176: Intuitive Gifts + The Loneliness Epidemic with Teal Swan

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self Podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest development. I am super excited to have on this episode a woman that has personally inspired me for many years, Teal Swan. So I came across Teal Swan when I was in college, and I would, you know, look up online. What is spirituality? What are spirit guides? What is ascension? What is 5D? What does 2012 mean? I mean, I had all of these spiritual questions that I didn't have any friends, any community, anyone to talk about it with. And there weren't really books that really made it modern that I was really resonating with at the time. And, you know, around 2011, that time period, so I came across her YouTube channel, and I loved it because she would just talk about anything. Like, any subject you had, she would talk about. And she was always in front of these, like, green screens, and she just had this, like, strong energy to her. And when I got the opportunity to interview her, she came over to my house, and she's so kind, so sweet. You know, she's not like those scary spiritual teachers that you're afraid of. She's honestly such an authentic, kind, and loving person. So in this episode, we talk all about spirit, really. It's a deeply spiritual episode, but we talk about what she believes is at the root of all issues that we are facing, from fear to depression to anxiety, and her belief that it's all caused from loneliness. So she came across this from really being in the jungle in Ceremony for many, many months. And she found that loneliness, this isolation that we experience, the feeling that we're not part of a community, is what leads to everything else. So we talk about that in this episode. We talk about conscious parenting. She is a mother, and how. How to raise your kids to make their own decisions and harness their own intuitive capabilities and so much more. So Teal is. Is on YouTube. She has a book called the Anatomy of Loneliness, which I highly recommend. And she's definitely someone who's been paving the path to bringing spirituality and. And also the controversy around her, too, and really being. Being fearless of sharing what happened to her, the trauma that she suffered growing up, and turning it to light. So without further ado, let's welcome Teal Swan to the Highest Self Podcast. And before we get started, check out these brands that make Highest Self podcast possible. This episode is brought to you by. Uva Uvda is a moder Ayurvedic supplement company that takes certain issues that we have such as mood, joints, immunity, digestion and creates these custom little packets exactly for us. Infusing ancient ayurvedic herbs with modern vitamins and minerals. I take the mood formula daily. It is great if you work a stressful job, had adrenal fatigue, ever suffer from anxiety or even depression. And it really heals you from a fundamental and holistic level. So if you want to try it out, head over to Uveda. Y-O u v d a.com use the code Sahara and you'll receive 35% off your first order. And they now ship to almost every country globally. So check it out. If you live internationally, they may be shipping to your country too. And they just added India. Guys. This episode is also brought to you by four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is an incredible mushroom elixir company. I proudly drink their elixirs every single day. My favorite is their chai mix. It is insanely delicious. I quit chocolate cold turkey and what helped me was drinking this chai mix every day. And best of all, they use stevia to sweeten it and there's no sugars like the chai lattes you'll find at Starbucks or wherever else. And the mushrooms are really good for balancing your hormones, helping heal adrenal fatigue, healing your body on an adaptogenic level. So adaptogens really kind of relate to what your body needs. So if you are high, stress will bring you down. If you need more energy, it will bring you up. And that's what so amazing about adaptogen is they adapt to your body. And mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms have a lot of adaptogenic properties. So you can head over to their website 4sigmatic.com F O-U-R S I G M A T-I C.com Sahara I have a little shop up there with my favorite four Sigmatic products so you can try it out. And you can also get 15% off any four sigmatic product using the code SAHARA. What's your DOSHA? Well, if you want to find out, I invite you to take my quick little quiz over on iamsaharose.com and in a couple questions I will let you know the exact percentages of the doshas in your mind and in your body and email you a free three day mini course on how to include Ayurveda into your modern lifestyle. So head over to my website iamsaharose.com to discover your dosha today.

Foreign.

Welcome Teal to the Highest self podcast. It's so good to have you here.

It's good to be here.

So the first question that I would love to ask you is, what makes you your highest self?

What makes me my highest self is integration. It's the commitment to. If I take a step or I do an action or I say something, I want to make sure first that all different aspects of me are in alignment with that. So my commitment is to there being no tug of war. All of us know what that feels like. We say, yes, I'll do that. But there's part of us that really doesn't want to do that. So it's almost like most of us are walking through life playing a zero sum game. Obviously, it's really hard to be the manifestation of your highest self if you've got parts that are at war internally. So my commitment was to end that war. It's a lot easier said than done sometimes, but I think that's what my answer would be.

Mm, I love that. I know fragmentation is a big thing that you talk about, which we'll dive into. So the first question that came up for me that I think a lot of listeners don't know about is your journey. One, your spiritual journey, but how you took it to YouTube and I was just telling you how. You were literally my spiritual encyclopedia, like, throughout college, when I would be like, what's a spirit guide? Like, what are past lives? I would put it online, and your YouTube videos would show up, and I would watch, and I was like, all of these questions that I just had in my mind you had thought of and created your videos about. So I'd love to know about how you just kind of came up with that and also your background for people who aren't familiar with you yet.

Which place should we start first?

Yeah. So what time were you born?

