From Illness to Enlightenment: Jenny Light's ASTONISHING Spiritual Journey!

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me Jenny Light. Jenny is a yoga elder, She's a psychologist, a meditation teacher on Insight Timer, which is an app that I use a lot. She's an author, and she's an inspirational speaker. And she's from Ayrshire, Scotland. I'm not sure if I pronounced that correctly. Her spiritual upbringing was fostered by her parents' personal exploration of vegetarianism, yoga, Findhorn, and a deep love of multi-faith religious buildings. She had a kundalini awakening as a small child. And she found yoga at the age of 9. She continued where she left off her spiritual meditative path of many lifetimes, she says. She trained as a Drew yoga teacher in 2000 and went on to train exclusively in Scaravella yoga before undergoing the esoteric spiritual training with the guru Paramahansa Yogananda through the Self-Realization Fellowship. So Jenny's actually written a meditation book. She's written a few books, Her long-awaited third meditation book is called Awakening the Lotus of Peace: Yoga Meditation for Inner Peace. That came out this year, 2022. And it's a beautifully illustrated book of yoga meditations to experience and express peace in your life. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth, Jenny Light.

Hello, thank you for having me, Brian. It's a lot— it's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to talking to you about your, about your journey. It sounds like your spiritual journey started pretty early. You had a Kundalini awakening experience as a child.

Yeah, it's, um, it was only as an adult I actually knew what it was. But as a child, I would have these expanded states of awareness that would occur quite spontaneously, and usually in the middle of the night. I would wake up and I would be expanded to fill the room, and I'd fill the room with blue light. And I couldn't move my physical body at the time when these happened. And but it was only as an adult, actually, I read about it. And then, oh, that's what happened to me.

So these happened spontaneously. At what age do you think they started?

5.

Okay. And did you ever discuss them with anyone? Or how did, how did you, how did you process that at the age of 5?

Well, you know, when you're a child, you have this assumption that everybody experiences what you experience. So I, I thought probably everybody has this, so I don't remember discussing it, or if I did, I can't even— I can't imagine what language I would have used to kind of describe it. So probably my parents just dismissed it as, you know, childish nonsense.

Yeah, I find it's very common that children that have spiritual experiences, seeing spirit, having a Kundalini awakening experience, you know, etc., they assume that everybody has it, so they just don't really think it's that big of a deal.

I think that what it must have been for me, but it was when I was in my 20s when I was, I was doing spiritual healing training, and it all kicked off again. I was, you know, energies were too much for me, and I was in this expanded state again, and I had quite a rough time actually. There was this feeling of wanting to vomit, you know, the world spinning. I couldn't come close to people because their energies set me off again, and it was really quite tough for a few years. I get a lot of people contacting me via the internet, you know, through my website, about their own experiences, and what worked for me is I try and help people so that if they are going through something similar, that they can, they know that first of all there's a light at the end of the tunnel, i.e., that you will get on top of it at some point. And when it's really debilitating on what you're trying to, like, I was trying to keep a career going in teaching like in education, and to try and keep that going at the same time as having these expanded states, it was very difficult. So on my website, I've got a blog which tells people what worked for me, and the big number one is to not meditate. I know that sounds tough because I'm a meditation teacher, but I couldn't process it at the time. So having a space of 3 months where I didn't meditate, you know, I've meditated since I was 14, and to not meditate was really tough. It was like breaking my pattern, my routine. But it was imperative because it was just too much. Everything was too much until I got some handle on it, some control on this uncontrollable prana energies that were running through spine into these expanded states.

Yeah, for people who don't understand what a Kundalini awakening is, could you explain a little bit more what that means?

The Kundalini is the prana energy that is latent in everybody. So for an unawakened person This is, um, it has, it has a depiction of being wrapped 3.5 times around the base of the spine at the coccyx, so it's sleeping, it's dormant, and it has this, um, association with it being like a snake, you know, coming up the spine and over the crown of the head onto the brow. Um, but that Kundalini energy, as far as I'm aware, it can't be stimulated artificially. It has to come from a stage of spiritual development. Um, but that latent potent energy, um, brings with it many benefits, but also it's, it's tough at the beginning. For most people find it quite tough until they've got a level of control over it.

Yeah, my understanding is it could be a very disorienting experience as you've described it, both when you were a child, maybe not as much then, but also when you're in your 20s, you're trying to live a normal life. And I've heard of people that have had these spontaneous awakenings. And for us people who are kind of spiritual, you might think, oh, that sounds like a great thing to go through. But it's pretty challenging.

Well, you know, I believe that that awakening is, or something similar is, is ahead of people that haven't experienced it. But maybe not everybody goes through a rough time. I don't know.

So what do you think, you know, prompted that to happen to you again in your, in your 20s after going through that when you were a child, and it was, I guess, dormant again for a while?

