Lessons from Saints and Angels on the Heart with Gary Jansen [Episode #953]

This week’s topic: Lessons from Saints and Angels on the Heart

Hi everyone, welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have our very special guest, Gary Jansen, back on the show again. I think Gary, you’ve been on two or three times previously. Welcome back. Gary is an amazing writer. He has been a mentor to me for many years in writing. He’s been my closest confidant in writing. He has this incredible new book out,  It’s called Saints, Angels and Demons. We’re gonna get into it today. A few more things, Gary was actually writing this book while he was helping me with the hidden power of the five hearts. Gary has worked on many books as well as a brilliant editor. He’s worked with Deepak Chopra, which is how we originally met. He’s worked with Pope Benedict.

 

About Gary Jansen 

Gary Jansen is the author of several bestselling books, including the memoir Holy Ghosts: Or, How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night, The 15-Minute Prayer Solution, Station to Station, and the multi-award winning MicroShifts: Transforming Your Life One Step at a Time. His illustrated children’s book, Remember Us with Smiles, which he co-wrote with his wife Grace, won the 2023 Christopher Award in the Books for Young People category (past recipients of Christopher Award include Jimmy Carter, David McCollough, and Ken Burns).

Jansen is a Chopra certified meditation and health instructor. He is frequent speaker and has been featured on NPR, The Huffington Post, CNN.com, Coast to Coast AM, A&E, the Sundance Channel, and has appeared numerous times on the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown.

 

Guest Resources

 Website:

Gary Jansen 

Book:

Saints, Angels & Demons: An A-to-Z Guide to the Holy and the Damned

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Spirituality and Writing
02:57 The Heart as a Center of Intelligence
06:00 Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs
09:11 Spiritual Practices for Daily Life
12:06 The Dark Night of the Soul
14:57 Small Acts of Love and Their Impact
18:02 Saint Teresa and Spiritual Experiences
21:05 Mother Teresa’s Struggles and Faith
24:02 The Complexity of Grief
27:04 The Role of Angels in Spirituality
37:19 The Role of Angels in Spiritual Guidance
40:26 Exploring the Mystical Connection with Saints
45:02 The Power of Forgiveness in Spirituality
51:04 Acceptance and Surrender in Life’s Journey
57:13 Living in the Present and Gratitude

 

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:01.102)
Hi everyone, welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have our very special guest, Gary Jansen, back on the show again. I think Gary, you’ve been on two or three times previously. Welcome back. Gary is an amazing writer. He has been a mentor to me for many years in writing. He’s been my closest confidant in writing. He has this incredible new book out.

can see all the ways I’ve already marked the book. It’s called Saints, Angels and Demons. We’re gonna get into it today. A few more things, Gary, and we gotta go through the bio. Gary was actually writing this book while he was helping me with the hidden power of the five hearts. Gary has worked on many books as well as a brilliant editor. He’s worked with Deepak Chopra, which is how we originally met. He’s worked with Pope Benedict.

Gary (00:32.86)
Thank

Kimberly Snyder (00:56.748)
He has, I mean, there’s so many things in his bio. He’s won the Christopher Award. His other bestselling books, including the memoir, Holy Ghosts. He also wrote an incredible book called Micro Shifts, which we chatted about on here. We’re going to link to Gary’s website, garyjanson.com. So you can check out all these incredible books, all those incredible projects. Maybe I’ll pause here, Gary, and just say thank you so much for coming on as a brilliant writer.

incredible mind and also such a close friend. You’ve always been here for me, Gare, and I appreciate you so much.

Gary (01:33.539)
it’s always great to talk to you, Kimberly. So thank you for having me on the show. And, you know, one thing I want to add is that we were also working on Chilla Gorilla at the same time. So we had a whole bunch of things going on at once.

Kimberly Snyder (01:41.248)
yes, of course. OK. Well, it’s funny because it just sort of organically came together, this, you know, wanting to bring the heart forward. And then you came to me with this idea for a children’s book with Loyola Press. And we said, of course, this book has to be about teaching children simple, but yet also research based ways to come back to the heart. All this incredible science of heart coherence.

which is also so powerfully spiritual and energetic. And we’ll get into this here, but in reading your book, there was all these references to the heart. And of course, a lot of these saints come from Catholic tradition, they come from the Christian tradition, but also across all spiritual traditions, as you and I talked about so many times on our own, this power center, this…

You know, you don’t have to know all this, you know, technical academic work to really feel that there’s this power in our hearts. And it’s beautiful to see in your stories and this beautiful tome you wrote. This is really across all spiritual traditions.

Gary (02:50.431)
Yeah, the, know, one of the first, I remember one of the first conversations we had, which was at Cognac many, many years ago, a restaurant, remember? Yeah, we had breakfast at Cognac in New York City. And one of the things that we did talk about, even though briefly was about heart resonance, right? Cause I was doing research at the time too, just on the idea of the sacred heart and the idea of the heart as…

Kimberly Snyder (02:58.01)
yes, breakfast place.

Gary (03:18.207)
the original center of intelligence, which is what you explore and talk about in your new book. But that idea of the heart being maybe our primary brain, being the thing that really, I mean, you have your normal brain or whatever, your head brain, right? It takes care of a lot of physical things, Right, rational things, right? But then you have this spiritual, this metaphoric like,

Kimberly Snyder (03:29.549)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (03:40.29)
Rationals. Yeah.

Gary (03:46.995)
but more than just a metaphor, this spiritual heart that also serves as a brain. And we’ve talked about how many neurons are inside the heart, numerous, right? And so it really does act as a second brain, but it’s also this channel for spiritual experience, right? And so many of the mystics and so many of the saints and so many of the holy people who have lived over time, whether it’s the Hindu tradition, the Buddhist tradition, the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition,

They always center, they come back to the heart. I love when you ask somebody like, if I was to say, hey, point to yourself, most people will go like this, right? And they’ll point straight to their heart. They don’t go like this. They don’t point to their brain, right? So the heart really is that center of self. And so this new book, Saint Angels and Demons, there are numerous entries in there and numerous stories about how important that spiritual heart is because that’s the center of spiritual experience. This is probably the

Kimberly Snyder (04:19.588)
Yeah.

Gary (04:45.919)
way that we can experience the sacred in our lives.