I was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I was born to a family that was not into spirituality in any way, but I was born extrasensory, so nobody knew what to do with me. It's the long story when kids are too open, meaning they're not just interacting with your third dimensional reality, they're interacting with all these different dimensional realities. Life is hell, to put it mildly. So my parents got real concerned with what exactly to do with me because they didn't understand what was going on when I was having meltdowns because of being able to hear other people's thoughts and talking about people in terms of colors. My mom has this real vivid memory where she was nursing me, and out of nowhere, this glass in the corner of the room just shattered. So she started getting real creeped out, not really understanding what that was, she tried to get help for me. And long story short, my family moved out of New Mexico and moved to Utah around a very, very religious community of Mormons. And that was a big mistake because the Mormon culture actually believes in these types of abilities, but they believe that it's a gift for only men because it's passed through power of priesthood, and priesthood can only belong to men. So if it's something that a female is exhibiting, it's a gift of the devil. So I was treated real bad in my childhood. Bad is an understatement, actually. I was not allowed to be around other children up into my high school years. It got bad enough that people would key my car, just bad, bad because they believed that I was a sign of the second coming of Christ. Kind of like the devil takes a last stand and says, I'm going to get as many souls as I can. And so my mom was trying to find people who could educate me in terms of how to deal with all of the input that was so obviously coming into my system. She couldn't ignore it. I was doing a lot of medical intuitive work at that age. Even at age 8, I would, like, point at somebody and say that I could see what problem they had and then they'd go get it diagnosed by a doctor. So everyone was getting creeped out, the original medical medium? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I had no word for it. They had no words for it. It was just, what is going on with this kid? So there was a man who stepped forward and said, I know what's going on with this kid and I can help her. And so he stepped in as a kind of a mentor. And my parents trusted me with this man. But unbeknownst to them, it wasn't just mentoring that he was doing. He was part of two very extreme cults in the area. And I was basically being exploited by him to access anything in this universe he wanted to access. And there was sexual slavery going on with him and just, I mean, all kinds of really heinous stuff. So I was ritualistically tortured for the period of 13 years. And I got really suicidal through that period and had to run away, which I eventually did at 19. And I wanted nothing to do with spirituality, like, absolutely nothing. And I went into professional sports. So I was a professional skier for a while, and then I switched to speed skating. But it was really hard when I was at the same time as trying to go through this whole court case around what happened to me when I was young. I was also having to compete. And there's no way to do that if I'm standing at a starting line next to somebody who got a good night's rest last night. But I spent all yesterday afternoon before this race detailing every different crime that happened in this particular city with cops and things like that. It's just, it's too much. And I started to fall apart and I realized that I couldn't run away from myself. The stuff that I see isn't going anywhere. So there comes a point where the only way to progress is if you stop running away from certain things. And that's how this worked. I eventually just said, this is not obviously not the way to heal. So I'm gonna have to open back up to all the stuff that I threw out because it's not going anywhere, and attempt to see if there might be something there for me. So I dabbled with it. But then my son was born and he's the one that really kicked me over the edge because he was born crystal, which is our spiritual way of saying that this person has an auric field, that it looks crystal and it looks prismatic and almost clear. These people are the greatest healers that we have because when they step next to somebody else's energy field, their energy takes on whatever color or pattern the other person has. So it's like the ultimate chameleon. But this is the reason they're the best healers, is because that person's energy doesn't actually recognize them as a foreign agent. So it's kind of like the energetic version of type O negative blood. And I knew what that looked like. And when he was born, I saw that energy field around him. I had a little bit of a breakdown, thinking, well, great, my son is going to suffer just like I suffered. And I pulled myself together after a while and realized there is no way to get rid of this. I've tried everything. You know, I'm going to teach him how to live like this. I have to get a better attitude towards this myself. So I started opening up towards seeing people for one on one sessions again. You know, I was very isolated in my childhood experience. But now as an adult, having run away, I was not isolated. So it blew my mind. Outside of that setting, how many people didn't know this kind of information? And not only that, but based on me telling them that information, what they did with their lives then. I mean, this stuff is very easy for us. We all know that when we have a talent, right, we take it for granted and we watch Somebody else doing something. We're like, whoa, I wish I could. But ourselves were taken for granted. And that's how this worked with me. And it wasn't until I actually saw that if I give this person this tiny piece of information, which for me is easy, they can completely overhaul their life. I thought, maybe I have a place. And I started to really see. Instead of it being about I don't want to be in the world because I don't belong in the world because there's no place for me, I figured maybe my place is this is to not fit in because I can change the way people think. It was very quick. Everything happens quick for me. It was very quick from there. Me sort of looking at mankind as if it's my responsibility that I can't separate myself so much from these people. So if there's a person who's digging in a trash can, that person is me. And that's an issue for me if there's somebody that's in that state. So I started to think, how can I reach a bigger audience? And that brought me to a book. So I'm like, well, nobody can afford a $100 session with me. That's what I cost at the time. Nobody can afford a $100 session that really, really, really needs this stuff. The kind of people that I want to reach. So I wrote a book, figuring if it's in the library, they can go rent it. But then this transmuted itself because I was thinking about people who are illiterate. Actually, first, believe it or not, I was like, okay, if I do something visual where I'm talking, then they don't even have to read. But how could that be free? Wait a minute. There are computers in every library also. So I started. YouTube was the only platform at that time.

What year was this?

2011. Yeah. YouTube was basically the platform where people could upload these things. And so I thought, you know, it's really interesting some of the stuff that people are doing on here. You know, like bike tricks. I'm thinking, well, maybe I can be answering questions, because that's what people do anyway. They come to me and they're like, teal, tell me why I can't manifest a relationship for the life of me. So I figured I'm just going to start answering questions so people can submit them. I'll pick whichever one I really want to answer, and I'll do it in video format, knowing that somebody can then go in. And that was always my goal. I wanted somebody to be able to sit down at the computer. And it didn't matter whether they had money, didn't have money, anything. They could be in any place. And based off the information that I give them, they can change their life from that. It's not abstract. That was my whole goal. I don't want any of this crap to be abstract. I want it to be very on point so that they don't ever have to sit in front of me. And yet they have the tools. And so that's where I ended up, because it exploded.

It really did. I remember you. I mean, you still have them, like, the backgrounds, like, you're, like, in an ocean. And it just kind of goes to show because I think a lot of people wait until they have, like, a perfect set or, like, who knows, like, what your background actually was. But you were like, I'm just gonna throw something, like a green screen on, and it doesn't matter. It's all about the information that you were providing us with.

Yeah. It's funny to watch the production level, like, increase and then occasionally when I'm on tour, like, decrease again, and then. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's just inspiring for people who are, like, waiting until they, you know, can afford a videographer or this or that to start putting out content on YouTube. And you were just going for it despite not having a strategy or anything.

This has always been my personality. Let's dive in the deep end and see if I can swim later.

Yes.

It's not always the best strategy, but it was this time.

And I think anyone doing anything in this world has had to have that attitude. So you talk about so many subjects. Like, literally, I could spend the rest of my life on this podcast asking you about them. But a really big thing we talk about on this podcast is your dharma, your purpose. And you've made a lot of really good videos about how to find your purpose. So for the person who's listening, who's interested maybe in spirituality, wellness, but they don't really know, like, what that thing is that they were meant to do or is there really one thing that they are meant to do. So I'd love to know, what's your take on this notion of life purpose or dharma?

