Physical and Spiritual Healing with Tanja Subotic

It's a journey that you have to desire to take. The second you desire, that will within you will turn on, and then naturally, synchronistically, all these questions that you have, that you're doubting, that you're, you're not really attuned with or questioning, they'll start to come forward and be answered through experiences. But it's that will that will take you on the journey of experiencing the truth.

Tanya, welcome to The Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. We're excited to get to know about you and your book, The Golden Virtue Unveiled. I'd love to go back to a time before you were 30, before you found yourself taking 40 to 60 pills a day and having 3 to 5 injections daily and suffering from Lyme disease. I would love to know what led you to that moment and hitting what you considered to be rock bottom.

What was the turning point for you? Ah, interesting question. Um, well, I think, uh, definitely, um, being diagnosed with Lyme disease led me to that rock bottom moment. But, um, beyond that initial diagnosis, um, it was kind of a cliché. I hit 30 and I was like, wow, 30s suck. It was like, wow, I'm really going downhill from now. But I hadn't known that I was really sick with something because, um, Lyme disease is kind of this invisible, unknown disease, especially back then quite a while ago when I had it, and it was very often misdiagnosed because it was underrepresented and underknown. So I had kind of gone into a 4-year spiral in the very beginning of cycling downward into that rock bottom zone because of the lack of knowledge and information, potentially the lack of consciousness I had at that point. to understand that the disease was a mask for something great, you know, further than, you know, what was representing itself at surface level already in symptomatic expression. So it— as I sought to seek treatment for all the disease and ailment that I was going through, no matter what I did, I kept hitting this wall. Mm-hmm. And it was this invisible wall that was just so strong, and I would rebound back, and it required me to turn on the consciousness, turn on my awareness, to seek inward, because all the exterior means that I was searching to find resolution had not gotten me anywhere other than a momentary band-aid, if you want to call it. So that downward spiral was that rock-bottom point where I began to search inward to my own inner voice, because all the outside voices were great to some extent. But I had one woman in, in my treatment journey who was a very Indigenous woman, very beautiful, spiritual, very unusual woman. And she took me by my hand and she was treating me and she said, I don't even want to treat you. You have given all your power away. which means you are giving your life force energy away. And because of this, you're not healing. And she said that to me, and I literally collapsed to my knees and I cried like a baby because I had realized it wasn't just in that moment. My entire life, I had been giving myself away to the mercy of everyone and anybody but myself in every category of my life, seeking for answers, for direction, for identity, for approval. And for worth. So in that very moment, like the vortex of my life completely pivoted. And then I went back home and then my son at the time, who was probably, I don't know, 7 years old, confirmed that days later, not knowing, just innocently. It's kind of how the synchronicities of the universe work, right? When you tap in, you lift the veil to one of the layers. All of a sudden, this, you start to magnetize like-minded energy. And my son had said to me, Mommy, because my son had come with me everywhere across these journeys, and he said, I think that you need to start— stop healing and start living and start doing things that you love. So instead of going to a doctor to get another injection, why don't you have a massage? Instead of looking on the internet for another cure for your endless list of symptoms, you know, in his own wording, why don't you paint or draw, 'cause you're an artist and you used to love doing that. Return to nature, all these things. So it took me a lot of external searching and a lot of pain and a lot of suffering to come back home to my center, to my center point. And when I opened that door to my inner kingdom, everything began to change, because that temple within us is the sacred reservoir, that divine sacred doctrine that we all have encoded into our, you know, our seed of life. All birthed with it. There's a highly intuitive and intelligence within all of us. And I had not known that because we're not brought up knowing this or taught this, for the most part, unless we have extraordinary conscious parents or schooling, which for the most part in that time and in our younger days, I don't see that being so prevalent. So it was turning on that light bulb within and allowing my innate intelligence to be my governing voice. And everything changed from that point.

There's a quote that I'd like to highlight from the beginning of the book that I think sums this up very well. You said, quote, somewhere along the blurred lines, illness has become who I am, an identity that has become home. I am sick. And so my question for you is, why do you think that is the prevailing narrative for so many people today? Why do you think so many people identify as sick? As another one of our podcast guests, Jim Kwik, would say, I am are the 2 most powerful words in the English language. So when you say I am sick, I mean, so many people say that. And then like you're talking about with your son, sort of identifying that you're reinforcing that behavior. Why is that the path that we think we're going to solve this problem with?