Kimberly Snyder (04:51.076)
You know, Gary, you and I have talked about this so much. And I want to talk about our mothers in just a moment. But I think as I’m hearing you talk about this center of intelligence, we could say it’s the first brain because it does form first, just these ups and downs in life. And I think so many of us struggle. I know I used to struggle so much with anxiety and this has to work out. And what if I don’t get a perfect score on the test or what if this happens? I just think my life 24 in 24 hours, Gary, I had this

big up our older son Emerson won first place in both his chess tournaments this weekend, which is, you know, as a proud mom, it’s like, you know, win or lose, we’re proud. But it’s really funny, Gare, because a lot of these other kids roll into these tournaments with their chess coaches and they go to chess academies and they take, you know, four to six classes a week.

We don’t do any of that. He studies books and know, Emerson, we don’t let him play on chess.com because we’re a low screen family, but he’s playing from his heart when he’s not thinking. There was just this beautiful flow, right? So there’s this up. And then this morning, just literally an hour ago, I’m so glad we made it on time. I got a flat tire on the way to driving my kids to school and it was like going down the hill. It went from like 30 to 20 to that. was like, my gosh. So we get to the bottom of the hill. I was like, what do we do?

Gary (06:00.882)
wow.

Kimberly Snyder (06:09.1)
and two doors down there is the community mechanic. This guy, Tom, who’s like bailed us out, he fixed my husband’s motorcycle. So I’m like knocking on the door and he’s like in the shower, like, can you just patch the tire? We just had to get back up and get the other car. And it was just, you this, this heldness, right? And I think if I didn’t have access to the heart information, which you and I have talked about, it’s like we go for the ups, but then it’s like, if we let the ups in so much, like the chest room is awesome, but.

you know, what happens when he doesn’t win? What happens when he’s really disappointed? It’s like we’re being tossed and then you could have freaked out about the tire, but it was just, you know, stay calm, stay coherent. And I found the more we go into his heart work and reading the stories in your book, which are so inspirational because a lot of these saints, as we’ll talk about, had really challenging lives. And so it’s not about the ups and downs, but it’s just this steadiness that

in this peace and this, you no matter what’s happening, this joy that really does come from within, which isn’t just an idealistic thing to say, it’s experiential. know I’ve experienced it more and more.

Gary (07:17.727)
Yeah, and I think, look, I’m prejudiced because one, I teach about spirituality, I write about spirituality, I edit books and publish books on spirituality. So for me, spirituality and the spiritual practice is so very important. And it’s something, and it can be non-denominational as we’ve discussed so many times in the past too, but just allowing yourself to engage in spiritual practice really does

take the edge off, right? And when we take the edge off, when we can live from a place that’s not fear-based, when we can surrender ourselves and just say, hey, you know what? Things may be rough right now, but you know what? There’s a survival mechanism within us, right? There’s definitely a primal survival mechanism that lives within inside of us. But there’s also a spiritual survival mechanism.

Right? And that’s your relationship to source, to God, to spirit. And our physicality can sometimes get in the way of that spiritual nature, right? Because it’s kind of like we overwork the physical, but sometimes underwork the spiritual. So when we can allow ourselves to kind of live in a place of surrender or a place of acceptance or a place of non-fear, we’re just going to say, hey, you know what? All right, I got a flat tire. This stinks.

it’s gonna work out, things tend to work out if we live from that place of non-fear. And really, I think that the stories about the saints really kind of embody that. Once individuals were able to kind of live from a place of acceptance, a place of surrender, all of a sudden they tap into an inner strength, right? And so there is a spiritual inner strength that

through practice allows us to get stronger spiritually and mentally, physically, and all of that contributes to our physicalness, our physicality, our mental awareness, our emotional awareness, all through spiritual practice.

Kimberly Snyder (09:26.882)
And you know, sometimes, Gara, you know, thank you for this practice, right? Because it sounds nice, like, I’m just going to surrender. I’m going to live without fear. But the truth is day in and day out, we can look on the news, we can get fearful. You can be fearful for your child’s well-being. You can be fearful for your job security. I know for myself, we’ve been talking about this heart aligned meditation and you talk about prayer. Sometimes in busy life, we don’t always have that space. know, usually I do my longer meditations when I get back, but because of the flat tire. But one thing

I always do when I wake up, even if it’s, you my kids, there’s activity around as I stand in front of my altar, I’ll kneel and I’ll set an intention for the day, right? Right now I’m working with these three terms, strength, loyalty and selfless devotion, which is what Hanuman represents. And I pray, I said, no matter what life brings me, may I, you know, give me the strength. I don’t want to be distracted. May I always be kind and loving so that, you know, I can be strong and loyal to God.

and know, practice the selfless devotion because it started to see it gears like all these little upsets of overthinking. It’s actually a distraction from the heart, the distraction from God, right? Spirit, whatever word you want to use. And as we go into these stories, I think that’s what differentiates a lot of these saints isn’t that they were perfect humans. It’s not that they didn’t have fears, but there is this focus that I think a lot of us

can come back to and take inspiration from and bring into our lives, even if it’s formal, even if we set that intention, even if we get off the intention, but at least the attention is there. So it’s like this needle point we keep coming back towards.

Gary (11:07.059)
Yeah, and I think you’re right on the money there. And I think, you know, the thing is that the fact that you have life makes you sacred. The fact that you are existing, you’re sacred, right? And that just doesn’t mean you or me, but everybody, everything around. If you believe in like a God created universe, then basically all of creation has a certain sacred, a sacredness to it. And so what the saints ended up doing, they’re filled with like doubts and fears. They make mistakes. Some of them are thieves. Some of them are, you know,

They get themselves into a lot of different trouble. You know, I mean, there are a couple that are murderers, right? But they’re able to kind of like redeem their lives through this embodiment and acknowledgement of the sacred, right? And so really, I think we’re all kind of like called to do that. Now that sounds, that might sound like very highfalutin or flighty or something that you can’t attain, but these small practices that you can do, like before you go to sleep.

when you wake up in the morning to repeat over and over again, whether it’s through a mantra or just sacred words like love or faith, just repeating these words before you go to sleep, upon waking up, when you’re driving the car, when you’re taking your kids to school, there’s plenty of time in between all the different things that you have to do where there are opportunities for you to not worry about X, Y, and Z.

but to do these kind of thought or spirit substitutes, right? So, all right, so instead of thinking, you know, I’m worrying about a bill I have to pay or a person that may be in a difficult situation, maybe for a few moments I can just repeat the word love, right? And there’s a resonance to those words. There’s a resonance to those beliefs. But the more and more you do it, the more and more you can embody it. And they’re really simple practices. mean, MicroShifts talks all about that.