Yes, that's a very good question. I think that as a child you are still fresh from the previous incarnation and that that expanded state— I would have dreams of— I say dreams, they're not dreams, they're visions. They're more— I'm present in them, I'm conscious and awake— of me being in a monk's outfit you know, orange robes, sitting, um, on overlooking this valley. And I'm sitting in lotus position meditating. And I believe that where I was in previous lives, um, was just showing up in childhood. And then who I'm in this life has to start to play out. You know, your childhood states received, you know, children, as you've said, they are still fresh from, um, from the other world, between worlds, and previous lives. And they're able to relate things that, you know, they shouldn't. You would think if they were tabula rasa, you know, blank slate, they wouldn't know these things. But children are not blank slates. They're old souls come into a fresh incarnation to have another crack at life and to find what the meaning of life is really, you know, finding— everyone's finding their way.

Yeah, I think that's very true. And it's just, I was gonna say ironic, but I think everything happens for a reason. I was just discussing with someone reincarnation this morning. And he was saying, I don't believe in reincarnation, because I'm a Christian, the Bible doesn't teach it. And I was just doing a little bit more research. And I was reminded of the research by Jim Tucker and Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia, with these children that remember past life. And it's actually very common that children remember their past life, but then they kind of put it away for a while.

Yeah, I think it's a stage of brain development where, um, they are still fresh, still wet behind the ears from, from previous lives. And then the brain development, you know, takes over, and, and their sense of ego identity in this life takes over, and those, those past life remembrances, probably from, you know, from the age of 6, probably people are starting to move into who they are for this life, you know, their identity for this life, and the previous, you know, remembrances from childhood get shelved, but they don't go away, you they're just shelved for a bit. Yeah, that's the same. The same is true for anybody that's had a traumatic experience in a previous life. It maybe becomes shelved for a bit, but it has to play out at some point because it needs to have an outlet. It needs to get released in this life, hopefully through some sort of healing procedure that they're going to be able to release that in, in this life. But I believe we come into this world with a primary agenda and possibly secondary ones. But the primary agenda is to know who you are, to find out who you yourself are, you know, why are you here in this life. And secondary agendas may be that you've got certain people along the way that you've, uh, contracted perhaps to help or to forgive or to release. You know, there's a healing process that's going on. Um, but who knows? I won't know the full picture until I've got the full picture.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a really good point. And, and it's, it's always, I think, interesting to discuss and think about reincarnation. And as I debate this with people, and I was just formulating my response to this person. And I say, the thing is, as long as it's not affecting you in this life, it's okay whether you believe it or not. But for some people, it seems to affect deeply. And sometimes doing these past life regressions and stuff can, can reveal something that's unresolved trauma from a previous life.

That's true. Yeah. And I think we've got lots of opportunities to release those traumas from past lives. You know, I've— the spiritual healing modality was one where, um, I took that on board because I felt drawn to it. And but later I went on to use sound healing, the tuning forks, and I find they're very, very good at releasing trauma without any great a detrimental effect on the person. It's not a case of coming in and spending, you know, months and months in, or years in counseling. It's not really talking about the issue at all, it's just using sound, using vibration to lift that trauma out when the person's ready to let it go.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely true. So you had these experiences when you were young, and then you discovered yoga. How did you discover yoga at the age of 9?

My mom was doing yoga. So, I mean, it was very, very new in this— I'm talking here in the late 1970s. And It was very new, and churches didn't allow yoga. They thought it was Hinduism, you know, at the time, so they didn't allow classes in churches. But my mum went along to a class, and she'd come back and she would practice, and I just, I fell in love with it then. I got a yoga book for my 9th birthday, and I never looked back. I begged and begged and begged to get to go to that adult class, and if they finally allowed me to come in at the age of 14. And as I say, I never looked back. It was obviously, I feel so, so me, so grounded. So, so it's so right for me, the yoga path.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, you mentioned that the churches didn't allow it. When I first started doing yoga, which was 20, 30 years ago, I remember someone in our church saying, oh, that's— you, you can't do that. That's, that's a bad thing. That's worshipping demons, or that's Hinduism, or whatever. So what is yoga to you? What is it? Why does it resonate with you so much?

Well, that's a good question. Well, for the majority of people, and for me as a child, it was a Putting your body in strange positions, you know, it was assuming these contortions, if you like. But as I got older, through my mid-teens, it was actually more the meditation that I was interested in, so I did my own personal practice every day of physical yoga. But it was the meditation that I felt most drawn to, that and the breathing. I must say though, I had chronic asthma as a child, so trying to do some of the breathing and, you know, some of the exercises themselves were quite challenging to me. But, um, but I grew out of all of that, and I think To me, yoga is the path of finding yourself, you know. So yoga means union, or union with the divine, union with the divine spark, and that divine spark is within each and every one of us. So it's actually— it's, it's— we live in a world of duality, so it's hard to couch things in terms of unity when we perceive duality, as in we look out, there's them and us, there's me and then there's all that is that I can see, touch, taste, smell. All of that seems to be something other than me. So what we're seeking in yoga is that, that divine spark which is ourselves, but it is also Everything, all that is.