I think as you know, we became a very progressive and modern civilization. And we've kind of severed our cord to the nature in which surrounds us as we've built and industrialized our lives, we have literally severed the cord from the innate truth of nature. And when we look at nature, that's why when we return to nature, whether we're watching a sunset by the ocean or in forest, almost all of us will immediately decompress. And it's like that sigh, that initial sigh of like, ah. And that sense of home and belonging comes forward because the nature you're looking at is the nature in you. And when we tap into that and we reconnect with the nature within ourself, then we're not latching on and seeking outside identity. We're always seeking some sort of identity to the level of consciousness that we're resonating in. And because we're not taught who we truly are innately, internally, that we are a spirit housed within this vessel called a body. We are a conduit of universal intelligence where we latch on from that yearning, from that place of disconnect, from that place of pain, um, to return home. And we latch on to everything else that will soothe that momentarily, and we identify with that for as long as that identity will carry us. And as long as that identity serves us, we will hold on to it until it's something else, until we kind of become aware or even disconnect more, which, you know, this is where addictions and all of this come in, which will bring our resonation, our energetic fields, our auras down, and that will allow a lot more penetration of, you know, the disconnect to continue to happen. So initially, when I went on this journey and I realized the truth of who we are as a human species, as one universal omnipresent intelligence channeled through individual unique animated expressions of energy that we all are, my entire perspective changed in life and so did my power in my life and so did my manifestation process of life. I know we like to use the word manifestation a lot right now in modern spirituality. But manifestation is, generally speaking, the magnetization of the resonance in which you reside in. And when you are attuned to your divinity, when you're attuned to your spirit, you automatically are resonating on this, this macro universal consciousness. And manifestation is no longer a process, it just is. You, you just are. You're just channeling what already is and always has been. You're just aligned now to that channel to do, to do that. And the biggest reason why we identify all the time with being ill, with being poor, with being depressed is because we don't know who we are. And because we don't know who we are and the power of the intelligence within us, we don't know how to navigate, we don't know how to utilize this energy, we're not masters of ourselves. So we let other people master our domains.

For people listening, for myself, for people that might think, oh, that all sounds well and good, divinity and tapping into your true self, that might think this sounds a little bit woo-woo, like, How can you get people over that hump with this language? What is something that you would tell somebody that writes you off and says, it doesn't work for me? What would you tell someone?

I have a lot of people around me that question in these categories. And I think the biggest thing is to understand that you have a mind of your own. And if you can disconnect from the noise and, and, um, I guess the, the teachings or the narratives that are constantly around us and just kind of quiet yourself for a minute and tune into your breath. The breath alone, if you can actually just tune into your breath and to understand what the breath is, that is the governing force, the life force energy, your prana, it is your essence in your life in general. Without it, nothing exists. If you can understand Mentally, the capacity of that divinity right there and then, it's like the beginning— it's the beginning entry point to understanding that that is within you is spirit. Where is this animated life force energy coming from? You have to be able to want to discern. You have to be able to qualify the aspects of being human by understanding it through an inward journey. And that involves you going inward. It involves you to start to discern. And inquire about, you know, the governance. Other things that you could look at are, you know, it's not even— I don't want to say religious, but, you know, the sacred doctrines that govern all of the religions in the world, they're all allegory. And if you tune in, this is how I started. I started to read a little bit to understand, really understand the understanding of being human and the concept of what what that means. And I started to look at some of the stories that govern these aspects. And there's written documents since the beginning of time on some of these truths. But it's a journey that you have to desire to take. The second you desire, that will within you will turn on. And then naturally, synchronistically, all these questions that you have, that you're doubting, that you're not really attuned with or questioning, they'll start to come forward and be answered Through experiences, but it's that will that will take you on the journey of experiencing the truth. I could sit here and talk all day long, so could Buddha, so could everybody, but it's the experience of one's will and desire to tune into the essence of understanding the nature of thyself that will begin that development to unfold, because it is a journey of every self to unfold in that, in that essence.

