Alisha Das┃Divine Guidance or Ego? How to Discern the Voice Within

We're not connecting to something outside of us. We're connecting to something that is built of the same source as us, which is light, which is love, which is divinity, which is ultimate goodness. To come back to— hearken back to your beautiful Buddhist tradition, we are ultimately good. Original innocence in Christianity. And so it's really connecting to our own, not only angelic, but archangelic nature.

What if some of the moments you've called intuition, coincidence, or feeling that you weren't alone were actually invitations into a much deeper relationship with the unseen? Today, I sit down with spiritual teacher and angel expert Alicia Doss for a fascinating conversation about angels, divine guidance, and the delicate balance between spiritual surrender and personal responsibility. We explore why spiritual experiences can sometimes be hijacked by the ego, How healing our trauma can help us discern a deeper voice from our conditioning, and why becoming more spiritual should actually make us more grounded, not less. Alicia also shares a remarkable story of surrender inside Folsom Prison and explains why connecting with what she calls our angelic nature is ultimately less about finding supernatural beings outside ourselves and more about remembering the love, goodness, and divinity already within us. Alicia Das, welcome to Radical Responsibility.

Thank you so much, Fleet. I am really happy to be here.

Well, it's a joy to have you. I've been looking forward to this conversation. So I'm going to share a little bit of your background and then we'll jump right in. Sound good?

Sounds great.

Okay. So Alicia Das is an angel expert and communicator, ordained minister, speaker, and spiritual teacher with more than 30 years of experience helping Helping people reconnect with their divine lineage and higher purpose. She holds a degree in spiritual psychology, has led more than 500 seminars worldwide, and hosts the Live Your Love podcast, featuring conversations with leading spiritual voices including Marianne Williamson, Jack Canfield, Neale Donald Walsch, and Lorna Byrne. Prior to her work in the spiritual arena, Doss worked as an actress and a DJ, experiences that continue to influence her dynamic teaching and communication style. So, uh, we like to get our conversation started on a little bit of a personal note. So I'm going to ask you, um, kind of what took your life in this direction. Um, you know, you have a degree in spiritual psychology, so kind of when did that happen, before or after? But even before that, there's just a question, you know, when you introduce yourself As an angel expert, is that, you know, takes some work to get people around to considering that? Because, I mean, I know there's many people who are tuned into angels and angelic visions and a whole angelic energy. But for a lot of people, there might be a little eye rolling. So I'm just curious how you work with that.

Well, absolutely. And I'm from a very scientific family. Everybody's an MD, and I was pre-med, a biology major. And so I I really understand that, and I actually welcome the skepticism because we want to be discerning and we don't want to do a spiritual bypass. And I'm sure my, my type AAA Indian physician father would have loved the term angel expert. And, um, not. And, and so, but really, you know, Fleet, angels are ubiquitous. And the recent study— I did warn you that I'm a nerd— a recent study by the NORC, the University of Chicago, and the Associated Press demonstrated that 69% of U.S. adults believe in angels. That is more people than believe in God or a higher power. So, and it goes— they go through all religions, even Buddhism, even of course Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc., even indigenous culture. So a belief that transcends so many different diversities as well as religions, there's probably something to it. Do you know? So it's not so much of a leap for people to believe in angels, but when you say you're an angel expert, yes, that that can get some eye rolling. And so for me, it's funny because you know I've talked to people like why don't you lead with the fact that you have a doctorate? And I mean that it definitely informs my work, but really the heart and soul is is learning that we can go only so far with beautiful psychological techniques and mental techniques and etcetera, and then we have to surrender to something greater, and that's where. the angels come in. So for me, it wasn't a leap. I think it can be for others. And I welcome that because I want people to go on their own experience.

And so how, with your background, your father being an MD and so forth, your family being very science-oriented, at some point you made a left turn, sort of a right turn one way or the other. So what brought that about?

Really, again, experience. I mean, I had— I'd spoken to angels in their own language at age 4, um, had lots of experiences growing up. And we just— we spoke about Indiana before we, we started. And do you know, in rural Indiana, when you start telling people things about themselves you can't know and things about the universe you can't know, according to them, as a child, you learn to keep quiet about these things. So it was really always the heart and soul of who I was. And once I left home, I was again pre-med for about a year, and then I went, wait, this is not who I am. So I kept the scientific predilection and then really pursued— first I was an actress, and then, um, but once I kept having spiritual experiences, moved to an ashram, got ordained, etc., that was where my heart and soul was. So I don't have any argument between science and spirit. And spirit. Many do, but I don't.

And so it sounds like you had some kind of intuitive capacity, or you were in some ways in touch with the subtler dimensions of life from an early age.

I really was, yes. When I was very young, I started having visions, and they really— I had some extreme trauma as a child, and this These visions, angels if you will, really kept me whole and kept me very functional until I could work much later to heal the trauma altogether. And so for me, at some point, you know, it really does go with a scientific mind to go, well, I'm going to trust my experience and then keep checking it out and see if it holds and see if it's consistent and see if it changes my life. And Once that was the case, I surrendered.

So, and your work, as I understand it, is about helping people reconnect with their own, well, with the divine in whatever way, but also with their own kind of divine lineage that people have their own. I guess everybody has their own innate connection or might be karmic connection or lineage connection with some sense or some manifestation of the divine or the sacred. So tell us more about that.

