Science & Spirituality Talks with Monique Class, APRN-BC

Hello, everybody. We are back for another science and spirituality talk, and this one we're going to have with Monique Klass. I've known Monique a long time, probably decades at this point, and I would say that I don't even know how to define her spirituality, actually. So, Monique, this is going to be a fun discussion with you because I know that you're a super spiritual person, and I'm curious how you define it and how you have it define your entire perspective on life.

So.

So welcome.

Welcome. Well, this is right up my alley. So to discuss.

I know. Well, the. The way that I usually ease into these conversations is by first talking about your relationship to science and medicine and healing, just kind of your personal journey. So maybe you want to say a few words about that.

Sure, I do. You know, I came. We all come into this through different disciplines, so. So I happen to come into this through the nursing discipline. And I never wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be an artist. And my. You know, my dad's an organic. Yeah, he's an organic chemistry professor. And so education was huge, and he had started many nursing programs. And so my parents said, listen, go to nursing school. You'll be a great nurse. You're great with people, and you can always take art courses on the side. So I end up getting into University of Virginia nursing school. And in the day at UVA Nursing school, they would interview you, and they would, like, ask you, you know, all the skills, like, why do you want to be a nurse? What interests you? And I was like, well, I want. Or what area of nursing are you interested in? And I was like, I'm interested in oncology. That's odd for somebody, you know, 18, going into college to be interested in oncology. So they asked me why, and I was like, you know, really fascinated with, like, where do people go after they die? You know, we're always in medicine. We're always trying to prevent death. But I was really fascinated by, like, well, where do you go?

You gotta go somewhere.

And they're like, well, why are you even curious about that? And I was like, you know, this is Italian New Yorkers. We go to many wakes where, you know, bodies are in the middle of the room as little kids were running around these funeral homes for hours and hours when grandfathers and such. And I used to just go up to the body, I was like, well, the body's here, but it doesn't even look the same. Like, there's gotta be more to this. So I think I was always really, really curious. And that was my lead. So that was the first job I ever had, was working on hospice on an oncology unit. And was really just so revealing to me. You know, I figured out, like, how do you die? Well, because if you die well, you know how to live. So that was my, like, first rollout. So I spent a lot of time. I almost got kicked out of nursing school several times because I would cut class at uva nursing school, cut school and go to the main campus when there were lectures on spirituality, death and dying. Like all kinds of, you know, Ram Dass came there, you know, in the day, Kubler Ross. So I used to just sit in on different classes because I was more interested in looking at it from that. Looking at healing from that perspective than I was the biomedical perspective. Even though nursing's a little bit softer, it's still. That's the lead very much. A little bit more cause and effect, a little bit more biomedical model. And to me, there was more. So got through nursing school after almost getting kicked out. It took me five years. And then when I got out, there was some brilliant, like Barbara Dossey and Barbara Joyce and brilliant nurses, PhD nurses that had come out of NYU and at NYU, they were studying energy medicine, like Dolores Krieger. They were looking at the energetics of healing. So they were going way beyond looking at quantum physics and bringing that into nursing and looking at integrative human beings and spirit in healthcare. And so NYU was really leading the charge. And then the Barbers broke off and developed a whole master's program for nurses. And it was a certified program that you can go through and get your master's. So I went through and that's where we did all of this wild stuff like, you know, learning psychosynthesis, imagery and visualization, energy work, looking at the interface between medicine and healing. And then I really got my launch when Dr. Oz like his politics, or don't like his politics in the day. He must have been about 30. And they were starting a complementary care unit at Columbia Presbyterian where he wanted to do energy work in the or. But they would not let anybody in that didn't know how to rock the medical community. So they called my instructor and she said, I got somebody for you. So she sent me down there. And then, you know, I wrote all these initial. Some of my colleagues wrote the initial IRBs, and there were two of us that got. Were able. It was like such a wild thing to go into the OR while he was doing open heart surgery and, you know, do energy work on people track all the metrics after, follow the IRBs when the hearts, you know, so there heart transplants in the day, people would have to stay in the hospital and either die in the hospital waiting for heart because these big huge machine called LVADs were the only thing keeping them alive. So we'd hang out, do all of this stuff, you know, I guess you want to call it mind body medicine. But a lot of it was being present, talking to them, hanging out, making connections, doing all these other, you know, working with aromatherapy, art therapy, energy medicine. And then when their hearts would come in, we get the call, we'd zoom down to Columbia. We do energy work over the hearts because they were coming out of trauma. Either someone was in a car accident, they were shot. So, you know, our thinking was kind of clear things energetically get it ready to be transplanted in. And then we'd go in the OR and do energy medicine while he was doing open heart surgery. So for me, that's where I began. In my early 20s, like, science and spirituality weren't separate. This was the highest tech you could get. Open heart surgery. He was in his 30s. He was hot stuff at the time, doing something that rocked everybody's world. Bringing us in and actually studying this. Listen, one thing he said when all the cameras started coming in and they asked, well, why are you even doing this? And he goes, listen, we're men of science. We're obligated to understand whether the things actually make a difference in outcome. And they did. People got extubated sooner. There was less depression. That's the biggest thing that happens post, you know, transplant is people go into deep depressions. People have bad memories and dreams, probably because the heart's being put in them or under trauma. And then they're. They're energetically we're putting that in their body. So there. There's more to the scene, right? So we got better outcomes. We would put hypnotic tapes on them, hemisync tapes in the operating. We did all kinds of stuff. Doing energy medicine on cancer cell lines. You know, it was. It was a moment in time. And of course, they took a lot of hits because it was the first major medical institution to be doing this stuff. And people didn't like it. People were afraid of it. So, you know, this going back, you know, I was in my 20s, so this is going back a long way. This is going back like 30 years ago, 35 years ago when we were doing this stuff. So it was novel at the time. But that. That's always been the way I saw It. It's not an either or. It's. It's a. They complement each other. Like, one is the invisible forces you can't always quantify, but they're the lead. And the other is the structure and the technology that allows progress but doesn't replace the other dimensions. Like, they're not separate things. They've always been intertwined. So that's kind of a long history. And that's always been my perspective is that they were intimately connected and shouldn't be separated, but should be embraced knowing that there's limitations to the science. There's not limitations to human potential. If you want to use that language or what we're capable of as human beings. We're just scratching the surface on what's possible. Right. So it's a lot of data.