So a book I wrote called Microchips about just these small tiny things that you can do. And we’ll talk later on, but there is a Saint, Thérèse of Lesault, who’s a French Saint. And she had something called the Little Way, which is what are these small little things I can do every day that acknowledges God, that allows me to keep the sacred in my life. And when you change, right, Kim, you realize that

Kimberly Snyder (13:18.916)
Mm.

Gary (13:33.289)
the people around you change, you’re able to help in a way that you might not have been able to help before, you’re able to elevate and to really, the fact that your heart elevates, you’re able to elevate the people around you.

Kimberly Snyder (13:48.362)
Yeah, if we go back to those little examples, or the small examples, they’re not little, but they add up. I love this idea of doing small things with great love. And I know that she directly inspired Mother Teresa, the modern saint we know who was, was she from Bulgaria?

Gary (14:06.823)
She’s originally from Albania, then eventually moves to India, and then settles in Calcutta.

Kimberly Snyder (14:09.476)
That’s right.

Kimberly Snyder (14:17.279)
was that a phone dear?

Gary (14:19.933)
No, there was some kind of beep or something.

Kimberly Snyder (14:22.372)
yeah, so we’ll just, I’m going to make a note to edit that. And also, could you just move your mic a little bit away? It’s really popping here. I think just the mic, the mic. Yeah. So it’s just popping a lot. Cause I think it’s right in front of your mouth. Can you, you can keep it a little bit closer to you. And then if you could just make sure none of those alerts go off anymore. Cause they really do.

Gary (14:29.495)
sure.

Gary (14:36.733)
Okay, is that better?

Gary (14:41.247)
Thank you.

Yeah, I turned them off. thought I did. Hold on a second.

Kimberly Snyder (14:49.038)
They really do make a, you know, are distracting. We have to edit each one out and it could be in the middle of the word. So we’d have to cut the whole sentence out.

Gary (14:57.961)
Right, okay. All right, that shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t go off anymore.

Kimberly Snyder (15:02.56)
Okay, yeah, and then we’ll just like, you know, just keep it really conversational instead of like the long stories. Okay. Just back and forth. Okay. So going back to the small things done with great love, really, yesterday I was at the chess tournament and I was rereading the Dow and he was talking about that famous line we all know, you know, the journey of a thousand steps starts with, you know, one foot in front of the next. And I think that’s a really big lesson with, you know, this St. Teresa because

Gary (15:10.143)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it.

Kimberly Snyder (15:32.868)
We don’t have to be these, know, sometimes we think our purpose is so big and lofty and like my job isn’t important or how am going to make a difference in the world? But it’s just these moments that create these reverberations in our family, in our circle, in our kids’ school, at our work. It’s just these moments, but it really does add up to the big things. So I know my self-care, sometimes I’m focused on these big goals, but you get to the big goals by the small moments.

Gary (15:58.431)
Absolutely. I mean, I think looking at it from, you know, physical fitness, right? It’s the more that we can, like, if you go to a gym, you know, you start off and you haven’t been there for a while, you start off slow, right? And then you have to build up. So over time with consistency, little bits of exercises, you know, add up to increase strength and to increase, you know, endurance. And we know that once the physical kind of kicks in,

Kimberly Snyder (16:13.763)
Yes.

Gary (16:25.339)
It changes the mental, changes the emotional and has impacts there. yeah, and just in terms of, like doing like little things, just trying to, at least once a day, trying to raise somebody up, trying to give someone encouragement and try to make, I really do try to make that something I do every day, whether it’s a stranger or a friend. Sometimes I’ll just pull out my phone and just text someone I’m like, and go through the list and like, who could need encouragement today?

Kimberly Snyder (16:34.179)
Yeah.

Gary (16:53.119)
and say, hey, and just reach out, check in with them, and maybe share something, a quote or an image or something. Just those small things make a lot of difference.

Kimberly Snyder (16:53.732)
Wow.

Kimberly Snyder (17:04.888)
Beautiful. I love that practice, Gare. And it’s something we can all do. in a moment when we’re waiting in line at Target or, you know, waiting at the gas station or whatever, these are things that we can redirect versus, you know, scrolling that just kind of comes and goes. But speaking of St. Teresa, there’s the other St. Teresa of Avila. Yes. I just also want to say, Gare, that some of the illustrations in the book are so beautiful.

I had a friend at the house and she was there when the book came and it was in the kitchen and she saw it and she immediately bought it for her boyfriend and they love the book. It’s great gift, I just want to say that as well, for yourself or others because this is the type of book that you can go through and just read the few paragraphs on one scene at a time and digest it and learn because sometimes we get these big books and we think how am I possibly going to get through this?

Gary (17:34.514)
Thanks.

Kimberly Snyder (18:02.744)
So I had been drawn to St. Teresa because I was reading all these stories of the other St. Teresa, know, she was called the Bengali Teresa, you know, some accounts because she spoke Bengali so well. So anyways, I went to this and I just want to read this paragraph, Garen, I want to talk about it. She had these moments. Teresa described these experiences as moments of intense joy or spiritual intoxication. One of the best known spiritual associate.

spiritual experiences associated with Teresa is the trans-verberation of her heart. It happened in 1559 when during prayers, Teresa received a powerful vision in which an angel appeared before her. The heavenly messenger held a fiery golden spear and pierced her heart, causing intense spiritual pain and ecstatic feelings of love.

Sorry.

Gary (18:57.087)
One of the most, yeah, I mean, it is essentially what you’ve talked about in The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, this amazing heart experience that comes through, it comes through a certain level of surrender. many people may have seen this image. There’s an artist, Bernini, it’s in Rome. There’s a sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila.

experiencing this intense rapture. And you could see it in her face in the sculpture while the angel is plunging this sword in there. And we have talked in the past that sometimes that these experiences, these spiritual experiences, they’re not necessarily joyful per se, they can be really intense. you know, she was very close to St. John of the Cross, right? And St. John of the Cross wrote about the dark night of the soul. And so

Kimberly Snyder (19:54.625)
Mmm.