I am really passionate about people really connecting to their own divine heritage, to their divine self. We're all God, we're all the divine, the universe, whatever we want to call it. I did my ancestry.com and it was very boring. I'm exactly half Eastern and half Western. I'm half English and half Indian. There's like a little bit of Chinese in there. I don't know how that snuck in, but that's like 1%. So for me, I'm very passionate about bridging the religions, the cultures about bringing us together. And so I really love to help people. I don't know if it's the best business model, but I love to make myself obsolete and really empower people to connect to the divine on their own. I hold a container, I help them, I do clear past lives and karma, etc., so that they can then connect on their own. And we do have to address the psychology and trauma and emotions and mind So that they can have that clear shot at really connecting to that which is beyond us all.

So my work, one of the frames for my work is the name of my book, Radical Responsibility. And it's about a very high degree of personal ownership and responsibility. It has nothing to do with blaming others, obviously, but it has nothing to do with blaming oneself either. It's just about taking ownership for one's choices and creating one's own destiny. And also our work at my company HeartMind, all of my work really is grounded in the values from my own Buddhist tradition of what my first Tibetan teacher simply called basic goodness. Now, there's a more technical term in the Buddhist tradition called Buddha nature, and he used basic goodness as just that kind of very simple, accessible term. But it's pointing to the fact that underneath all the challenges we have, underneath all this stuff, at the core of our being, we are innately whole, innately wise, innately good. One could say innately sacred, innately divine, right?

Yes.

As opposed to ideas of the fallen nature or any of those kind of ideas that are out there. And so, but mixing that, so I think it's very helpful. Actually, for me, a lot of my work is helping people get in touch with that. so that they can embrace higher degrees of radical ownership and responsibility in their life without that triggering them into self-blame.

Yeah.

Or self-doubt or self-loathing of some kind, right? So you, you first need a foundation. Now you can cultivate self-compassion on a kinder relationship with oneself and work with deconstructing limiting core beliefs and all that, but actually have an experience where you experience in a depth of your own being that you're not broken, that you don't need fixing, that you're whole and innately good. is profoundly transformative and then gives us the courage and the resilience to embrace greater ownership in our life. Having said all that, how do you distinguish between the idea of surrendering to divine grace and personal agency?

I absolutely love everything you said, and I do want to celebrate your book title. Like, that really says everything. It's not responsibility, it's radical everything. And I think that goes to really accepting who we are as human beings. as well as divine beings. It's so, so important having— so to answer your question, I would— to me, the two are not mutually exclusive at all. I want to tell you about my friend Robert, and it is literally the favorite story in my book, Your Angelic Ancestry. So I was sitting on a kitchen floor at a retreat in the desert, in the high desert, so we're away from everybody, away from civilization, and a Very enormous gentleman was saying to me, I could get my guys to kill for me, but I liked it to be up close. And I would kill the child molesters and the drug dealers and, you know, the bad guys. This is an actual conversation I had. This was from a man named Shadow. And it was at a retreat in the desert with Byron Katie, who you probably know, spiritual thought leader.

Yeah.

And so former lifers were joining us with civilians in the desert to show us their work with the Inside Circle Foundation. And in an amazing ceremony to pick our dog, which is, as you know, one's protector in prison, I picked Robert, who was this enormous— I mean, I gotta say, he's probably 250 pounds of solid muscle, bald, a behemoth of a gentleman. And we went and sat in the desert, far away from everybody. Robert had just been in Folsom Prison for 24 years, 6 years in solitary. He'd been out less than 6 months. And I'm a small woman, and I realized as I was listening to him tell me about acts of violence I'd never even heard of, and he'd murdered someone, and his own story of alcoholism at age 11, et cetera, I realized that I was not afraid for a moment. I was sitting in the calm of the storm that had long passed. And here's Robert's story, and it is about surrender and agency, both. So Robert had started doing work with the Inside Circle Foundation, so a blend of Christianity and Buddhism and radical responsibility, trauma work, et cetera. And so he'd been doing this work in prison. He had become a Christian, and he had learned of a fellow inmate that was going to murder him. And this happens so much more in prison than I had any idea. And I mean, Shadow, who was, you know, another former inmate, just laughed at me when I'm like, well, how do you kill in prison without weapons? And Robert looked at me and he said, I said, how, how did, how did you get parole? And he said, so this inmate was going to kill him, and Robert went to his inner inside circle, um, mentor, and they said meditate on it first, meditate on it first. And so Robert really did, and in his meditation an angel came to him, an archangel came to him, giant, much bigger than the prison, bigger than the mountain he was on, came to him and said surrender and showed him a of himself, arms out like Christ on the cross, and said, surrender. And Robert came out of his vision, and he had this moment of radical responsibility where he took responsibility for everything he had done that got him into prison, in prison, and rather than take a life again, he was going to surrender. So the inmate came, to his cell, or wherever it is that they go. I guess it wouldn't have been his cell when they were out on the yard. Came to him with all this violence, and Robert looked at him and surrendered, knowing that he was— that that would cost his life. He surrendered rather than take a life again. The inmate saw this, and, and it affected him, and they ended up working out their differences. No violence and grace, as if watching, entered in, and Robert was paroled. He was released. And I saw him 6 months later in the desert, completely alone, pitch black. And I said, what is it like to be out after 24 years? And Robert said something, Fleet, to me that I have never forgotten.

What?

He said, well, it's great, but really, what's the difference? It's all an inside job. And so to me, Robert fully took responsibility and he surrendered. Full agency and surrender.