I never knew that you wanted to be an artist. I never knew that you had worked with barbadosi all the way back in the day.

All the way back.

You know, these nascent emerging programs. You know, it was kind of interesting because nurses, as a collective, somehow they just seem to get it. Like whether they have more patient touch and interaction time. So that they're actually like enmeshed with that therapeutic encounter at a deeper level than physicians. So maybe they go there quicker or maybe it's just many women and their intuitive sense. But it's really fascinating to see your progression. And then you started to study with the center for Mind Body Medicine.

James Gordon.

Like James Gordon, you did that and then you found your way into functional medicine.

And I would tell you that wasn't me, you know, it was Joel. You know, he's the one. Because we ended up working together. You know, he was just working. He was a doctor at the hospital and he was. Started becoming interested in the mind body stuff. So we ended up working together. I had no interest in functional medicine. I thought it was crazy. Thought this whole concept of genetic expression and nutrigenomics, you know, it wasn't my thing. So he kind of pushed me into it, kicking and screaming. And then I saw, once I understood the model, that the model was actually comprehensive and included right in the middle of the matrix. We understood in functional medicine that this was the center, that every. All of the other nodes of the matrix, it influenced and informed everything else. That they weren't separating things like other forms of medicine. So that's when I started realizing the genius. And, you know, when you look at nursing and Nightingale, I mean, that was her big thing was how does the environment impact the patient? Like cleaning their room, opening the window Getting them to move, having them do prayer, putting different colors to influence healing. I mean, those were her. That's what she taught all the nurses. That's what she, you know, she was doing for. During the wars, right. She was having the nurses do what they could for the soldiers with this in mind, like how you touch them, how you influence them, the environment around them. Love heals. Like, all of these things are ingredients for healing that you can't separate out from the medicine or the surgery. So, you know, that is our roots. You know, not all nurses lean into that, but that's embodied and embedded in our training and in the DNA. And you could say, well, nurses are better at this. Well, I think we're taught a little bit different, but also there's a bias towards who goes into nursing in general. Now, I think with nurse practitioners taking over, you're getting a lot more people that would have gone to med school, going into nursing. So it's. It's changing. But in the. In the day, there was a bias towards the type of personality that would go into nursing to begin with, because it was bedside. Your deal was you. You bathe them. You were their advocate. You were by the bedside, you were holding their hand while the doctor was coming in and out. You were executing on the orders. Right. And you were the one bumping things up and spending the time you actually knew what was going on, you would tell them, and then they would give you the plan, because that's their degree, right? So, you know, it's an interesting. You know, if you want to look at it metaphorically, we were always the spiritual part and they were always the science part. But you needed both for.

That's an interesting way to look at it, that the doctor informed the science, the method, and the nurse informed the relationship, the spirit. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way.

That was our job. We bump up. She's upset. Her father died. Her son's name is this. This is what's going on. This is what's influencing. So they would. It's not like they didn't listen to us. I had relationships with all the docs I've ever worked with, but they looked at us to give them the information, the pieces of the emotional, spiritual components that they didn't have time or didn't know how. We'd give them that data. They'd put it all together, they'd give us the plan. So it was collaborative in that way, but it was still siloed. Right. They would do this, we would do that. And now the lines are blurry. I see. You know, I'm leaving ahead to your question about AI because I think that's a fabulous question, you know, and why I'm leaping ahead is I think that absolutely, with AI coming on the scene and all this computation being not taken away from us, but being super speedy, there's going to be way more time for people to connect if that's their lean. If, you know, I think doctors can go back to that because they can lean in and not have to do so much of the other. And same with the nurses and nurse practitioners. So I think people are going to be craving and the lean in is really going to be being present and doing these other dimensions of healing because the other stuff we'll be able to do in two seconds. I was just playing around with it. Just to play around with it. You take a bunch of different labs, you drop them into ChatGPT, as simple as that is. It's not even as sophisticated as it needs to be. Hey, you can get comprehensive care plans super quick. Now I would modify them, but you don't have to be a super genius anymore. But if you don't know, I think if you don't know how to use AI well and you don't know how to connect, you'll be left behind because it's going to be about the relationship and being present and the wise use of AI like knowing how to, you know, navigate that. You can't leave it all to AI. You got to know how to put the pieces together. But it takes away a lot of the heavy lifted things that would take us hours. We have a lot.