Gary (19:55.987)
The Dark Knight of the Soul and Teresa is also very, very well connected. One through her relationship with John of the Cross, who was again another sacred kind of like a holy guy who was a writer, an artist, but someone of a deep spiritual intellect and someone who was also a religious figure. And he was the one who really wrote these poems to become the Dark Knight of the Soul. He was very, very close to Teresa.

And so they exchange these experiences. You can call them mystical experiences, but they’re just deeply spiritual experiences of a change in consciousness.

Kimberly Snyder (20:37.454)
Well, know, Gare, as you’re describing it, and you sent me the Dark Night of the Soul book, when I was going through a Dark Night of the Soul period, and then you talk about this piercing of the heart. You know, to me, I kind of think of it as an ego death, and I think of it in yogic terms, which is attachment versus non-attachment, surrender, non-surrender, however we like to think of it. So these dark moments where it’s like, whoa, I put so much of my identity in this thing, and that’s not it, or…

I’m just feeling sort of lost out here. you know, I’ve gone through several of these periods and you’ve always been there for me. And I’m just trying to figure out life. And I think many of us can relate. And in a way, it’s almost like this cracking of the armor around the heart, this rigidity, the mind gets so rigid and this piercing of the heart. You know, it could happen at any time. It can be sort of like this built up, you everybody’s stages. you know, journey is so different. It could be a build up or.

I know for me too, Garen, I think for you, we’ve had these moments of sort of like, wow, like big realizations and almost quantum leaps and shedding more from the heart. Can you speak a little bit about any dark night of the soul or heart moments? This brings to life.

Gary (21:50.579)
Yeah, yeah, mean, so many. the, know, I always wondered like if you could put like an electrode on a seed, right, and plant it in the ground, you know, and you could somehow chart or understand it’s whatever it was going through emotionally, it would be amazing, right? Because you take a seed, you plant it into the ground, there’s worms, it’s dark, it’s dirty, it gets soaked through water, right? All of a sudden there’s these weird heat changes, it’s going cold and it’s hot.

Kimberly Snyder (22:07.94)
Hmm.

Gary (22:19.625)
But then over time, and then at a certain point, like the seed cracks open. And that’s gotta be super painful for the seed. Right, but then all of a sudden new growth comes out of where you were cracked or where the seed cracked. And then all of a sudden it starts to grow up. And so there’ve been many moments. I mean, most recently, I’m still going through kind of a dark night of the soul because my mom passed recently back in November and in trying to understand the world without her in it.

Kimberly Snyder (22:39.788)
Yeah

Gary (22:46.815)
We know when we lose parents or we lose people who are very, very close to us, it leaves a void. And the world looks especially mother. mean, because you have the, you’ve come out of another person, right? I mean, she carried you around for nine months. that person that you were the most connected to when that person passes, really, really, it’s so hard and it’s really hard to even describe.

Kimberly Snyder (22:53.738)
Mother especially.

Kimberly Snyder (23:12.033)
So hard.

Gary (23:15.549)
So right now, just trying to maneuver through the dark night of the soul and the dark night really signifying this change, right? And this, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to go through the dark night of the soul. In many ways, when you come out the other side, you’re changed and normally you’re changed for the better.

And we’ve experienced it ourselves. mean, just kind of like, I know you and I, without going into great detail, have had conversations where it’s just all of a sudden, you’re forced to encounter yourself and you’re forced to encounter your weaknesses and things that have happened in the past. And it’s sad. It can be really, really sad, but there’s something transformative about it as well.

Kimberly Snyder (24:01.636)
Sometimes I cry when you don’t expect to cry. Sometimes I can talk about my mom’s passing and I don’t cry. I think that’s the way the heart is. It’s not predictable. You can’t hold it in a box like the mind. One thing for me, Gara, I was just thinking about when my mom passed. So complicated, right? Because I’m happy for her soul to go on. But then I also think about how much she sacrificed.

Gary (24:01.887)
Yeah

Gary (24:07.323)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (24:29.592)
for me and how hard she worked. And she came out of poverty in the Philippines and her life had so many hard times. And so then there’s this sadness we feel and it’s very human, right? Because we know another level, her soul’s gone somewhere else, but there’s so many feelings when someone passes away.

Gary (24:48.863)
and I’m still feeling it. I’m still trying to work my way through it. the, you know, especially because like my mom had me when she was 16. So she was 16 years old and yeah, she was a baby and she, you know, and I imagine what it must’ve been like to hold me when I was first born. And I go through different scenarios, whether or not she felt

Kimberly Snyder (24:58.882)
Wow.

Kimberly Snyder (25:02.596)
See the baby.

Gary (25:18.385)
scared, angry, happy, all of these things. And I’ve gone through different imaginative, like just experiences, trying to imagine what my mom must’ve felt. so what I struggle with, and I think a lot of people struggle post death of a loved one is, when she first had me, there may have been a lot of hope in life and maybe hope in me. And then I, you know,

Kimberly Snyder (25:48.58)
You can subscribe.

Gary (25:48.593)
I question, did I do enough for her? Was I able to be that hope for her? And I don’t know. And that’s been the toughest thing. I think we all kind of like when someone passes, have you done enough for that person? And my mom suffered a lot, went through a bad divorce, just, by the time that she was 26, had five kids. And to like, it’s just, she…

She had a rough life, so just trying to understand that. But I think the dark nine of the soul is kind of a gift. It’s a spiritual gift that helps us to kind of maneuver these things. They’re intense, but the fact that you’re going through it more often than not means when you get to the other side, there’s something beautiful to be found.

Kimberly Snyder (26:38.306)
You know, one of the things that I was surprised about when I was reading your book was again back to Saint Teresa. I bring her up so much because she’s so alive in our household that but you know, the one that moved to India because we read her book all the time or a comic book on her life. And you right here that actually came out, I don’t know, like posthumously that or maybe when she was alive, how much darkness she really felt.

Gary (26:50.591)
All right.

Kimberly Snyder (27:04.088)
When we think of Mother Teresa, we think, you know, she worked with lepers. She started all these clinics. Like she was amazing. But can you speak a little bit, Gary, because I think for many of us to say, wow, she struggled too, because a lot of us feel darkness and lack of hope or fear. What do you think her life was really like? Do you think day to day she was really struggling?