I just— this question, I feel called to ask it. It's a total left turn here, but I was listening to a conversation recently between 2 people, and they were talking about the universal oneness, the omnipresence, the feeling of being connected to everybody else around you. And they were talking about this within the context of psychedelics. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on psychedelics.

Yeah.

Are they— we could talk about maybe some like ritualistic psychedelics, ayahuasca, or maybe some psilocybin or something like that. Is this something that you've thought about? Have you participated in anything related to psychedelics? Do you think it's a shortcut to accessing some of what you're talking about for the average person? Because they'll go from traditional Western thinking to like fully in that present omnipresence type of thinking. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

So this is a very controversial topic, but I will give my personal opinion. So I have, I have done a lot of work in every single medium and modality in terms of attainment and conscious development at a very high level. My personal experience with psych— with any modality, really, all we're doing in these aspects of entrainment, if you want to call it, and experiential, um, you know, techniques to get us back into our psyche is, is really they're all mediums that can carry us inward, that can kind of shut out the world around us and what we're associating with in an egoic level and what we're identifying to on the ego side to kind of bring us back inside. Now the thing is, is I It is a helpful tool if you're really, really struggling. I also believe that there's, in my personal opinion again, there's also a little bit of a laziness to do the self-work. So, you know, we do these shortcuts that will bring us to a moment, but, you know, it's a very sacred, sacred journey, and it's not held as sacred anymore. And you know, we're— the psychedelic community is— I mean, it's like taking psychedelics like you're going for a drink on a Friday night now, and it's become very, um, you know, loose. And it's unfortunate because in— within that sacred realm, there's a responsibility that comes with taking this medicine. There's the afterwork that comes in, the integration. And when you're not psychologically mature enough to embody this work, it can spiral you out of control in a different way. And a lot of the time, I see a lot of ego identification on the different aspects. So you're going from one spectrum to the other. So on the ego side, you know, you're powerful, you're this, you're that. And then on the other side, we have the god syndrome happening, or, you know, the character role changes into all of a sudden, you know, people are identifying to being shamans or whatever it is. So again, it comes down to being a mature individual to be able to embody the work that comes with it. It can open a door that's been shut for a very long time. But again, if you put the work in and you utilize the given gifts within the temple itself, there is nothing that you cannot obtain with practicing with the modalities of just your breath or just, you know, the meditation aspect. Meditation in itself Is a communion with your higher self. It's just we're not, we're not taught these things of how to commune with our higher self. In my personal experience, the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had in terms of universal wisdom, truth, and anchoring this into my body has never been close with, touched with any modality other than myself. I've had the most extreme experiences, um, and, uh, I guess the floodgates open with the wisdom in, in just utilizing myself and the universal intelligence within. So psychedelics, yes, they're great if you're really struggling, but you have to be able to be very mature and integrate this because it's very sacred and it can be very dangerous as well if you're not.

I love that answer. Um, I've done a little bit of— I've dabbled in some psychedelics, uh, in my life, and I think they've, they've really helped me elevate myself, someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety and those sorts of things. So I'm a pretty big advocate for it. But I agree with you that that integration point is so, so important, because I've seen a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll go and have this experience and then come back and nothing changes.

Exactly.

Yeah, so that's so amazing. I'm curious, taking like just a few steps back, This spiritual stuff, did you— before you hit that low point in your life, was it something that you were talking about? Was it something that you were involved in at all? Or is it like all of a sudden you hit 30, hit that rock bottom, and then just complete change?

Yeah, um, since I was young, I can honestly say I've always had, um, a very imaginative mind, and I used to kind of tap out into that imaginational realm often. Um, so that's another gateway to higher states of consciousness for me. It's the absolute gateway for higher states of consciousness, and I do that as an artist. I was an artist my whole life. I stepped out of it for a moment when I hit some more of my shadow moments in my late teenagehood, but that that was always very much in my world. Same with the the imagination that comes with storytelling. I've always been. Enamored by fairy tales and by our myths because I used to always think, how did this— the story, how was it created? What was that creator thinking? How did he access that imagination to do that? How did these artists access imaginations to paint, to sculpt, to all of these things? So I was always very keen on it. I was always enamored by this world of genius, if you want to call it. And it was something that had percolated in my mind since I was super, super young, very, very young. And I guess it's been a long journey for me to untap my own creative forces again, because it was shut down for a while. And that was part of the inquiry that allowed my consciousness to open up. And sometimes it's not always the way that we ask to get to a certain point that these experiences will present itself. But, you know, you ask and you will receive. It's just the journey will take you on the way, on the course in which you have to develop a maturity to be able to withhold, you know, some of these practices to create and to write and to, you know, whatever it is that we're doing in our life. Again, it's a maturity thing. It's— I always call it like an initiation. Every stage in life is an initiation to be— to be welcomed into the doors, into the gate, in the kingdom of the next journey.