That's a beautiful story. And there's so much within that. And I really deeply resonate with it. I think you may know about my background. I spent 14 years in a federal prison on drug charges. So I'm very familiar with the world of prison and what you were referencing there. And I can well imagine Robert, and I knew many men like Robert. And my philosophy of radical responsibility was actually born in my own prison experience that I saw the only way through and the only way out for me was to embrace that kind of radical ownership, radical responsibility. So I really resonate with that story. And interesting, my own spiritual path is very much about the integration of surrender and personal agency. So people often think of them as being oppositional or something, or at least confusing, right? But they're very much integrated. And so, you know, I haven't had any angelic visitations or visions that I'm aware of in my life. Given that I've survived 3 quarters of a century now, and given the nature of my life, I often feel like maybe I've got an angel or 2 riding on my shoulder, you know? Very, very possibly. I've survived a lot of near scrapes in life, and in you know in my own spiritual tradition Buddhism and I practiced deeply in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for over fifty years. Zen tends to be pretty austere, mostly about the practice and about insight. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition really includes the full breadth of the Buddhist tradition, including the Buddhist Vajrayana and Tantric. tradition. And from that view, kind of the way reality is conceived of or experienced is that there is the unmanifest realm, and then there's this realm that we live in. And in between the two, there's kind of a realm of form, has different names. What I'm referencing, if there are any Buddhists in the audience, would be the dharmakaya, the unmanifest, the unformed, the pure potentiality. Mm-hmm. And then this realm, the nirmanakaya, the realm of physical form, relative reality. And in between the two is something called the samogakaya, which is sometimes called the enjoyment body, literally. But the samogakaya realm is populated with all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and dakinis and dakas and a whole realm and pantheon of all kinds of beings who Would be considered enlightened to one degree or another. There's also the notion of, you know, within realms there can be dark energies and different kinds of things, although it's not kind of— doesn't get into quite the same way that's depicted in the Christian tradition. But there's very much, we're not alone in the world from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective, and a lot of Tibetan Buddhist practices involve offerings and, you know, connection with that and so forth. So, and at the same time though, very importantly in the Buddhist realm, because Buddhism is not a theistic tradition, it's a non-theistic tradition, which means it's kind of, it's not saying there is a God, it's not saying there isn't a God, it just doesn't use God language to describe reality, and also feels that ultimately reality is empty of anything that could define it, or, and certainly empty of anything like a self. And so it's ultimately a non-dual tradition. So even though we, in Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana practices, we work with this whole realm of having arising of deities, whether receiving blessings or oneself arising, there's all this whole realm of practices where you're working with that energy, but it all arises out of emptiness and dissolves back into emptiness. So the notion of emptiness or shunyata is very important in Buddhism, and it's a little different than your— more God-centered and theistic traditions, which don't point to that so often, except some of the mystics do. In the Christian tradition, certainly Saint John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and other mystics point to this realm that's kind of beyond the notion of God and me, or that kind of dualism, right?

Absolutely.

But anyway, just a background of that. So you often speak about communicating with angels.

Mm-hmm.

And so for someone who's both curious and skeptical about that, what does that exactly mean and what does that look like? Um, because, you know, I mean, for me in my practice, you know, sometimes I feel, uh, have a session where I'll feel particularly connected to that realm, right? It's not like I'm necessarily having a direct vision or hearing communications, but I'm able to tune my mind and emotionality. So I, I'm feeling more really connected and And you come out of it in the meditation and it's always profoundly enriched and so forth. So it has a profound impact. And others, in terms of receiving communications beyond our normal discursive thinking or beyond our normal interactions, a lot of people, you know, might categorize some things as kind of an intuitive feeling, some things as an idea that arose in their own mind with great clarity, almost like a vision. Or, um, and then of course you have the whole realm of psychopathology where people are hearing voices, right? But so when you talk about communication with angels, from the one you mentioned before, it sounds like this feels like a very real, uh, experience where you're literally communicating with another being. So I wonder if you could describe it and see, are there different forms of this or ways this shows up for you and for others and so forth? I'm trying to describe the spectrum of this kind of communication with a subtler realm, with the divine, you know, in broad terms to see how accessible we can make it and then talk about the particulars. I don't know if that makes sense, but—

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and as mentioned, my heritage is half Eastern and half Western. My practice is as well. I have been an ordained minister since very, very young. But equally committed, also very young, at 23, I moved into an ashram dedicated to Eastern practices. So, and I'm half Indian, half English. And so, for me, I absolutely concur with what you're saying. And I love the way you've described the Buddhist philosophy and practice, really much more than philosophy, but practice, reality. So, ultimately, the soul, we are souls, we have a spark of light that is eternal. But even ultimately, as we continue our practice, we give up even that, and we are in the selfless self. We are in the undifferentiated consciousness, what you're calling the void, the emptiness, no self. That is who we ultimately are. And that's a little bit of double talk, you know, but ultimately we are, we are not, you know.

Yeah.

We are and we are not. And we are this endless stream of— I call it love because that's how I relate to it. But it is well beyond religion, is well beyond identity. You know, it— and so where angels fit in that, they tangibilize that invisible realm. And I do suggest— I do believe that everyone has a guardian angel. They're with us before our first breath and will be with us after our last. So those are So the angelic realm predated the human realm by trillions of years. It's a very ancient realm parallel to ours, not higher or lower, but very ancient realm. So, but angels are essence. They are the space between our hands, do you know? So connecting with these angels are, are in a collective. They don't have individuation. When they evolve to an archangel, they have individual souls like we do. But then these great archangels, these monolithic, very, very, very highest angels, are really much more beingness than beings, more in that beautiful void, more in that selfless self, right? That overarching presence. And so I do recommend we work with those and connect with those. And what they do is they bring more present in a way we can perceive it. They're a living bridge to higher consciousness, to God, to the divine, to the void, whatever we want to call it, because they are essence and yet they have sentience. So they are, are a divinely ordained shortcut, a legal shortcut if you will, to higher consciousness because they help us experience the invisible and bring it very tangible.

