Hi, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And today I'm talking to someone with an amazing name, actually. Rachael Jayne Groover. Now, what about that for a name? I mean, that is amazing. I don't know which of the three names is my favourite. They're all spelled amazingly differently. But the word grooving, I mean, that's a blast from my past. Rachel, I'm sure you don't want to hear that.
Rachael Jayne:No. My husband, whose name is Dan Groover, my name is Rachael Jayne, and so I've got a double first name, and he always says that you married me for my last name, didn't you? And he's a bass player also, so it's kind of amazing.
Russell:Wow. Well, there is this theory, isn't it, that people often do the trades which are something to do with a surname. Quite a peculiar thing. I'm sure it's just one of the statistical oddities, but there's a famous chef called Baker, isn't there? Anyway, sorry I'm whittering on in my normal fashion. So, first of all, thank you for joining us. It's a joy to see you. And I can already detect by the accent that you sound as if you're nestling somewhere in the colonial common, the colonies, somewhere on the other side of the world. Is that true?
Rachael Jayne:Sort of. I was from Australia. I'm a Melbourne girl. Melbourne, Australia. I live in, Colorado, right now. I came over in 2002 and got dropped into Ashland, Oregon. For those of you that don't know that place, it's a beautiful town in Oregon that holds the biggest Shakespeare festival in this country. And it's got a lot of spiritual and personal development work. I felt like every guru and their cat lived in Ashland. It's a very tiny place. And it was amazing because it was my spiritual college in many ways. Just learned a lot and got to work with a lot of different facilitators and trainers and authors and many that you might know. And then met my husband there, Dan Groover, who's an award winning author, novelist himself. And then we moved to Colorado because we just wanted to be somewhere that had a little bit more yang energy.
Rachael Jayne:Oregon is very yin and very little bit of hippie and very spiritual, and we love that. But we kind of wanted to build our business, too, and do that in a way. So, we moved to Colorado in 2008 at the end of that, and we've loved it.
Russell:Fantastic. So brilliant. Okay, well, you've given me a lot to think about already, but let's start there. Tell us a bit about yourself and what it is that you do. You talk about the business. Tell me a bit about you as a person, a little bit about the organisation.
Rachael Jayne:Yeah, well, I've always been fascinated with why certain people have a magnetic presence about them, why they are an effortless leader and people follow them and just really lean into their message and that happened when I was in Australia. I was a singer full time, so I was very interested in what that magnetic presence was in relationship to performance. And I ended up teaching a vocal technique, stage performance, stage presence, how to create that because I was learning it, learning the energetics of it, and like, yeah. And people would then come and I just kind of got a little burnt out from the music industry. Wanted to change at that point. Again, right before I moved to the US, I started watching who had just started having all the personal development people on her show, which seemed like just yesterday, but it was over 23 years ago or something like that.
Rachael Jayne:And I was so intrigued. Everything about personal development, I was absolutely intrigued. And that got me feeling like I think I meant to move to America. Like, I love what's going on there. And at the time there was not a whole lot of that was going on in Australia or the UK or any of the colonies. It was kind of were travelling a little bit behind the US as far as all of that kind of work. And I also had a feeling, an intuitive sense that my man was living in America. And I had really bad luck in relationships prior to that. So, I was like, I'm wanting a change, wanting a shift. And so, in the move over, decided to change careers because I was hearing about this business called being a life coach, being a personal coach and helping people in their resilience and in their personal life.
Rachael Jayne:And when I came over to the US just to visit the first time, people were saying, just do what you love, and the money will follow. It's going to be amazing. And so, I did. I changed. Gave up the singing and the money didn't follow. I think people it's not just do what you love, it's do what you love and have a strategy and take action. And so, I was struggling for a long time, but that's kind of what started the journey of becoming a spiritual teacher. Mindfulness, leadership, presence, inner peace and out of purpose. We work with a lot of entrepreneurs now because we've built a multi seven figure company in this world of personal development. But that's really my love now. Our company is called the Awakened School. We hit the top 5000 list. and I say that is because there's a really big cross over now between building a business, building a conscious entrepreneurship, and being a philanthropist and a giving back however you want to make an impact and the personal and spiritual realms of your own inner work.
