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From Trauma to Transformation: Healing the Mind, Body, and Spirit My Conversation with Mindy Jackson · Rooted & Real With Keenan

• Keenan: What happens when trauma, psychology, spirituality, near death experiences, and questions about the nature of consequences all collide in one person's story. Today on Rudon Real with Keenan, I'm sitting down with Mindy Jackson, a licensed professional counselor, Riky Master, spiritual coach, and founder of Ascension Counseling Services. Many stories anything but ordinary. She grew up surrounded by both traditional Southern Baptist Christianity in a family culture where dreams, premonitions, psychiatric experiences, and spirituality were openly discussed. She describes experiences she describes experiencing a near-death experience just five years old, followed by only months later by encephalitis and what she remembers as an out-of-body experience while hospitalized. Those experiences became part of a lifelong journey trying to understand trauma, consciousness, spirituality, healing, and God. Years later, Mindy became a psychotherapist and developed an integrative approach to trauma, to trauma treatment that combines traditional clinical concepts with practices and beliefs involving Reiki, energy healing, shamanism, intuition, and what she describes as quantum healing. Then in 2023, her story took another dramatic turn. Following a heart surgery, Mindy suffered a stroke affecting her visual cortex and experienced significant central vision loss. She describes turning a painting as part of her rehabilitation. That artistic process with both the recovery of much of her vision and what she views as another major spiritual transformation in her life. Now, I want to say something before we get into this conversation. You've listened to Rooted and Real. You know my own worldview is rooted in Christianity. Many and I do not interpret everything we're going to discuss today the same way. And that's okay. This isn't a conversation where we're asking you to automatically accept every claim you hear. It's an invitation. To listen carefully, think critically, and exercise discernment and just be curious. Today, underneath some very different spiritual language, we also get into questions that matter to almost everyone. How does trauma shape the way we see ourselves? Why do we wear masks? What happens when we fear rejection? What happens when we fear rejection keeps us from living authentically? How do parents model emotional health for their children? Can suffering eventually become part of a larger sense of meaning and purpose? And what happens when an experience completely disrupts what you thought you knew about life, death, God, and yourself? Mindy is open, passionate, and absolutely unafraid to go into territory that might challenge you. So whether you agree with her, disagree with her, or find yourself somewhere in the middle, I think there's something valuable about being willing to sit across from someone with a very different framework and genuinely ask, help me understand how you got there. Let's get into it. This is my conversation with Mindy Jackson. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I would say, you know, who I would say who I am and how I got to where I am is definitely built from spiritual resiliency. And I say that because I grew up in a family that was religious. I was brought up in the Southern Baptist Christian tradition. And secretly at home we were the psychics and we talked about our dreams and premonitions and various like spiritual, mystical, paranormal experiences. And I also attribute that to trauma. as well as and you can classify near death experience and out of body experiences from so encephalitis as a form of trauma also. So not every trauma is, you know, necessarily some kind of violent, you know, experience. But having had the experiences I had at such a pivotal developmental age and growing up in the family that I did with the belief system, but also having my own experiences that sometimes aligned with what I was being taught and sometimes contradicted that and trying to navigate that in on top of everything. I was so wide open, such an intuitive empath that I felt everybody's stuff. So I was the weird kid at school, you know. That had to go home with a headache and a stomachache after being there for for like an hour and a half because I was feeling everybody's stuff inside of me and not knowing how to how to sort that out or let it flow through, and I didn't have the boundaries necessary because who teaches us empathic boundaries when we're little, you know, or energetic boundaries, right? So being so wide open, you know. The way I look at it now, and based on the knowledge that I have and the remembrance that I have come into, what I'm going to say is, I came into this world a high frequency being with a mission. I didn't know, of course, what that was for a long time. I had to be anchored here like many people do. And in order to anchor high frequency, you have to have some kind of density. And this is a very dense realm, very dense world. So trauma is one of those ways that we get grounded and until we learn how to ground ourselves and heal, right? But it's one of the ways that sort of anchors us in. But it's also the catalyst that eventually we crack through, you know, we crack through that and remember who we are and we we recognize the gifts that we have as we heal. And with my clients, I teach them how to feel that energy for themselves and then transmute it like an alchemist for themselves. And we work on all the the psychological and emotional aspects of it after that. You don't fix the flower, you fix the environment first, right? So What in my personal experience as well as with my clients is that when the person transmutes that energy, they can more clearly see, right, their intuitive capabilities that have been expanded because of trauma, but they can also see all of the negative core beliefs that they grew up with. They can more clearly see the emotional constipation that because they didn't they weren't taught how to express their feelings in a healthy way, right? But as that person works through that and they start finding meaning in the experience, they start finding purpose in the experience. They start realizing wow, you know, it's kind of normal to be intuitive. It's just part of who we are, really. That and we know historically why it was shut down. I'm not that's a whole podcast in itself, right? but I get to watch these people go from you know, living in this fear-based nervous system that's dysregulated, constantly scanning the environment for the next threat, to loving themselves, finding a sense of purpose and meaning in life, and self-love. Then leads to this expansive awareness. So their intuitive capabilities, instead of being sort of finite to a degree because they're locked into fear, they become expansive, and instead of looking for the threat, now that person is seeking connection, they're seeking guidance, they're seeking love. So to get where I am, of course, I had went through multiple traumas myself, a lot of loss, a lot of grief and loss, abuse. And in the hardest of times, what I learned to do was to go within. And because of my experiences at a young age of near death and out of body, going within meant connecting with what I understood as God. most people have either read my psychology today profile and sort of know my skill set and my sort of paradigm that I I work with. And if not they have either word of mouth, you know, so I don't get your typical client, I would say. Most of my clients come in Keenan: Okay, sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: already or awake, aware, you know, s spiritual more than religious in a lot of cases. Keenan: Okay. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: with more of an expanded consciousness, a desire to understand and learn and all these things, the desire to heal. I do do a fifteen minute a free fifteen minute consultation with any new client at at the start anyways because I have to weed out the clients that my skill set is not necessarily going to be the most helpful for. And if somebody comes in and they have say very rigid thinking, very rigid beliefs about themselves, the world, you know, that's not going to work with the skill set that I have because you have to be able to be fluid and have that neuroplasticity and the willingness to take in new information, right? So most of the clients who come to me are people who've already identified themselves as an intuitive empath, light workers, healers of some sort, star seeds. So these these are people who are already at a I hate to say higher state of consciousness, but that I mean that's that's the truth. It is a a more advanced state of consciousness and have some knowledge about things like Reiki or energy healing and quantum and all of that, right? Shamanism. So my clients come to me with the expectation that I'm going to bring me to them, and that's the way I look at it. That relationship with that client first and foremost is of utmost importance. And so I meet that client where they are or do my best to do so and build that relationship. We spend a lot of time just talking about, you know, the the client's interests. What what knowledge do they have about some of these things and what are they curious about? What do they like to learn? So One of the things that I do on the front end too, as I'm building that relationship with that client, is I'm teaching them. I'm teaching them how to feel their own energy, how to feel the difference between their energy and my energy. My their energy and a plant, you know, like they're learning discernment through whatever their primary intuitive gifts are. they're learning how to differentiate energies, right? So that when we get to that point where we can transmute the energy of trauma that's being held in that person's nervous system, they can then say, okay, it feels like a rock in the bottom left side of my stomach, and it is purple. Right. So they can really like bring to life that energy and give it a an image, a texture, a weight, temperature. They really make it as third dimensional as possible. And then I help them, I teach them how to do some, you know, quantum healing for themselves, but we also use art. We use all forms of you know creative expression. And I will introduce sound therapy because the vibrations help break up anything that's dense and heavy and helps transmute that as well. I might pull out the tuning forks and we'll work with the chakras and release that energy. If we work on releasing the energy and Filling in that void with self-love, self-care, that person then can start to transmute the residuals of the emotional impact, the psychological impact, the relational impact that this trauma that they've experienced, or trauma is in many cases, has left behind, so to speak. When they get to the point where they feel like Hey, and and this is a line I hear a lot. Hey, you know, it's kind of like I had to go through that for blank reason. Right? They start to find purpose and meaning in the experience, and from that they find purpose in their own life. And many go on to be intuitive healers of some sort in various capacities, whether that's a lawyer, a teacher, you know, a dentist. They still bring some sort of presence that is heart-centered to what they do in their work with other people. Or even if you're a writer, you're bringing heart to your writing, right? so that's kind of that's kind of what it looks like. And we work on the psychic development too, because once it moves into that more love-based awareness, there's this need to sort of hone that sharpen those skills, identify is what I'm hearing inside my head loud enough to make sense to me that gives me direction, or am I needing to fill this out with my body? Do I just have knowing? Right. Can I see it in my mind's eye? So whatever those different clear clares are, right? We have all of them. We have the capability for all of them, but some get more developed than others. Didn't I didn't until it it told me this is what I'm gonna do. It my life and my career have definitely felt divinely guided. there have been struggles and delays because I had to work through some healing myself or some ego stuff, right? But I didn't know. I knew That, you know, especially as a teenager, when you start thinking about, gosh, I gotta figure my life out, you know, I knew that I was gonna be a healer of some sort, and I thought initially I was gonna be a physical therapist. So I went to the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, that has a really great program. They have a lot of medical like oriented programs. And the very first semester, if you declared your major. they had you go ahead and do observations. So I went to the gym first semester to do observations and I realized that was not what I wanted to do very quickly. I did enjoy the creativity of it. I enjoyed the problem solving, you know, all of that. I enjoyed the helping people aspect, but the practical, realistic, you know infected incision that busts open because of movement was sort of like a pr red flag for me because, you know, one gag and you're out. So I switched my lay I switched my major to speech pathology and I got really bored really quick and it was easier to party than it was to go to class. So I actually wound up after two years coming home and sort of getting my shit straight and gypsied around for a year and dealt with my family going, you'll never go back to college if you take a year off. And I'm like, No, I'll go back. I just need a break. And it wasn't until I came here in Carrollton, Georgia, which is funny because life and my career have taken me full circle. So this is, you know, this is like 30 minutes from where I grew up. And it's been here the whole time, kind of thing. But I decided, okay, well, I'll go back to college and I'll get