I was so mad at him for years. And now I don't, I don't try to save him. He's an act of addiction. I don't say, well, let me love you and, and, and give you a place to live. But what I do is when I think of him, I send love and compassion. I don't think he's an SOB and tell you all the things he did to me. I see him as a suffering soul and I have nothing but compassion because see, I was a suffering soul and I hurt people. When I was suffering, I would hurt you. Andrew Heacock: That's what hurt people do. to ask about Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: the question about the body and our identity with it. A lot of what I've been learning is what shamanism is involves dropping into the body. That's a term here all the time. Let's drop into the body. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: that was kind of what I was getting at with my questions. Like that's very difficult for me to even identify with the body or to access it, to get in touch with it. What do you make of that kind of challenge? I think that's probably a big issue in modern time too, because we're all on our phones and so we're in our head. But like, I've just kind of a sense of disconnection with the body. What do you think about that? Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. For me, dropping in the body is a call to become present, to get present in the here and the now. And because right now I am inhabiting this body and this body is very intuitive. This body is designed to respond to nature, right? Like your body responds when you're next to flowing water. You're designed Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: that way. Your body responds to the moon. So dropping into the body is for me, again, I don't have a specific definition that another practitioner may have, but for me, I access it through the breath, deep breathing. meditation and I can then discern what is the thoughts and what is not the thoughts and the abilities because everybody has the ability to sense things, intuit things. And so it's dropping into the present here and now dissociating from the thoughts, right? Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: And because I'm not my thoughts. So letting that busy thoughts go, but recognizing, but I also, when I drop into my body, I'm getting present, but I'm also expanding. And then coming into the parapsychology, which is about energy and energy fields and intuition, is working with my energy field because there's the physical body, but then there's the energetic body and the energy field, the aura and the energy field. So... For me, dropping in is really getting present and aware that I'm not just skin and bones. I'm a whole ecosystem. I am nature. I am stardust. I am... I am the creator having been created. this land? Look, I'm avoiding saying, you understand? Andrew Heacock: Yes, it is. I'm continuing. So that's the thing. I'm continuously sitting here thinking like, I can feel what you're saying. And it's like, how do you explain this people that don't know, that don't already know it? And it's like, because it Dr. Angela Faith: Well, I've heard that people, can't, you can't explain it to people that don't know. People that know don't need an Andrew Heacock: You can't, you can't, yeah. Yeah, right, that's the challenge. It's like you've... Dr. Angela Faith: explanation and people that don't know, no explanation is possible. Andrew Heacock: That's a great way putting it. mean, I wanted, that's one of the things for me when I began my path of spiritual practice, I'd kind of, I'd had some shamanic journeys and basically it was like, okay, I need to try something again. I had exhausted all other options. And one of the reasons I chose to move here to Nashville is that there was a meditation center here. That's a Buddhist meditation center called Wild Heart. And, just wanted, just wanted access to anything different, anything that was, that was different other than the monotheism that was on offer for me in Louisiana. began practicing Buddhism for a while. And what I liked about Buddhism is, you know, at a very basic sense, like the Theravada style of Buddhism, it's non theistic explicitly. mean, it's just that has nothing to do with what it is. And it's basically like, it's very empirical. It's like, if you do this, this is what you should, this is what you could experience, like try it, you know, and that's the only real way to observe the mind. mean, like the scientific study of the mind is the only way to really do that is through meditation because science requires direct observation and no one else can observe your mind with you. And that's really how I see meditation is just kind of like studying the mind and being like, hmm, that's weird, but interesting, you know, that that kid that that came up now or look at that, like, or it's like, look squirrel, whatever, like, and it's gone. you know, you the way it was an interesting thing you said disassociating from your thoughts. usually think of thoughts as the vehicle for dissociation from the body. That's usually where I am. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: You know, when I'm not here, I'm up here in the present, I mean, in the future or in the past, as you mentioned. We spend all our time there, but neither of those things are actually real. You the only thing that actually truly exists Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Andrew Heacock: is this present moment. We have this weird quirk of our minds that we can mentalize into the future or the past in a way that makes them feel real, but they're not. That's why that's how false memories happen. You know, or you just anxiety about things that, know, conversations you're probably never going to have. You know, I wanted to ask also, You also, I don't think you mentioned it, but you have a PhD as well, and that was in parapsychology, right? Can you tell us like, Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: what is parapsychology and what was your experience of graduate study in that field like? Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, yes. So I got my bachelor's in metaphysical science and my bachelor's and master's in metaphysical science. I did my thesis on meditation. Meditate. Yeah. So I've researched and experienced because all of my education, I'm very I love reading. I love studying. So I have the intellectual and the experiential that I bring and parapsychology. I was led to that again, metaphysics. And then I It was years later I felt inspired to pursue and I did my dissertation on North American Indian spirituality and did a lot of research and experiential things there. Parapsychology, the way I share it, is again the study of consciousness, energy, beyond just the physical and the five senses. It also brings in the component of the Christ consciousness, the metaphysical teachings and the universal intelligence. So it's understanding that when you talk about this body, we also have an energetic body. We all have the ability to be psychic. It's not a gift. That's egoic. Every time someone says my gifts, I'm like, it's your abilities. And you can strengthen those abilities. We all have them. Andrew, you have the ability to ride bareback on a horse and shoot your dinner with a bow and arrow, but you haven't been trained. So you won't be able to do that today, but your body can do that. And it can also lead you through your other senses to food. It can allow you to talk to plants to know what's poisonous and not, but we're very far removed from being in that type of relationship with this physical body. We're told that it's, you know, make it pretty. It should look a certain way and all of these other things. in an abusive relationship with our body. And for me, parapsychology brings in that approach of considering you're not just a physical bones and skin, you are energy. You are always moving and in motion and everything is vibrating. And it just, it's beyond comprehension, but it's an awareness that, I also work with... Part of my approach in parapsychology, like doing energy clearings or blessings, I'm aware that energy can also take on a form. if you are, let's think of a haunted house where something horrible has happened. It's not necessarily spirits or ghosts. It's energies that have taken on a form that's not human and it's energy. So in parapsychology, we look at everything as energy, not as good or Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: bad, because energy doesn't care. We label it as good or bad. So it gives a broader approach to that. Andrew Heacock: This idea of energy, you're saying there's this energy that could be like in a house where something horrible happened. I just was kind of wondering, do you see any similarity between that idea of energy and the Hindu idea of karma? It's kind of almost like there's a balancing of the accounts. every action, every Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely. Yeah, everything's. Andrew Heacock: spiritual action has a spiritual reaction. Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely cause little of cause and effect. Absolutely. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just basically like, think like if things happen, there will be there will be a result. There will be a residue of that. Yeah, that's interesting. Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, yes. And love is the answer. Love is the answer. What's the question? And so sometimes these energies can get fed because of other people's fears. That was Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: one of the things I was taught early on by my mother doing seances, do not get afraid, because we were working in some darker energies, meaning it was the 70s, it was the 80s, it was all different. I don't even know what words to use, but. Yeah, just doing different things. And my mother would always tell me, they feed on fear, don't be afraid. And that's not an easy feat when you're seeing things that aren't of this world. It's not always easy. But I do remember, I practiced that today. I do get afraid. I wanna be clear. I get angry, I get scared, I get anxious. I don't stay angry. I don't stay scared. I don't stay anxious. where I used to get angry and stay angry for 30 plus years. I used to get afraid and stay scared. You understand? So it's, I'm human. I'm gonna have these experiences, but I, with practice, with practice, you get, it's easier to come back to the truth, which is fear is false evidence appearing real. I'm energy. The ego might die, but I am infinite. I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm okay. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I mean, that sounds, what you just said almost sounds like a form of faith. Dr. Angela Faith: Absolutely, absolutely. My middle name, everything, Andrew Heacock: Basically just having faith that things are going to work out things are okay. Yeah, I don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: it already is, not that it's gonna work out, it already is okay. Everything is okay. Everything is okay. Everything is working out. And I'm not gaslighting myself. I'm aware that things, I'm human, I go through, know, worldly experiences, but I'm aware that my perception, that's it, your perception. Andrew Heacock: Right. It's the meaning that you make. Dr. Angela Faith: I was told in 12 steps I had a disease perception. Exactly. What meaning are you giving? What are you projecting onto that? Are you bringing your past experiences into the present? Because now you've brought a ghost in the room, right? Are you predicting the future and trying to? Because you can't have all the facts. are just like there are so many things you can't see right now, radio waves and such. is so much you don't know. We don't know. So it is a walk of faith. Absolutely. Every damn day. Yeah, I walked away from a 25 year, Andrew Heacock: I think you were about to say it's Dr. Angela Faith: go ahead, I'm sorry. Andrew Heacock: you were going to say something about having a disease of perception, I think. I just wanted to, I wanted to pin that because Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, yes, that's. Andrew Heacock: I was curious what that means. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, your perception. If you don't like what you see, if you hate everything you see, you have a disease of perception. When I first got sober, that's what my sponsor told me, because I thought everybody was talking about me. I thought I had thoughts and ideas of everything. I could tell you what everybody was thinking. could tell you what everybody had done to me. And she was like, you have a disease of perception. I was perceiving it as all an attack. And I love the four agreements. I think everyone should read it every year. But two of the principles in there I live by is don't take anything personal and don't make assumptions. And that shifts your perception when you are perceiving everything as being all about you. Because honestly, nothing that anyone does to you or for you is about you, nothing. And nothing you do is for or about them. And so it's changing. I always say, if you don't like what you see, don't try to change that, change your perception of it. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, that's kind of the only thing you can always control, really. And the thing is, I've Dr. Angela Faith: Exactly. Andrew Heacock: had that challenge before, and I don't think it's specifically like thinking that people were out to get me or whatever, but I mean, just the constant ideating about what I was experiencing and the meaning, making Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: all this meaning that really wasn't necessarily warranted. And when people would say like, you know, it's in your power to change, I would be so frustrated and angry by that because it's like how? I mean, like, it feels really involuntary. Again, this is one of those areas where meditation helped because there is meditation really is a process of continuous detachment. You're just continuously choosing remembering that you're, hey, wait, I'm meditating. Like it's a weird experience of remembering that you're meditating. And that's what, I'm supposed to be doing this thing. I'm detaching. And that's what I'm coming back to. What am I doing here? Like in the present moment, that's what this activity is and not. yeah, you know, I wonder what that guy really meant by that one thing he said, you know, you get lost in thought or whatever. And when you're Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: so lost in thought that you can't you don't even you can't see the forest for the trees. It's it's really hard to to come out of it. And I still feel confounded by like, how do you explain to people how to get a what this problem is like, and without having them ever experienced anything different? And then B, how do you how do you work your way out of this challenge? And invariably like meditation is one of those things where it's like, if you try it and you do it long enough and consistently enough, your, your relationship to the world will change. And it's this word disease Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: of perception. That's a brilliant term. reminded me of the book that Aldous Huxley wrote called the doors of perception. And it's just kind of like the idea that what we perceive isn't necessarily the truth with a capital T. Yeah. Or even true. Dr. Angela Faith: It's It's not. Yeah. Yeah, it's not true. I want to mention too, a few things on meditation. Alan Watts says that meditation isn't something we do. It's a practice. It's a Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: practice in a way of being. And so it's literally just being with your thoughts, being with your uncomfortableness, being with your busy mind. And consider