Well, if you look at life before incarnating into a physical time, space, reality, there is always a reason why you would come in in that way, why you would project forth an aspect of your consciousness into the physical dimension. So there is a life purpose for all people walking the planet. And I'm 100% on that. So Every person does have a life purpose, and it tends to be quite specific. More specific for some people than others. The problem that we get here is that we get disconnected when we come into our physical incarnation. We are essentially creating a second point of perspective. So it's our operating in this world through two points of perspective. One being the non physical aspect, our eternal self, and one being the temporal aspect, the one I call Teal Swan right now. It's the discrepancy between these two points of perspective that makes us feel the sense of lostness. If we are projected forth with an intention, what will happen with the temporal self is you can't actually feel emotionally good unless you're in alignment with that original intention. So if you were not pulled out of alignment with your what's called emotional guidance system, you would naturally fulfill your purpose and there would be no if, ands or buts about it. But the process of socialization teaches us to go sideways from our own soul path. It teaches us that left is right and right is left. So let's say I gave a good example the other day. Let's say you've got a little girl who loves science. So this little girl is just obsessing over her microscope. But she was born into a family with a mom who's got lots of kids to look after. And it's not a value of hers for this kid to be looking in a microscope all day long. So even though that naturally feels good to her, she's going to incur a punishment for that behavior. And now she's going to incur to the opposite. She's going to encounter a reward for what mom wants, which is I need you to help with the house. So here her wires are getting crossed already she's starting to learn what I naturally incline towards. What naturally makes me feel good leads me to something negative. And what naturally makes me feel negative gets me reward. When those wires are crossed, it causes us to no longer follow our own internal compass. So it's almost like she can't follow due north anymore because mom's saying that's the wrong due north. So we abandon our own compass for other people's compass. And this is why we're confused about our life purpose. We're walking through life thinking things feel good, but it feels good because we have been conditioned. So it's real important for me that people understand that they have the awareness of that conditioning process and how it affects our capacity to stay in alignment with our life purpose. At the same time learning how to tap back into what feels good. Your purpose is always going to be in alignment with what feels good. There's no if, ands, or buts. Now, most people misinterpret that. I didn't say easy. Right. But if any of us who have really loved something will tell you that even the effort feels good. So it's about that internal. Yes. When you're doing something and you can feel it like an energy that's filling in every one of your cells. And that's what I want to reattune people to, because that is how to know what your purpose is. And unfortunately, if we've abandoned our own compass for somebody else's compass, we have to relearn that art form. And it can be quite fun, actually. It's frustrating to do something at 20 or 30 or 40 that you should have done at 2 years old, but you're almost at a place where I have a lot of people actually pretend that they're either an extraterrestrial coming to the planet for the very first time, or they're just waking up from a coma and they've got to think about, okay, do I really like that color? What do I feel when I look at that color? Because, like, we, for example, we've been taught as girls, for example, pink means a certain thing. So even we've been conditioned to feel a certain way towards something. So it's almost like stripping clean of that, holding a perspective like an extraterrestrial would. This is the first time I'm experiencing this. What do I organically feel towards it? This is how we get back in touch with our individual preferences. And if we keep following those preferences, it is inevitable that your purpose falls in your lap.

So my question is for that girl who is interested in science, and her mom was telling her focus on cleaning the house. Why would she have chosen a mother that was not in alignment with her purpose?

I like that. Well, we have to lose things in order to understand that we have them. A better way of understanding this in terms of universal perspective, is that you have to understand black to no white. So for any of us to get back to the core of ourselves, to actually understand authenticity in the first place, which has been an issue for the human race in general, we have to come into the opposite experience. So it's quite often that if people set off on a soul path of love, they will come into the exact opposite same if I come into a soul path where I'm meant to become authenticity and teach the world authenticity, so that there's a shift within the human race gonna opt into complete opposite.

So if the soul. You know, people say that the purpose of being here is flow and to experience ease. Would you agree with that or would you say that that may just be an easier way of looking at life, but hardship is necessary for growth.

I'm torn here because even the universe hasn't made their mind up on this universal perspective. Is that potentially, like right now? I'll just jump to the chase here. You live in a time space reality that's based on law of attraction. But even right now, we have created an alternative universe that's already in the process. Where the law that governs that universe is pure desire. Meaning it doesn't matter whether you're. It's not neutral like this, not like a mirror. It doesn't matter whether if you're focused negatively or positively. All that comes is desire. And there's an interest in seeing how far that can progress or create expansion within the mind of consciousness itself. And believe me, being down here on planet earth has made it a little tempting to go in that direction. I think it's rather limiting, that type of. That way of looking at life. But I feel like it benefits sometimes. And I get into a chokehold a lot of times with these theories where I feel like we should be looking at all theories within spirituality and self growth. Like tools. Tools that work perfectly in some scenarios, that will completely destroy you in others. So if somebody says, you know, you're meant to live here in flow, but let's say that what they're doing is just following what feels good all the time, they may be in complete avoidance. And so now that teaching is being used by that person specifically to get away from something that they so need to look at in order to move to a place that's in alignment with their purpose for another person. I might tell them that myself. You're not meant to be struggling all day long. You're meant to be in flow. So I think the hardest part about being a, you know, spiritual teacher is the fact that you have to be using this plethora of tools, Some of which make no sense in one scenario and perfect sense in another scenario. And when taken out of context, could ruin someone's life, quite frankly.

No, I mean totally, because I so see that happen even within myself. I'm like, oh, I just want to live a life of ease and flow and have fun. And I'm like, I have all these things that my soul feels like it came here to do. But the steps to get there, not total Flow, fun and ease. So it's this human dilemma that we're all in.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

So would you call that just an essential part of being a human, or would you call that fragmentation?

It was fragmentation. It's fragmentation.

So how can we balance that need to do and be.