my core curriculum in and I'll decide what I really want to do. And I took my very first psychology class here and realized two things. Two, one. One, this was not your typical psychology. This was not rats and mazes. This was humanistic, transpersonal, existential psychology. And the master's program had a clinical track. So I entered in the bachelor's level program, completed that, loved it so much that I didn't want to go anywhere else to get my master's. So I did the master's program here as well, and they had a clinical track. And of course, I followed that because my thoughts were: I need a practical way of making money. Because this world runs on freaking money. And I wound up you know, pregnant with my son in the first semester of grad school. So I also had this I'm I'm a mother and it it that's my first priority. That's my main responsibility. So, you know, I took the practical route. But in doing so, I got to take really cool classes, you know, and I think It was coming into the psychology department at West University of West Georgia. I felt seen and heard for who I truly was for the first time ever in my life. Even with my family, I still held back some things, and I think most of us do. And there was some dysfunction in my family. So there was there was you know not a lot of emotional health. And I had to learn that. There were there weren't. emotional boundaries and there wasn't energetic and empathic boundaries. I wasn't taught any of that. So I had to learn all of this, but here I was trying to mask all of this most of the time for the public, thinking, you're not supposed to talk about these kind of weird things, right? You're the weird person if you do. And now I laugh and say, well everybody's catching up. So the Being seen for the first time and really being taken under the wing of the the professors and the staff at the college got me in touch with a lot of other people who were have been and still are great guides for me throughout my life. And I can't say that any one major thing led to me being where I am now. I can say it was a accumulation of life experiences and a desire to learn everything I could about spirituality and healing and religions around the world as well. Even with my undergrad, my I minored in anthropology, but my focus was in the spiritual traditions of different cultures around the world and how that changed and morphed over time. Keenan: I wanted to ask you, you mentioned, you know, we talk a lot about families here. You had a son your first semester. or you were pregnant with your son your you got pregnant your first semester. Yes. What was Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I got pregnant in the first semester. Yes. Keenan: that process like to wrestle with like, okay, I'm gonna be a mother, I'm in college, like most mothers would that would happen and then they would drop out. Or they would just not go do college, but you just kept Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Mm, mm-hmm. Keenan: you figured it out how to do that. Like, what was that thought process like? What was that like? Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Yep, I just went to class pregnant. Keenan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I mean, in the environment that I was in, I definitely had my whole like goddess complex at the time with being pregnant. It was just so normal and natural for me because I felt like I'm here on this earth doing exactly what I came here to do. And that was to be a sacred portal. And that was acknowledged as well as encouraged in the program that I was in. So it was easy. I just went to class pregnant. And then, you know, when it was time for him to be due, I took that semester off. And, you know, when the following semester started, it was the summer semester and they had the May mesters and those are great because you get like a lot of information compiled really in a short amount of time. So he was old enough at that point I could, you know go back to to school and and that's what I did. And the bigger challenge for me was I was raised in such a religious community and family that I felt shame for being pregnant Keenan: Mm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: out of wedlock because his father and I weren't married. Well I had come from a divorced mother and divor divorced grandmother, an intergenerational home. So in my mind I'm like just don't get married. Talk problem solved. You can't get divorced Keenan: Hm, right. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: if you don't get married, right? But no, Keenan: That's true. Yeah, for sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: no, on a serious note, it was more that he and I were meant to be co parents, not partners. And neither one of us would take it back. We get along great, but neither one of us would change anything, neither one of us regret it, because we have an amazing son who now has his first child on the way any minute, literally. Keenan: Wow. my gosh. That's incredible. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Yeah. She's overdue, in fact. So I have a little granddaughter that'll be here any time. Keenan: man, that's exciting. Congratulations. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Yeah. Keenan: so, you know, you go through this process. You mentioned you were meant to be a sacred portal. I think I heard that right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Mm-hmm. Keenan: so someone hearing that for the first time, you might have hit on it a little bit, but I want to make sure, you know, we understand or at least I understand fully what that means. So what does that mean? Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Okay, all right. Well this is this is where I get really animated. Keenan: All right, let's do it. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: So if you look at indigen indigenous cultures, if you go Keenan: Okay. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: back through history and you look at how women were treated before patriarchy took over, women were seen as sacred portals. They were seen as divine space to bring that which is formless. But conscious into physical form, literally through our bodies. And that was honored. That was women were Keenan: Mm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: given such respect because of that. And when a woman is respected, the men are gonna be respected, right? So when If you go back and you look through historically, you could go back as far as ancient Egypt, right? All these different cultures that when they started wanting power, right? Power over is masculine, empowered is feminine. They're supposed to balance each other and work in harmony. But when Keenan: Mm-hmm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: you have a and we all have masculine and feminine, okay, they I want to Want to make sure that you guys understand when I say f sacred portal, I am talking about the female body. Keenan: Okay. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: People who have uteruses. Okay. People who have a uterus. But we all have masculine and feminine. Some women carry more masculine energy. A lot of women carry masculine energy because we have been masculinized for so long. We've had patriarchal control and systems of control and conditioning for thousands of years. So much so that we sort of have this weird sense of what femininity is actually supposed to be. Instead Keenan: Hm. Okay. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: of being a sacred portal, women became bitches with a uterus. What the I'm not okay with that. Right? And Keenan: Hmm. Sure, yeah, for sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: men have gotten away from what it means to be a divine masculine. Carrying the shadow of the wound all these thousands of years, and who has been the divine masculine example in your physical life to show you what a divine masculine is supposed to be? Keenan: Hmm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: So you have sports and beer commercials and church leaders and coaches and father figures. To generations of telling you what a man is supposed to be. Sometimes that goes against what a man naturally feels. So a lot of men who are awake these days, a lot of men who are more conscious, who have higher intelligence and have higher consciousness, find themselves at odds with the machismo idea of what a man is supposed to be. And have gotten back in touch with the importance of sitting with your emotions, allowing them to flow through you to gain wisdom, and then you move on. Being able to recognize, hey, you know, intuition is not some kind of woo-woo thing. It's natural to who we are as a human being. We're meant to Keenan: Mm-hmm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: be able to feel into one another without absorbing and entangling with one another. We're meant to be able to access connection with nature, with some higher power, cosmic forces. We are divine beings on an on a planet just like a Pleiadian or, you know, an Octurian, if you want to go that far. We're all divine beings. We're just in different stages of evolution. And we're kinda behind, I think. Keenan: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. so you're almost talking about like like there's a cultural macho man that you're talking about, and then you're also the higher enhanced man, I guess you we could say, is one that's in touch with their emotions, is kind of like i able to feel things and process through it. which, you know, Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Right. On an energetic level, Keenan: yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: it is a man who recognizes that there are masculine and feminine energies and being able Keenan: Yes. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: to br not necessarily balance because you don't want to do the seesaw thing. What you want is union. And this is what like Yeshua and Mary Magdalene were trying to teach people, but the patriarchy said, no, no, no, no, no. Let's turn her into a prostitute and a bitch and let's just kill him. We can't have people be empowered by coming into sacred union within themselves. Because that's what Yeshua's teaching. He was saying the kingdom of heaven is within, right? So and and many Eastern mystics had the same story. Native American, the White buffalo calf woman, we have all these stories that keep set telling us the same thing over and over again, but we still keep looking for a God outside of ourselves. Make it make sense. That is control. If you're looking for a savior or a God outside of yourself, you're not accessing that power that the patriarchy feels threatened by. has has has found a divine masculine has found the union of those two. The divine feminine has already been so masculinized, she has to heal that masculine. The the feminine, she's carried the wounds and the dormant DNA, that all of that that got shut down. for thousands of years, she's reawakening. She's reactivating that dormant DNA, the frequencies that we have right now, just the frequency of what I'm saying, can wake up that dormant DNA. And women are finally going, yeah, mother's intuition really is real. So maybe intuition's not so woo-woo and weird. Why do we think it's woo-woo and weird to begin with? Systems of control told us it was, and then reinforced it with doing things like killing women, burning them at the stake. Keenan: Hm. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like it's kind of like we're in touch, both men and women are in touch with like the masculine side and the feminine side. And it's able to like those traits what's the word? Coexist, connect. like that's kind of what I'm hearing. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like a a union. Yeah. It it Keenan: Yes, that's the word. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: if you think of it in terms of instead of saying side and side, duality, because that's what we've been taught, that's the density of this world, is duality. When you bring Two opposing things together, you have a dialectic that happens, right? You have this back and forth. So we we do this inner wrestling, we have the grappling with our stuff kind of stuff, our higher self and our ego, right? So all of our dualities, eventually, if we're truly trying to heal, we're truly trying to live from a heart-centered space, and we're trying to understand, we're gaining knowledge, we're connecting, right? What happens is you eventually hit wise mind. In DBT, we call that wise mind. You go from logical and emotional, you have the dialectic go back and forth, and eventually you come to wise mind. So what you have is a transcendence of duality. We become a whole new being. Instead of saying that, we have masculine and feminine, we just become the new being. I call it homoluminous, the hu the human light being. So we we do step into our higher selves, we have a higher perspective. That does not mean that we're some kind of idea of perfection. Whoever like made up that word needs to be drug out in the streets and anyways. But if you think about it, being authentic is your perfection. Keenan: Yes. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: And that doesn't mean that you're not gonna like hurt somebody's feelings or I don't believe in mistakes, I believe in lessons, but It doesn't mean that things aren't gonna happen and that you're gonna struggle from time to time. It just means you know how to come back to your heart and be real. Not wearing a mask Keenan: Right. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: all the time. Keenan: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you know, people wear masks all the time. It's it's kind of like from environment to environment to person to person. Like how someone hears that, they're like, I want to be my authentic self. Like how would if you heard a client say that or someone said that, how what would be the first step for them to engage in that or even begin that process of discovering that for themselves? Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Well, in my room, we we get a real mask. We get a plain white mask and we paint it. Keenan: Okay. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: We paint on the inside, we say, This is what I don't want people to see. And then on Keenan: Mm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: the outside, we paint what we do want them to see, what or what we think depends on where the person is, right? What we think other people see. And then you have to remember all of the conditioning that we've had, we have learned to reject. We have learned to reject other people. Why? Why because of judgment. Why are we judging? Because we've been Keenan: Hm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: mind controlled for thousands of years. If we just Keenan: Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: say, you know, I don't give a shit what other people think. I really don't. I care about your opinion or their opinion in certain matters. I care to be seen for the authentic person that I am, and I am a good person. I'm a heart centered person. I would hang out with me. I love me. I'm cool, you know? So if we just recognize Keenan: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: that right, if we just recognize if you're sitting across from somebody and you're thinking, okay, they're over there judging me, guess what they're thinking? They're not judging you. They're wondering if you're judging them. So especially like with my teenagers, I say, okay, let's say you're wearing your mask and you walk into the big social space, right? The lunchroom or the gym, right? You walk in and everybody has their eyes on you. That's the thought we have because what we what are we doing? We're fearing. We're showing of we're masking our fear of being judged. We don't want to be judged because if we're judged harshly, we get rejected. That goes to an existential fear of being annihilated. Existential fear Keenan: Hm. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: of being alone leads to the thoughts of annihilation. And we can't, we can't. Hold that. If we name it and look at it, then we can, right? But if we if we decide, you know what? I'm I don't give a shit. I'm gonna walk into this lunchroom. I'm PMSing. pissy because so and so got on my nerves earlier. And I really hope that that that person over there likes me. So I wanna like, you know, I want to look nice for me, but I want to look nice for them too, right? I'm being real. Keenan: Sure. Sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I'm being real. I want their attention. So, you know, Keenan: Be real, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: if I'm a teenager walking into a lunchroom, I'm facing a teenager's biggest fear. Right. Keenan: Yes. Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: How much of that do we carry with us into adulthood because we don't know how to deal with it and we don't ever learn that it's okay to be authentic? But you do have examples. If you remember, think about the kids that were just blatantly themselves and they were popular because of it. Not because they were like the mean Keenan: Sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: girl or the asshole, not because they were the star student or star athlete, because they could just be themselves completely and openly. I don't know who taught them that, Keenan: Yes. Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: but I needed them as a parent. You know, so when we think back on the kids that that we really liked because of that, it was because they were just being themselves. And ever the rest Keenan: Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: of us were wearing masks of fear of judgment. Keenan: Right. Yeah. So it's almost like the better option, it seems like, just to be your your authentic self and figure out like either what you're holding up to block out that authentic self or what do you need to let go of. Like that's what it seems like needs to happen. Is engaging in that. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: So let me curb my behavior. Let yeah, I get it. Let me, in other words, how are we wearing the mask? Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Keenan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Yeah. So so I'm gonna go back to adolescence because this is the time we have the biggest, you know, fear of judgment and rejection. Keenan: Yep, absolutely. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: We will alter what we do, how we look, what we wear, how we talk, where we sit. in the lunchroom, who we sit with, right? Where we sit in the classroom, how we engage with the teacher. Everything from just being afraid to raise your hand in class. I remember going to college the first year and it was such a culture shock that that we were like, we don't have to raise our hand. Just so so so we try to We try to act in a way that many times might not be authentic to who we are just so to avoid it. Or we gotta wear the latest fashion, drive the cool car, whatever, right? All of those things Keenan: Yeah, for sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: mean I get accepted, I get included, I'm not alone and getting annihilated. And it's Keenan: Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: even worse in school because you not only do you get ousted and rejected, you get picked on and bullied. if you're an Keenan: Mm-hmm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: outcast as well. And that leaves major sparring. Keenan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. For sure. So I'm curious to know your thoughts. Like a parent listening to this of a teenager is kind of hearing what you're saying and being like, my gosh. Like that's totally what I see happening. Like w what do you think that parent needs right now? Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: The parent needs therapy. Right? What is it in my parenting Keenan: Absolutely. That's for sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: style that I can potentially change? Can Keenan: Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I accept that maybe I've missed something because I didn't get taught? Right? We have Keenan: Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: access to knowledge now that our my generation, my mother didn't have a computer growing up. We didn't have computers until the 80s and hardly anybody had one. And then in the 90s, it was like Keenan: Right. Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Some people got them, some people didn't. And then you hit 2000 and everybody's got a a smartphone and a laptop or a smartwatch these days. So we have knowledge at our fingertips. We have resources. We have therapy. We have parenting classes. We have this available to us. If a parent is willing to say, Let me be authentic, guess what their kid's gonna do? So if that Keenan: Mm. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: parent sits down with a teenager and says, you know, I see you doing this and I know it's not you, but I know where you learned that. And I'm gonna take care of that. You watched me do it too. So the it the parent being willing to say, where have I been wearing a mask? And can I take it off and show my kid what's underneath it? Even in public. Can I show them that I can be my authentic self? And it in the end, who's going in the body bag for you? Keenan: Right. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: In the end, who's going to answer to whatever higher power or however that works, right? I kind of have my own sense about it because I've had near-death experiences. Who is gonna you gonna wear a mask in front of God? Or whatever your idea of God, source, creator. Like you can't fake your authentic being, right? So what I have learned in my personal life is the more authentic I am, the more in alignment I am with who my Keenan: Mm. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: my higher self is. it becomes easier to be empowered. It becomes easier to navigate all the nuances of life. If I fall down and get mud on my face and you laugh at me, I'm just gonna laugh with you because it is funny. Keenan: Right. Yeah. For sure. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I'm not gonna run and hide and be like, they're gonna they're gonna go put it on Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and they're gonna make fun of me. No. I'm just gonna be like, well shit, I fail. Y'all see all this mud? Damn, I messed up my clothes. And then I will laugh. Keenan: Rights. Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: We'll go on about it. Keenan: Right. Yeah. And go on with your day for sure. I mean I I imagine, you know, you mentioned your near death experience That's gotta like help at least take some of that off of you because you've been in so close to that. Like what was that experience like? You said experiences or experience, like what is that like? What's that like for someone hearing that word Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: I had two. Keenan: for the first time? Okay. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: That's not the only way near death experiences can happen. So people describe the tunnel of light and the light at the end of the tunnel and then seeing it. And there's truth in that. And I had one that went kind of that way and I had one that was very different. So the one I had at age five was I drowned in a lake near our home. It was a you know, recreational area. We went I had a summer birthday, so we would often go swimming for my birthday and you know, in the summertime just for fun. But I and I had been going to this lake since I was probably three. So it w I it was not unfamiliar, but I also knew I still couldn't swim very well. And I was at that stage where I would like hold my nose with one hand and be like, Look, Mom, I'm swimming underwater and do the one arm thing, duck my head a little bit. So in this situation, the thing that really kind of caught my attention that something was happening was I was moving through the water, but I wasn't holding my nose and I wasn't moving my arms. And I noticed that there was this shimmery light coming from the bottom of the lake. And I'm like, what is that? Let's go see what that is. Because I was a curious five-year-old. And in my mind, there was, it was just, I was just. floating through the water. It wasn't like, I'm dying. It was, hey, I'm curious and cool. I'm not having to hold my nose. And you know, so I kept getting closer and kept getting closer. I wanted to see what this was, and I finally got to this space where it was like this opening and I could see these gigantic flowers that were just such beautiful colors. And there were these the way I call it now, light beings. in my five year old mind, saw them as light beings, but I knew them. I had not known anybody that had passed away at that point in my life. A few animals, yes, but no people, right? But there was something familiar. I knew who these I knew who they were. And it it still boggles my mind a little bit. I I've thought about that many times did I see angelic figures? Did I see like six-dimensional or higher kind of beings? Like were were these ancestors, right? I I don't know. But at five I knew who they were. I couldn't do the word now. And so I'm almost there, like I'm almost like to the flowers when I get pulled back through this blackness, to this black bubbly water. And I'm sat sideways on my float. And I'm coughing, I'm choking, and crying, I'm pissed off because I was almost there and somebody yanked me back. I was mad. Like, why did you pull me back? I was there. I was about this, you know. And it could have easily been a case of some adult was like, that kid looks like they might be in a little bit of trouble and grab me and whack me on the back and go on. Because there was nobody there. I don't remember a person being there. My mother. didn't remember any big incident. My sister was three at the time. She wouldn't have r necessarily remembered anything. So it was kind of like I felt like alone in this experience at that point. And I'm like, what just happened? So that that experience at such a pivotal age, I do believe, had such a major impact, number one, on my nervous system. And then I had encephalitis from chicken pox a few months later and I was in the hospital and I was having out of body experiences in the hospital. I don't think I would have survived that honestly because I had a fever of 105 that sustained for four days. That is major brain damage. That is maybe I have brain damage and just don't know it, but somebody tell me if I do. But I think because I had had the near-death experience so so soon right before I had the encephalitis, it led to me being able to exit my body. And so I would go and wander and then I would come back and do this little dive back into my body. I could see me. And I would have these like weird moments where I'm like, how am I there and here at the same time? It was so weird. But then I would go through like what I thought was kind of like waking up and I would tell my mom what I saw. And she told me years later there was so much consistency in the things that I would tell her that she started to go and validate and she would come back and ask questions. So That to me is enough evidence to say, yeah, I was having out-of-body experiences, didn't know what that was, but my mom had enough information, enough psychic ability herself to realize something was going on. So when you have experiences like that, it alters the nervous system. Our nervous system is how we send and receive information, not just through our five basic senses, through our Claire senses as well. So I That's where I think the whatever intuitive capabilities I came in with, right, got magnified, got expanded. And of course I went through traumas. The other near-death experience I had was three years ago. I had had heart surgery. They, I think it's called a thoracotomy. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but like they went in through the rib space and the intercostal space between the ribs and went halfway across my body. To get to my pericardium to remove a cyst. It reminds me of like a scene off of Ghost Ship. If anybody you know the reference there. But the pain was so intense. And I looked it up. This surgery was like one of the top 3% most painful surgeries you can have. And I was in a primordial state of consciousness trying to cope because they sent me home with shitty pain man pain management. That much pain, and they send you home with Percocet. No. Anyways, the pain was so intense that like two and a half days in I had a stroke. I had a stroke in the occipital lobe, and that's your visual cortex. I thought I was having an ocular migraine because I'd had those before and it was very similar. It was the rolling black started. And sometimes I didn't sometimes I might have a few seconds of that with an ocular migraine, but this just kept on going. And then the next day I had a really bad headache. So I'm like, something's not right. We called EMS. They came out and assessed me for typical temporal stroke. didn't assess me for other types of brain bleed. And because COVID was still lingering around and the hospitals were full of people, I opted not to go. So I missed the golden window. Okay. It was that following Monday, the home health nurse comes in and we tell her about this, and she goes, go to the ER now. So they found that I do I So I go in, they assess me, and the rolling had kind of was still kinda there, but what was weird is I had central vision loss. So It wasn't like a black hole when I looked at you. It was like you didn't have a nose. My brain would fill in that space with the colors of your face. So nobody had noses and then part of the mouth was gone. So I could only see part of the mouth. And I was told that because we missed the golden window, it was potentially permanent. And I refused to accept that. So I'm looking at my phone in my peripheral vision doing research to find out what to do and ran across information about doing visual arts and I started painting and I can come back to that in a minute if you'd like. But the near death experience, I was having some kind of medication interaction. And what was happening was my blood pressure was dropping real low. I just kept thinking I was really sleepy 'cause, you know, you're in the hospital or whatever. But this I knew this was different because I'm looking around my hospital room and instead of that sort of like clinical white light you have, everything kind of had a goldish white light color to it. It was like a softening and the edges of things were softer. And I'm like, this is really pretty, you know, kind of like when the golden hour happens and everything's kind of pretty, you know. And I see these fingertips in the peripheral of my vision and it startled me at first and I turned to look and when I turned they went with me. I was like, Well, what is this? What the hell's going on? Right? And I I regulated very quickly, like all of a sudden it was just boom, completely calm, and there was goldish white light coming from the fingertips. And then I instantly knew who it was. It was Yeshua, my childhood friend Shua. That I didn't know was the Jesus I was being taught in school in in Sunday school until I got older. And I guess the preacher may have said Yeshua in church one day, and I went, er, they're talking about my Shua. That's a whole nother podcast, too. So, anyways, he spoke to me, but it was telepathic, it was imagery. He showed me and gave me the words in my visual mind. you can step out of that robe and into this one. And I said, You mean it's that easy? And he said, yes. And so I turn and I look and I can see my son and I see my family and my friends and my colleagues and it just exponentially got bigger. And I said, well I'm not really done yet. Can I take a rain check? And he giggled. And he said yeah. And I said, okay. And that was the end of it. It's kind of like the next thing I know, there was a nurse standing beside me and she's going, Mindy, Mindy, Miss Jackson, Miss Jackson, Miss Jackson, you're back with us. Are you okay? You're back with us. And I'm like, What's going on? Like, where did he go? Like, where did you come from? Like, what's going on? I had a moment where I was confused and it took me a while. It took me a little while. It took me probably a good thirty minutes after she left the room and I was, you know, stable and, you know, by myself again to realize I had just I nearly died. And I was given the opportunity to choose. So that to me was pretty amazing. And that that gives you a sense of, and I don't mean religiously here. I'm talking about a sh Yeshua, the spiritual divine masculine, that had been he and his girl, Mary Magdalene, have been my guides even when I was a child. And I don't know if they were just the representation that I would understand, the divine masculine and divine feminine, right? Or if it was actually then it felt as a child it felt very real because I could see the dust on my feet when we would go to town and go to the market and I could taste the water. It tasted different, right? So in that near death experience, what that gave me was a sense of peace about how easy and painless death can be. And part of the reason this was important to me is my a few years earlier. My adopted brother had been killed in a drunk driving accident. And the type of injuries that he sustained, it really, really bothered me. I wanted to know, I had such morbid curiosity. Did he lay there and suffer? Was he in a lot of pain? What was it like for him to leave his body? The him that I knew that made who he was, right? That soul, that spirit, that consciousness. And I just was so restless about it. And one day I decided to go out to the forest and was just riding around on the dirt roads in the national forest and I was talking to my higher power. And I was like, I just need to know. Please show me, please show me. And at some point I went around this really tight curve at the top of the mountain and it had a really steep embankment. And as I went around the curve, my car went down and I jumped up through the s the the the windshield and I went and I snapped back and I I got around the curve and I just had to pull over. I had chills all over. I started crying and I was like, my God. my God, he leapt just before impact. And that's what I was shown is that in many cases of a traumatic, unexpected sudden death like that, that's what happens. Is before that person even hit gets the blow, they leave. Some are given a choice. I think those are the ones that probably suffer a little bit more. So I don't know. But