that, again, I say indigenous cultures a lot because we're living in an unnatural way, but they didn't have to say, I'm gonna go meditate because hunting, you gotta sit still and quiet when you're hunting in the woods, right? That's meditative. Gathering is meditative. They lived, it was a way of being in relationship. So yes, when we practice, just sitting with our thoughts. If we practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable, instead of thinking something's wrong because my mind is racing, if we can sit and let it race, it'll eventually start to slow down. If we sit there, keep sitting there, it cracks me up when people say, I can't meditate. Well, if you believe that, then that is true for you. And in my course, 21 Day Meditation Foundation, it's 21 days. And in each day, I add an element and people that have taken this are always like, I didn't realize this was part of the meditation. So what I bring into that practice, and this is my own personal practice that I've been doing now for, my gosh, 10 plus years. Well, I create an altar. Every morning I meditate at my altar. That is my designated space. It's got my sacred items. It's got plants. It's got crystals. It's got a Buddha statue. Like it's my place. and my guides know that that's where I'm gonna be. It's also not just about me, it's my way of showing up to my unvisibles each day. Because we, I say when someone tells me someone's a narcissist, I laugh and I think humans as a species are a bit narcissistic. And Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: we want, you know, our guides and things to help us, but we can't cut out five minutes of our day to just show up for them. Right? So when I meditate, that is me coming and telling my gods, my guides and my creator, I am coming here and I'm gonna come to you with my busy thoughts. I'm gonna come here with whatever weather I'm in today. Maybe I'm sad, maybe I'm happy, maybe I'm stressed, but I'm still gonna show up and give you, for me, it's 20 minutes every morning. I light a candle. When I light the candle, I am inviting. my angels, my teachers, my guide. So it's not just a flame, it's now an anchor. Putting your focus on the flame, your focus is your superpower. Deep breathing. teach, and this is what I teach in this course as well, how to breathe. Because when we learn to breathe, many of us are breathing shallow and just into the chest, then the mind thinks that you're dying and now everything is an emergency. But it's not, right? So when you practice breathing in meditation every day or most days, you are training yourself to access breath when you need it. I trained, I've trained myself through, and the easiest is the box breathing. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Do that for about seven breaths. It resets your nervous system. Whoa, right? And so now, I've practiced this every day. When I go out into the world and someone cuts in front of me and my nervous system is like, my God, we're gonna die. I know how to get myself back grounded. because I've been training it, I've been training myself when I'm safe at home all this time. So now that person cutting me off didn't ruin my whole day. They just took me out of my day for a moment and I've empowered myself with breath. Then we bring in working with crystals, working with prayer beads, affirmations, mantras, so much there to practice, bring into your meditation practice to train the mind to come back to its center and just observe all of those thoughts. I get excited about meditation. It's been a game changer for me. Andrew Heacock: Me too. One of the things that I've, I really love yoga and I will practice Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: some, some Hatha practice, some of the, you know, the physical breathing and postures. But for me, what is exciting to me about yoga is how incredibly rich and deep the meditative traditions are. Just the incredible diversity and plurality of different ways of meditating. And, know, having started with Buddhism, you know, there's a lot of it is Vipassana insight. Sometimes there's, you know, maybe metta, you'll do loving kindness or some of the Brahmi Vihara, hard practices and But most people, you know, in the culture, it's a buzzword, mindfulness. It's weird. are marijuana dispensaries called mindful. It's an interesting, that's a fascinating phenomenon to me because that's basically the one thing I'm not going to be when I'm on marijuana. And it was why I used to like it so much. mindfulness, I feel this kind of way about Buddhism, I've said to a few people recently is that Buddhism is a lot about emptiness. That's literally what Zen is about. You're meditating on the idea, you're emptying the cup of the mind. And it's great to empty out what all the clutter, but then from there it's like, well, what do you want to fill it with? And I found with yoga or in the Hinduistic pantheon, there's so much richness there. You mentioned mantra and also having an altar, they have these incredible symbols, these deities and that represent different things. I just was, I was reflecting on that as you were talking about, you're set up an altar in the ways that you meditate, that there is this whole world out there beyond just mindfulness. Mindfulness is a good place to start because again, it's