Hmm. You know, interesting aside, I go to Auschwitz every year with the Zen Peacemakers. I've been going for almost 25 years now. I'm one of the leaders of a Bearing Witness retreat where we bring people from all over the world, many of whom have a family background and history with the Holocaust or with Auschwitz in particular, but also many people who don't, Germans and Poles, people from the Middle East. We've had Native Americans from the US with us, people of all come there and bear witness to the horror of what happened there, and people find it very transformative. Very difficult, but very transformative. And so, and we always have clergy with us and have some religious services in the camps, and we always have a rabbi with us. And we had a rabbi for a number of years, and when the retreat finishes on Friday night, there's a Shabbat service and then a meal and so forth. And so he, he also was a singer and played music and so forth. So there was a song he did that I always felt a strong connection to. Again, I haven't had any direct connection with angels or any angelic visions, but I grew up Roman Catholic. So it's, you know, that's there and it's not super emphasized, at least not the way I grew up. But it's there, right? There's, you know, depictions, iconography and so forth. But anyway, this one song, it was a calling in the archangels and it had to do with Gabriel and Michael and Gabriel and And what are the 4? Raphael, and I'm missing one.

Well, there's many, many more than 4.

There are many, but aren't there like 4 principal archangels?

Is this in Judaism or Christianity?

This was in Judaism, yeah.

In Judaism, it would be Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and probably Uriel. Uriel.

That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah, okay, so the 4. So anyway, it was a beautiful, beautiful, you know, he was kind of— it's a song of kind of calling their energies into the space. And I found it always stuck with me. I found— always found it very, very, very, very beautiful. So, um, um, and I, and I love what you said about, um, about balancing that East-West background you have of we are and we're— and, and we aren't, the two. The relative sense of self and then the selflessness of beyond. And I'm wondering how this— Getting more of a connection. Well, it sounds like that this connecting to those energies, if one actually begins to have some intuitive or visionary connection to these energies, That, that can also be reaffirming of one's own divine nature or sacred nature and innate goodness, which could then also, in terms of healing trauma and resilience, overcome a lot of the self-doubt, the self-hatred, the self-loathing, all the limiting core beliefs, all the internal poverty and negativity that most of us arrive in adulthood with as a result of conditioning in the human condition, right? So it sounds like there could be a lot of healing in that and developing more confidence in one's own innate goodness and divinity by connecting with this representational energy of the ultimate divine.

Oh, absolutely. And that's really how my book is different than most angel or any other angel book that I've seen is, yes, we want to connect to these beauties. I mean, for Robert, you know, he took radical responsibility, he surrendered, but it was a messenger. of grace that really directed him, you know. So he, he found his way through that. It was divine intervention. So the way that, that this book is different is really about connecting to our own angelic nature and all the things we associate with angels— divine remembrance, connection to, to God, grace, beauty. You know, when you say to somebody, you're an angel, you're compassionate, you're giving, you're service-oriented. So It's really to say we're not connecting to something outside of us. We're connecting to something that is built of the same source as us, which is light, which is love, which is divinity, which is ultimate goodness. To come back to— hearken back to your beautiful Buddhist tradition, we are ultimately good. Original innocence in Christianity. And so it's really connecting to our own, not only angelic but archangelic nature.

So there was a, um, in the years after I got out of prison, in the early, uh, 2000s, there was a training program I led for, um, quite a few years, uh, um, and we had a lot of things involved in it, but I had a primary, uh, co-teacher that we led a lot of the core trainings with, and it was, it was, uh, it was really a, a training in contemplative peacemaking. But it involved all kinds of inner work to do our own healing work. And, you know, but she was big into getting people in touch with their inner guidance and discernment. And we had a big conflict for a while around that and arguments around it because, you know, in my view, I felt like more often than not what she was getting people in touch with was their own egoic voice, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, until we do a lot of inner work, I mean, maybe people have spontaneous experiences where it's just absolutely clear one thing, but I think for a lot of us, until we do some inner work to really get clear that we do have all this conditioning and that we do have a fear and survival programming, and we actually do have something called the ego, which is— there's nothing wrong with that, but it tends to be fear and survival based and pretty self-centered until it's not, right?

Right.

So, um, until you know that almost your entire experience is being filtered through that, then, uh, and you're starting to get in touch with inner discernment, well, how do you know whether that's actually something inner and deeper or angelic or just deep versus, you know, just the latest survival strategy from your ego, right? So we had a lot of arguments about that. And, um, uh, and it's not that I doubt that there's such a thing as inner guidance. But, you know, I do think, uh, we need to be well aware that, um, you know, that until we don't, most of us are— the psychology we arrive in adulthood with, there's a lot of hope and fear involved in it, right?

Mm-hmm.

We're, we're very, we're very hopeful that we'll be loved, that we'll be wanted, that we'll belong, that we'll fit in, that we— nothing terrible will happen to us. We're very fearful that we'll be rejected, that we won't be loved, that terrible things will happen to us. And a lot of our personality, which began as soon as we had to start individuating around 6 months or so, is about, you know, I'll be whatever you want, just don't leave me, love me, don't leave me, or love me, don't hit me, right? So we develop our whole personality around, you know, trying to get the world to accept us and have us belong, right? So all that conditioning runs very, very deep, and our experience is continually getting filtered through that.