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of people, we think we know what yoga is, and we think of it, as you said, it's kind of like it's moved— like you, when you're the 9-year-old you, it's moving our body into weird positions. So it's kind of an exercise thing. And then some people think of yoga as almost a religious practice, because, you know, you're connecting with— in this case, my friend, you're connecting with Hindu gods, which is why it was a bad thing. But what is yoga meditation? So I haven't heard that term before. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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Yoga meditation is, um, it's techniques of using the breath to transcend the human experience into higher states of awareness, and it's very much focused on the fact that the spine, as in the not the physical spine, but the astral body. The spine is the vehicle with which we transcend human experience. So it's bringing the awareness up through the spine, through the different chakras, the energy wheels of consciousness at points on the spine. And, and that whole process of that, that's the process of meditation. But meditation itself There's a— there's, there's a— the techniques, and then the meditation itself is just that immersion in the divine, in that oneness, in the peace, the love, the harmony that transcends all really language that we can really describe it with. But there's the process, which, like, verb, and then there's the noun meditation itself. So it's— in yoga, it's expressed as dharana, which is concentration, and dhyana, which is meditation proper. But in the wider world, these tend to be synonymous, you know, they tend to be the same thing. But in yoga, it's not. Yoga is split into the different steps of awareness. But this all has to be grounded in making yourself a better human being, living the best human life that you can, you know, so it's not treading on other people, it's being kind, it's being loving, you know, all of the things that you would imagine, non-harming to others, and that also means not thinking, but like judgmental bad thoughts of other people either. It's just accepting people as they are, that people are living the best version of themselves that they can at the moment, even if you could see that they could live it better. It's for them at that moment in time. This is their— everyone's living their best version, you know. When we look back on our own lives, we can see, looking back at our younger selves, that we would have done things you know, we would have acted different. I don't think I would have changed any of the story line of my life, but I certainly would have been certain instances that I might have acted different, you know, toward others, to be more kind, to be more loving. But it's a process of discovery and development, isn't it?

Yeah. So what I hear you saying is yoga is more than just the exercises and more than just even the breathing, but it's more of a, it's more of a way of life. And I think a lot of people have gotten this, uh, we have a misunderstanding of what, what yoga is. It's a much broader thing than we've, we've been taught that it is.

Well, I don't, you know, run down anybody that, that really enjoys doing physical movement and physical yoga because they have the benefits too, you know. They've been specially devised a series of exercises that, you know, millennia ago were devised so that they would allow the body, the mind, brain, the breath to become calm. And so that, you know, the whole point of physical yoga is so that then you can have a still body, a still mind, a still breath with which to then, you you know, be seated and come into quiet and meditate within. I don't denigrate anybody that is, that is enjoying the physical exercises because it's a process. It's a, it's a worldwide movement, yoga, whereas before it was confined, you know, I'm talking about the 1800s, 1900s, it was confined to India. You know, only moved out of India in the last— with, um, one or two swamis that moved out of India in the late 1900s. But now it's a worldwide— and there's, there's hardly anyone across the world that doesn't know that, you know, have some concept of what yoga is, right? And it's, it's widely accessible.

It is. And I, and I didn't mean to, to denigrate anybody that's doing yoga just, just physically or, uh, or at that, at that level. I guess what I was saying is there's different levels that we can, we can go to. And once we, once we start with that physical level— and that's, that's the thing that actually scares some people, uh, going back to that friend. She's like, well, you're— when you do yoga, you're opening up your mind. Um, and that was, that was a fearful thing to her. That was very scary to, to open up your mind to to whatever. Um, so I, I, there are still some people I think that have that misconception that opening our minds is a bad thing.

Well, it's all about having experience. So you open a little bit and you go, oh, well, that wasn't so bad, you know. Makes— maybe next time I'll allow myself to open a little bit more. You go, oh, well, that wasn't so bad. It feels a wee bit different, but the perception as you open a little bit feels different from being closed, but incrementally we become more confident to say, well, all right, well, the world didn't end, you know, I didn't die, isn't that bad. And so we learn, we learn a bit like a flower opening to the light, you know, we open a little bit, and then as the sun sets, the flower closes again.. And then it opens a little bit more perhaps the next day, because it's allowing more brightness of spiritual light to come in. You know, so we learn incrementally to open and close. And, you know, it's a process.