So in your acknowledgments, you acknowledge your husband David, and I'm curious as to his role in your life at this point, if he was like super supportive, if he was like, honey, you're going off the deep end a little bit. Like, what was his thoughts around that?

So, so this has been a very great question. I've never been asked this. Very interesting journey with my husband. We have had a very enriched journey in life together on all spectrums, not so good to good. When I went on this spiritual journey, it was the fork in the road, whether you're coming with me or we're not in this anymore, because it's very difficult to be in a partnership where you're, you know, accelerating on a certain level and the consciousness next to you is not serving you anymore. And I don't see this as right or wrong. It's just a different We're in a different state of our consciousness, and you know what served in a moment may not serve now. And it's not wrong or right, but it's just this is where I'm going. And if this doesn't serve you, then there why are we together? It's not even just about what served me; it's maybe I'm not serving him. Maybe he needs to be in this reservoir for a bit longer before he if he ever chooses to come along or not. So eventually we had that. Work in the road. And it was a very intense moment, especially when I got very sick, because I turned on that, that journey at the highest level. And I'm known to be quite an extremist with things that I tap into. And now I've mellowed out, I've harmonized that a bit. But he came, he came full force. And he had to do things that he was just like, what am I doing in my life? Oh my God, this is insanity. But he has really accelerated himself. We're very different on a conscious level. We're very different characters. We're oil and vinegar, black and white, but we complement each other in terms of what we do in this world right now. And he's very structural, third-dimensional, kind of, you know, building systems and everything, and I'm not. I'm more aloof. I'm more etherical. I'm more celestial. But my work can't necessarily come out without that structure part, right? Because I'm very hypersensitive to energies. I'm hypersensitive to even being out, uh, in public a lot, um, you know. So, and he's not. He's like, he calls himself King Kong. He can go through everything and he's fine. And I would end up in a hospital with what he can do. So, you know, it's all good. But yeah, it was very funny because so many times, and people that know him, they're like, oh my God, what are you doing, David? But it worked. And he's very grateful for it because he's come a long way. But I'm not someone to push anything on anyone. All you do, all I do in life is offer seeds. And if the seeds are planted and nourished and, you know, and the light has been, you know, shined upon them, then great, we'll go along together. And if not, it's okay. The seeds are there. And when you choose to nourish them, they're there to nourish. And that's that.

That's a wonderful answer. And I was going to ask about this as well, but maybe from a different perspective, because you do, follow a number of traditional business-style authors, people like Russell Brunson. Again, some people that we've had the chance to interview that don't talk about the universal oneness or love or subjects like this. They talk about business. And so, your husband sounds like somebody who's tapped into that world a lot. How do you think about the need to earn money, build a business? Uh, and balance that with staying tapped into what you've discovered in this sort of spiritual adventure?