Mm-hmm.

So how does one discern one's maybe wishful thinking about divine guidance versus genuine divine guidance? And then how does one assume, even if one is kind of in some way or another getting in touch with something kind of an extraordinary intuitive perception or visionary perception, that one isn't further filtering it based on one's own kind of more egoic needs and desires? Versus really, you know, hearing the truth?

Yes, it's an excellent question, and it's an incredibly important question, and it's one I wish more spiritual seekers would ask more often of themselves. It's a question I ask of myself still after 37 years at this, most of my adult life, because we, you know, I'm going back to having a scientific background. We don't want to leave our mind at the door, but the challenge is our mind is a great servant, a terrible master. So we don't want to do— I, in my opinion, we don't want to do a spiritual bypass, which would— is what it would be if we go, oh yes, that was— God told me, you know, an angel told me. And it's like, well, that is through your perceptual filters. Now sometimes people are very clear, and of course that is my work of helping people to connect to that higher voice. But that's also why I started getting degrees in psychology and practice in psychology and life coaching certification so that I could address the whole being first. Because often— because if our windshield is very dirty, we're not going to be able to see down the road to drive, and we shouldn't be starting the car and going, yes, I'm enlightened now, you know. And meanwhile, we're driving off the road. So for me, I'm really passionate about let's address trauma, let's address emotionality, let's address— for in my parlance, you know, let's Clear past life, not to go back to them, but to clear what's incomplete so that we come present. Let's clear your auric field. Let's work with your psychology, your emotions, your repeating thoughts that you know sabotage you. Let's work with all that. But the thing is, is there's also something. So we want to work, address all that, right? But then people go, oh my God! I'm going to have to be doing that for twenty years before I can connect, and that. is not true either. It's a both-and. As you know, with Buddhism, you know, we don't want to do duality. It's, it's a both-and. So we address the psychology. And in the Hindu tradition, there's something called the Royal Road. And that means, like Einstein said, you don't address a problem at the level at which it was created. You get above it.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's where the spirituality comes in. And we, we work the psychology, we clear our, our mental fog, etc., and we continue to work with and to heal our trauma. And then we go, and I surrender, and I am open. And I don't— at some point we go, I don't need to keep fixing myself because God, Divine, Universal Life Force, whatever we want to call it, intuition, is not limited by my limitations, by my humanity. God, the Divine, the Universe is not limited by my humanity. So the Royal Road is where you go from the top down and you truly surrender. You choose— that's your agency— you choose to surrender your free will, which humans— somehow God, Spirit, the Creator had some pretty amazing faith in us humans to give us free will, to endow us with free will. Sometimes I'm like, what were you thinking? So, but don't we learn so much through our free will and through that challenge with how do I discern the highest voice amidst all the distractions of this level, against— amidst my ego, amidst all the illusion? And that's where we surrender and we take that divine pause and we allow something higher. We go, well, is it my higher self? Is it God? Is it an angel? Who cares? Is it positive? Is it loving? Is it wise? Is it beyond this? You know, is it beyond your mind and emotions? Is it that living stream? Then trust that and speak from that. And I— that's the thing where I've seen people who think they can't do it, and I just hold the vision and the container for them, and they will start speaking these messages that will heal a whole room.

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So I want to unpack this even a little further, and I want you to know that in doing so, I'm not wanting to challenge you at all. I just really want to unpack this to make it accessible to our audience on so many levels. And if there are any people in our audience who are just sort of angel devotees that feel I'm like being too challenging, I apologize for this. But, um, so, um, uh, I mentioned before my, my first and principal Buddhist teacher, my, uh, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher that I started studying with back in the early '70s. His name was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and widely regarded as one of the great masters of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition by his peers, by the other teachers of the 20th century, and a deeply spiritual human being and a very visionary human being, received whole bodies of teaching in a visionary way. Uh, which is part of that tradition. Not all Tibetan Buddhist teachers and masters receive teachings that way, but some do. They're called tertens, or treasure discoverers, and that's a whole other subject. But anyway, so he was a deeply spiritual visionary being, but at the same time, he— so he came here to the West in the '70s, and he saw what was going on in the 1970s and in the '80s, you know, which was quite a spiritual circus. You could call it a spiritual awakening in the U.S., but it was a bit of a spiritual circus as well. And he actually coined the term spiritual materialism.

Mm-hmm.

And that kind of goes along with what you could call physical materialism, psychological materialism, and spiritual materialism. And that view was the idea— the materialism part of it was the way in which our egoic self, that part driven by fear and hope and fear and, you know, wanting to survive, that survival psychology, Uh, co-opting things, right? So on a physical level, we could try to achieve physical perfection, and that then I'll be survived and I'll be loved, and right? So, or maybe I, you know, develop psychological perfection, become really brilliant psychologically and master that, because, you know, or spirituality. So there's a tendency, um, and it really isn't, uh, it isn't picking— there's certain bad people do it. It's just a natural human tendency when we have spiritual experiences. for the egoic part of our nature to go, oh, wow, I had that experience. Now I'm a spiritual being.

Enlightened.

Now I'm somebody. Now I'm this. And, you know, that can be completely unconscious, conscious, unconscious, by degree, varying degree. But he felt like he saw a lot of that in the culture.

Yeah.

In fact, his most— one of his most popular early books was called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. And it was all— and I used to tell— I've been teaching for almost 50 years. And I used to tell people, you know, who've read that book, you know, he wasn't talking about those other people. He wasn't talking about, you know, some charlatans out there, or, you know, or the worst example we can think of it. No, he was talking about all of us, because we're all doing that until we're not.