Rachael Jayne:And when we have someone who wants to do those equally like their personal development, their spiritual development and their business development, then they find us because we want to stay in an ethical alignment with all of those three things.
Russell:Interesting. So, let's unpack a few of those things. Some people get a bit nervous by the word spiritual, so maybe you can unpack what you mean by that.
Rachael Jayne:Yeah, spirituality to me means receptivity. Are you receptive to this moment?
Russell:Right. That's very different to the normal definition.
Rachael Jayne:I mean, if you think about from a religious standpoint, religion is a path to spirituality, right? Prayer, mantra, talking to God, nature, whatever religion you follow, it's a path of receptivity to something greater than your ego, individual self. And so, the more spiritual you want to become, the more receptive to the moment, to the divine, to your divine partner, to your source, whatever you call that. And so, yeah, I grew up Christian, Catholic, but I'm definitely in the bucket of spiritual, not religious these days, using the best of all religions, because everyone has a piece of how to become more receptive, compassionate, unconditional. But what I've found in my journey is to do that, to become more receptive, I need to work on my energy field. I need to work on my mind. I need to work on the physical way that I breathe and open and relax, because the nervous system often keeps us in that shaky, non-present place.
Rachael Jayne:And when I started doing that, when I started working on not just the mindset, because I think, Russell, I'm sure you see this in your work that a lot of people first work there. It's like you need to change your beliefs. You need to change your mindset. You need to change your thinking about that, and that's great. But if you don't change the energy field around the centre point of your head and your heart and your gut and you stay in this kind of contracted place and you're trying to change your beliefs, it doesn't stick. It's a marriage between the mind and how your energy system is working. So, after I did a lot of training and experimenting on myself first, because I don't teach anything that doesn't work on me, I realized that the energy part is where the change occurs. And people sometimes have heard maybe, you know, you've got to be a vibrational match to that which you want, or you've got to align to what your beliefs are.
Rachael Jayne:And so that means this system, I'm pointing it to my Earth suit, as I call it, right? I have to make this train, this Earth suit, to be receptive. Otherwise, I am running old stuff again and again. Old habits, old beliefs, old programming. And so, spirituality is a big piece in your freedom and peace.
Russell:It's interesting you're talking about it in this way. It sounds like you're describing spirituality as a process, whereas the usual definition of spirituality is about enlightenment, which is a sort of an end point. But it sounds like you're more interested in the process than the outcome, which I think is quite refreshing.
Rachael Jayne:Absolutely. I mean, even enlightenment is an experience to me. Enlightenment is an experience. And the experience is knowing with 100% clarity that you are not who you thought you were. I'm not Rachael Jayne Groover. I'm actually infinite love, unconditional response potential running through a portal called Rachael Jayne Groover. And enlightenment is having that experience pretty much all the time. 99% all of the time, I like to say, because if we get like, I've got to be perfect, then you're back into your ego and all of that. So, what happens with people that come and work with us is they've had experiences of that enlightenment moment or satori experience or, like, wonder divine connection with their source and hearing that voice. People have usually had experiences of that, but they do not know how to sustain it. And that is the spiritual process. That is the spiritual awakening process of how you go from going in and out of those states to a stage of consciousness that has you remain in that no matter what is going on.
Rachael Jayne:And that's my personal journey. It's like, I'm not there 98% of the time, like 2% of the time, but from this work, I am there now pretty much all the time. And I have a busy schedule and a lot of things going on where five or ten years ago, that was not my experience. I was going in and out of it, in and out of state.