I think that's a beautiful image that you just gave. And, you know, the thing is, I would go and I would do yoga after church. I would go to church, then I go do yoga. And I was telling this friend of mine, I said, to me, this is like a continuation of my worship, as a continuation of the prayer that I'm when I'm at church. But the fear that people have, and it was really interesting, she's like, well, if you open your mind, demons can come in. And I'm like, but what if I open my mind and the Holy Spirit came in? You know what, or I get in touch with, as I know now, my higher self, or my guides, or, you know, all these other entities are there. It's not just evil, but that's the fear that people have sometimes when they hear the word, you know, yoga, or they hear even meditation.

Well, I mean, whatever we fear, we draw towards ourselves. That's the sad thing, you know, that whatever we think, we then draw towards us. So if that is something fearful and we're drawing that towards— whatever we fear towards us, and I would say, and for those that we're struggling with fear is just to pray, because prayer leads us into that higher states of consciousness, you know, it leads us into a safe place. So if you're Christian, then you, you might be praying to Jesus to support you, to guide you, to envelop you in love. This is non-denominational, whatever works, you know, whatever would be your go-to, whichever, you know, deity or personage, saintage that you would like to support you, prayer will take you there. Then there's no need to fear.

Right, right. So I know you speak about meditation. So why do you think meditation is important? How does meditation help us?

Well, I think without meditation we would just continue to be a human doing, you know, like a robot going from A to B. We're not breaking the cycle of constant activity in the day, but with meditation we break that. In many circles, it's, it's, this world is delusion. So what seems to be the story of this life and what seems to be so real is not reality. But when we come into a quiet state within, we actually start to touch not that busyness, not that constant activity, we actually start to touch the quiet, a calm within. Those states of calm then will build into deeper states of peacefulness, of feeling a peace and harmony that not only is within but around, a peace that extends everywhere. I think meditation is important because in our busy lives we need to use a circuit breaker to come into that, those moments of calm with which we can then make more informed, more intuitive, better decisions, you know, about what's happening in life, things that we need to make changes or make choices in, that we come into that quiet within, so then it impacts on how we live our lives.

Without that, we're just continually doing, doing, doing, Yeah, I think a lot of times in our society, we're actually addicted to that doing, doing, doing. And I love your phrase, you know, you become a human doing as opposed to human being. We don't even know who we are. And we're so uncomfortable with ourselves that the thought of sitting with ourselves and our own thoughts for 5 minutes terrifies some people.

Well, even 2 or 3 minutes will make a difference if we sit and allow ourselves to come into calm.

Yeah, I completely agree.

I mean, it has huge benefits, like, for the physical body, for, you know, bringing the body into calm. So it means it's going to be more healthy when it's not in stress. It's better for the brain. It calms the whole nervous system. There's a whole host of physical and mental benefits, but primarily my focus is on, you know, spiritual, uh, the emphasis on spiritual awakenings, on spiritual growth, is finding out who we are. But, but even just to take it on a physical level, a physical and a mental level, to allow the monkey mind to become not still, not empty, but quieter. Great benefits in that.

Well, there is a mind-body connection that I think we don't give enough credit to, that, you know, that as, as the body goes, the mind goes, and vice versa. So that's why, you know, there— those, those physical benefits are there, and that's a lot of times something people in the West might cling on to. You know, I can lower my blood pressure, I can, you know, reduce my level of cortisol. You know, we do all those studies and stuff, but the reason why that happens is because of the spiritual things that we're doing, the fact that we're getting in contact with our true selves, that I think that actually leads to those physical benefits. And speaking of physical benefits, I know you're In your book, your first book, Living Lightly, you talked about your journey through what we call in the United States chronic fatigue, but I know you guys call it ME. I can't remember what ME stands for, but tell me how, how this practice helped you with that chronic fatigue.

Well, chronic fatigue was me hitting total burnout. I mean, it was, it was very upsetting at the time, and I was unable to do anything. Really. Maybe if I lay still for, like, flat on my back for 5 hours a day, sort of drinking in the sunlight— I wasn't in direct light, but sort of drinking in the light of the sky— I might be able to be able to do something like make a meal later in the day. It was very debilitating at the time. But my journey to wellness was, I kind of decided 2 weeks after my diagnosis, I was, right, okay, that is not me. I'm going to get well. I, yes, I've got a label, but I find a label quite useful because a label says to you, well, this is what, you know, you could have went on I don't know. Without that diagnosis, you don't really know what's wrong with you. But I said, okay, now I know what it is. That is a label, but I am not the label. So I'm going to get myself well from that label. So I thought, right, okay, complete change. I was always, you know, eating very healthily. I was vegan. And but I went to 100% raw food diet, so I sent away for a book by Doreen Virtue and somebody, a raw food book, and I was, I was just juicing and all that sort of thing, you know. I got a juicer for a fiver in a thrift shop. So anyway, um, Yeah, I went raw food diet, and I went to a spiritual healer once a week, and it was just me lying there while he worked, you know, remotely above the body. And I just came away energized, but, you know, it just seemed to, um, like charge the battery for me when I wasn't able to do it myself. I did some meditation, but for anybody that knows anything about chronic fatigue, it's an inability to process language, and, you know, the cognitive bit doesn't work. So concentration on anything was like 1 or 2 minutes, and I couldn't process. Sometimes I would go to speak and I couldn't remember what I'd started the sentence to try and say. You know, it was really difficult. Sometimes I would watch people's mouth move and I couldn't process what they were saying. So the meditation, I would say, was more me going quiet within for about a minute and just to try and focus on my breathing. It was nothing, nothing esoteric, nothing fancy. It was just coming to a quiet within.