Absolutely.

And so I've often, um, encouraged people, rather than, you know, living with ritual, thinking, well, I hope I'm not involved in spiritual materialism, to rather consider Well, of course I am, on whatever degree. Let me look at that. And when I can recognize a layer of that, oh, I can peel back that layer. And there's one less layer and another layer and layer. So to have that, it's not quite an internal skepticism, but it's slight. It's not a negative view of oneself, but it's being savvy about the way our psychology works, right? And having a little bit of skepticism so that we can get— we can peel away those layers of the— self-delusion around it, and then get in touch with something more direct, something right. So, and, and I would say, you know, maybe this is just my bias, but the notion of angels and angelic communication is probably a pretty ripe fruit for the idea of spiritual materialism for people, the way they, you know, if I had an angel vision and, you know, now, you know, but anyway, so I'm just putting it out there. And so Again, I guess this comes back to the discernment of how people work with being savvy enough about their own psychology and being able to separate that and the way that might make use of spiritual experiences so they can really hone in on the truth of the spiritual experiences and their spiritual path and stay, you know, stay in that kind of self-honest relationship to their own spiritual path.

Absolutely. I actually— and I don't mind the challenge at all. I actually welcome it because I want to keep discerning and going, well, you know, we— I think we need to keep questioning and be open and curious and ever-growing. So I just think this is remarkable because literally I had a, a lunch with a, uh, a CEO of the Los Angeles Tribune, and he sent me this text yesterday, and that is Spiritual. That is, I'm not going to say this right. Shogun Trungpa.

Uh huh.

On spiritual materialism. Because we were talking about it. We were talking. Yeah, literally right here.

Little serendipity there.

Well, absolutely.

Or what Trungpa Rinpoche called he called it auspicious coincidence.

Exactly.

Things coming together that you can't quite explain, but there seems to be something auspicious about them coming together.

And see, we're all talking about the same thing, and it drives me nuts when people go, "Oh well, it's this or it's that." Like we're talking about. Whether we go— I would call it divine intervention. That's what I would call it. But it's absolutely, you know, auspicious coincidence. I, I was privileged to be able to, uh, spend some time with Andrew Young, who was on the balcony when MLK was shot. And he said to me— we had a beautiful conversation— and he said to me, coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.

Hmm.

You know, so I mean, I think it's wild that just yesterday he sends this to me. So I think it's— and the reason we were talking about it is because I was saying there is this— I wasn't calling it spiritual materialism because I didn't have that, I hadn't coined that term, but I would call it a spiritual bypass, you know, or where we go— or a spiritual ego where we go, oh, I'm special because angels talk to me, or I'm special because God told me. That drives me nuts when people do that. God told me, do you know? Especially if they— it doesn't drive me nuts if they're using it in a beautiful way, but if it's against someone else, that drives me Do you know? So see, the thing is, is my favorite saying from my teacher, who's long passed, but is, ordinariness is the prior condition to God.

Mm-hmm. Right?

'Cause we are— nobody is special if angels talk to them or Jesus talks to them or Buddha talks to them, 'cause we're all the same. The ego loves to be special. And the tricky thing about the ego is if it can't be the greatest of the great, then it's the lowest of the low. Well, I suck and I should eat worms and die. Still being special. So we want to watch for that form of the ego too. So I think spiritual materialism is definitely a thing, and it's something to watch out for, and it's something not to fear but to respect. Because we want to go, wait, am I, am I, am I making an excuse? Am I going, oh, I'm too spiritual to actually handle the world, you know, to deal with the world and checks and You know, and and radical responsibility, and you know somebody else should be doing these things. And and the thing is is the more grounded we are, you know for a tree to grow taller, it has to sink its roots deeper. So the more grounded and ordinary we are, I think the higher we can go in our awareness. And it's continual discernment and vigilance called like let me surrender, let me. Experience what I experience, and then to keep surrendering and keep checking it out. And when you come back from these beautiful enlightening experiences, it's as you very are very familiar with— chop wood and carry water.

Yeah. So, um, yeah, first, uh, first enlightenment, then the laundry. Exactly the way that's been said.

Exactly.

Um, yeah, and interesting, you know, uh, one of the descriptions of the way the nature of mind, or what one would experience with a full awakening, what you're actually experiencing, that level of reality, is sometimes called ordinary mind. And, uh, many spiritual teachers have unpacked the word extraordinary— that just means extraordinary, right? So that ordinariness, I think, is very powerful.

Yeah.

So, um, you've interviewed some, um, uh, really interesting figures, including, um, Uh, you mentioned Byron Katie, uh, Neale Donald Walsch, uh, Marianne Williamson. I've interviewed Marianne for one of our summits before. And, uh, and, uh, I think we mentioned one other person in your bio, Jack Canfield, who I also had the privilege of interviewing not long ago. And I imagine you've interviewed many others for your podcast. So is there one, um, um, one teacher, one conversation, one interaction that kind of stands out for you? In your history of, you know, having these conversations with spiritual teachers?

