Caroline Myss on Intimate Conversations with the Divine

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Caroline Mace and author of many books, former host of the TV series The Journey with Caroline Mace on the Oxygen Network, and guest on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday. Today, Caroline and Eric discuss her book Intimate Conversations with the Divine Prayer Guidance and Grace. Hi Caroline, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thank you. Nice to be with you. It's a pleasure to have you on.

We're going to discuss your latest book, Intimate Conversations with the Divine Prayer, Guidance and Grace. But before we do that, let's start, like we always do, with the Parable. And in the Parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson. She says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which

represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I want to prayer about that. Oddly enough, I know you did. That parable

means a great deal to me. First of all, because the wolf is such a powerful animal, both symbolically and physically, and I think the instinct to give in to the need to attack is so powerful, and I think those are primal instincts, and it takes so much to make the decision to you align yourselves with the higher instincts of the soul, the higher graces, to realize that to attack is to give into your fears, and those decisions

are only destructive. The parable that wisdom is eternal. It's brilliant. That's why I love that. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, And I was definitely struck by in the book as I read that part about the wolf in it, you know, talking about two wolves in a dark cave. Absolutely, absolutely, and I don't think there's anybody who can't relate to that. I think every single person knows what it is to feel as though they've been abandoned in a dark cave

by something in life that's happened to them. And it's a terrifying feeling. It's terrifying to feel powerless, that something has rendered you in a powerless situation. And I think that is among the most frightening feelings that you can confront in life by far. Yeah, it really is. So your book is all about, as the title suggests intimate conversations with the Divine, and they're really your prayers to God.

And I was struck by just how you brought every part of you to God, every concern, every worry, every doubt, every fear. Say a little bit more about that. Well, my own spiritual journey has taken me well beyond the idea of an off planet God that exists someplace in the clouds, into this deep and profound understanding that the nature of God is experiential and is very present, and that for me, for me, I feel that I live in the atmosphere of all that is created, that everything

is God. And I don't mean that in a like physical sense you pick up a cup and say, is this God? This is a mystical principle that all that is creation is an expression of the Divine, that the Divine cannot exist outside creation. So this is a very rich mystical precept and that the nature of God is law,

that all things operate within the laws of nature. And as I started to deeply understand that, I realized that this relationship that I was developing with the Divine became very conversant, that it was ever present within me and around me, and it became very intimate. It became the what I would use his intimate and that I began to understand the power of prayer, That prayer was not this magical thing, you know, make things go get better.

I understood that the nature of God within our lives is organic, that the Divine works within us through us, through the laws of nature, through our power, within the power of life, through the power of our attitudes as they change, their creative force changes within the forces around us, so that when we pray, give me the courage to do something, the thoughts within us that need to change our change, the inspiration that we need to have to

change our fears is how Heaven works with us. The nature of God is so profoundly, beautifully organic and ever present, and it just made sense to me. One of things that I was really struck by was similar to this, As you say in the book. At one point, when we pray, we ask the Divine to show us how to see. And I thought that was such a powerful idea, that one of the main purposes of prayer is to instead of our sort of senses, let's align the Divine

with my view of the world. But it's really a different one of like maybe I can see with a different set of eyes precisely. I mean, when you really get that this world was here long before we were and it will be here long after we're gone. We are little visitors here. The name of the game is for us to get the rules of life here, and that our job is to learn the rules, not to have life serve us, but for us to serve life.

That is the name of the game here. And that the way of prayer is tell me what you want me to do while I'm here, that I am in service to this it is not in service to me, and that if you live with this attitude that everything here is about serving me because I'm so special, you are going to suffer. Absolutely. Listeners have heard me say this before, but it's a phrase that I've heard often

from yoga teachers. And I'm not picking on yoga teachers, and I know what they mean by it, but it always grates on me a little lot of here, which is let go of everything that doesn't serve you. I understand what we're saying here, like don't carry around baggage

that's no good for you. I get it, But it points to this idea that everything is here to serve me versus the other way around, which I do a lot better in life when I orient myself towards one of my surveying versus how well are things going for me? Isn't that the truth? Isn't that the truth when you really really get that life is very brief, it's very brief, that every day is really a gift, and that, in the words of Thomas Merton, this day will never come again.