Yeah, it's almost like AI can help us to regain our humanity in some strange way, isn't it? It's like, oh, wow, all this super tech and everybody's afraid, but yet it allows for the space, the sacredness to come through. Whereas otherwise we'd have to like be scrambling with all these tasks.

So it's amazing because, you know, like I said, I'm just playing around with it. Not even in a sophisticated way, but you know, I type a basic care plan. I know what my care plan wants to be. You pop it in and you just say, just elaborate on this and that stuff. That would take me 45 minutes. Now I have 45 minutes back to.

Be and it does it in seconds.

Telling it what I want, but then it's just so then I can spend more time with the people, which is what I want to do. I want to hear their story. So like I said, I Think I'm not afraid of it at all because it takes away the stuff I hate to do, and it leaves me with time to do the stuff I want to do. I want to know everything about the person when I. You know this. When you let. When you give people the space to just ramble, and they'll often, almost halfway through, say, am I saying too much? Do you really want to hear this? Because they think they're just going. But when you have the space to just let them, the answers emerge for them. They start going down a path that they didn't even know was there, and they hit on something that they didn't even realize was big for them. And you've just sat there and created an environment where that can happen, that can happen more. If AI is doing the stuff we don't need to be doing. Really, it's true.

When we can make eye contact and just hold that space, you know, that's where the healing. I feel like it's facilitated in so many ways. So when you and I were sitting next to each other at the IFM annual conference and we were witnessing these talks, it's just so beautiful how this is all coming together, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes. But before we get into the future too much, I want to go back into your past.

Sure.

Because we kind of jumped in with you in your 20s and being into art and then going into nursing. But I kind of want to know about little Monique. I kind of want to know about your upbringing and any kind of. Did you come from a religious home, a spiritual home? How were you raised in terms of setting the framework for your spirituality?

Super Catholic. And I was super rebellious, you know, because, you know, I didn't want to go to church. They'd be saying stuff, and I'd be like, this just doesn't sound right to me that I need a third person to. To get to God. Like, you know, I've always questioned authority. I was, you know, there's six of us. They all followed the rules. I was the rule breaker. Right. And. And what I meant by the rule breaker is if the rule didn't make sense, I wouldn't follow it. I was that person. Like, I was always questioning, like, does this even make sense? Could this even be true? Which I think is the functional medicine way. Right. It's the medicine of. We're always like, well, why, like, pushing it to the next level. So, you know, Catholicism was that way for me. I was like, this doesn't make sense that, you know, I've got, I'm a sinner until proven otherwise. And I need someone else to have give me a hotline to God. I can't get there on my own. So I think when I started reading other books on other indigenous cultures and other concepts, you know, I was just like. And I didn't. I think I threw out the baby with the bathwater. First I was like, all Catholicism's bad. And now I'm like, you know what? There's some beautiful parts, but all of it isn't true. So for me, anything that gets put in a box, that becomes dogmatic and a system, you know, there can be corruption, miscommunication in those systems. But foundationally, you know, the unifying theory of all religions are saying similar things. So when I sat back and started looking at like kabbalistic and what the Jewish community was doing, what the Catholics were doing, there's. There is a mystical sect of all religions, Catholicism as well. When I started looking at that, comparing it to what they were saying and Hinduism and Buddhism and all these things, there are unifying principles or theories. So to me, just like in nutrition, right, you go for the unifying theory, not the one off fight over macronutrient distribution. It's the same thing like what are we all saying and coming to understand in this deeper, grander way. And that's where I kind of came to my understanding. But there's intellectual understanding, Deanna, that we all know from reading these books. And then there's direct experience and they're not the same. You can't just understand these things by reading a book or having somebody teach you. You have to start having some direct experience of the phenomena to deeply understand the terrain. You've got to be in it, right? So, you know, I think that all of the, you know, someone said this to me once, and I believe it's been my experience that you open these portals to these direct experience through illness, through poverty, through tragedy. You get crack cracked open in this way where you, you go up and out and you, you're at a different vantage point. I mean, I think some people are using different versions of psychedelics and I get it. But these, if you're doing it without anything, it's. These things are portals. These, these events are not negative things. They're cracking you open in these ways that dissolves the ego, the ordinary waking. This is right and that's wrong. And your catapult up even for a moment in time to get some clarity on potential possibility, other dimensions, and then you realize that it's not what our ordinary mind thinks it is. And it's simpler than we think and it's always with us and it's something we have to do. All this didgeridoing, I think in the moment of shift of perspective, like awaked awareness, if you want to call it, if you want to use that language, is always there for us. But it's. Are we looping in our minds? Is it locking us in? And the moment we realize it is and we take a step back, you can drop back in anywhere, anytime, without very much training. Right. So I think that's what I came to. There isn't a specialness about it. We all have it. It's. We've been programmed not to see it, not to feel it, not to drop into it in the ways and in the moments we should. But people know when they're there.