I'd have to pick a few, but the ones where they are speaking from spirit, from the universe, from wisdom, not about it, are the ones that strike me the most. The ones where you just are like, I'm in the presence of the Divine through this person, right? So it's the ones where they have presence more than the words. The one that strikes me the most at this moment is Ervin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, who brought quantum physics into the popular conversation, wrote something like 100 books, founded— he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Extraordinary man. I was so, so honored to be able to not only have him on my podcast, but then my way I met him was he had me on his. Uh, he wanted something of the angelic on his, and, and he liked that I, I had a scientific background because of course he's the consummate scientist. And oh my gosh, really, the— he— the— we were speaking about coherence, and you know, I like to, to, to speak about things of the intellect and, and brilliant concepts. And then I said, to me, the greatest coherence is And then the whole conversation just became about love, and he demonstrated loving moving through him. The coherent field of love was moving through him, and I cannot tell you a word he said. I can just tell you we were sitting in the presence of the Divine for the rest of that conversation. Who knows if we talked? I'm sure we did, but it was just that experience of someone who had done the work. And it was in the presence of it and speaking from the divine. Those are the conversations that affected me the most. There were there were others, and sadly Dr. Laszlo passed recently, and I was at his memorial, and it was just world leaders from all corners of the globe speaking that about him. Do you know that he yes he was by many considered the Einstein of our generation. But there was something deeper, and it was more towards the latter part of his life. Some said the last few years where it's just he was in this place of surrender.

Beautiful. Beautiful. And you brought up the idea of surrender quite a few times in our conversation. And this is all across spiritual traditions and historically and cross-culturally and across all traditions. At some point, or another, surrender plays a key role in being able to reconnect our individual spark with the greater field of consciousness, however one wants to think about that, with source and so forth. And in some ways, you know, I'm trying to remember who this teaching came from, but they were reminding us that, you know, those of us involved in spiritual work of one kind or other, whatever path we're on, to remember that, uh, who's doing that work? It's the ego that's on that path and doing that work, right? And so there is always the— there is the risk of spiritual bypassing or spiritual materialism or inflation of the ego through spiritual work and spiritual experiences or the accumulation of knowledge, what have you. But there's also the possibility of continually sort of refining, that our ego gets lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter. It's there, it's a structure, we all have one until we don't, and probably as long as we have a body, we have it in some form or another. It has a purpose, but so it's becoming lighter and lighter and lighter and more refined, but that at some point, the ultimate awakening across traditions has to do with, at some point, the ego becomes light enough that it can actually surrender to that connection with whatever it is— higher self, greater consciousness. Because until it gets light enough, you know, when you think about it, the— just the idea of surrender is good from the ego's viewpoint. It's going to create this real, whoa, you know, what does that mean? Annihilation? I don't— what does that mean, right? You know, so, but it finally gets light enough and refined enough through the work we do that it can naturally or spontaneously surrender into a greater field of consciousness. So I think that's really cross-traditions. You know, the world we're in today, we're speaking a lot about spiritual realities and possibilities and paths and divine guidance and so forth. We live in a world today where there's a lot of stress, a lot of distraction, a lot of, you know, in some ways, I don't really have a— I'm not one of these people that has a super negative view of not only humanity, I believe in basic goodness, but also of life. And in many ways, we're better off than we've ever been. People don't often see that because if you watch the news, you get a very skewed view of what's going on. Now, we are up against the challenges of climate change. There are some real limitations there because there are so many of us on the planet. And until we figure out how to shift what we're doing, which I'm optimistic that we'll figure that out, But still, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of causes for anxiety, uncertainty. The world is changing very quickly. AI is changing things in ways we don't even understand yet. And even the experts don't even know where we'll be in 3, 4, 5 years even. So, you know, a lot of people are feeling a lot of anxiety and a lot of people come through their childhoods with no small amount of trauma. And so, you know what I mean? In our Uh, audience, um, what, you know, we still hear, there's just a lot of, uh, anxiety and overwhelm and concern and, and, and, uh, so, and a lot still, a lot of strong need for healing work. So I wonder if we could circle back and, um, uh, talk about how the, the path of maybe awakening to one's own divinity, awaken to the divine, or connecting with this angelic energy, or presence, how that, uh, travels in parallel with or can be fully integrated into a path of healing, healing one's— whether they're childhood traumas or later adult traumas, uh, and, and being able to be in the world with a greater sense of, um, not hope in terms of hope and fear, but a more positive sense of where we are in the world as humanity, and, uh, and a little more confidence about that. and oneself and one's place in the world. And, you know, just have a better feeling about ourselves, about life, and so forth in the context of today's world.

Yes. And it's a beautiful question. And again, so important. I mean, I think a lot of us on spiritual paths sometimes can sort of disdain this level and go, you know, I want to be done with my physical lifetimes. I want to just, you know, focus on the higher realms. And yet, This this level is very consecrated. If there's a the purposefulness to it, so I think the healing goes hand in hand with our spiritual heritage, our spiritual connection. So I'll tell you a story about a client Grace, and Grace not her real name, but she's a real girl came to me. She had five suicide attempts. She was fifteen. darn near successful, the last one. And she was from a big showbiz family. They had taken her to all the biggest therapists and counselors, and nothing was working. She was just— life was untenable to her. And, you know, she's a beautiful girl and obviously well-resourced, etc., and just did not want to live. And I looked at her and I, you know, I can certainly do Gestalt therapy and different psychological, and I went, she's done this. this is not what she needs. And I looked in her eyes and I saw that she had a— she'd recently been from the angelic realm. So let me tell you what that means. So the— here's— we're gonna, we're gonna take a little leap into the esoteric. Can we go to that for a second?

Sure, go ahead.