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Positive thinking. As I say, I'm not that label. I, I am getting well from this. And also, I used omegas. So it was a brand called VegEPA. It's a high-end omega-3, 6, and 9. So it's, it's a process. I'm not selling this stuff, I just, I'm just saying that it worked for me by a company called Hygenis, and it was really instrumental. I read a book called Mitochondria, Not Hyperchondria. By a doctor, and she had said that this product was really good. So I had 4 of them for the first couple of days, and then I was down to 2 of them for a few weeks, and then 1 a day for a year and a half. But within a fortnight, within 14 days, I was thinking better, I had more energy, I was able to, you know, get up earlier in the day. The sense of vertigo would kind of leave me by maybe about 12 o'clock midday, and then I'd be able to do something in the afternoon. But yeah, it was a whole process which, you know, as you said, I wrote about in my first book, Living Lightly: A Journey Through Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME. Yeah, it was. I've got lots of tips on how to cope with other people's energies, and you feel everything so strongly. How to cope with the fact that, um, electrical current running through, you know, a phone charger— I couldn't be in the same space as electrical equipment. Or in some occasions, if there was electrical wire running through the wall I couldn't put myself close to it. So I mean, there were strange things like that, and, um, very, very sensitive to sound. I mean, very high-pitched sound that nobody else can hear. And so yeah, I've got to think how— I've got how to cope with these things, tips that work.

Yeah, that's, that's great. You know, you said a lot of really good, uh, interesting things there. I love what you said about like you know, getting the diagnosis, because that could be a dual-edged sword. You know, it's like before you have a diagnosis, people think, oh, there's just something wrong with me, I'm crazy. Especially with chronic fatigue, you know, there's a lot of, that's all in your head, it's not a real thing. Um, but then you get the diagnosis, but then we have to be careful not to say, well, that's the label, that's who I am. It's like, so now you know, well, this is what I have, but that's not who I am. I love the way that you said that. This— I don't, I don't have to accept this. And there are— there's a combination between the physical and the, and the spiritual and the mental. The things that you've done, you know, you— the raw food diet, and it was one thing, and taking the EFAs, the essential fatty acids, you know, that was a way of helpful. But also going to see your spiritual healer. I'm a big believer in all the above, you know. So we can use Western medicine and, and we can use, um, other things.

Yeah, use whatever is in your, your power to do, you know, make the physical changes that you need, but make the mental ones too. You know, the long-term goal is to put that behind. And I thought to myself, well, I've overcome chronic asthma as a child. I've missed half of my schooling as a child because it was so bad. This was before inhalers and stuff like that. And I overcame all of that, you know, Kundalini sensitivity in my 20s. And I thought, well, I'm going to overcome this. This will not, you know, define me.

Yeah, I think, you know, as you talk about all those things, or, uh, I think some of us are more sensitive to things. We're all, we're all transmitters and we're all receivers, you know. And you talked about some things that reminded me a lot of people who have had near-death experiences, the sensitivity to electrical currents and stuff, the sensitivities, other people's energies. And so people might say, well, that's woo-woo stuff, but the fact is our brains are putting out electrical signals. Even more, our hearts are putting out electrical signals. So when we walk into a room, you know, our heart signals go out, I think it's like 30 feet. So when we're close to other people, we can pick up on their energies. And I think some people are more sensitive to that than other people.

Are.

But as I'm sitting here right now, there's all kinds of electrical currents going on around me that most of us ignore. But for some people, it really impacts us.