a way of helping you see that there's a there there. But for a lot of people, think it's boring, you know, like they just, get bored with it they stop before they see any change. And, some of these more esoteric practices, I think could be beneficial for some people. even me, like I'm struggling that I don't have a teacher right now that's really well versed in all of those in the yogic tradition who can give me individualized instruction. Okay, you need to really, you should be doing Shunya. You shouldn't be doing Natashadhi or whatever. And I'm working on it. You know, I'm hoping to learn more about it, but it's exciting because there's so many different ways to change your mind, basically to explore your mind Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: or to cease. You said meditation is not doing something, it's a practice. I've heard of it said that meditation isn't something you do. It's something that you cease to do. Basically, like you just, you, you cease to it. You cease to attach to thought. Yeah. Yeah. And you just kind of come back to the present. Dr. Angela Faith: That's perfect and our way of being. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I want to be clear. You don't stop your thoughts. want to I want to make that clear to listeners because I I've been meditating for a long time and I don't I might have a half a second where I'm not having a thought and then I'm having a thought that I'm not having the thought. But it's learning to observe your thoughts and be aware you're not your thoughts. So I might be meditating and be like, oh, I need to email Andrew. and it looks like me still staying in my meditation. And many people use the description of let your thoughts be like clouds floating by. So I'll see that, I didn't email Andrew back and I'll let that cloud just float by instead of jumping up out of my meditation and emailing you. It's learning to just be, and yes, and cease from doing and just be, just be with your thoughts, be with your uncomfortableness, be with your anxiety. rather than thinking something's wrong, because there's the perception is something's wrong. I'm not okay. I'm Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: not safe. The world is on fire. I can't do this. Our perception or, you again, I'm doing it wrong. Right and wrong don't even live in my vocabulary anymore. It is, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: it is, it is what it is. And it's what meaning am I going to give it and how am I going to perceive it? Yeah. I did take Andrew Heacock: thought a lot of, go ahead. Dr. Angela Faith: No, a yoga teacher training. I completed that in 2015, Baptiste Yoga, and that was where my meditation practice really deepened as well in that experience, yes. Andrew Heacock: You were mentioning, I guess this is just the dichotomy of doing versus being. And I've thought a lot Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: in the last, I don't know, several months, about a year about what the divine feminine is. And that kind of, me, necessarily you need to triangulate that against what divine masculine means. What do these terms mean? What do these terms mean to the people that would conceive of them in different cultures, et cetera? And the best explanation I've come to, the simplest one, is that the masculine is about doing and the feminine is about being. Do you agree with that? Dr. Angela Faith: Yes, I do. do. The divine feminine gets inspiration. She gets that divine guidance. And then the divine masculine takes her inspiration and helps bring it into form. Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: Right? So the feminine and understanding this is not about gender. We all have both, but we Andrew Heacock: Right. Right. Dr. Angela Faith: are all very much caught in doing and we're not waiting to get inspiration. We're just doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. And then we get distorted masculine and distorted feminine. A distorted masculine is a bully. It's that inner bully saying, this is stupid. We don't have time for this. What do you mean you want a watercolor? That's a waste of time, right? You need to be doing something. The distorted masculine tells you you're lazy if you take a nap. Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: And the distorted feminine is, yeah, she's not okay with just being. She's filled with fear and oppression. So she's not trusting her. divine guidance, her inspiration, her intuition. And so we often have that distorted going on within us. when we get in that divine feminine, like for me, I have a private practice and I do not work on anything if I'm not feeling inspired. And that can look like sometimes for a whole week, I'm not doing a whole lot. And my ego is like, what are you doing? You're lazy. You gotta be. You gotta be doing something. And I've learned it's okay. We're gonna rest. We're gonna rest. We're resting right now. We'll know when we need to take action. And then when I trust that and I nurture that, yeah, I'll get a big inspiration. And then I'm creating a workbook or I'm writing a book. I published my first book last year, right? So that was exciting. Well, Andrew Heacock: Tell us about that. Yeah, what is the name of that book? Dr. Angela Faith: it is, yes, the circle