Gary (27:28.051)
Yeah, she was a complex individual and you know, but in but a human being and the thing that I think shocked a lot of people. So, you know, I started working in spiritual publishing, religious publishing around 2008. And so I moved over to the publishing house that published her book, Come Be My Light. So I didn’t get to work on it. Right. But that was a big deal when it came out, because that was one of the first books like my new boss gave me said, read this. And so

Kimberly Snyder (27:47.874)
Gary (27:56.733)
You know, you read it and you see this person who becomes this icon, right? Kind of like a Princess Diana and someone who is just, she’s iconic. People, they see her face, they know her name, they have a general idea that she’s someone who’s helping people. But essentially when she decided that she was going to start working with the poor, it’s as if, and she was a deeply spiritual kid, like really like connected to God. But as soon as she decided that she was going to work with the poor, it’s as if.

Kimberly Snyder (28:00.324)
Yeah.

Gary (28:26.803)
the spigot of water or the faucet had been turned off and her connection to God just shriveled up. So you’re talking about 40 plus years where she felt completely, no, my friend. And now there’s ways that we can like look into this, but no, for 40 plus years, she struggled and struggled daily with her faith and felt like she was in a constant state of

Kimberly Snyder (28:34.264)
Really?

Kimberly Snyder (28:38.252)
What? I thought you were gonna say it opened up.

Kimberly Snyder (28:46.051)
Yeah.

Gary (28:57.215)
of experience in the Dark Knight of the Soul. And you could kind of understand, mean, you know, we can’t even imagine here in the West, like the poverty that she may have seen in India, you know, and you’ve been on your travel. Yeah, especially during that time. So, and things have changed slightly here in the world right now, but back, I mean, think about like in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, you know, there are no hospitals, people are just dying on the street. And she sees this

Kimberly Snyder (28:59.926)
Really?

Kimberly Snyder (29:06.816)
it was really at that time. Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (29:22.745)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (29:26.2)
Day in and day out.

Gary (29:27.283)
day in and day out. so, you know, and she’s asking, through her prayer life, she’s asking for understanding, but it’s really, really tough when you start seeing these things to kind of understand it. So here’s a woman, but that’s it. I mean, her faith kept her going, right? So she was able to kind of like pray. She was able to embrace these doubts. And I think the thing that many people who try to lead a spiritual life or religious life, they think, I have doubts, so I can, you know, I’m not a spiritual person, but that’s not it. I mean, if you look at some of the great

Kimberly Snyder (29:38.852)
Keep going.

Gary (29:57.247)
One of the reasons why I wanted to write this book was to show kind of the human foibles of these people who we kind of raised and put on a pedestal, but they had their doubts. Sometimes they turned away from God. Sometimes they didn’t have a prayer life. They didn’t have a spirituality. They felt completely abandoned. But there is something about maintaining connection through prayer, through meditation, through acts.

you know, just doing kind works. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I think from Mother Teresa, you know, I think, you know, and to bring up Princess Diana, I think, you know, here is an opportunity for her to kind of, you know, she’s experiencing and seeing, you know, on the ground, all the travesties that are going on and just in terms of poverty and how bad poverty is. And so, but she was able to become friends with Princess Diana and she and Princess Diana would kind of go on these tours.

Kimberly Snyder (30:26.402)
us an example,

Kimberly Snyder (30:55.417)
Right?

Gary (30:55.549)
where they kind of spoke together, And that ability to kind of be, to connect herself to someone of that caliber really raised awareness, right? And so, you know, so she used, so she was really smart. She was like, hey, you know what? If I can connect myself to certain types of celebrities or certain diplomats, whether it’s Ronald Reagan or states of, or like Mikhail Gorbachev, then I can raise the awareness

and then we could get more funds to help more and more people. So I think, you know, she was smart, but I think through prayer, these things opened up for her, right? I mean, she’s a little nun that’s living in India, essentially in a remote part of India, but somehow she’s able to make connections to world leaders and to Princess Diana. And all of these people come out and it’s through that raising of awareness that more and more people, you know, were able to kind of give money or were able to kind of step in.

Kimberly Snyder (31:26.979)
Yeah.

Gary (31:53.567)
and help. And she was tough. mean, so she really used her platform to, you know, to really kind of push people like Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev to really take action to help, you know? So, I mean, it was just, it’s part of its perseverance. Part of it is her remaining dedicated and just saying, hey, you know what? I’ve made this decision. Even though I don’t understand God, I’m going to pray to you every day and I’m just going to work through it.

Kimberly Snyder (32:05.348)
with help.

Kimberly Snyder (32:20.834)
You know what’s interesting, Gar, is the human mind, again, back to, you know, bigger, lesser, you know, more impact, less impact. That’s how we, the mind, tries to say, well, know, St. Teresa reached all these world leaders. It’s amazing. And it was amazing. But then here in your book, there’s some of these saints, their vibration, their energy, their love, their prayers for the world were so big, and yet many people haven’t heard of them. Maybe they lived in their little cave or their monastery. Can you give an example?

of more of a hermit like Saint who, you we read about now and obviously there’s research and you did this incredible writing in the book, but Arne is like grandiose, right? Because from the heart’s perspective, it doesn’t make, you know, we’re all equal. Yogananda says all hearts are equal. We just try to move towards more of that transparency where God’s light can shine through.

Gary (33:12.329)
Yeah, so there was, well, there’s a few. There was St. Rose of Lima and Martin Perez, right? And so they really kind of like worked together in South America to really just, again, try to alleviate poverty. I mean, they have schools named after them and the hospital sometimes, but the fact is they’re not as well known as St. Francis, but these are just people who kind of grew up in poverty and were able to, but there was something.

I don’t want to say that there was something special about them, but there must have been something special for them to be able to say, hey, you know what? I want to work toward helping and I want to be able to help. And for them to have that kind of consciousness to kind of work beyond, you know, and we can get caught up in our day to day, but to be able to work beyond and say, hey, you know what? There are people here that need help and I’m going to do that. And so there are countless, mean, there’s 10,000, technically 10,000 saints like in the Catholic church and probably, but

Kimberly Snyder (34:05.431)
Really?