Yeah. It's almost like we are just designed in this realm in order to have that separation. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm curious like you now, in the stage of life that you're in, you can kind of look back at all of that, but what was your process? Was it kind of like you were poring over books in the library, looking at the Kabbalah, or were you like, what was your process for self discovery in that way? Were there certain books or certain teachers or classes? So when you were a child, into your teen years, what was informing you?

Nothing directly, but indirectly, it was all experience.

Okay. It was all kind of what you were feeling?

No, I, you know, like I said, you know, I grew up in the Bronx with like a big family, community, but they were very community oriented and service oriented. So they all, like the, my grandmother, the aunts, the uncles, they started, they were deeply involved, started church programs, parks, like, you know, food drives. They were the ones organizing it, creating it, leading the charge to take care of the poor, the underserved in the Bronx community. That, that was their work. They did a ton of work. So I was around that concept of service and family and faith. So I grew up like that, even though I didn't really grow up in nature. And you know, it was done in a particular way, but that's the core of the value system was, you know, family, family, faith, service. Like those were your, that's what you did. That's, you know, that's who you were. That money was never the driver. Like, you know, education, friends, family was much more important than money. Right. My parents were always like, as long as you love what you do, it doesn't matter. What you do, get an education. That was important, but it was more about do things that matter instead of do things that matter. Do things that matter to you instead of do things so you can make a lot of money. Like, that was never the mantra or the message. So it was much easier for all of us to, you know, drop into different professions and just follow, because we never thought, you know, it's nice to make money. I'm not taking anything away from making money. You need to make money. But that was never our primary objective. It was to make a difference. So I think that those early messages from not just my core family, but the extent that. That eight, you know, great aunts and uncles, like, that was how everybody. They were leaders in their community at a very. You know, my grandmother used to visit. She's like, I'm going to visit the old people. I was like, Grandma, you're like, 88. You are the old person. She was great. Would walk all over, visit, bring people food in the neighborhood, never thinking that she was old, which is hilarious. But, you know, that's what she did, right? Walking around the Bronx, not afraid. No one ever. The gang members and the. No one ever. They knew who she was. No one touched her. She was safe because she was doing service work. Didn't see color, took care of all, you know, didn't matter who it was. If they were in need, she'd show up with food. And so that's what I saw. And so I think, you know, they modeled and gave those messages, whether consciously or unconsciously. So I think that was the foundation.

Yeah, that's so beautiful, too, because just like you said, you didn't grow up in a natural environment with trees. And, you know, like, when I was talking to Dr. Bob Rountree, for him, it was all about nature. You know, he was a kid with a lot of energy, and he just got that out. He went to camp, and he was always in nature. And it just goes to show that we can find our spirituality in whatever environment we're in. Right. And people, those interconnections and the cohesiveness of your family.

Yeah. Yes.

Profound.

Yeah. I mean, and like I said, I grew. I grew up with cement. I went to PS 97 in the Bronx with the chains. And, like, I was one of the only white people in the school, so I did not grow up in this environment that was like, you're out there in nature, and that's the only way. So, you know, I think that that's a good point. There's many portals right there's. Many portals in now. Now I spend a lot of time in nature because I'm blessed to live near nature. But it wasn't. That's what I'm saying. You can get this anywhere. When I, when I was in, went to India, I mean, they're all stuffed in these tiny little places and you know, most of them don't have a lot of money. It's like dirty and all this kind of stuff. But deep spirituality. So it's, there's, it's not like it has to be done in these beautiful yoga studios with like all the right trappings. I mean, I think that is the trap that you need all of this stu for it to happen. Like, it's nice to have that stuff around, but it's unnecessary. It's about the vibe, it's about the energetics around you. It's about the.

Yes. Yeah, no, I really like that. Monique, what I get from you too is that it's an intuitive, visceral experience like you alluded to, you know, in terms of your interactions with people, your community and how you're in your mind and in your heart, kind of patching that all together and kind of processing it all. Would you like to share or have you shared and do you feel open to sharing any mystical experience or something that really turned you around experientially where it was like there was no going back to a certain way of thinking anymore because you had had some experience and it could be something super small like, you know, you saw somebody dying or it could be like a dream you had or, you know, Terry Walls and I talked about a near death experience that she had had that I never knew she had. I mean, is there anything that you would like to explain and unpack as it relates to a mystical experience where there are really no words for it, but it's profound, deep and it's life changing.