I will never see this sunrise again, and I will never see this sunset again, and I will never see the faces of people I love to look exactly like this again. And when you become appreciative of this type of truth, that I will never have an opportunity to say a kind word to you again. And that's a big deal. When I start to put my life into those gifts, that I have an opportunity to say a kind word to you, and I'm not going to blow that. That that's a big deal. That that's what a really

big deal is. One of the things that you mentioned early on in the book is you talk about that we're living in a transition right We're letting go a lot of the mythologies of the past. We're evolving into a new myth but that even though our cultural myths are changing or outdated, are yearning to be acted to.

The divine doesn't go away never. So what do you think is important for us to individually be looking at as we deal with the fact that the existing myths that sustained human society for a long time are falling away? How do we find our way into a new relationship

with the powers that be so to speak? Well, in a sense, we're witnessing how we're doing that, and we're traveling in this collective transformation from the breakdown of the Abrahamic mythologies, for example, but we haven't yet identified what

it is we will collectively believe. And let me say that it's worth appreciating where we are right now because it's so awesome, and I mean awesome in terms of to be filled with all that in this moment, we are, for the first time in the history of civilization that I know of, and I'm a pretty advien student of history, we are entering the galactic community, Eric, We're entering galactic mythology time, okay, And that alone is rendering our scriptural

mythologies outdated, okay, But simultaneously, our mythologies that have held us together for centuries are also outdated because they're biologically threatening, meaning that the teaching of separatism. Each of the Abrahamic religions, for example, believe themselves to be the chosen people. This

is not just in Judaism, but Christianity, in Islam. They all have this kind of current in them and the idea of being the chosen people, and that in order to believe in this they have to be aggressive towards that person, this tribalism that has become characteristic of religions.

If I put a different hat on and go into my work for decades in health and healing, here we are also in this age of consciousness in which wholism has become a creed, in which we are recognizing that the template of body mind, spirit of becoming whole is a fundamental creed in health and healing. How can you have wholism as an organic health creed and have in your spiritual theological template this idea of separatism as your

theological creed. You have got to find a spirituality, a spiritual truth that aligns to your bio spiritual theology, that

in fact all is one. We are now a sending to mystical truths, where in fact we have to get that this is a bio spiritual ecological era where we recognize in fact that the nature of God is law, that religion is a political arm of God, but that we're finally transcending and going into the truth that the mystical level of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddha, Hinduism were all laws, and they were all the mystical laws, from Pythagoras, through Plato,

through Judaism, through the Kabbalah, through what Jesus taught, the Sufi tradition. They are all just the laws of the universe. And if I were to sit and teach you the cosmic laws and say which tradition do you think this came from, you would be hard pressed to say, well, I think it's but I could be Buddhism, but it

could be this, because they all taught the same. And this is what this great transformation is about, the shedding of separatism and the emergence of holism, in which we get that the cosmic design and the nature of God is this organic truth that all life breathes together. We are all one and this is a bio spiritual living theology that is in our blood and bones and in each other. Yeah, that's a beautiful way to say it. And that that idea that we wouldn't be able to

identify the tradition all this. Huxley called it the perennial wisdom, right, It's this idea that there's these ideas that show up in all these traditions, that are consistent to all these different traditions. I want to touch a little bit more on this idea. You say at one point that we're built for belief. Belief shapes the way we see divine power in our role within it. This is the first time in the history of humanity when the majority of people do not know what they believe in. It's a

phenomenon that's never existed before. So most of us don't realize the psychic trauma it puts us through. And I think that is certainly part of what we are seeing. I mean, and I think if we look at this, there's some real benefit to shaking off these myths of separatism. My religion is the right way, you're the right kind of person, you're the saved kind of person. But we are in a transition where I think a lot of

people are stuck in the middle. And I do think that point that you say of you know, we don't realize the psychic trauma that it's having to a lot of people, you know, the age of meaninglessness, and it runs deeper than people realize. Eric. It runs into not just don't you believe? But what you have faith in? This is where people run into real crises because for years this runs so deep, and it runs into territory that people find uncomfortable talking about. To w When I

ask people, so what do you have faith in? It's easier for people to tell me with great conviction what they do not have faith in, what they do not have faith in, But they cannot tell me what they do have faith in. And I wondered for the longest time, now why is that? Why is that? And as I really investigated this, I saw some real common patterns, and one is when you lack the capacity to have faith, to really struggle with faith, it spills over and that

it's a whole mechanism. It's not about not having faith in God. It is a mechanism and you in which your capacity to have faith in yourself is rusty, and therefore, if you don't have faith in yourself, having faith in another person is virtually impossible. Because you know that if you can't even keep your word to yourself, if you say something to yourself like, well, I'll just start exercising tomorrow, I'll do that. I just know I'll quit drinking tomorrow,