You don't think about balance at all. I think the most damage that people create within their internal spectrum is trying to create balance. Especially because when we approach it that way, we're approaching it from an outside in approach. And that's a projection every time we're saying, well, I think that I can establish some sort of equanimity between these two aspects by diminishing one and increasing the other. That is the worst way to go about it. What I'm trying to teach people into now is this concept of the third option. So it's almost like you're taking the totality of both sides, if they're polarized sides, to find whatever unifying factor might exist. And unifying specifically because so much about balance is about compromise. It's this concept. I'll take a little pain if you take a little pain. And we get into real deep trouble in relationships when you do that, because it's not actually possible, it just builds resentment. And when we're doing that with ourselves, it builds internal resentment towards ourselves. And there could be nothing worse in life than that. It's the internal war between these parts that are unsatisfied because we've told them. Because of this balance approach, you can only be so much of, and you need to be more of, that's not going to make either happy. I mean, you can feel that if I look at you right now and I say, be a little less, you're gonna be like, give me the finger. So, yeah, so we gotta stop this.

So when you catch yourself, you know, you're working really hard and the mind starts saying, you need to relax more. You need to do. Should you just stop listening to that?

No, the opposite.

So go into it completely.

So if I get that type of a voice, I'm gonna go, okay, well, there's something super interesting here. So I'm gonna listen to it and realize that right now, if that. That part is talking to another part within me, who is you, is the biggest question we can ask. Because if we listen to all these different voices, what it looks like, which is the reality is that we've got so many splits within our own consciousness that it's like we got a city internally. One part's fighting another part, one Part loves another part. One part is completely giving up its responsibilities to another part. So I'm looking almost like zooming out. So in that moment, I address myself, which is the development of a central I. I zoom out so that these two parts within me right now that are currently opposed are like two children inside my own body. In the new book that I wrote, I called them internal Siamese twins. So I'm looking at them realizing I am both of them and therefore I am not a single one of them. It's like positive ownership without the identification and based off of deeply listening to each one of these aspects with an attitude of. They all have a very important perspective. We can see what the unifying factor between them is.

So when you're experiencing anxiety, would you say to really listen to that? Because it's something that you need to.

Hear, Especially with anxiety. Because if you don't listen to anxiety, it gets 100 times worse.

I totally agree with that. And I see a lot of people saying, just shut the mind. I totally agree because it's telling you something. It's something that you need to listen to.

I have a little bit of personal pet peeve towards the spiritual community and their relationship with the mind in general. Because everybody's like, well, it's about the heart, not the mind. But I sort of. I'm trying to encourage people yet again, because my whole purpose here is the integrative path. One thing that I love having people do is to go on the Internet and to look at these quotes that are about the heart and the mind, right? So you've got. The heart can go places the mind can't follow. Right. And things like that.

Oh, I have that on a mug. I forgot to give it to you. Yeah.

So what I have them do is put their own name in where mine goes. So for me, if I was doing this me, the heart can go places that Teal can't follow. So then I ask them, well, how would that make you feel? Because your mind's a part of you, and that's the message that you're now giving it. And so it's about how to really respect all these different aspects and put them in the place that they belong. Because the mind actually, when it's properly respected, actually tends to get on board with practice. It's not as much of an impediment as most people think it is.

So do you practice a meditation practice, like a seated meditation? And in that, do you. Is it more of a meditation or contemplation?

I do all types of different meditation. As we know, there are so many different types. It's like we could be here all day long for weeks talking about all the different types. The one that I prefer the most, it's not really like a passive meditation, but it looks like a passive meditation. It's a complete presence meditation, but it's almost like an internal journey that I'm going on. So my favorite one is that I'll sit down and I close my eyes. I turn my full attention to the inside of my body. So I'm being completely and unconditionally present with whatever exists. I'll usually pay attention the most to sensations, emotions, and just like I'm doing a shamanic journey, if I was to take a medicine, I'm literally allowing my own consciousness to be taken wherever that aspect wants to lead it. So the way it goes is that usually you'll be watching a shape, usually a texture, it intensifies and it changes. And I'm not trying to control where it's going. Just as it changes, I'm sort of following it. So then there will be like an opening and I'll see an image. Maybe that image is a memory. Maybe it's just some image I don't recognize. I go into the image and it's like doing this journey work type of a process for however long I want to be sitting there. So that's my favorite one.

No, I love that. And I think a lot of times the meditation practice that we're taught are very shiva cultivating. It's very masculine. It's very shut off the mind. The mind's not gonna take you anywhere good. And sometimes you need to just let the mind wander because it's gonna show you things that you need to be looking at. And whenever I see, like a lot of times happens to me when I'm walking or exercising, like an image, like I'm back to my childhood or here. And I always ask, why are you showing?

Exactly, exactly.

And it could have just been like, it was just pent up in your shoulder right here. Just like something that just needed to be seen. But I think a lot of times we're like, oh, my mind's so monkey mind. And it's like, no, it's a map.

Exactly. I actually agree completely.

Yeah. So I think it's hard for people because the spiritual community is like, this is what it looks like. And it's hard to find your own when you don't know what the tools are.

That's one of my main problems, is that we're teaching people in the spiritual community to become selectively identified. We're teaching them that this is what it should look like. And so you have to create a personality within you that looks like that and then deny, reject, and disown any other aspect. And we're creating such division, such war internally this way. I just. It's like. It is. It's such a personal pet. If I can't tell you, I can't hang around spiritual groups most of the time because of this, right? Because people.

New collective consciousness.

It is. People look at me and they're like, I've completely forgiven that person. And I'm looking at a person who, like, you can actually see, like, you know me visually. I can visually, and not in the mind's eye, visually see the pattern of resentment. And I'm going, okay, this is terrifying at this point.