Russell:To ask a question, if I may. When people describe these sorts of states, they make it sound extremely grand. It's all encompassing. It's this thing which is amorphous, and some of it seems to belief based, which is absolutely fine. But I mean, how does it help you do your shopping more effectively? How does that effectively with the trivial and the mundane? Because you've got to be done all the time. Most of our lives are trivial and mundane. How is it useful in that sort of sense?
Rachael Jayne:Yeah. So, I think we hear this term the end of suffering in spiritual and religious context, the end of suffering. And to me, when people say that line, they mean the end of the mental suffering and emotional suffering that the ego creates, right? Those, oh, I'm not doing good enough, or the inner critic, or the seeker that's never happy. And the defensive part, all these things that we have to deal with, right, as human beings. So, when that shift occurs, you still chop wood and carry water, you still pack the dishwasher and go to the grocery store. But the difference for me is when I was going to the grocery store five, six years ago, my mind was still going in the background. It was still, what have I done? What have I not done? Where am I measuring up? Where am I not measuring up?
Rachael Jayne:Oh, I wish this person would go faster. Because I'm running out of time, I'm too busy all those things. And really, even five, six years ago, Russell, I was a very happy, pretty conscious person. But I can tell you my mind was still going in the grocery store shopping, like of those little things that would do it now almost all the time when I don't have a thing to focus on. Like right now my mind is silent. I'm not in a place with you of I need to say this, and I need to promote this and I need to do and when I'm at my computer, I might be, okay, I've got to figure out how to write this email or do this thing. I can call my mind up to do a job, but when it doesn't have a job, there's silence. And that was never my experience before.
Rachael Jayne:And so what's helpful about that is when I'm silent washing the dishes, my joy meter is so much higher. There is so much more receptivity. And when receptivity and joy is higher, more of what you would want, more of what you would manifest as someone would say, more of what you are trying to bring into your reality happens easily and effortlessly. So there is so many pluses to going on the process. I love that, as you say, of more and more spiritual awakening and receptivity because it's going to help your work, it's going to help your relationships, it's going to help whatever you're wanting to manifest a wonderful vacation or career, it's absolutely changed everything.
Russell:Right. And so, the primary benefit is this sense of peace.
Rachael Jayne:Yes. I would say in my language, the benefit is having no resistance to the moment ever. And everyone can listen to that and feel, what would that be like? Because what Russell's asking would be a different answer to any of you. Some of you are very you're a CEO in a Fortune 500 company and some of you are mums or grandmothers, and some of you like, what would it be like to live with no resistance to the present moment.
Russell:But the resistance is in yourself. You're not talking about external resistance, are you?
Rachael Jayne:Anything so yes, the resistance that I'm adding to the moment, like, oh, I don't want this to happen, or oh, I didn't want that person to say that, or I should be doing something different or something happens. No, it's anytime we go no, and I'm not talking about boundaries, I'm not talking about being a doormat to people and all of that, but just Russell says something, we're going to go in this direction, let's do it. Okay, this is happening. Okay, well, but I would also like this, I can insert myself of I'd like to talk about this, or I'd like, but there's not an energy. And I'm sure everyone feels that when someone's got an energy of resistance and they're trying or they're forcing or they're trying to control or they're grasping or they're seeking when enlightenment, using the language that a lot of people do, or the spiritual awakening, and that stabilizes in your experience, all of that's gone.
Rachael Jayne:The seeking mind dies when that happens, and we're all on our way to it. But a lot of people, our sweet spot in the awakened school people have been on a personal and spiritual development path for decades, right? So, they've been having this conversation, but the sweet spot is they know they have evolved significantly, but they also know they're missing something that doesn't stabilize this experience. They have it, and then it snaps back. And that was my experience until five or six years ago when I had a very profound awakening journey process that flipped me into this next, more stabilized place of it. And so I can help people navigate because I was like, oh my gosh, I was missing such a huge piece of understanding that kept me in the individual ego realm, just getting better at that. Right? Because personal development is getting better at being a healthy ego, which is very important. We definitely want to become more healthy egos.
Russell:What does that actually mean? A healthy ego?