and you know right away you don't mean it. If someone says to Eric, I have to confide in you, would you keep this to yourself? Could I confide in you? Do have room in your heart so that I could put something in your heart that I can't hold in mind anymore? Would you carry it for me? And you say yeah, and when you keep it confidential, and all

the while you're thinking, wou'd I tell this person? So you don't even trust yourself enough to be able to give your word to someone, to know that your word is integrists, that your faith and trust in yourself is that fragile, that while someone is asking you to keep your word, you're already breaking your word, And that these endless little acts of betrayal that people no longer even recognize as active lives and betrayal they even recognize it.

And it's all these little threads that break away, chip away at integrity, at faith, at trust. And here's the deeper thing, Eric, Not only does it make a person lose respect for themselves if they ever had it. That's why they think that the job of respect should come from others, because they have none for themselves. Okay, but they also find it impossible to trust others because they

know they're not trustworthy. So then how is it that if they can't even trust themselves a body that they can physically touch, much less someone sitting across from them, how do you thing they could possibly trust this invisible thing called God or the divine or whatever they want to call it, that this grace called faith, this grace called trust, which is so essential to our well being, so essential to our managing life without depression, without anxiety,

without suicide, so essential to our getting by, so essential to our having faith that I will find a way I'll get through this without faith or trust. How could they possibly when they don't even trust themselves, possibly believe that there is a grace that comes from a place they can't trust at all? Do you see how the crisis comes? And here I will add to this. I'm

going to add something. We've got to think about it, and then you get it that more people have faith in darkness in the dark than in the light, and they've grown a customed to trusting darkness. They've grown accustomed two feeling safe in darkness and not in the light. They fear the truth, but they're okay with the dark, and that's something people have to deal with when it

comes to healing. No one in any of my workshops that I have done for years and years and years, and we've just met, so you don't know me, and you don't know my history or how many things I've done are taught. But I assure you I've taught a lot of places, and nobody Eric and all my life has ever come to a workshop of mine and said I'm here because I'm in a spiritual crisis. I'm here because my conscience. Conscience is heavy. They'll say I'm here

because of consciousness. What that hell? But conscience is the thing they should be there for, because I can't deal with the choices I make because I know I should have done this, but I did this. It's quite astonishing to me. What you bring up is a really interesting point, and it makes me think about a bunch of things

that point about. You know, exercise, I see that. I mean, I'm a behavior coach, so I work with people all the time, and I often say that the fact that you're exercising or not exercising every day is important sure for your health. The bigger consequences that we stopped believing in our ability to change. Like you said, I start to say, well, I'm going to do this, but I don't even believe myself anymore. You know, repairing that is a really interesting and tricky thing. And it also made

me think a little bit about coming to recovery. You don't know me, either of them recovering alcoholic drug addict. And you know, I came into recovery with certainly no faith in myself. How well do I'm fifty? I originally came into recovery at twenty four, so long time ago.

You see this happen though, You see people come in and I got sober and twelve step recovery, and twelve step recovery is very much the belief is that there's a power greater than yourself that will get you sober, and there is a temporary suspension of I believe in a power greater than me over my own faith, you know. But I also think that in a healthy recovery, our own faith comes along and we start to trust in ourselves. It's sort of both those things have to happen. We

have to do both. We have to develop our faith in life I think again, use the term you want to use for that odd life whatever, and we have to develop our faith in ourselves. They both have to come along. Yes, that's how you do it. Yes, I am hugging you. Can you feel me hugging? I can thank you. So I want to talk a little bit about prayer because that's a big part of this book.

And you've got a line before we go too much further into this that I really love because a lot of the book you're you're wrestling with the things that all of us who are trying to create some deeper connection wrestle with, which is like, yikes, there's an awful lot of terrible things that happen out here in the world. Goodness gracious, what do I do with that? I have faith, but now I'm terrified. I believe in higher purpose, and

yet I see it lacking everywhere. And one of the things that you say, and I think this is really good, is that there are no logical answers when it comes to mystical matters, none at all. That is you know, again and again in my p I have said, I'm going to talk to you because I need to talk to you. You don't need to talk to me, but I need to talk to you. And it calms me

down to talk to you. And maybe that's what grace feels like, because I don't get calmed down when I talked to a lot of human beings, but when I talk to you, I get calmed down because I need to recognize again and again the higher truth that there is no logic two mystical matters, and there is no justice in the immediate world the way I want to see it, and I will never get the answers I want. And at least when I scream at you, and I scream at you all the time, I feel better and