Yeah, a lot of spiritual bypass. We take a quick break from this episode so I can share with you an amazing opportunity. Are you interested in having a career focused on health and wellness? Well, if so, then the universe is calling you to become a holistic health coach. I am offering this incredible deal, a discount of $1500 off my Alma mater, Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is the world's largest nutrition school with guest teachers such as Deepak chopra, Chris Carr, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Andrew Whale, and so many others. It is split between six months of health care coaching programs teaching you hundreds of nutritional theories, including Ayurveda, as well as six months of business coaching. And as an additional bonus, I am offering a webinar where I will teach you how to use social media to create a thriving career as a health coach. On top of that, I have created a private Facebook community just for the highest self, podcast listeners who are becoming health coaches to connect with each other, meet up with each other, and so support one another on this journey. So if you're interested, send an email over to Sahara. S A h a r aat feel fresh.com with subject iin again, saharaetfeelfresh.com with subject iin and I will personally send you back the email that will allow you to get a 1500 dollars off discount as well as my business coaching webinar and the private Facebook group. I'm so excited for you to begin your journey as a health coach. I'd love to introduce you to the tea brand I've been loving recently, Vadam Teas. The tea starts in the mountains of the Himalayas and within hours of harvest are packed at their tea facility and shipped all around the world. I'm personally indulging in their master tea assorted pack which contains 15 loose leaf blends, black, oolong, green and white. They pack their teas in single spring serve premium pyramid tea bags so you can have the convenience of loose leaf tea anywhere. Not just this, but they've managed to eliminate all middlemen from the sourcing process, thereby retaining all earnings in the source region for the farmers. These teas are fair trade, organic and pesticide free and they benefit the farmers directly, which I deeply care about. Additionally, every time you pick up a pack of Vodom teas, a part of the revenue goes towards educating the tea growers children, which makes it all even more worthwhile. Oprah just listed as one of her top favorite things, so I take Oprah's word for it. If you want to try this out, head over to vaadomteas.com v a h d a m teas.com and use coupon code SAHARA for 20% off. Again, head over to vadometees.com and use coupon code Sahara for 20% off. So for people who are confused, how do I know if it's my mind? How do I find know if it's my highest self or if it's another voice that has found its way onto me? How can you differentiate?

I don't want people to differentiate because I'm trying to teach people that there is nothing in this universe that isn't you. So if it's coming in, it's important to listen to it. I'm trying to get people, regardless of whether it's a voice inside the head or some homeless person on the street that's a part of you. So we have to be paying attention to seeing, into listening, to feeling, into all of these different aspects of ourself. It's about what type of mentality do you want to have? Do I want to have an individual consciousness where I'm like, I'm Teal Swan and everyone else is other? Do I want to really be in the embodiment of oneness? If I want to really be in the embodiment of oneness and actually recognize the mirroring happening in the universe, there is nothing that isn't teal.

So let's say you grew up with a family that would always tell you you're never gonna be able to achieve your dreams. You're not worthy. And that's the voice in your head.

Yeah.

That's just a part of you.

Yeah. Now, the inner critic is one of my favorite voices because the inner Critic holds your values. What happens when we're younger with the inner critic is that we're convinced that if we take on that role that's constantly policing us, then we will be able to adapt ourselves in a way that gets us the love that we want. So anytime that voice comes up, it is an indication that in this moment, I have a fear that something I'm doing or saying is going to make it so that I lose my access to that thing that I'm wanting so badly. It's actually one of the easiest voices to address. If you're finding the vulnerability that's underneath the way that it's expressing it, you now know how to take an action that's right for you, but from a space of free will. And that's everything. Being able to say, oh, right now, in this moment, that voice is kicking up because I'm afraid this person isn't going to see me as XYZ at that moment. When I have that awareness, I have a choice to make. Either I can proceed, but with conscious. You know, it's a conscious choice for me to do this. At which point, by the way, the voice does quiet, or I cannot do it, and intentionally so.

Could you kind of guide us through what that process could look like? If you're hearing that voice telling you you're not worthy of achieving your dreams.

And if I wasn't, why would that be so bad? I think one of the very best. In order to chase these core beliefs, you alternate two questions. The first is, why would that be so bad and what would that mean to me? But we're not asking it like, shaming it, right? There's two different ways to ask something. If you tell me, I'm terrified that everyone's going to judge me, and I say, well, why would that be so bad? Already in the voice that I've used, I'm implying that it's wrong to feel that way. That's not the way that I'm wanting this to go. When I ask you, why would that be so bad? I'm actually wanting to draw a further truth out of you. So if you start this internal dialogue, this internal questioning, the next answer might be something like, well, I'm afraid they're going to want nothing to do with me. And why would that be so bad? We get down to what our core fear is, and that's actually the vulnerability that the critic self is trying to actually steer you away from. It's saying, I'm keep you away from that pain. Just stop being such a Retard, you know? So I'm wanting to teach people, when they start caretaking that fear, they can do something different. So let's say that I go, okay, I'm going to be completely by myself. Maybe that's the bottom line. That's where it all ends. I'm terrified that I'm going to be completely by myself. I might bring that to the person. That's been my practice, because I want to be in relationship. So that means if that's the fear, I'm going to say, you know what? Right now, I'm afraid that if I say this, you're going to think I'm ridiculous and want nothing to do with me. And how somebody reacts to that truth, that internal truth of mine, indicates whether I'm keeping them in my life or not, to be honest. Because either that's a person who actually wants connection, and in connection, it is to take another person's best interest as a part of your own, or it's somebody who's dangerous to be in a relationship with and they're not at a point where they become lonely enough to actually. Actually want to commit to that.

Right? Yeah. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is actually the best thing that can happen to you because you go into whatever that subconscious fear was.

Yes.

And I think it all comes down to the same thing. Loneliness, which is what your book, Anatomy of Loneliness, is about. Feeling unloved. What are. What are other kind of core fears that you've been seeing that are underlying all of these issues?

It's all isolation for the physical human. That's why I. I wrote that book, because over the years of doing all of this work with bringing people back to their core fears, it's always the same core fear. I'm going to end up alone. And not only is it core fear, it's an experience we're already living. So the fact that that is such an epidemic is the whole reason I wrote that book.

So let's talk about that. The fear of being alone.

Okay. You ready for it?

Yes. So can you first of all, just tell us a little bit about your new book, Anatomy of Loneliness?

Okay. My new book, the Anatomy of Loneliness. Do you want to know how it started?

Yeah.