Yeah, well, I think I had a couple different experiences. But you know, when, you know, I too had a near death experience in a car accident, but I didn't end up being hurt. But that's a whole different thing. But I think one of the earliest experiences I had was I was when I was at college. Now I got voted class teetotaler. I didn't drink, didn't do drugs. Like I was pretty straight and pretty in my box. We were at this country party and one of my housemates gave me this tiny little bit of mushroom which I had never had, you know, magic mushrooms. Okay, fine. So I took the tiniest little bit and we were out, we were having this field party and I. They all were having fun and just laughing hysterically. They, like they were using it for recreational purposes. And all of a sudden I went out to the field and I was sitting in the field, like, with the animals. And I felt, you know, I felt like at one with the animals, at one with nature, like the cows were communicating with me like the. The. The chickens. And like, they were all. They. They came. Whether they did or not. I thought they were coming around me. They probably were. And after that moment and in meditation, I was like, I can't eat meat again. Like, I just. I couldn't harm them. Like, I had this whole awakening about the interconnectedness of things, the aliveness of trees and nature and animals. And I didn't continue to do, you know, any more drugs, but that experience informed. That just stopped me in my tracks and opened me up to that, hey, there's other dimensions. There's, you know, other things are alive and communicating with us. We're just not still enough. So that got me started on the path, learning how to do it without any props, you know. So that's how I started reading. I started meditating. I started on that whole spiritual journey from that particular experience. And then. Yeah, so that really was the moment that I had this shift. And I was like, wow, like, there's way more than I can see, and I wanna. I want that without any substance. And that became my journey. Wow.

And. And that was some time ago. And you have this whole time, right? So that has stayed with you.

Yeah, that has stayed with me. Yeah, that. And, you know, I felt like the truth, like, Like I said, I know I was on something, but I saw the trees in nature in different ways. Like, oh, they're alive. Like, they're sustaining us. We're not sustaining them. They're sustaining us. Like, I had this gratitude and awe and this awakening of how small my little world really was and kind of dissolved into a bigger sense of the large self, if you want to put it. I guess there's so many language, the implicit order, I guess whatever you want to put on it. But I had that awaked awareness and then was able to recreate it through different meditative experiences. And, you know, and beyond that, sometimes different encounters with patients or people or friends, when you're really in that heart zone with them, you kind of dissolve. So once you kind of know it, it. You can spot it, and it comes up in these various organic ways, you know, so it's not that I'm Always around like that. But I know the difference between when I'm doing everything.

When. I mean, we do have this physical reality to tend to. Right. So it's just part of it.

Yeah, you use that part of our mind. Yeah. So, but, but that was the moment where things shifted for me.

No, that's beautiful. You know, I have a couple of questions based on what you just relayed, but one of them is about a spiritual practice. You know, I'm just curious because the way you live your life seems like it's already extremely in tune. You're aware you're awake, you're in touch with life. Do you also carve out time where you say, okay, I'm praying or I'm meditating? I'm curious if you pray or you know, do you have kind of a rhythm where you say, I am doing this for my own spiritual health? Or maybe it's just how you live. I'm just curious about that.

Yeah. And, and I do every day I set aside and it's different amounts of time. I don't have this like, well, it's gotta be 20 minutes and it's gotta be at this time. But you know, I've set up my practice that I don't see patients before 10:00 in the morning. And not because I'm, I wake up early, it's not because I don't wait, I don't wake up till 10 o' clock in the morning. But I want the morning time, like I'll wake up at 5:30 or 6 to be contemplative time. So I'll sit with a cup of tea, contemplate nature, watch the birds, do my exercise, sometimes go for a long hike in nature. So I spend those couple of hours being, being with me. And it's different every day. But there, whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it in this slow meditative way because I've given myself enough time. So, you know, the one thing I realized is that if you don't create the time for deep work, deep, deep work doesn't just happen. So, so, you know, even though it looks different every day, I've carved out that morning time for deep work in these different dimensions. And I think that's probably one of the best things I do. But there's always an element of being in nature, moving my body, you know, nourishing my body with either tea or healthy foods and prayer, meditation. And then I, I do, like I said, gratitude's become big. And so, you know, not big meaning it's Become people. I've caught on and they almost use the word all the time. I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that. But I. Every day I have a friend of mine and we just text gratitude, our gratitude journals so that I have like a person that's going back and forth with me. So every morning that's part of the ritual. And I may stay. Like I said, I'll start with like, listen, I had a bad day, I'm not really there. And you know, this, this was difficult. That was difficult. I'm feeling a little off. And then you can get to it, right? Then you can get to, you know what? All that's true. And this person like opened the door for me. This person helped me here. Like these. You can always find something in the day that you can be grateful for, big or small. So it's getting into the practice of noticing those things, of spotting those things. So, you know, a couple, couple things that I realized is I put my phone away a lot. So, you know, because what I was doing was I would, people would call me, I'd be like checking out at the checkout thing and I'd be on the phone, I'd be walking in at the doors, I'd be on the phone and just. I put my phone in my purse and I really don't do that. And just connecting throughout the day with ordinary people that you may not even know changes the game changes. Whether it's the person behind the counter, calling them by their name, looking at their name. Good, say, how are you? Just the eye contact. So you get these little hits of connection throughout the day when you put your phone somewhere else and you're not driven. So I think it's setting the conditions, whether you do large amounts or small amounts of being consistently keeping yourself on track to be awake and noticing when you're not. Like, you're never going to always be in the zone. But I think for me it's like, okay, I'm totally crazy right now. I'm out. I haven't been paying attention. Have you ever had that experience where someone opens the door for you and you're so in your head that you don't even say thank you? And you walk through and they're like, thank you. And they're like angry at you because you've not said thank you because you were like in your zone. So, you know, that happened to me like once or twice within a 48 hour span. I was like, oh, I'm not paying it, I'm not conscious so that was just a great way. I said, you know, it's owning those things. I turned to that person, said, you're absolutely right. I was like, in my head, I'm so sorry. Thank you. So it's calling yourself honestly on things and bringing yourself back into the moment, into connection, into awareness of what's happening. So I look at all those things as signposts that I'm drifting.