you don't scream back. But what I do get back is a sense of calm, that it's okay to scream at you, and that somehow or other I get that it is human foolishness, fear, darkness, that creates all this. It's not you. And every time I hear people say, if there's a God, this wouldn't happen. No, if we had a God in us and we got how God worked, this wouldn't happen. This is us, this is our handiwork. Yeah,

there's a story I love. It goes like this. It says, past the seeker as he prayed, came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten, and seeing them, he cried, great, God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them? And God said, I did do something. I made you. I've just always loved that idea because it sort of turns that like, well,

why is there bad things in the universe. It turns it back to, yeah, there's bad things in the universe, but there's also the capacity to respond with compassion, and that that's on us. That's on us, if we weren't so afraid to empower other people, if we weren't so afraid to share. I walked down the street. This is one of the things I tried to point out when I wrote Invisible Acts of Power. Believe me, I'm not saying that to push a book. But this is what

inspired me to do this, Eric, I knew. I got this feeling that we are wired. We're designed to sense the vulnerability and other people are lower. Intuitive wiring is all about our gut instinct to protect ourselves, our gut instinct like should I eat this? Should I walk down the street. But our hier wiring, our higher wiring, is all about the other. How can I care for you? How can I care for you? What is it you need?

And these two are often in collision because if we don't work on the management of our heart, we will resent our own higher wiring will resent it, and we will try and turn it down, turn it off, we'll

try to repress it. And I see this in small and large ways when someone walks down the street and they see a homeless person, and homelessness is my devotion, and they'll look the other way when they see a homeless person because they sense that person and they sense the vulnerability and that person, but they don't want to so they look the other way because they can feel it, they can feel that human being. And then they'll say

things like why don't they get a job? I have heard them say I have at more money than I do you think that person is more money than you are? You out of your mind. They don't want to feel that person. That's how attuned we are to each other, Eric,

That's how attuned we are. Our upper level is about our mutual survival, and our lower level is about our personal You reference one of your main teachers, Teresa of Avila, but you talk about something that I really like that she mentions, And she mentions that we have a reptile that Dwells referred to as the gut dwelling reptile, which will fight to keep us in our smallest attitude, reducing us the superstitious ways of thinking, but also really focusing

only on our own survival. That frightened part of us well well. Teresa says that all our negativities and all our fears, she calls them all reptiles, and she says, reptiles get in. And when a reptile gets in, it see's better at night than you do, which is why reptiles haunt you at night. They win through the darkness, They win in the night battle. They keep you up at night. They become iguanas you know, they become kimono dragons. And so little gecks, and it's like a Buddha. Buddha says,

these things are illusions. You have to become strong enough to recognize I'm not letting that thought form in me. Someone says, you know you better, you better, you better do this, or else you better invest in this, or you're gonna lose all your money. You better not go near that person. What will people say if they see

you hanging out with that person? All of that is nothing but reptiles and the strength of soul that you have to have to keep those kinds of reptilian thoughts at a stance so that you can manage your own consciousness and conscience with power and not become contaminated by lesser reptilian thoughts. That's where prayer comes in. That's where you have to pray and say, keep me in a field of grace, Keep that away from me, that is darkness,

that is evil. Just blasp me with grace. And sometimes I have been with people when they've started to talk and they slip into this negative garbage, and I've stayed right in front of them and I said, would you excuse me for a moment. I don't go anywhere except inside of myself and inwardly. I immediately go into a prayer and I'll say, download me with some badass grace right now, God, because really I need to be in a field of grace right now. Just get just get

me some grace. And then I re engage in the conversation. And what does that grace help you do? What it does? It? It keeps me center. It keeps me centered because it keeps me from being a smarty pants. It keeps me from smarting off. It keeps me centered, keeps me in my sense of humor, which is my greatest asset. It keeps me where I belong. It keeps me on the right side of grace instead of the wrong side of the fence. It keeps me in the impersonal archetypal realm.

It keeps me where I belong. Because I think what we realize is in a lot of these cases that it is fear. You know, people are afraid. You know, people are often very afraid, and that's that's part of the desire for survival comes from from fear. I think we think it's okay to dismiss somebody's actions because of fear, as if well, you know, people No, it's not. Eric, No,

it's not what took place at our capital. You could say, well, that's your fear of what white supremacy that was okay because they were afraid that people of color might begin to have a decent life. Are you kidding me? There's nothing okay about that fear or not. So there's sometimes when you say your fear is not an excuse for what you did. You knew better. So now we're going to get to the place where you have to own what you did. I'm not letting you off the hook.