remembers. Yes, I return to sacred living and it is a journey to returning to sacred living. What I did is after I did my dissertation on North American Indian spirituality, I had this document and you may know this when you do a dissertation, it's all research. You can't put a lot of your personal experiences in there. So I had all of this research and I wanted to share it and I had other things to add to it. So that was the inspiration, the divine feminine. Let's take all of this and turn it into a book. You have everything already here. You just gotta work the divine masculine, bring all of it together and bring it into form. I got goosebumps. Andrew Heacock: Mmm. Dr. Angela Faith: And I did, I did. And I got guided. I self-published it through Kindle and KD Kindle Direct Publishing. And I'm so proud of it. I'm so excited for it. And people have really enjoyed reading it. So yeah, it's, but. to just start working on something because I think I need to be doing something. It's exhausting. don't operate that way anymore. I took a 20 minute nap before we got on here. I do, I will nap. Yes. Andrew Heacock: Good for you. Good for you. Yeah. I mean, it's better to be rested. Yeah. My nap too. I mean, I've always had sleep challenges in my life. And so now like if I, if I nap during the day and it's 20 minutes or what or less, that's a blessing. Cause it's Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: just like, get, just get a huge pick me up and I don't, I don't use caffeine or stimulants anymore. So it's like, you know, so because they mess Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: with my sleep and yeah, good nap. mean, it's better than the alternative of just being like mentally at less than half speed. The 20 minutes of nap is amazing. What it will, what it will give you in terms of cognitive performance. Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah, but we're very conditioned Andrew Heacock: And I. Dr. Angela Faith: to think that not doing anything is lazy and unproductive and not good. And I don't believe that anymore. Andrew Heacock: I've had some of this same experience too, because I'm a photographer and I just started thinking I began less than a year ago, but I've gotten pretty good at it pretty quickly because I love to do it. But I haven't made a branch into doing it professionally, even though like the work that I'm doing, you know, I consider it art. I consider it my art form and I'm trying to do it at the highest possible level that I can. I to be as good at it as I can. That's part of my motivation is it's Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: a growth medium. It's also a mindfulness activity. shoot film a lot. so film photography is a Zen art. And that's a lot of how I relate to Zen is by, you know, being in the moment and not arranging what I'm seeing, not creating a scene and just capturing what's already there because what's already there should already be perfect. And so it's, and Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: it also makes you better as a photographer because you have to really be intentional about what kind of film am I shooting? What am I looking for? I've only got 36 frames. Like you can't just fire and know, spray and pray. It's been a beautiful thing. one of the things that I, you know, you'll see advice is you should, you should go work every day. You should go out and be shooting with your camera every day, working with your camera, know your equipment, et cetera. And I've not been able Dr. Angela Faith: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: to do that. And I kind of don't want to, I'm in a place now where I went out to New Mexico a month ago, a little more. I shot seven rolls of film out there, which is a lot for me and got some stuff back and posted creating an Instagram account. And I love it. And I just haven't picked up the camera really since. And I mean, I did a little bit when I got back, but I'll come back to it. I've got some more equipment. But for me, I what I don't want is for it to become an obligation because most of what I'm doing is from inspiration and I want to love doing it. I'm not doing it to get a good photograph. That's the other thing about film that I love. You have to just let go of any result. You're not going to you can't guarantee anything. You might not have exposed right. There's no screen. There's Dr. Angela Faith: Don't be attached to the outside. Andrew Heacock: no battery in my camera. I don't know what I'm going to get until I expose it until I develop it later. And So you just have to let go and do it for the doing or you know Just be there in the moment and capture this moment and this is a memory of a time that For one one thousandth of a second or whatever it is this moment will never happen again But I was there for it and I was able to capture it because I was able to be present enough to notice What I was seeing and it has been Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: hard to be like, yeah, I mean I guess I can't just be out Shooting every day all day because I'll get burnt out and I don't want to do that with something that I love so much Dr. Angela Faith: You're seeking presence over performance. Performance is doing it every day and trying to get perfect at it. You