Yeah, yeah. They bring us back to center, for sure. And I think now sometimes we have guides or, you know, people who are there to kind of keep us on track and get us to pay attention again. You know, I'm kind of curious based on what you just described. I follow a kind of a similar thing to you. I really like those early morning hours where everything is just still. Like it's before, you know, the noise and just everything starts. But I'm curious, too, because you're such a creative person, you know, And I learned that Terry Wahls actually was going to study fine art before medicine, but then realized, you know, she was like, I couldn't make any money from that. So I'm just curious, like, you're. We're all creative. This is just like saying, we're all spiritual. Right? Everybody has physical creativity. We're emotionally creative. So I'm just curious, how does creativity show up in your life? And do you see that as a way to connect to your sense of feeling whole or complete?

I think creativity is huge for people. Right. And I think there's many versions of creativity, whether you're creative with how you cook, whether you're creative with how you organize your garden and put things out, or there's, like, actually drawing artwork or, you know, sometimes it's being really creative in these care plans with people. And so what's fun for me, I'm such a visual person, and I had a lot of training in imagery and psychosynthesis. So when I'm with people and they're talking about when they put an image to a symptom, then I have a lot of fun with going back and forth of, what does that look like? Describe it more. Show me the. You know. You know, so I go back and forth with images, with people, more so than I color write and do all those things. So I've had a lot of fun, you know, dropping metaphors and images and working with imagery and psychosynthesis in my clinical practice. But then, you know, I've started to garden and, you know, I get really creative with the different color flowers. So it's come out in these. And now I'm getting creative with herbs in the way I cook and the way it looks on a plate, which is new as putting it into cooking. But I think there's many. I always thought, and I will go back to it. I always thought I'd paint. You know, I. I had an easel and someone threw it out, but I got to get another easel. So I think ultimately I'm going to create some space to do some fun painting, because that was always what I love to do. I used to do all that kind of stuff, but for now, I find it in these other places, working in these other places. I love art. I love it. Yeah.

Well, and I really love what you said. I mean, creativity is in every moment. Like, how are we creating and unpacking and seeing our lives as creative? Right. And so it doesn't have to be classically in a box of being creative, but even what you said about organizing a meal and making a meal like that is spiritual and creative at the same time. It feels to me.

Yeah. How are you putting it on the plate and what herbs are you putting? What colors are you putting in the meal that light up the plate? Like, I think that's fun. Right. And so I think there's many ways to bring creativity, but I think it's an important element of all human beings to have some kind of code of outlet. But it doesn't need to look the same. Like, for instance, my husband's a fly fisher. Men. That's what he does. Even though I don't eat fish or agree. Agree with catching fish. But he'll sit down there for hours making these little ties and painting them like, you know, and doing woodwork. So his version of creativity is. That's what it looks like. So, you know, people do it in different ways and it's appreciating that it doesn't need to look just like you're saying doesn't need to look one way. Some people make jewelry. I have a patient that makes fabulous jewelry. It's just, you know, some. Some of my patients knit and knit these unbelievable sweaters and things. So I think there's many ways to. To have that outlet. Even creating PowerPoints.

Right.

You've done it.

Yeah.

Like it. Totally excited. Not about what you're putting in there, but like finding something that matches your picture. What article can I put near this picture?

You're right. That's so much a part of the process. Right. And you very visual. So you'd want to see that even looking at the Slide. And so you can imagine how the audience would be. I love that. So I have a little bit of a heavier question for you. And I've only asked a couple of people this so far, but I feel like you could go into this space very easily. You know, many of us think about just this existential question of, like, the meaning of life, like, why are we here? And what happens when we're no longer here, when we pass? So I'm just kind of curious about your belief structure around those things. Meaning of life and where do we go when we're not here anymore? What is. Do you have any idea about that? Or you're just kind of going with the flow of it?