You're not five years old. Fears what I let a five year old off the hook for. But you're a forty fifty year old human being, and I'm sorry you have to now say I'm using my fear as a way of becoming violent when I don't get what I want. Right. So, what's the role that you see for forgiveness with that sort of stuff, the thing at the capital or anything else. What's the role? What does your prayer life talk to

you about? Where does forgiveness come in? I think forgiveness is the first truly mystical thing we do for ourselves because it's not rational, it's not rational it's not reasonable. Forgiveness is not a rational reasonable thing to do. Everything in us is wait a minute here, you know, wait a minute here, So forgiveness is. I will certainly deal with all of the rage, and I will not rage against you. But there is justice, and that also has to be dealt with. But I will not bring my

rage to increase so that justice becomes injustice. I will bring understanding and justice together. And that's the wisdom of Solomon. You know, I think that you almost have to look at even in your own life, and the things that happened to all of us, whether things are theft or divorce, or whatever things happen in our lives, whatever thing's happened. Healing,

I have learned, requires the stage of witness. We have to have a witness, at the stage of the holy witness, where if something happened to you, Eric, you would require that someone witnesses, that someone sit and listen to you, tell your story, Tell what happened. Because what happened to you was so hurtful, so harmful. You need someone to hear that, not because you want vengeance, but because for you it was so Where did this come from? How could this happen. You have to say that out loud.

You have to have someone not because you want that person to say, oh my God, but because you want someone's heart to receive that, and just listen and bear witness to that, to bear witness. The second stage is that because we do live in a society of civil laws, if there are civil laws that need to be dealt with, they need to be dealt with. And the third stage is what needs to be forgiven is a higher question

that you need to deal with spiritually. You must also forgive what needs for your own sake, and that requires you realizing this was at a soul level, not personal. I'm not sure if you say to God, why did this happen to me, You're going down the wrong avenue. You're saying to God, this happened to me. I don't want to carry this story in me for all the eternity. So I have to let this go. And it is huge, but I have to let this go because if I don't, I will relive it with every human being I meet.

I will retell it and I will punish people, and I will try and take this rage and hurt and give it back to them to say see how hurt I am. This is why I will forgive, because I want that taken. I'll keep the story. I'll keep the story, but I don't want the fire, and forgiveness is releasing the fire. I do not want this experience to turn me into that person, and forgiving is letting go of the rage in me and for that person. But I'll keep the story. If you don't know, is always good

to keep the story. And we're nearing the end of our time here. But one of things that shows up over and over, and you've referenced it in something you said in the last couple of minutes, which I think shows up in a bunch of part to this book, which is this idea that this stuff isn't personal, That we are very focused on our personal agenda what we want out of the world, but that's not what spirituality

and mysticism and all that is for. Correct. Do you talk a lot about how it's not a personal thing, And I think at one point you say something along the lines of Heaven is not interested in our happiness? Correct? Say more about that? Well, you know the whole purpose of your life. You weren't born to be happy. I mean,

if you want to be happy. Be happy, But your journey is more about everybody was born to learn about the creative power of their soul, to learn about that and to learn that the more I create on behalf of others, the more I'm going to benefit from that creation, the more some how other, the more seeds I sew and feed more people, the more harmony I generate. And that is going to somehow or other benefit me. I gotta figure out that formula. And getting to that formula.

For a lot of people, they're going to have a rough runway to lift off because their runway may not be already paved. And if you have to pave your own runway, it's a rough beginning. And that is true. But the text of life is all about learning that what we give is better than what we take. And secondly, that arising tide lifts all ships. So if we think we're in this just for ourselves, we're going to be gravely disappointed. And so if we started to say the prayer,

what can I do for others? Tell me what you want, You're gonna find your life directed in a very different way. Yep. That is probably the most foundational prayer I discovered in recovery, and one that I keep with me close, which is just guide and direct me, guide and directed me what am I here to do? And when I'm oriented that way, I do a lot better than when I'm oriented towards. How am I feeling right now? How are you feeling right now? And I really don't care get busy because

your feelings change moment to moment. They absolutely do. Well. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I've really enjoyed having this conversation. It's already forty six minutes like that, so my pleasure it was. It was a real pleasure to meet you. Same here. Delightful, Take care, stay healthy. Thank you you too. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly

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