Gary (34:06.207)
Well, I mean, there’s actually billions, right? Because each and every one of us is considered a saint because we’re sacred, right? But the capital S saints is more than 10,000. And so, you know, have people who are the patron saint of bell makers or the patron saint of butchers, know, butchers and botanists. And so the book does try to like give you that. It tries to show you.

Kimberly Snyder (34:11.821)
Yes.

Gary (34:31.743)
So if you’re really interested in flowers, like who is the patron saint of flowers?

Kimberly Snyder (34:37.112)
How did you narrow it down, Gare? mean, it’s you know, it’s your process. And who included? Yeah.

Gary (34:41.225)
in terms of like who do like, yeah. how did I do this? Really? Just a lot of this were saints that I either knew a little bit about or was really interested about. And then just a lot of research to try and kind of like narrow it down. So I tried to do a really good mix of popular saints, not so popular saints, a lot of women, a lot of multicultural folks, you know, from Asia and from Africa and South America. So to balance it out, because there are a lot of.

folks like St. Francis or St. Anthony, they get a lot of attention a lot of times, you know, so to try and kind of like shed the light on some of the lesser known saints as well.

Kimberly Snyder (35:12.813)
Bye!

Kimberly Snyder (35:19.556)
Let’s talk about angels for a minute, because it’s saints and angels, right? There’s this angel part. And I grew up, my mother was very into angels. I think it depends on our family and our culture. then with some traditions, there’s this idea of just having guides around you. And so you talk about this idea of guardian angels and some of the bigger, the archangels. So is it the…

Gary (35:21.31)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (35:46.36)
you know, some of this is personal gear and there’s different ideas with the church, but is there really this, you know, is it spelled out? We all have guardian angels personal to each one of us.

Gary (35:56.403)
Yeah, so that goes back, it goes back even before I believe the Judeo-Christian tradition, this idea that you had a kind of a spiritual being that was attached to you. And so Greeks and Romans and Egyptians believed in something essentially called a daemon, right? We get daemon from it later on, but daemon was this kind of spiritual being within us. Like Carl Jung talks a lot about his daemon, which kind of helps him.

Kimberly Snyder (36:24.749)
Right.

Gary (36:26.047)
create the body of work that he had. But the belief is that we have a guardian angel that’s with us. kind of a spiritual, yeah, a spiritual guide that just helps you along the way. And there are different orders of angels. And again, this is kind of goes back to, it’s in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but a lot of this also is like picked up from like just Middle Eastern or yeah, the Mideast, the religions of the Mideast.

But again, this kind of like hierarchy of angels that each are responsible for certain things, right? So the seraphim, which is the highest order, those angels praise God, right? And then you have like regular angels that are out and about kind of helping you spiritually during the day. And one of the most popular is St. Michael, right? And St. Michael is the one who is kind of defends us and protects us. And so,

Kimberly Snyder (37:19.126)
Is that the same McGarra’s Archangel, Michael? Okay.

Gary (37:21.875)
Yes, yeah, so Archangel Michael and the, and so, yeah, so you have, can call on these different angels in order for different things, right? Michael’s really the one for protection. If you need help in like communication, it might be you call on the angel Gabriel, right? Who is the angel who tells Mary that she’s going to give birth to Jesus, right? So through the Annunciation, he’s kind of the angel of communication.

So if you need to be able to kind of like communicate better or need help and understanding, go to Gabriel, right? Because Gabriel can help with these spiritual realities and help you spiritually. So I love angels. Angels have been a big part of my life. I grew up thinking about my guardian angel. And every time I just kind of, something misses my head, like I almost hit my head the other day, like with a fraction, like just a tiny fraction. I was like,

Kimberly Snyder (38:01.229)
Yeah.

Gary (38:14.707)
Thank you, Guardian Angel, for that because, yeah, it wouldn’t have been really pretty if I had walked into that wall.

Kimberly Snyder (38:21.23)
Do you think they like being acknowledged?

Gary (38:24.871)
absolutely. Right. I think, yeah, so I would definitely, you can develop and cultivate a relationship with your guardian angel and, really, you know, it’s an opportunity for you to ask for guidance and, think of it as a spiritual friend. Like if I have a question, Kimberly, I’ll come to you a lot of times. I’ll be like, Kimberly, what do I do here? and, know, but you can go directly to your angel, right? And you might not necessarily get.

Kimberly Snyder (38:42.691)
Right.

Gary (38:54.483)
Most people don’t all of a sudden get a phone call or have this flash of insight. But I think the more and more that you embody this relationship with your angel, with your guardian angel, the more over time all of a sudden you’re starting to make decisions that maybe you, that just are good decisions. And so I think, spiritually speaking, angels help us to make good decisions. They’re messengers.

Kimberly Snyder (39:17.348)
Do you think, are they giving the pure message from God?

Gary (39:22.113)
sure. Yeah. So I mean, so there are reflections of God. And so essentially the angel will reflect to you, you know, the most pure, the most pure messaging. That being said, our capability of accepting that or receiving that can be a little bit off, right? And so a lot of times it’s just the, you know, our…

Kimberly Snyder (39:40.857)
Right.

Gary (39:49.224)
We might have faulty wiring, right? And the faulty wiring throws us off. But yeah, but the message is pretty clear.

Kimberly Snyder (39:56.516)
It was interesting. I was rereading the Bhagavad Gita for how many times I read Yogananda’s commentary and translation. And there’s this section about the devas, which translates in Sanskrit to the shining ones. It also translates to this idea of angels. So it’s very much written about in Hinduism and ancient India as well. you know, it’s so beautiful, again, just to see the intersection across these different faiths and

Gary (40:09.756)
the divine ones.

Kimberly Snyder (40:25.924)
I mean, there’s just this whole other world that we don’t see. And one thing you and I have talked about Gare. So I think, you know, any people can write different things, you can do research, but there’s something really special in that, you know, your mother was a mystic and you can also see things. And we’ve talked about this before, you know, whether you call it clairvoyant or psychic or all these trends, you know, these words that are out there, but you’re definitely

channeling energies, Gare. You’ve seen things in me. You’ve given me messages. You’ve given me guidance. And I’m sure when you were writing this book, you were tapping into different energies.