I mean, I've got ideas, but. We all have ideas. But I think we're here to express divine love, and I think that looks different for each person and. And depending on what they have to contribute in their skill set and how they're going to explicate divine love. But I think it's moving beyond loving with attachment. Like, I'll love you if you love me and we'll be married. You know, those kinds of Eros loves and that type of love. But divine love for humanity, for the world, for those types of things. I think we're here to learn how to express that. And we get many opportunities and many lessons to provoke us to drop into that. And so I think that that's the main reason we're here, is to express that and connect with that, whatever that looks like. Yeah, I think we transcend. Depending on your level of. I get. I'm using words that maybe, but the body isn't all there is. I mean, so this is just from my direct experience of being with so many people as they transitioned when I worked for hospice. So as they're exiting out of the body, they look one way. The moment there's no more heartbeat, we got a flat line. The body looks completely different. The face looks different. I mean, so there's a spirit that's in there that leaves. And you can feel it. You can feel it in the room when it's leaving. You can. You can feel it around. And so I think we transcend to different dimensions and different schoolings to learn different things. I think there's the halls of healing where the spirit has to recover from being stuck in this body. And then I think we go to learn what we didn't get right this time. And I do think we get second and third chances and fourth chances and many chances to come back until we reach whatever the word you want to use, you want to use enlightenment at the point where you're embodying divine love. And you don't need to come back and burn off any particular karmas, right? So I think that's my belief system that there is. The energy's got to go somewhere. So if you want to put in other. In other terms, like quantum terms or energetic terms, like energy can't be destroyed or created, it's got to go somewhere. So even though it's not in this body, it's where is it? And so I think we've all had these experiences, especially when people we love pass feeling their presence or them messing with technology. So, you know, most of us don't have the visual frequency or the. Or the hearing amplitude to hear what's happening on the other side after they leave the body. But there are some humans that are walking around that are born with different ear canals, with different frequencies of vision, and they can see it. Right. And so I've had the privilege of sitting with two different people in my life that had that capacity to see people after they transcended. And so I've had a lot of conversations around that with them. What that's been like, what happens to people? What are people saying? So, like I said, you know, believe or not believe, I believe it to be true, that this can't be all there is, that you leave the body and you go nowhere. It can't. It doesn't make sense to me that. That we're here to just get more things, live forever and look beautiful in the casket or whatever people are saying. You know, I think that's the wrong emphasis.

Yeah, no, that does make sense. So when somebody says old soul or young soul, do you feel like that is kind of getting at, like, the levels of development, that maybe that person has gone through it, Like a soul level, like, kind of like. Okay, you know, and I'm curious about for yourself. Do you feel like being here and being on Earth and having all of these lessons, like, do you feel like you are really happy with your life in the way of the spiritual aspects, like what you said about divine love. Do you feel like that's definitely something that you feel very centered into throughout your life, especially with the profession that you chose?

Yeah, you know, I do. And listen, I'm refining it. And I think, you know, part of the being in your 60s is you're no longer raising kids and doing all that. So part of it is you've got the opportunity and the wisdom to share it, spread it drop into it in. In different ways than. Than you did before. Right? This is the moment where I still got enough energy, I'm still healthy. Like, I get it, I see it. So I look for any opportunity to do something nice for people, go out of my way for people I know or don't know. Like, that's just become, you know, part of what's important to me is to show up for people that I love, people that matter, and even people that I don't know that are having a difficult time and could use a positive word. Like, I'll talk to lots of people for no charge, that are going through breast cancer and frazzled and things like that. You know, a friend of a friend of a friend, and they're like, can you. Or someone that just calls my office and can't get in for four months and they've got a new diagnosis, I'll always, like, hop on the phone and just be with them. So because my lean is through medicine, I can do that through medicine. But I'm also bringing it into my personal life with my nieces and nephews and reaching out in different ways and showing up in different ways. So I know I'm making a conscious effort in my 60s, now that my kids are older and I don't have to put so much energy in there or in my career. Like, I was laughing with one of my friends that said, oh, that's something to put on your resume. I was like, you mean my tombstone? At this point, I don't need anything. Anything that I'm doing now is going on my tombstone on my resume. So because we're not not looking to build in those particular ways, like, the energy can go into finding these opportunities to lean into that divine love, whatever that looks like for people. I just think it's these acts of genuine kindness with wanting nothing back, but just to be helpful in small or large ways. I think there's all these opportunities throughout every day, and sometimes we miss them, but if we catch them, like, you feel so good in, like, the energy is different. It's not that you feel good about yourself. It's like you tap into a different energy for a moment. It's like divine energy comes through you. So there's this therapeutic reciprocity. I mean, I don't do it, so I feel good about my ego self. But there's an energetic exchange that happens where both are true, where that person gets service and love and you're infused with divine energy. So. And I think that's how you elevate the planet one person at a time like that, right? By. By opening up to these things, being of service to other human beings around you in a way that's. That you can, you know, not giving it all away if you're sick or, you know what I'm saying? But in ways that you can, looking for the little things you could do.

Yeah, no, you said that beautifully. Again. It's like moment by moment and just squeezing and juicing every moment. And the gratitude that you can have, the awareness, you know, one of the things you spoke to. I've never asked anybody this before, but I'm just getting this question now for you is you're talking a lot about divine love. And it's kind of like, you know, we're here in order to come into this space of more love that isn't around attachment or around ego. And I'm just curious now if we come back to the science and what you started to say about AI and this whole trend with biohacking, right? Like trying to, like, metricize and improve and optimize. So let me just connect these two things. Do you think we could ever biohack or optimize our ability to be more in that space of divine love and kindness and gratitude? And is there a place for something like technology, science, AI to take us more into what we're actually here to arrive at, according to your spiritual framework, that sense of love? Can we see those worlds coming together?