Excellent, excellent question. So this has been my personal, um, journey, a little bit tormenting if you want to call it, because I am not good with money. I actually don't value money in, um, the sense of desire the way that a lot of people do. Um, I could live very simply and hermetic if I wanted to. Um, But, you know, especially coming out with this book, you know, I live in the middle of a forest most of the time, and I'm very quiet. And now all of a sudden I have to come into the world and show my face and talk and all of these very, very uncomfortable things for me. Long ago are the days where an author would write a book and just put it out and, you know, it's out and you don't have to show yourself. I really wish I was alive in that time. But anyways, You know, I, it, I don't reject it. I actually, I actually kind of surrender to the process because it's a part of me that I've pushed away for so long, finding my voice. And finding the voice is the aspect of having business. You have to, if you want to have business, you have to be present in the world of business. Now, I am not desire-driven to make money. My husband is. So he is that balancing act for me to kind of soften that harsh edge of coming into the world of business. My motivation will never be money. If it serves and if it is, you know, an extension of the work I do, then great. And it'll be used again to keep creating and developing, you know, some of my bigger projects that I'm working on right now. I have a desire to reach the world and to, ignite some sort of magic and beauty and love again that I do that requires money, that requires the business push behind it. So I kind of always do prayer around and meditation around the aspect of money. And I don't call in money. What I require is the support to carry my work into the world, whatever that might look like. It could— I don't really mind which way it comes in. It could be charitable. It could be any type of way. But anyone who knows me right now, especially as I'm coming online, my main goal is not money, but the support to carry my work out is there. So David has been wonderful for that. I also have a beautiful mentor who is, you know, one of the pioneers in psychic and spiritual work, and she is very well known and has also guided me because I went to her for this reason. You know, sometimes in life you have to understand your weaknesses or where that shadow is still kind of lurking. And we face that and we bring that into resurrection. And it's amazing, you know, the greatest transformation or alchemical processes, the alchemization happens when we bring that shadow up and kind of go into it because there's often a treasure waiting, you know, that was buried for a long time. So that's kind of happening right now. So now that I'm embracing this, this not so comfortable side of what I do, there's a lot of beautiful treasures kind of percolating and it makes the whole journey a lot softer and nicer. and more enamorable, um, and purposeful.

I love that. And I think it's so important to understand your weaknesses. And I think that though so many people get in their own way or they let the world get in their own way. So what are, what are some tips that you may have to like, I don't know, get out of your own way so you can almost tap into this, this, this spiritual self?

Um, in my personal experience, almost everybody I've ever worked with, or people that have come to ask how to do that, and including myself, I could right off the bat say, what are your eating habits? What toxicity are you putting into your body? We have to understand that we're energetic beings, and our energetic system is the central nervous system, and the central nervous system is essentially our spine. I like to see the central nervous system as a conductor, an energetic force. And as you know, there's the Kundalini rising, let's say the chakras, that's a whole different conversation. But if we are constantly in, in it, like inundating ourselves with toxicity and toxic thoughts, our body is keeping us so much in our body working that out, trying to survive the toxicity, because what we have done is taken away from our innate function, our innate nature, by filling something, you know, filling our bodies with something that's not natural to it. So our body is so heavily working through that that it can't be in its natural high state of consciousness. We are meant to be naturally highly conscious, highly, highly developed in our faculties. But from a young age, we start bombarding our systems with toxicity, toxic thoughts, and we It becomes programmed, it becomes embodied into us, and it becomes our identity again. And, you know, feeling good, feeling, not feeling good, or having the headache, or having certain ailments, or having the stiffness, oh, this is not, this is considered normal. No, none of this is supposed to be normal. None of it is supposed to be normal. And we are conditioned to believe that these are just parts of growing up, growing pains and all of these things, and this is not the case at all. So first, I always ask, what are your eating habits and what are your mental habits? And entrain that. Start to love your vessel. Your vessel is a gift. It is an— it is the most incredible gift for you to be here on this earth, enriched with the life force energy emanating and illuminated in your divine purpose, in your gift. We all have a special gift within us. We can't get to that gift, which we all call purpose. The purpose in life is to be in our full nature and essence, to then illuminate that special gift within us. But you can't tap into that if your body is so busy working, trying to survive what you're doing to it every single day. You are— we are our own worst enemies to this divine expression. So I would say that. And number 2 is return to nature as much as possible. Again, if this is very deep and it can go on forever, but if we can understand that we're energetic beings, Mm-hmm. And we're living in cubicles. Literally, our houses are cubicles, very untouched with natural forces of energy. Then we go into our offices that have that same type of dynamics. And then we're in cities that are blocks of cement. We're not surrounded by any of our natural energy sources. So if we tune into nature, plug back into Earth, put your feet into Earth, sit next to a tree, breathe in the fresh air. Sit in sunlight, drink, you know, natural waters that are from ravines or from the mountains, you're already— that life electric force energy in nature is triggering the, the coherency of the electric life force energy within you. So you're right away just tuning into your nature again. But we sever that cord when we're in our cemented lives, and this is the challenge, and this is why we can't hear ourselves, because our vibrations and our energy is so low. And, um, and we're not— we've lost our electricity. Electricity is the light which enables our life force, prana energy.