Gary (41:08.563)
Yeah, I didn’t want to write this book in the beginning because I didn’t because one, I was going to work on your book and just having a day job too. I kept, the publisher kept coming back to me and saying, please write this, please write this. can’t. And at one point it’s like, we can’t find anybody else to write this. And I said, I can’t do it. Well, one of the reasons why I ended up deciding to do it, cause it was a massive undertaking was that I was going to be guided by all these saints and angels, you know.

Kimberly Snyder (41:36.548)
Hmm

Gary (41:37.085)
And someone had said that to me. It’s not something I came to on my own, but someone said to me like, you know what, man, go for it because you know what, you’ll be guided. And I really did feel like I was guided during this period. Not that it wasn’t tough, not that it wasn’t difficult. It was really difficult. A lot of times I was cursing myself for being, how could you be this dumb? You have so much to do. This is taking a lot of time. It means early mornings. It means joining the 5 a.m. club so that you’re up early every day. You’re not getting a lot of sleep and

Kimberly Snyder (41:46.788)
Wow.

Gary (42:05.533)
But I really did, especially at certain points. Funny, there’s three Teresas that we’ve talked about and that’s Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, and then Teresa of Lusue. And they’re all, back to back to back in the book. But when I was writing about them, I really did feel guided by the three Teresas. I felt like they were these three spiritual ladies who were like, you’re gonna do it, keep going, keep going.

Kimberly Snyder (42:28.078)
What are some male saints that you feel close to or they have stories where they wrote about the heart or interesting stories we might not know until we read your book, of course.

Gary (42:30.825)
you

Gary (42:35.156)
Right.

Gary (42:39.357)
Yeah, you know, definitely John of the Cross because of the Dark Knight of the Soul and something we’ve talked about in the past. I love Saint Francis because he is a he’s such a well-known saint. But, the thing is, is that he came from a really well-to-do family and he was a soldier and he has like kind of a little bit of a spiritual experience when he’s captured during kind of a skirmish. But eventually, like he encounters this leper. Right. And.

And at first he’s disgusted, but then he kind of reaches out and touches the leper and then the leper disappears and he realizes I’ve had a God experience. And so then all of a sudden he’s like, you know what, the material stuff, I don’t want it anymore. And so, which he ends up having big confrontations with his dad. You’re like, as tradition holds, he strips naked in front of the bishop, in front of his father to say, I don’t want anything earthly.

Kimberly Snyder (43:19.35)
Bye.

Gary (43:36.979)
and I’m gonna go off and I’m going to live a life of prayer and service. And so he does. So something very, very, the more you learn about him and his sacrifice, but also he sounds crazy a lot of times too. mean, he’s just, he’s turned away so much, but I mean, he creates the nativity scene. So we’re in Christmas time right now. So if you have a crash in your house or you have a little nativity,

It was St. Francis who came up with that. Like he was the first one to create these like little figures and put them together and do that. But also this love of the environment, this love of nature, this love of animals. He’s a really like fun one. And then St. Ignatius of Loyola, who’s essentially my patron saint. And so he founded the Jesuits, but his basic idea was find God in everything. So, and he was…

Kimberly Snyder (44:30.285)
Mmm.

Gary (44:32.487)
as much as he was Catholic, as much as he founds Jesuits, he was very non-denominational. it was really, do we find God in the earth? How do we find God in the food that we eat? How do we find God in the environment and the people around us? How do we find God in difficult times? How do we find God in the body and the heart and in the mind? And that constant asking of where is God in this has really has been transformational for me my whole entire life.

Kimberly Snyder (45:01.668)
Did some of these saints come into faith, I imagine some of them, much later? Some of them already had families or most of these saints from their early years oriented towards a life of celibacy and full God focus.

Gary (45:18.783)
Yeah, so I would say, at least in the book, I’d say it’s probably about like 50, 50, maybe 60, 40 that people start off. I mean, essentially, they start off growing up in kind of a religious family and then they kind of there’s an outgrowth. But there are plenty of people that come later in life. I’m trying to think of like one right now that comes to mind.

Kimberly Snyder (45:25.784)
Kimberly Snyder (45:40.036)
Some later in life care and maybe after they, you know, this word sinned or they like, you know, they did bad things or they stole things or, you know, lied. And yet, you know, this idea, think, you know, we live in cancel culture right now. It’s condemning people so strongly versus we’re human and we need to grow. And of course, sometimes there’s reparations, apologies, things that need to be addressed. But this really strong condemning energy.

Gary (45:54.661)
Absolutely.

Kimberly Snyder (46:09.636)
It’d be so damaging.

Gary (46:11.251)
Yeah. And I think the whole idea of like cancel culture really like takes out, really tries to eliminate this whole idea of forgiveness, which is at the core of all of like the major religions, which is like forgive, right? And so, you know, when people say, Hey, we live in a Christian country or something like that. And I’m like, well, not based on like, you know, the lack of like forgiveness, you know, yeah, because that’s not the way it is, but this kind of elimination of forgiveness. And, and I think.

Kimberly Snyder (46:19.957)
I know!

Yes! Yes!

Kimberly Snyder (46:32.792)
ideals of Jesus.

Gary (46:40.735)
That’s at the heart of all the saints. It’s at the heart of the angels. And you see, like when you can’t forgive, right? That’s where it leads to demons, right? There’s kind of like, because forgiveness is where you channel God, right? And so there’s a story that Lucifer really couldn’t forgive God for creating mankind or humankind, right? And so, and because of that, he plunges into hell.

Kimberly Snyder (46:48.365)
Yeah.

WHAAAT

Gary (47:09.107)
And there’s this separation because he was not able to accept what God wanted. So there’s this, and then John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost, he kind of turns Lucifer into this anti-hero, this guy who loved Lucifer, was spirit, this angel that loved God so much, but feels rejected because he chooses human beings over the angels. And so not being able to forgive,

Uh-huh, really kind of like that power of forgiveness, which can be really, really difficult. And I’m not saying it’s easy because it’s not, but when we kind of shut that energy off, yeah, we’re going down dark places. It’s not good for us. It’s not good for us as individuals, not good for us in the country or in the world. Bad.