Okay. Um, so the angelic, as mentioned, predates the human by many, many, many millennia. And but there's obviously crossover. People talk about guardian angels and archangels. I mean, it's a ubiquitous word in our culture and across many, many cultures, if not most. So the— in the angelic, angels don't have free will. They evolve to it when they are an archangel. And so in a wild act of faith, archangels started incarnating into the human realm to learn more about free will. So it's not so radical when you think about there's other realms of existence. There's realms of non-existence, though to me it's not really non-existence, it's just all existence. Right? So we— there's lots of cross-purposes and permeability between the realms. So I looked into— and that's part of what I mean by your angelic ancestry, you know, it's connected to your own archangelic heritage, to archangels, to divinity. Who cares if you call it angels or Buddha or Christ or nature?

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. So I looked in her eyes and I saw that she'd come recently from the angelic. Realm. And so she was so sensitive, and this world was really difficult for her because she had a rare open access to it. We were in this wondrous time where there is cause for a lot of optimism. Yeah, there's a lot of darkness on the planet, there's some crazy things going on, but there's also more light, I believe. We couldn't have this discussion as openly 20 years ago, right? You and I have been doing this for a long time, you longer than I, and I'm willing to bet there's conversations you're having now within the public that you couldn't have had 50 years ago or 40 years ago or even 10 years ago. There's more light, people are more open. And so I looked in her eyes and, you know, her dad and her mom were there, very, you know, Hollywood couple. And I'm like— and Archangel Michael started coming through me. An angel means messenger of God. And I'm like, great. I mean, a talk angel to Mr. Hollywood, Mr. Mogul in front. And I'm like, but you know, Fleet, if we don't listen to that higher guidance, those higher voices, they shut up. And, and I very much trust those voices at this point. It sounds like I'm hearing voices. It's really the voices we all hear. the higher voice, the voice of love, the voice that says, yeah, you could lay that person low. No, you know, the voice that says, I'm really afraid to go walk on stage and pretend I know anything, but I'm guided to, right? Those voices. And so I allowed this archangel to speak through me, but more to look through my eyes at her. And I share what I just shared with you, that I saw she had an angelic heritage etc., and, um, and that she was an archangel and she was comparing this level where there's time and space and bodies that age and die and money. None of that's in the angelic. That's why a lot of angels started incarnating here, because it's a beautiful realm. It's heaven, basically, but it takes a long time to grow precisely because it's not as challenging. So I said this to her, you know, after my momentary hesitation in front of Mr. Mogul. And she looked at me wide-eyed and I said, how's that sit with you? And she said— she started weeping and she said, well, it's way out there, but I feel hopeful for the first time in my life. So yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Started driving to me every week. She was always on time and she lives an hour away. And, um, we started working and it's 10 years later. She never hurt herself again. She had been cutting. She'd been, like I said, darn close to successful. Never cut again, never hurt herself again, certainly never had an attempt again. And, um, and she's thriving now. We did keep working on the psychology, but mostly focused on just reminding her of who she is so she could be true to that, so she could be true to that. So she's still a young, you know, she's in her mid-20s now. She meditated. She's a Buddhist, actually. How beautiful is that? She's a Buddhist. And so, but she needed that spiritual element. The psychological wasn't doing it for her. The trauma work wasn't doing it for her. We did all that because I'm a big believer in all that as well. But it was the spiritual that healed her.

Wow, that's a beautiful story. And it communicates so much. So we're near the end of our time here, Alicia. I've really enjoyed this. Maybe just one last question. You know, since a lot of your work does focus on angels and angelic presence communication, what's the biggest misconception you think people have about angels?

That if they're not seeing fat flying babies or hot men in dresses, they're not seeing angels. True story. They are formless. They are essence. They look like the space between my hands. So they'll come to us. in visions, they'll come to us with a form. But it's really— I'm going to go on a limb here, Fleet, like I haven't already, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think you probably have experienced angels. You weren't just calling it that. You know those moments where you go, I'm not alone?

Yeah.

You even talked about in Buddhism, we're not alone. There's other beings here, they're just not as visible. With us. So it's like I would say to people, you're probably already experiencing angels. One, you experience them with spiritual sensing, inner sensing, right? Not as clearly as you're looking at me and I'm looking at you, but with your inner sight, with your inner ears. And as you start to connect and trust that with angels, it's not a big leap to go, okay, I can experience all that is invisible.

Well, I'll consider that. Now, I feel very grateful. I've had countless experiences throughout my life of profound oneness and interconnectedness and peace and openness and all these kind of things from early in my life, then through some very dark years and through my practices. A lot of that, I'm very grateful for that and feel very, a lot of confidence in that. I don't generally articulate it as angelic presence, but I'm open to that. I'll keep it under consideration.

Okay.

And I won't necessarily be looking for, you know, some figure with wings necessarily.

No.

Well, this has been really a joy, Alicia. I've enjoyed connecting with you and really happy you could share your wisdom with our audience and really appreciate the work that you're doing.

Thank you. It's been, it's been such a joy to be with you, Fleet. And really, you are infinitely inspiring. And so thank you for the work that you're doing. Truly, and bringing it into our world at this time.

So where can people find out more about Alicia Das and your work and your books and so forth?

Oh, well, thank you for asking. So my book, Your Angelic Ancestry, just launched a few weeks ago. It's everywhere books are found. It's with Hay House, distributed by Penguin Random House. So it's everywhere. And then my website is aliciadas.com, my name, A-L-I-S-H-A-D-A-S. Lots of free resources there. And my podcast, which I want to have you on, is called Live Your Love. Live Your Love. And it's also where— anywhere podcasts are found.

Wonderful. Well, I'd be very happy to be a guest on your podcast anytime. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Absolutely a joy. Thank you.

Be well.

You too. Bye-bye.

Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Until next time, stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to yourself. Take care.