I was going to ask about some actionable things that we can all do, uh, to take a step in the right direction, but you did just cover, uh, some great recommendations. Uh, and I love how you said— and I'll try to summarize this quickly— I love how you said that we are our own worst enemies. Our bodies are trying to survive what we're in doing to them every single day. Um, so I, I suppose here's my last question, and then we'll kick it back to Luke for his famous last question. Uh, and I'll, I'll give a little bit of context here. About 3 or 4 years ago, I started to read about fasting.

Mm-hmm.

So speaking specifically about our bodies and about how most of us, if we follow the, the traditional Western diet, we live in a constant state of inflammation, essentially for our entire lives. And so I've started fasting. I practice intermittent fasting on a daily basis, uh, but I also do longer fasts. Luke and I both did a 72-hour fast where we only had water recently. And, and so I'm curious, is fasting part of your, your world today? Do you think about fasting? If you do, how do you practice fasting?

Yes, I've been fasting for a decade. Over a decade now, fasting is very important to me. But again, there are you know there's some preliminary cautions around fasting. You know all these natural indigenous experiences such as fasting and regimes; they've gotten very commercial, and we're selling them online like it's you know you're buying a pair of shoes. And fasting again is a very interconnected. Journey. And before we actually fast, so we're not going into this dire kill-off stage of— we're really infested with a lot of toxicity, chemicals, and even parasites. So often a lot of people will have these fasting experiences, and some of them will come out with not really any results, and some of them will come out even sicker. And it's because we haven't extracted these chemicals and toxins and parasites out of us first. And I was Victim to that for a long time. I would go on these rigorous fasts, a week or more, just water, and or sometimes a certain you know mono fruit. I'd go on mono fruit diets. I've done every type of fasting as well, and I would feel way worse and with very limited results, and I couldn't understand. And in the process, my mind was not okay because I was getting exasperated. With all the chemicals and toxins in my body, they were just purging out of everywhere, and it was exasperated. So I I backtracked, and I used the you know this beautiful I guess nature's pharmacy, and I started using herbs to extract all of the chemicals out first, all of the parasites. Then my cleanses started to become very beautiful. The fasting became very beautiful, and in my fasting experiences, I would have heightened experiences. Of course, spiritually, consciously. because my brain was clear enough to kind of rise into that or expand into that consciousness without the burdens of toxicity being reabsorbed in these fasts. So fasting is definitely a gorgeous way to tune into yourself and to allow the body and the central nervous system just to calm down from the, you know, constant input, input. We're always inputting, inputting, inputting, and we expect such a glorious output, but we're inputting so much that we're clogging our— we're clogging every system, our mental system, our physical system, our spiritual consciousness system. But we expect so much out of ourself on the output side, and it's hardly fair. And in that process of that lack of return, this is where we start, you know, the unkind relationship with self. Oh, you're never gonna be this, or you're never gonna be conscious enough, you're never gonna be that, you're never gonna be beautiful enough, or you're never gonna be lean enough. So when we're constantly requesting so much on the output side, we have to ask ourselves, like, what are we doing on the input? How fair and how kind are we to ourselves and our body? And this is where I personally began a relationship with my own body and my own thoughts and my own organs, speaking to my organs all the time, my body, and loving my body and the vessel for allowing, you know, this life force to work through. Fasting is a great way to do it, but again, it has to be done with an awareness.

Well, Tanya, you have given some amazing answers, and this has been such a fun conversation. I always end the podcast with this last question, and that is this: if everything that you put out, all the information, the books, courses, whatever information that you have that you've put out there disappears, but you can leave the world with one single piece of advice, what would it be?

One piece of advice, to awaken to your truth, to discern who you are, to not, to not give yourself away to every other mean and mechanism that will— that you think will define your identity. Define your identity for yourself by discerning yourself.

That's beautiful. I love that answer. All right, so the last, last question. Where can people go if they want to learn a little bit more about you and what you do?

Um, right now I'm just living on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and my website, uh, which will be changed and kind of revived a little bit. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, tanya.msebotik.com is my website, and then tanya.msebotik is my Instagram.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so, so much for coming on our show and sharing your wisdom with us. We had a, had a great time learning from you.

Thank you so much. Nice to meet you, Luke.