I would say it doesn't, it doesn't bother me so much now. I mean, I've outgrown that, you know. But I think that every experience that we have in life is— has got something really precious to teach us. Yeah, so it taught me to reinvent how I live life, how I deal with the cards that I've been given, you know. It taught me to do things differently, and, you know, I know that I've had lots of people that I've kind of coached through, you know, their own chronic fatigue syndrome. But I think ultimately it comes down to, are you going to allow this to define and to curtail who you are? Now, I don't mean that by being silly and go and, you know, expose yourself to things that are going to make you ill again. What I mean is that you learn to pace yourself, so you have periods of rest, you have periods of activity, but you don't allow that to curtail what you really want to do in life. How can, how, how can something physical actually, you know, change you as a person? Because it's only an experience, it's only a perception, because the physical body is not who you really are.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's, that's, that's the key to everything right there. The physical body is not who you are. And that's, that's— I believe that. And that's the thing about the practices you're talking about, the meditation, the yoga meditation. It really helps us get in touch with our true self and understand that this, this body is something that we inhabit, but it's not who we are.

Yeah, it's the perfect vehicle for what you— or everyone without you— the vehicle that you've— you have is the perfect vehicle, with all its flaws, with all its difficulties, with all its strengths, the perfect vehicle for which you to learn the lessons that you are as a soul, as an individual soul, need to learn.

Wow, that's really interesting you said that because I was, uh, listening to a guy the other day, he has memories of being in between lives. And he talked about having the veil put on as he came into this world. And he described a way I'd never heard before. He's like, the veil is custom made for you. It's like, it's not like it's just one size fits all slips on everybody. And I've always thought, you know, I've not always, but recently been thinking that the body is the veil that we talked about. So I just kind of put those two things together. It's like, You're right, this is the perfect vehicle for us, but it's also, it's that veil of forgetfulness. It's that thing that, as you said, as a child, we still— that, that real us is still leaking through, and we have those past lives memories and stuff. But when we hit about 6, our ego pushes all that out, and then we, and then we forget.

Yeah, but not everybody is forgetful of who they really are. I mean, Masters come in and they have— they're fully aware in the womb, they're fully aware as a, as a child, and they don't lose it. So not everyone goes through the veil, but that forgetfulness is actually for our benefit, because if you're having a fresh start, a fresh stab at life as in this incarnation, you, you're not going to be held back by you know, maybe traumatic events that happened in a previous life, because you don't remember them, you perhaps have some residual fears and all that sort of thing, but you don't remember the events. And that's, that's actually a kindness.

Yeah, well, the thing is, I've heard people say, if we could remember everything, especially if we remember where we came from, we, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't stay here. It's too hard. So that, that's one of the reasons why we forget is because it's like, we think this is it, this is reality. So I have to deal, I have to deal with it. And if you did know that, and this guy was mentioning, he talked about being incarnated a couple times. And I guess the first time, one of the times he remembers, they put him in the body in the womb. And he's like, they started to put the veil on, he's like, no, I'm out of here. I'm not doing this. Because that, that sense of separation was just too much for him to deal with. So I think we all, we, we, we take this on. As you said, the forgetfulness is part of the, part of the plan.

Yeah, I think at some stage we won't need that forgetfulness, but it's kindness, you know, when we move into this life, it's kindness.

I want to talk about your, your, your current book, um, Awakening the Lotus of Peace, uh, yoga meditation for Yoga Meditation for Inner Peace. That's a very ambitious title. So what does inner peace mean to you? And is it something that we can achieve?

Well, I think inner peace is who we are. It's not— I don't think it's a case of achieving some unachievable goal. It's, it's by meditation coming into that quiet and realizing that we are that inner peace. You know, we're awakening that awareness, that knowledge within us that this is who we really are. And all the rest is just simply a delusion.

Yeah, I think that's beautifully said, you know, because I think that we— it's about remembering, it's about recovering, it's not about becoming. And I love that, as you just said, it's not about achieving inner peace. It's about finding it. It's about finding that it's already there.

It's in there. It's interesting because in my experience, the, the heart has many veils, and that our stages of development are going through different, different veils of separateness in the heart. The heart is the perception that, that you are separate from I as myself, you know, that there's this, that there's you and then there's other, other beings. There's, um, there's others, you, and then there's God or the Great Spirit or whatever you would like to term. Um, but the heart, the more that you meditate and the more that you practice becoming open and let go of those traumas, those fears, those instances where there's a tendency to blame others for all of your difficulties, or there's a feeling of guilt that you're to blame for everybody's difficulties. We let all of these things go, and each meditation can be a lovely handing over. In my early days, I used to use my hands, and when I was coming into meditation, I would imagine that I was scooping something out of my heart and physically use my hands to hand it over. Like, this weight I give thee, you know, is no I. This weight I give thee. It's just letting go, letting go. The process is always about letting go. It's about surrendering letting go, and the veils start to fall off the heart until it's just this huge, open, loving generator.

Yeah. So in your, in your book, it's described as a spiritual workbook of yoga practices. So what, what types of practices could we find in the book?