Well, I think AI in the technology will give people the metrics to measure what it's doing on a cellular level, but it won't teach them how to get there. I mean, that's gotta be done by deep wisdom, true teachers. And there's very few true teachers, right? People that have really been in the terrain that can actually pass down and help usher people down that path. But I think the technology can give the metrics that show people they're heading in the right direction, right? So they're finger. The science and the AI are fingers pointing at the moon. But it's got to be caught from an enlightened, elevated being. And then I think once it's caught, it catches, right? It catches from person to person. So that's my understanding. They could work hand in hand, but with AI alone, you can't get there. But AI can give you some metrics if you need them to show you you're on. Well, this is how it's changing my heart rate. This is what it's doing. The biohacking. Kind of interesting, you know, the biohacking I know people love it, but it almost gets people so stuck in comparison, competing, contrasting, that they're stuck in that loop of the mind that doesn't open up to the things we're talking about. So although I understand the value and I understand how people love hearing about all this stuff and we've gotten super caught up with that. I don't think it necessarily leads people where they deeply want to go. I think it gets them caught in some of these traps. These physical traps. Right. Really attached to the physical body in these ways. I take care of my physical body. Don't get me. That's why I wake up early. Like, I exercise. I saw and I do all those things, but. But I don't even track them like that. Right. So it's. It's. That's my. That's the trap with. With those things, I believe is that it gets people more stuck on the body and more competing with themselves and everybody else and more down that loathing. I'm not good enough. I haven't done this and this person's doing that, you know, so that's my only concern with the biohacking that's out there.

Yeah. And that's a valid concern. Right? Because it's almost like that comparison, competitive nature. And then also, like looking at just one little marker and not the whole. Like. I remember when I was wearing the OURA ring and I'd wake up in the morning and I'd look and it's like, oh, you didn't sleep so well. And I'm like, wait a minute. I thought I slept great. So what? Which one is lying and which one do I actually believe? Is it me and my feeling, my experience? Or am I just tricking myself into thinking that I slept well? Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. But I. I don't know. It's just. I like what you're saying because again, it just builds up more. I'm not good enough. I need to do this better. I'm not perfect. You know, it just can bring in a lot of that. That language.

Yeah. Comparison, competing, contrasting. Instead of compassion. Right. It leads down a different road. So the technology should serve your inner journey. It shouldn't lead it. It shouldn't be the lead. It shouldn't be your guide. You should be your guide. That's just back. That's the backup band.

Excellent. That is. Well said. That's a pearl of wisdom. Just one last thing before we come to a close here. I'm kind of thinking about what you said about AI can metricize and show us the metrics, but can't tell us really how to get there. I was having lunch with Jeff Bland recently and he's mentioned this to me a few times. Now that he's created his AI clone so that when he's no longer here, he can just wax his wisdom. You can ask him a question. And I know that you feel very strongly about the elders and kind of, you know, making sure that we revere and honor people who actually have this experience and have this sense of just imparting and mentoring. So I'm just kind of curious because if we vision out AI and let's just say that, you know, we look at elders, people we revere, people like you said that are the enlightened teachers could there. And this is a wacky idea, but I'm putting it out there anyway and just getting your thought on it. Like, what if we had an AI infrastructure or a way to connect into that wisdom that they all bring? I don't know. I know it's kind of, you know, so fabricated. Like, how could you even imagine that? But you can imagine because how is AI being fostered now? It's like crowdsourced just to everybody. So you're getting a lot of garbage. But what if it was streamlined and refined to the wisdom teachers where it's like, no, these are eloquent responses. These are elder and experienced enriched responses to these questions that you might have.

Listen, I think it would be a good surrogate. If it can be refined that way, it would be a good surrogate. This is an opinion. I don't think anything replaces being in their presence because you're catching it. It's an energetic transference that can't happen through an AI computer. But the intellectual teachings could be taught. But I think the transfer that happens of the knowledge is transferred on an energetic. They're transferring from student to teacher. And I don't. You can't do that without being in the presence of. But it can be very helpful to prepare people and keep people thinking a particular way. I think it's very useful. But it can't replace it at that level where like Jeff Bland and brilliant geniuses of the intellectual kind, I think they're reproducible through this because it's cognitive. It's cognitive and it's interconnection of cognitive information. That's what it. That's. It's lean. I mean, AI is great at that. I mean, so yeah, he can create his AI clone. Ganga G you. I don't think you can right that is so insightful.

That's so true, because I even mentioned that I said you can't do PLMI just with your avatar. You know, that's not the same as, like, exactly what you said. The energy, the experience of the person and what you feel in the room. So when we're all virtualized, it just doesn't have the same impact as when I'm sitting next to you at the ifmaic. Right. We have a different feel and experience there than, you know, just being online. So it's kind of the same and even probably further step removed.

So, yeah, these are. These are great questions, you know, so it's just.

Yeah, just listening to you and kind of what's coming through, and I just really love listening to your wisdom, Monique. And it was wonderful to have this conversation. It'll be really great to showcase this and for people to get a bird's eye view into your life and to understand the depth of who you are, especially when you're on stage and teaching them, and to know that all of this, this enrichment is something that you bring to all of your teaching. So thanks for being open to doing this, and it's fun. So good to get to know you better in this way.

It's so fun. And I just want to applaud you for putting this podcast out. It's time is now. You're a perfect person to lead the charge with this. I really appreciate the fact that you're doing this.

Thank you so much. And thanks for doing it with me. And you're so ahead of your time. Look at this. Back in your 20s, you could have had this going about 20 years ago or so. So thank you again for the person you are, and I look forward to seeing how your journey unfolds. Thanks, Monique.

Look forward to seeing you soon. Bye, Deanna.