Rachael Jayne:Yeah. So, to me, an ego is what makes me feel like I'm an individual. My mind, my body, the energy field. Like, I am an individual person. I'm not you. And so that's the sense of self. A sense of self. And the stronger my sense of self is, the healthier my sense of self is, the happier I will be, the more functional I will be, the healthier in relationships I will be. And it ends up being the easier that spiritual awakening and stabilizing that peace will be. Even though they're different lines of development. Because I was doing all of the mindset upgrades and all of the relationship courses, and I was becoming a better communicator, but all of those things still were in the individual self-realm. And I didn't understand that even if I got better and better and better at those things, it wouldn't pop me through to the next stage of consciousness in the spiritual development.
Rachael Jayne:That is a different thing. And so that's where I was getting confused. I thought, if I just get better at this, it's going to open this. And it didn't. And so once I got understood what the spiritual awakening process is, then, whoa, things started getting very interesting and exciting, and it's happened. Isn't it's a never-ending journey? I still see the next door of what's next and the next portal. And the next portal. It's not enlightenment. Anyone that's saying enlightenment is a goal or something, that's the end. It's just their ego that's saying that. It's a belief system. It's not an experience, but it's really getting that personal development and spiritual development have to go together. And then we get a lot of people who are that way inclined trying to build a coaching business or doing workshops or retreats or maybe consulting business or service-based business.
Rachael Jayne:We have a lot of healers, a lot of artists, and I say even if you get so good at your spiritual development and even if you get so good at personal development, it doesn't mean you're going to build a business. I'm sorry you have to now get good at your business development, but your personal is going to definitely help your business. Your spiritual is going to keep you in a place of non-resistance and flow so it’s easier to manifest what you want. But the business of who's your ideal client and how do you market and how do you sell. And that has to come too. And we take a lot of very well-meaning people who are at zero to maybe six figures or multi six figures and really help them get you don't have to give up this beautiful inner work that you're doing to have a lot of outer purpose and do really well at that.
Russell:Brilliant. So how do I find out more about you? Because it's a fascinating concept and obviously we're just scratching the surface here today. So where can I dig in and find out?
Rachael Jayne:I think the best place is to go to theawakenedschool.com we have free membership there and you get a ton for your free membership. We are having free master classes for our members, five-day challenges on different things. Already this year we've had our Manifest a Miracle Experience, which is really around the spiritual receptive place. We've had our Outlining your Book challenge because a lot of people finally want to write their book. We've had how to really be able to speak your message. We've had our Be Seen Boot Camp for people who fear being visible. And we've got so much more for the rest of the year. So, you can just go to theawakenschool.com and a thing will pop up somewhere on that front page to become a free member and that'd be a great place to start.
Russell:Brilliant. And if I want to find out more about you, are you on all the socials?
Rachael Jayne:I am on all the socials. Exactly. I'm not on TikTok. I haven't got to my dancing shoes yet with the TikTok. But I am on YouTube. You can binge watch me there a lot. Facebook. We have a Facebook group that is really stellar. If you are a mature person wanting a really elevated conversation on human potential and this kind of work, you can go to the Awakened School on Facebook and join our Facebook group as well. There's a lot going on in there.
Russell:Brilliant. Excellent. Well, that's been absolutely fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So, let's just say that again. It's the awakenschool.com. We've been talking to Rachael Jayne. I forgot your surname.
Rachael Jayne:Groover.
Russell:Groover. I made such a song and dance about it, and I wrote it down and I couldn't find it. I'm so fascinated by what you were saying. Sorry about that. Brilliant. Wow. That's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. And one final message or one final thing that you'd want us to leave in our heads? What would that be, perhaps?
Rachael Jayne:Yeah, just right now, as you're leaving this conversation and you're moving into the next thing that you hear and the next thing you're doing today, be open to receive this moment as an experience.
Russell:Good. Well, I'm off for something to eat, so I'm very interested. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
Rachael Jayne:Thanks for having me.
Russell:You take care.