Well, I've got— most of them are breath techniques, so easy breath techniques. I like to talk in simple everyday language, you know, I don't like to couch whatever I've got to say in fanciful or elitist language, but something that everyone can touch, so simple, because you change the breath, you change the brain waves, you change the state of consciousness, in that order. So there's different breath practices throughout. There's a little bit about physical yoga because for some people they've got a very, uh, what's the word, restless body. It's fidgeting, they can't sit still. So physical yoga has its place. So using a few well-chosen yoga postures just to try and get the body to ditch its restlessness so that you can then sit for a few minutes. There's quite a bit about introspection, so maybe we're looking at issues that you might have around guilt. There's a whole chapter on the doshas, the The 6 deadly sins, as it were, that's to do with the sacral chakra. So that's looking at deceit, pride, lust, greed, and guilt, and hate. And it's about having introspection, going into quiet, into meditation, and asking yourself key questions. About this? How much of that am I holding on to? And can I let it go? So I think the first thing really is to realize that there's some aspect of yourself that is holding on to something that's, say, a weighty, and then just to, to release it, to make the decision that this is the time, I can let this go now, this doesn't define me. It may be I allowed it to define me, maybe earlier in this life or previous lives, but I'm not allowing it to define me any longer. I see that it is not me. It's really about deciding or finding out which of my thoughts and actions are defined by the ego consciousness that false self, and which are by my soul or higher self, you know. And we can feel by the weight or the type of thought dialogue that you might have with yourself whether it's ego consciousness or whether it's soul consciousness. Soul consciousness always comes with a sense of feeling good. There's a lightness, there's a sense of rightness with it. And the ego consciousness always comes with doubt, doubt or fear. So we weigh up, is this me? If it's not me, then I can hand over and let it go. So we're talking a lot of meditations, you know, this is a lifetime practice in refining who you think you are to reveal who you really are.

Yeah, sounds beautiful. Um, so in terms of meditation, uh, how often should people meditate? What— and how— and how important is it to be persistent in meditation?

100% important to be— to be persistent. Some people have different times in the day that they meditate, but I would recommend that early in the morning before the world is really busy I'm talking about energies here because, you know, for those of us that are sensitive, we can feel when the ethers become quiet. That's a more conducive time to meditate than in the, you know, the middle of the day when people are talking about people that you don't even know. They could be, you know, miles or miles away, but still you feel that frenetic buzz of their mental activity. And so it's quieter, the ethers are quieter in the morning or even in the middle of the night, but I'm not suggesting anybody does that in the beginning. But choosing a time that's suitable for yourself— some people, they can't manage that, so it has to be evening. But I think the mornings are where you have come fresh, the soul has had a rest, as in, I mean to say, you've had sleep. Sleep. So the body, the mind, wakes up. It has, it has a freshness to it. So there's a kind of clean slate, a new day to start. But, but really, you know, every breath is a fresh day, a fresh do-over, a fresh start. So you don't need to think that, oh, I've missed this morning, you know, I haven't managed to meditate, then I'll have to wait till tomorrow. No, just make the decision that I'm going to sit down now. I've got 20 minutes to myself. There's nothing going to be happening in this 20 minutes that's really imposing on me. So I'll sit down and I'll choose this 20 minutes to just sit and become—

So when I ask you how often should we meditate, I think a lot of people think in terms of daily or weekly. It sounds like you're saying several times a day.

Well, I would say daily, yeah, but basically don't limit yourself. If you think you've missed a day, just make sure you meditate the next day, you know. I'm trying not to be prescriptive because it's a bit like making a New Year's resolution. It's very easy to, you know, people get to the third week in January and they've broken the resolution. Don't be worried about that, just do it.

Yeah, I think for me, I'm a very— I like having measurements. So I— you talked— I think we talked about Insight Timer, and I know you've done some meditations on there. I love Insight Timer. I've used it for years. I've actually just switched to something else now recently, but I meditated every day for like 3 years, 4 years in a row, because it would tell me what my streak was. And so that actually works for me. But I tell people now, for me, meditation is kind of like brushing my teeth. I would not get up and go a day without brushing my teeth. And your mind is— it's like you've got to keep it, you've got to keep it clean. You've got to, you've got to do that meditation. And it doesn't have to be, you know, 30 minutes at a time or an hour at a time. You can, you can meditate in 3 or 4 minutes, you know, if you've got time during the day.

Absolutely. I try and encourage people to If they've got 20 minutes or they've got 2 minutes, make that 2 minutes your own. It's like for those 2 minutes you carve out a space in the ethers, you know, push away the world for those few minutes, either side, front and back, beneath, above. Carve yourself a bubble of time and light and just meditate for those 2 minutes that you've got. Make them count. Yeah, you're not going to get those 2 minutes back. What else were you going to do in those 2 minutes? Scroll through Instagram?