I was miserably lonely. That's how it starts in my childhood, because of everything that was going on and being so ostracized within the community. I had no. I had no idea. I didn't fit in with my family, didn't fit into the society that I lived in. Got so Miserably isolated that I tried to commit suicide multiple times. And I was telling myself the story just like most people do when they're totally lonely. I'm the only person that feels this way. It's just Teal. Teal's the only one that doesn't belong on the planet. Right? Because that's what pain does. Pain in isolation. Pain is an isolating experience, right? It convinces you you're the only person that's in it. So it wasn't at that point, by the way, that I got out of this, but I realized I just needed people no matter what. So I started an intentional community. And that's where some of it started to dwindle. And I started to really figure out how to have relationships. But it wasn't until I was in this career, going to all these different places on the planet that I realized that I was hearing the same story no matter where I was landing, which is, my family doesn't understand me. Well, you don't know how it is to be me, which is, by the way, this is all separation. Like all of this is loneliness. And people who are like, I have no idea, I'm going to kill myself. You know, didn't matter what age, didn't matter what gender, didn't matter what culture. I was literally like an epidemic issue. So I'm going, okay, this is obviously an issue that goes beyond me. And then I awoken to this way bigger truth about loneliness, which is that it's actually what's behind all the suffering on the planet. In fact, there is only one pain, and that's the separation. If I feel pain, no matter what I'm feeling separated from something, even we could say physical pain, sorry, is a separation from health. So we've got separation present for any type of pain. And I started to look at crimes because I'm so heavily focused there, wanting to do so much with the justice system. And I realized that if a person commits a crime against another person, whether it's breaking into the house and stealing something or murdering them or whatever, they have to first perceive themselves to be separate. So now I have loneliness not only as a culprit for pain on an individual level. I've got this as the cornerstone of why we're even able to do this to each other. So then I was like, that's it, I gotta figure this out. But I didn't have the answer. So I went down to the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica and embarked on a year long process. It's been three years now. Since then, but a year long process of diving into loneliness. I wanted to go as deep as I possibly could. So I understood exactly what creates this loneliness. And not the loneliness that can be solved by being in the room with someone. I wanted to attack the loneliness where it doesn't matter how many people can be in the room, you may even feel worse with them there. So it's psychological loneliness. What is it that creates that and what do we do to completely replace it? And I got my answers in a very difficult way.

What did you do to go into the loneliness?

Shamanic journey work. I found a shaman, a very good one, and I allowed him to take me as deep as I could into my own and then into other peoples. It was like always a back and forth. Yeah, I was, I mean to say it just. I cannot sum up in any words what that was like because I took a backpack is how it is down the middle of the jungle. It's like this messy, very aggressive experience. So I took on a backpack with all these pages and I would scribble everything that I was becoming aware of and seeing. And I mean, these pages, you should have seen them, they're like crinkled and they've got puke stains on them. And I brought it home after this whole year and I got a stack like that big and I look through it and I'm like, I'm going to organize this. This is the book. Originally I wasn't thinking about writing a book out of it. It was just, I'm going to teach loneliness, I got to fix loneliness. So I came out with the answer and that turned into the book.

So can you share with us some of the steps that people can take to overcome this eternal loneliness?

Well, the first thing, most of us like to bypass into the solution without being fully aware of the problem. And it's being fully aware of the problem and what creates it that I feel like actually creates the biggest shift within us. It's like the why I'm doing what I'm doing and being able to see myself in real time. So the first step is being able to see separation within oneself. And that's the mentality of it all the way down to the splits within our consciousness that I've been talking about today. I have to see that I'm not a unified individual. I have to see where I am mentally distancing myself from things. I have to witness the mind separating. Spiritual teachers have been talking about separation with the mind forever. This is what the ego is. I am a separate self. But we have to see how that practically is working in our own lives and also with the grand picture of the universe itself. Because the story of separation began far before our physical incarnation. It was a mind that was created, or a thought, I should say, that was created in the mind of source, or what we were calling God. So when that concept, I was created, it functions like a cancer that keeps dividing aspects of the universe. So now we've got a table versus teal versus a cup versus a terrorist versus a dolphin. So this whole world of fragmentation was born out of that thought. And now when I come into a physical experience, I am educated more and more into that concept of separation, which gets more intense depending on what culture you're in and even the language they speak. So, you know, most. Some cultures, it's like everything's divided into male and female, and that's the type of fragmentation they understand. But we teach a child to identify honestly. When we're even teaching them language, we say, this is a cup. Right. We're not teaching them. This is cupping. That's a Native American concept that everything is in a state of choice or transition. So the Hopi language is one of my favorites. If you translate everything, it would be ing on the end. So I'm tealing. This is cupping.

I love that.

Yeah. So I mean, even that worldview changes the way that your mind is functioning within them. Yeah, yeah. So the way that we're even teaching children to speak is making them go, I'm more lonely. More lonely. It's more me versus other. Yeah. Then when we add any kind of fear into that equation, Fear is the third pillar. When we add fear into that equation, we start pushing things away from ourselves. And that's very important for us to understand. It's almost like this concept. You can't punch something without your hand being punched back. I can't push something away without pushing myself away. And so if I'm creating any gap or distance between me and anything, loneliness is about that gap. It's about that separation between me and whatever I've pushed away. So obviously, we have to undo that whole process, because to love something is to take something as part of yourself. It's what people who are down here teaching love we're meaning to express to the world. It's what Jesus was doing with lepers when he was saying, the lepers are you. And most people are saying, no, they're going to infect us. You know, pushing it away. So it's the way that we go about addressing our own fears. Either Bulldozing them right, or letting them run our life, not really taking our fear as part of us so as to consciously caretake it. That's creating a problem. And the second pillar of this whole situation is shame, which is probably the most important. And that's the one that I found to be, I think, where the majority of focus has to be because socialization functions around shame. It's almost like shame is the way that we go about making other people behave like we want them to behave. And this starts very early on in childhood. So if a small child perceives themselves to be pushed away by the parent in any way, the child has to alienate themselves from whatever part of them that the parent is pushing away. That's how we survive. And it's our misunderstanding about shame that I feel like makes it so impossible for us to get out of this loop that we get into. Because we think shame can be overcome. It actually can't. Shame is a biological affective reaction in the same way that the fight or flight mechanism is a biological affective reaction. So it's natural.

So should we even be trying to overcome our shame or just being aware of it?