it really gave me a sense of what to expect in some ways and a solid, I guess you would call it faith, right? In life after death. That's 'cause we don't want to. We've been conditioned to think it's scary. I I think it's possible that at some point we because of the changing of the frequencies, because of where we are in the universe, because of what's going on with people raising consciousness, there's literally an effect on our DNA. Our dormant DNA is waking up, and we are going more from a carbon-based body to a little bit more plasma-based body. And think about this, right? If you take the plasma out of your blood, anybody's seen, you know, you bleed and you leave it alone for a minute, and you get that little plasma. What is it? It's a crystal. It's a crystal. So plasma is liquid crystal running through our bodies, right? And we've not thought about it. We didn't activate it because we weren't told. And once people started figuring it out, it's like, wait a minute. There goes that DNA waking up, right? So it is highly possible that as we raise our consciousness, raise our frequency, our energy body becomes so light that the physical body has to go with it. We become more plasma-like. We might not ever face what we consider as physical death ever again. I know that sounds like a long shot. And I know that sounds kind of out there for a lot of people, but do your research and get back to me. Right? I can come up with a lot. All right. Well, excuse me. To put it simply, I would say wake up and remember you're not powerless. Remember who you are. Get all of the cobwebs, the matrices, the systems. If you can just recognize all of that for what it is and exit, as people are saying, it's a catchphrase, exit the matrix, but the word matrix actually means mother. So that's debatable. I think we need a new word. But It's a good reference. The movie helped people understand this, so I'm going with it for now. Notice what the Matrix is made up of and realize that that's all the falsities that take away from you remembering who you truly are. You are a divine being embodied on this planet in a reality where you're supposed to evolve in some way. A lot of people will say, What are we, what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Well, what if it's just to be? To just be here and just I think we're meant to enjoy it. Like, I don't think the human body and our spirit are made for the levels of stress, but we're also very resilient. So we are in some ways devolving and in some ways evolving. But if I could say to the people anything. It would be remember who you are. Remember your sovereignty. And what does that look like? I would say do you want to stay where you are? Because if you're even contemplating it, you're not very content or comfortable. Something's not working, something is out of order. There's disorder. If it's really bad, we call it dis-ease, because being out of order leads to e dis-ease, right? So if you don't make the choice, what is that going to look like? Do you want things to stay the same? Because change doesn't happen until we take action. And it starts inside of us making that decision, saying, huh, let me take a look. What are you so afraid of? What are you so afraid of? That's the main thing people that keep people from going to is I I hear all kind of defenses like, that's just bullshit that doesn't have any that value and it doesn't do anything. Okay, you go over there and stay in your third dimensional world. And I hear people say, Well, I just I don't know. I'm afraid they're gonna judge me. That's the big thing, is people have so much shame around whatever it is they're struggling with because our world said you're not supposed to struggle. We have a quick fix mentality. You got a headache, take a pill, right? You hungry, go through the drive-thru, hand them a couple of bucks. We weren't taught to sit with our feelings and emotions. We weren't taught that they are energy in motion. They're meant to flow. We're not meant to get emotionally constipated and then have explosive diarrhea behavior. That's not the way it's supposed to work in a healthy system, right? There's way too many for me to even try to pick. I would say one of the most influential two really influential researchers. One is Besser Vanderkoult. His book is The Body Keeps the Score. Many people are familiar with that. It talks about trauma and how it affects the nervous system, how it affects the body, the DNA, how you can as a female you can carry up to three generations of trauma. I think it's a lot further back than that. We just don't have the tools or the people to measure with, right? and Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey. it tells the hero's journey, and that is the healing journey. Every movie you've ever watched, book you've ever read, that's the underlying thread, is the hero's journey. So, you know, if you're content with your misery, then so be it. But if you really want to advance your consciousness, use your intuitive skills, have a better balance in your thinking and clarity, and you want to heal from these things, as even things that you're carrying that you didn't ask for, generational and ancestral Keenan: Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: trauma. in your own body. Keenan: Yeah. Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: If you want to heal, look at these two books. Look me up. I do spiritual coaching too. So even if you if you I'm limited to psychotherapy clients in the state of Georgia because that's the way licensure works. But as far as quantum energy healing, I can do that virtually and spiritual coaching. Of course we can have we can even do FaceTime For fit for spiritual coaching. So, you know, you Keenan: True, true. How can Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: can look me up, do any research you want to in healing. Keenan: Yeah. how can people find you if they want to find you? I'll put your website in the description so people can find you, but what are ways people can Mindy Jackson, LPC, Reiki Mast: Well, I I don't know if I sent you the actual website to my business, but for all of my services, the best way to actually see what I do and contact me is to go to psychology today's website and then type in my name, Mindy Jackson, and you can put Georgia or you can put Carolton, Georgia. You'll find me. Read between the lines. If you got eyes to see and ears to hear, you'll you'll notice it. Also, you I've got I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook as Mindy Jackson, but I also have one for my business, which is Ascension Counseling Services, LL C. and also Ascended Mys Mystics. So I have three actually, three Facebooks. I'm on Instagram as Jackson Mindy, at Jackson Mindy, whatever. I don't use my Instagram as much. I took probably do need to get better at that, honestly. Keenan: All good. Well, thank you so much for everything today, being patient, excellent conversation. I really appreciate your time today.