Yeah, well, and it can— you can, you can actually reset yourself during the day, you know, when you're having that hectic day, as you said. Even if you're working in an office, sit at your desk, close your door if you've got a door, close your eyes for 2 minutes, do some deep breathing. It really— I mean, you can feel it in your body. It doesn't, it doesn't take 30 minutes to kind of return to that state.

No, it's very, very quick to change. Change— make the decision that you're going to have those couple of minutes to yourself. Change the breath. Immediately that you change the breath by lengthening exhale, then we have a change in the brain waves. The brain waves become longer. And slower, and our state of consciousness then changes from the conscious mind into the calmness of the subconscious mind that we're used to going into in sleep every night. We slide into the subconscious. I'd say that my number one tip in meditation would be to not let your con— your concentration glide into the subconscious without some control because it'll just wander away into a state of drowsiness. You know, meditation is about being alert and awake, not becoming sleepy or drowsy. So it's to make sure that you go through that bottleneck, if you like, of the subconscious mind into the superconscious mind beyond that, which is calm and awake and alert.

Yeah, I've never heard it put that way. I love that. So, you know, we're— a lot of us are concerned right now with what's going on in the world. I mean, it seems to be a crazy place. So do you think that a personal meditation practice can have an impact on world peace?

Absolutely, because remember, thought is what we are. You know, whatever we think is what happens. It has a great impact on the world at large. And there's this tendency to think that we are small, there's only one of us, so, you know, we're small and insignificant and we can't make any change. I would say to not concern yourself too much with what's going on in the world. Change yourself first. You know, Gandhi said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world." So that means that you do your meditation practice, and you do the kindly acts that you can, but make it— make your parting, your, um, the end of your meditation practice, make it so that you're sending out your waves of peace that you gained in meditation, that you've dropped into, you know, that you've tuned into, shall we say, that you send those waves of peace out into the world without any thought of who they might affect or what they might affect. Just send them out anyway and you won't be alone. Yeah, peace for some people tend to be synonymous with the opposite of war, you know, peace and war are two opposites and I would say that they're not. Peace is a state in its own right, it's not the opposite of anything and just to send that peace out into the world You can make huge change just by doing that. You change the ethers for the lot of us. Your small act, you know, quiet act that isn't being broad— you know, we are broadcasting, but you aren't— that you're not necessarily saying to anybody. Your small act does make a change in the world, and the ethers change. Is that where we all touch in consciousness, the human consciousness, that mass consciousness? We, we feel your calmness, we feel your peace emanating.

Yeah, that, that saying by Gandhi, I remember hearing it several decades ago now. And it just gets— it's those really simple things that are so profound, and we don't realize the profundity of them when we first hear them. But, you know, be the change that you wish to be in the world. That's, that's all we can change is ourselves. But we— the thing is, we are all connected. We are all one. And we have much more of an impact on the world than we think we do, than we give ourselves credit for. And if you— someone smiles at you in the morning, it can impact the way you go about your day and how you react to your family when you come home at night. And that person's smile has impacted your family, and then they go out and they do a kind act for somebody. And it just ripples through the world.

It does indeed. When we are not separate, we are all connected in consciousness. And we feel it, we perceive it, it helps us to be the better person that we're seeking to be.

Absolutely. Well, Jenny, um, it's been, uh, really good talking to you. Um, is there anything else you'd like to say as we wrap up today?

I would just like to encourage people to, if they haven't got a meditation practice already, is to make the decision that they're going to take 20 minutes, 2 minutes, whatever they have, and try and meditate every day. You could use Insight Timer app or any other app for guided meditations. Personally, I prefer to just sit in the quiet, but it's whatever is your— whatever you're drawn to. It's going to have repercussions for your physical health. If you meditate, it'll be beneficial for your mental health, and it'll lead you more clearly on your spiritual path to awaken to who you really are.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to let people know where they can find you. So it's www.living-lightly.co.uk. Is that correct?

It's— yes, there's a hyphen in the middle there. So it's living-lightly. Yeah, sorry about that.

I should have said living-lightly.co.uk. And so I assume people can find out more about you there.

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to, you know, converse with anybody that, um, has, you know, it's maybe they've got issues with their own chronic fatigue or the Kundalini awakening, or they really want to know how to meditate. And I've got some sex-free, um, physical yoga. It's very gentle yoga. And, um, meditation sessions. So there's 6 half-hour sessions for free up on my site, so links to YouTube. So yeah, people can—

yeah, that's awesome. I'll put the link, uh, in the show notes. But Jenny, it's been really, really great getting to talk to you today and getting to know you. Thanks for being here.

Oh, it's been lovely speaking to you, Brian D Smith. Have a lovely day.

Yeah, you too. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful, and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, there are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of grief to growth. For more about Brian and grief to growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

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