I'm going to say yes and no. We need to become aware of it and aware of what exactly that process is, and then doing the exact opposite of the process. So I'll give you an example. Mom doesn't like my anger. So I have no choice if I want to get close to mom again, which I have to do. Can we talk about that in a minute? Because I got to get people to understand themselves and the need for people. I have no option to get close to my mother then than to push away my anger. So I'm going to reject, deny, and disown the angry part of me. It can no longer be close to me. And the feeling that I am calling shame is just the feeling state of doing that, of pushing a part of myself away. Now, I can't obviously do that in the physical. I can't push a part of myself away physically. I can't draw a knife down my body. And now, oh, that part that was associated with anger. But I can do this with my consciousness. So shame is the primary mechanism for fragmentation within the psyche, and it creates all kinds of problems. But the majority of people who are trying to counter shame today, we do it in a way that actually enhances it. So let's say I've pushed that part of me that's angry away. If I go to a seminar and I say, God, I'm so Angry. I'm so ashamed of my anger. Most people will help me to see that I'm not an angry person now. I've just actually made that even worse and banished it even further into the ground. What we need to be doing is to bring these pieces, especially the ones we're the most ashamed of, which is just I push the most away from myself and actually re own them aggressively, which is really hard because your mind tells you that if you do that, you're gonna lose people.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the work of OSHO was about integrating your anger and your sadness and your sexuality and all of that. And I think what, what made people so afraid of him was what would the world look like if we had crazy angry attacks the way that we would as children? So what would you say for parents who your kid is having a temper tantrum? Just support them in that and let them experience it.

With emotions, the first thing you have to do is to see the emotion as important and valid. So that's the mentality in the parent. I have to see that this is happening for a very important reason. There is never an emotion that happens for not an important reason. And we got to change that mentality because we got a lot of projections. Parents do like, well, they shouldn't feel that way or they wouldn't if. And we gotta quit. End of story. If an emotion shows up, it's important. Second, I have to validate the emotion. Validating the emotion is different than validating a way that somebody's thinking. Somebody could say, I feel like I'm a complete idiot. I'm not gonna go, oh, you're right, I think you are an idiot. But what I am going to do is validate the emotion. It makes perfect sense in this scenario why you would feel like an idiot. Be like, I can't validate from a space where I'm like, unwilling to actually see that it's valid.

A friend would normally say, you're not an idiot.

Yeah. But then I've just, I've just made you think, I don't see you. Right. And this is the primary reason why we have such a crap relationship with emotions. Because the first thing that emotion always needs is validation. It needs space, actually. So after validating the emotion and, and allowing a person to really sit in it and allow it to move through their embodiment, you don't even move into a resolution phase about that emotional state until you have given it complete permission and validation for even being there in the first place. So, yeah, it's like really critical if you're a parent sitting there with a kid in that type of a scenario, to do that type of a process. So let's say you've got a kid who's throwing a fit about being jealous because let's say they're at a birthday party and all the other kids are getting presents. The first thing you say to that kid is, it makes total sense to me. But you gotta really actually try to see their perspective. It makes perfect sense why you would be so upset. It sucks. It would suck for me too if I was watching everybody else get presents. That makes total sense. Now that teaches the kid. My emotions are right, very critical because they are still in touch with their emotional compass. Now all we're doing is teaching them how to use it. So then after they play around it and they're still upset with it, you help them with how to. By the way, it does improve when you validate an emotion. The charge goes. So the child's fussy, but then they start looking for a way. You can actually feel it in the psyche. You can feel a person start to sort of search for a way to make the emotional state feel better. And it's at that point that you can suggest things like, did you remember how we. Like, last month was your birthday and we did this? This is what happens at birthdays. I think it's probably important for us to think about what can we do right now that can make you feel like people love you too and get the kid thinking, you know, this is something that parents don't do. We assume that we're going to be the ones that come up with everything. But I feel like it's really important for us to, albeit a little bit of an ego hit, to be able to admit to our own folly and our own lack of understanding around things and give them the room to be the one that creates it. You know, I found myself in this scenario several times with my son where I get to crossroads here, where I get to tell him either that he's powerless or admit that mommy's powerless. And it may not be that I actually am, but I really feel like that in this moment. So I'm educating a lot of parents, for example, that have financial issues. If you get into a scenario where a kid really wants something, don't say, well, how dare you want it? Don't say, well, you're never going to get it. Say, well, mommy can't do that. It may be a problem with mommy's capacity to create abundance, but you're Going to probably be different than mommy that way. What I can tell you is mommy's not your only way of manifesting in this world. It's so hard to do. But what does that do? It makes it so that a kid can open their horizons, and this is what is ultimately going to make this a world where we can evolve it. I did that. I actually had another moment like that that might interest you. We were on school because no kid likes school, regardless of how Rishi their situation is. My son goes to an alternative school that's like, I'm so jealous. But he doesn't have that context that I do. So to him, it's just, I don't want to be away from the house, and why do I have to be away from the house? So we were on the way to school and he was like, I don't understand why we have to go to school. And I literally said, well, if I don't send you to school, mommy gets in big trouble with the government. That's the truth. Now, I trust you. If it really matters to you to be the person who might come up with an alternative. So in his head, he's like, this is frustrating, but there's still this, like, open door for maybe I'm the one that can do it instead of just educating children into the same prison bars. That was a tangent.

No, I love that. And it's really good advice because I feel like the new age parenting advice is to, you know, just like, fully listen. But I've never heard, like, what do you think we could do to make it better? And allowing that kid to see that he's not the victim of his circumstances and he can actually change it. And imagine just, you know, how, like with your abundance example, how many people are blaming their parents financial situation for their own. And if you were told, like, mommy can't get you that toy, but you'll be able to get it for yourself and create that wealth. So would you. What age would you start talking about money to your kids?

I started the second he started asking questions. My approach to parenting and the way that I. I mean, from my perspective, obviously I'm going to approach parenting in the way that I see the world, from the way that I'm seeing children. They have their own destiny and so they will unfold. And for me, it's about introducing these different elements as a kind of a offering. So I'll have them try this, try that, try this, try that. It's like an exposure to these things and see what takes. And I'LL also let him lead. So, you know, he was the one that led his weaning process. He's the one that leads. Whether he wants to sleep in his room by himself, he's the one that leads. It's almost like a child led process. I don't want to think of a child like a molding of clay. I want to think about a child in terms of he has his own potential. It's my job to kind of peel those layers back to see what ultimately he becomes. So that way of looking at children greatly influences the way that I parent and teach people to parent.

I think your next book should be on parenting.

Everybody tells me that.

Oh, so good.

It's so hard.

And I want.

It's so hard.

It is so hard. Well, I want you to tell us about the need for people. It was something you told me to remind you back on.