are seeking that presence. You're there and there for all the things that it has to offer. And I would like to say, because one thing that I'm different about is when I teach, I do not teach people how to be shamans. I teach people the principles and practices of shamanism as a personal practice. Through that practice, we then can tune into our own internal navigational system and be directed on where our life wants to take us, right? And the journey, you've shared in our conversation that you have had an experience with the shamanic journey. And I have encountered people that think that if they journey more, they'll get better at journeying. It's not a performance. It's a relationship. And it is the things you're doing in the other hours of the day. And I'm going to bring this back around to your photography. I would like to see, rather than you being in the doing every day, like you said, taking cameras every day, meditation. Because when you're meditating, you're going to get more in tuned for the inspiration to guide you to the places that are going to be the pictures that you want. The things that bring you bliss and joy. And the way that you're spending your time when you're not behind the camera, right? Because these phones, I don't even know where mine is. These right here, I want you to think energy wise. I'm not talking about these are bad for you or good for you, but let's talk energy for a minute. You start getting inspired. You're getting, we can call it a download, an inspired thought. You're ready to, you're open, you're receptive. And then you pick this up and you scroll for maybe just one minute, but energetically you've gone back to zero. So you can't get any momentum built up. can't like you get inspired and you get that energy built up, but then you pick up and scroll and you're back down at zero. And then you get inspired, you get some energy pick up back to zero. I actually did an experiment with this before my book. I kept getting inspired and I'd go back to zero and I journeyed and I'm like, what? What is blocking my creative potential? That was my intention. What is blocking my creative potential? And it was real quick answer, social media. Because if I had a minute, I wasn't spending all day on it. I was just checking it, you know? Just checking it, that's all. Every time I checked it, yeah, just checking Andrew Heacock: Right. Checking in for see if you see if someone liked you. Yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: it to see what was going on in the world. Cause you know, I want to feel connected. And every time my inspiration was going to zero. So. I took that information, that journey, I said, okay, I'm taking a break from all social media, published my first book in that break. Andrew Heacock: Isn't it amazing? I mean, how much social media will fritter away your motivation and your self-esteem and everything just by virtue of doing it. And it is a challenge Dr. Angela Faith: it's sad. Andrew Heacock: because like for as a photographer, I've gotten on Instagram because I've become a photographer and it's a photo sharing app. I mean, that's what it's really for. And so I can also Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Yes. Andrew Heacock: look at photography a lot and I get inspiration from that, but you end up scrolling, doom Dr. Angela Faith: Yes. Andrew Heacock: scrolling and it's been a challenge to manage it. So I can totally relate to that. Dr. Angela Faith: It is for most of us. Andrew Heacock: And I've also realized if I, you know, eventually I want to go back to writing. used to write a lot when I was younger and haven't done it much lately, cause everything is, is oral like this podcast. But when I go back to writing, I know I'm going to not be able to do anything before writing. Like I just need to wake up Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: to go for a walk, do whatever, but I can't look at a screen until I sit down to write because otherwise like, you Dr. Angela Faith: Well, yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: know, once you do it, you know, you, you kind of will fritter Dr. Angela Faith: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: away that motivation. Dr. Angela Faith: And then we were wondering why people are walking around for depressed and uninspired and unmotivated. Again, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: I'm not at all saying critical. These phones are, I don't know what to even call them. I accidentally destroyed my phone a few weeks ago, destroyed it. And it took two days to get a replacement. The first 12 hours, I had anxiety. I was just like, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: I kept reaching for it and, my gosh. And I just practice my breathing and perception and all the things. And after the first 12 hours, I didn't want it back. When it was delivered Andrew Heacock: Liberating, right? Dr. Angela Faith: and I saw it on the front porch, I was like, man, I got to get that set up now. I don't even, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: I really enjoyed the last 48 hours without that distraction. so I practice, because I'm human too, I do not have social media on my phone. So. Andrew Heacock: Hmm. Dr. Angela Faith: I do post the events, my events and