Okay. So people, way back in the day, people understood that we needed each other. What happened when we started to take ourselves out of the survival of the fittest game that's going on on the planet and be able to develop a society where we have no natural predators anymore unless we swim too far out into the water, is that we forget our need for each other. And that was the primary method of survival for thousands upon thousands of years for this physical human. The reason that we are here is our dependence on each other. If I take a physical baby and I leave them out on the doorstep, they're dead. End of story. And for a long time too. In childhood. They cannot take care of themselves. Not like another species can graze at a certain point. It takes months or days even. So a human is completely relationally dependent. That means their entire nervous system is encoded with closeness being the primary need for survival. And so what we have to accept is it is our closeness or connection with people that even got our primary needs like food and water met. That means connection is more important to us than the need for food or water. So if we're going to sit here and tell a story that like our basic survival needs are about those physical things and not about connection, we don't understand ourselves as a species. We are completely connection based species. And it really bothers me how we've become influenced with a kind of independent or. Yeah, I think it's an independent sickness. I mean, this is an obsession and it's one that is doing us in. So a human being thinking they can be independent as an illusion in general, but it's a complete alienation of their own biology to get people to understand how mentally sick this is. I want them to imagine a deer. Now, a deer is less relationally dependent than we are because their babies are up within hours grazing very soon after that, and it takes less than a year before they are completely self sustainable. So a deer is less of a group dependent species than we are. Now, how ridiculous do you think it would be to walk up to a deer in the middle of the woods and say, you know, I really have been watching you, observing your behavior, and you are just way too dependent on your herd. You, you just need to like at least an hour a day, just like go away and see that you can do this on your own. It's insanity. I mean, we can see the insanity that it's like, no, if a deer starts getting unhealthy, it's because it's loud. But we do this to each other.

I think what we're afraid of is putting on the responsibility of someone else to make us happy. So it's easier for us to claim our independence than to say that I really need someone to show up for me.

And it's. Well, when that happened because it's easier for us to say I don't need you, than to admit that we're around people that won't do it no matter what. And so we're starving to death. So we're looking for empowerment, but it's false empowerment. When I'm looking at the world, I don't want to teach people to become more independent and do it on their own. That's not the way to do it anyways. I mean, it's a long story. But what I want to teach people to do is to actually learn to be in relationship. So it's to get away from the I. I want people to actually want to connect to each other so as to really deeply take each other's best interests into account. Yeah.

And something I've noticed even with myself is you feel lonely. But when's the last time you reached out to an old friend or a stranger, Anyone, really? We expect it all to be towards us, but we're not being that friend who is the type that we're seeking.

Exactly. And we're terrified. Yeah. No, I mean, it's interesting because you say that because I've made a practice after doing this whole process of figuring out loneliness where I'm the one that crosses that boundary with people. You know, it's like I'm sitting next to them and we may be, I don't know, this person who's Sitting next to me in the chair. But I'm the one that turns over and says, oh, I really like that, like engages them in conversation. And it's really interesting how much people are desperate for it. It's like it's either two reactions and it's 80% people love it and like 20% people are distrustful of it. And you know, that that second reaction is really sad to me. The first one is like, look at the state we're all in if we're all like so desperate, but none of us are willing to actually cross that terrifying, you know, border of don't reject me.

And it's just this collective. Like I, I know whenever I go to places like Costa Rica and places that my heart's totally open and I come back and I'm like making eye contact with everyone, like I'm considered weird or like when I'm hitting on people, the street. And it quickly gets you to close back up. So it's this. I mean, as more and more people are doing this, we have to change it so the normal culture becomes remaining open hearted.

That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get people to be brave enough to be all, you know, all of them be sensitive. If everybody gets sensitive at once, everybody gets connected at once. It has to shift. And that's the empowerment. I want people to really take away from these types of conversations. We have to start to look at society which normally feels so much bigger than us, as if we are all a part of it. If I take responsibility for my piece of the pie and so does the person next to me, that's two pieces of the pie, right? If we start doing this at a bigger level, society has no option but to shift because it is made of individuals. And I feel like that, I mean, anybody who's really had a message of empowerment to share has come in with that message. You got to see yourself as piece of the puzzle. If you change yourself and enough people do, the whole damn thing changes.

Love that so much. So how can listeners connect with you? Watch your videos, get your book, your premium content.

Tealswan.com I tried to make it easy. I made it my name. Yeah. If you go to tealswan.com then you have access to everything that I do. Books, videos, events, everything.

And what's next for you?

Conscious media. That's why I'm in Los Angeles. Actually. My whole thing here that I came to is that I want people through their entertainment, you know, wanting to wake up the masses in General, most people are in a space of avoidance. So what do we do when we want to avoid the pain that we feel? We distract ourselves. But what if the very method through which we are distracting ourselves is the very method that awakens us? And so it's this big boom right now, which I'm telling you right now, this is the wave. The wave right now is conscious entertainment. I'm calling it edutainment, where people can watch something and let's say that it's a reality TV show if they identify with somebody through entertainment, but that person goes through some sort of transformative shift where they're adding consciousness to the individual, it is impossible for a person sitting in that seat to not go, what does that mean for me? So if we make consciousness the new thing, then people will be shifting and more and more and more and more. I've got real hope for it, because even being down here, this is the way everybody's going. I see that as the place that I really want to be right now. I want to be creating something forms of entertainment that are awakening humanity.

Well, we're really excited to see that. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, for sharing your wisdom with us, and for allowing us to see ourselves and the world in a new way.

Thank you for having me.

How epic was that interview with Teal? She has so much wisdom. I could just powwow with her for hours and go so, so, so deep, because she's really been there. She's really explored the depth depths of human consciousness. So it was super rad having her here on the podcast to dive in, because that's what we're all here for, right? Just diving in, knowing the truth, getting to the bottom of it. So please feel free to connect with Teal over on her YouTube channel, Teal Swan at Tealswan Official. And if you loved this episode, I would love to send you the first half of my unreleased book, eat right for your mind body type, which is different from my book, Eat feel fresh. It is my unreleased, never to be released book because it is now part of my eat right for your mind body type program. I would love to send it to you absolutely free. All you gotta do is leave me a review in the itunes store, take a screenshot and email it over to me@saharaetfeelfresh.com Again, take a screenshot of the review and email it to me@saharaatfeelfresh.com and I will send you the first half of my unreleased book, Eat right for your mind body typ it. Namaste.