updates on my things, when I'm like right now I'm at my laptop, at my desk and I will get on once a day or twice a day to do those things. It is because I'm aware, again, I'm not saying because it's good or it's bad. It's because I became aware of how it was affecting my divine feminine inspiration. And then of course the divine masculine is just like, well, I guess we're just gonna make a bunch of mess because we don't know what else to do with ourselves. And so, yeah, then you're just creating for the sake of creating, but yeah. I Andrew Heacock: Yeah, yeah. Dr. Angela Faith: do want to mention, I did have a 25 year career as a courts stenographer and talking about that divine guidance. When I was a court reporter, I was a freelance court reporter that went on depositions. And if you're listeners, some will know what a deposition is. It's in a conference room with attorneys and it's being asked questions about your injuries and your case and before you go to court. And I'm the court reporter sitting there, right, taking it all down. Highly stressful. I'm working with attorneys, people in lawsuits, people that have been injured. I am expected to get every word perfect. I'm expected to produce a transcript with zero errors, 97 to 100 % accuracy, very stressful. In that job, I started all of this practicing. I started meditating every day. I'd get up at 4 a.m. I started yoga, the shamanistic principles and practices, the spiritual seeking my relationship with my higher power, making time for myself. being mindful of what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, all of these things. And I learned that I could walk into a conference room and my energy made a difference. And I learned that I could hold the room in love and light, even if everyone else was angry. It was so cool. I also started doing private sessions on the weekends, had no desire to do anything full-time. I made good money as a court reporter and I was really good at it. And... I was good. So I woke up on a Wednesday, March of 2020 during the pandemic start, beginning of the pandemic. And I always said, I don't want to leave court reporting and do the spiritual stuff full time, but if that ever changes, I will know without a doubt. And I woke up on a Wednesday and I knew without a doubt. And it was not an easy acceptance. I can't explain it. I know how it sounds. People be like, well, that was just your ego. It was a feeling. was a knowing it's time. And my ego said, what do you mean you're going to leave court reporting? The world is on fire and you should be glad you even have a job. Nobody's going to invest in working with you. That was what my ego said. I had learned by that point not to listen and to listen to that higher intuition that I don't even, again, if you know, you know. It's been six years and I'm still here. it has been a journey. It has been a faith walk. There have been times the first two years was ego death after ego death after ego death. My relationship with money had to change. My relationship with productivity had to change. My ideas of what... success had to change, my ideas of prosperity had to change, and self-worth, so many things. And then I finally, after the first couple of years, now I'm just, I'm here for it. I am here for it. And it has been. meaningful. It has been very meaningful and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Andrew Heacock: That's very beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for sharing your wisdom and for allowing me to get to know you, let my audience get to know you as well. And thank you so much for agreeing to be here. This has just been a wonderful conversation for me. Dr. Angela Faith: Thank you. I have really enjoyed talking to you and getting to know you. may I, is it okay if I share my website? Andrew Heacock: Yes, of course. I'm going to have links to that and your book as well in our description here, but please share however people can reach you. Dr. Angela Faith: thank you. Yes, thank you. The website is angelafaith.love. And Angela Faith is my first and middle name. so angelafaith.love. And the book, can find that on there as well. I have lots of information. And there's also a way to contact me on there if you, if anyone wants to just have a clarity call and. Yeah, and I've really, as you can tell, love, get excited talking about these things and it has affected, it has impacted my quality of life, these principles and practices and the things that I teach and share. And I've had now six years to work with others and witness how these teachings and these principles and practices, my main container is called a shamanic approach to modern living. That's my main mentoring container. And that's exactly what it is. It's not saying you have to go off the grid and live on a compound with a tribe. It's learning how to bring these principles and practices into this modern world to support us in these big times of change. Yeah, it's exciting. Andrew Heacock: Beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you very much. We'll have links to your website and your book down in the description if anybody wants to get in touch with you and Dr. Angela Faith. Thank you very much. Dr. Angela Faith: Thank you, Andrew. You have a wonderful day. All right, bye-bye. Andrew Heacock: You too.