Kimberly Snyder (47:56.004)
I’m laughing, Kara, because you were helping me with this book and in the devoted heart section, there’s this practice on forgiveness, which is from the heart, not from the mind. And when we started writing the book, I instantly thought of this situation where someone had shared some information about my husband and I, that we didn’t want to share yet and sort of got back. And then I said to Kara, I was like…

Well, I was like, you know, just it was like a partway forgiveness and this person’s name would come up. I was like, no, I’ve forgiven them, but I still had this resistance range and she’s like a relative. So it was like, and I said to you, Gar, can I write in here like something like, and you’re like, Kimberly, like, no, I’m still like trying to get it in. And we know.

when we’ve really forgiven and it was like this holding on, it can feel so strong. No, she really shouldn’t have done this. It goes back to right or wrong from the mind. And then at a certain point by the end of the book, I really did say, you know, cause there was this event coming up, this family that where I was gonna see her and it was all taking place while I was writing the book. And I was like, no, I have to let this go. And so the truth is I have, but the truth is also Gare, cause either part in the book where

talk about doesn’t mean you get trampled upon. I’m not going to share private information with this person. I see what this person is capable of or where she is, but it also doesn’t mean that we need to hold these hard blocks, which really do affect us.

Gary (49:23.549)
Right. Absolutely. And I remember that moment because we because it was funny. the but yes, I mean, look, when we stop the flow, right of of spiritual of just this, our true spiritual nature, that’s where all of a sudden, like spiritual plaques build up. It’s kind of, you know, we know that when physical plaques build up in the heart can lead to a heart attack.

but we can really go through these kind of like spiritual heart attacks too, when we stop the flow. And part of it is just acceptance. Things have happened, you know, I’m not saying forgiveness is easy. It’s really tough. plenty of people in my life that I haven’t been able to, that it took a long time to get to a place of forgiveness. You know, I kind of was raised and, you know, I was kind of abused when I was growing up and it took me a while to get to that place where I was able to kind of like let it go.

Kimberly Snyder (49:54.83)
Yeah.

Gary (50:20.265)
To this day, I’ve let it go and I really think that being able to do so has opened up so much for me in my life to be able to experience the things that I’ve experienced, to work with great people like yourself, to just have that open channel. Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect because not at all, because there’s plenty of times where I get grouchy or I feel I want to be vindictive. And there are these kind of feelings that sprout up, but you know.

It’s, they’re not good for us. I mean, that’s what it comes right down to. You know, there are some things that are just aren’t good for us and not cultivating forgiveness is not good for us. and it takes work, but when we can do it, things open up.

Kimberly Snyder (50:58.702)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (51:03.396)
This idea of things open up, right? Everyone comes as a messenger of God and everyone’s in a form, a different form of God is how I try to really see it. Especially when people annoy me sometimes or they’re more abrasive. But we’ve been talking about this all along, Gare, like when Mother Teresa, she’s struggling, there’s this surrender, the surrender. And I can’t help but think about the story of Mother Mary and how…

Gary (51:15.313)
It’s tough.

Kimberly Snyder (51:27.908)
She was like, okay, know, Archangel Gabriel said a child’s coming. And the fear, she must’ve thought, well, people will think I had a child out of wedlock. What are people gonna think? But she just accepted it. And there was this, you the virgin conception. There was this child that was formed. And sometimes it makes me, I think about that story in terms of manifesting things when we really have this faith. And sometimes things don’t work out exactly like we want, right? The mind wants,

this project to work or this to happen. With these saints and these stories, Gare, can you talk a little bit about merging with God’s will, manifesting how sometimes it’s different than our human will, but when things don’t work out, when they work out great, when they don’t work out, still keep this sort of, or these saints keep this sort of faith going.

Gary (52:20.169)
Yeah, mean, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially because we’re coming up to Christmas, but I’ve never really thought of it in this way, which is, you know, when the angel comes to Mary and says, hey, you’re going to be the mother of Jesus, she essentially has an unexpected pregnancy, right? And so, I mean, and so many people, I’m assuming, even though my mom has not told me this, I have to say that because she was 16, I was an unexpected pregnancy, right?

Kimberly Snyder (52:24.729)
Right?

Kimberly Snyder (52:35.839)
You

Gary (52:48.871)
And that is terrifying. But I think the message from this is that when you’re terrified, when things are scary, when all of a sudden life hits you with something unexpected, maybe what we should do is to accept it. And I think a lot of the pain that comes from, and I think the saints would say, a lot of the pain comes from non-acceptance.

Kimberly Snyder (53:10.766)
Right?

Kimberly Snyder (53:15.107)
Yes.

Gary (53:15.293)
Right? And so we live a life of non-acceptance and we’re like, well, we didn’t want it this way. You know, if I could have, if I could have chosen my mom to live another 20, 30 years, I would have chosen that. I can’t choose that. And so it’s tough, but being able to accept, you know, what happens in life. This is not to say that you’re necessarily happy about it, or like you said, you shouldn’t fight back when things are life threatening to you or putting you in a bad situation.

but this idea of acceptance, whether, hey, this book didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, or, hey, you know what, I didn’t get the home that I wanted to, or the job I wanted to, or I was hoping to have kids, but I can’t have kids, or I wasn’t hoping to have kids and I have kids. But trying to just kind of like live in a place of acceptance. And there was a book that came out years ago called, I’m forgetting the name, but Dan Harris, What? 10 %?

Kimberly Snyder (53:58.258)
And

Kimberly Snyder (54:10.18)
10 % happier. Yes, he came on.

Gary (54:11.485)
Yeah, % happier, right? Right, don’t think you have to, right, you don’t have to make like these crazy decisions, or you don’t have to make like 100 % of the decision overnight. But if you can just do like a little bit, like where you work toward acceptance, I think that’s the thing. The saints, many of these saints lived long lives, right? So they cultivate this idea of like sanctity and holiness and learning because they had a lot of years to do it, right? And so not everybody, there’s lots of young people who’ve like been recognized as saints.

but a lot of people live long lives and that just means a lot of opportunities. And so I don’t think we have to figure all this stuff out overnight, but what are small steps that we can do that allows us to lead to acceptance? And when you can accept the world around you, even though it’s in hell sometimes, even though you look around and you’re like, can’t believe what a mess the world is. This guy, Anthony DeMello would say,

It just is. It is what it is. It’s okay.

Kimberly Snyder (55:09.828)
Well, Gere, so I was talking to you so much when my mom passed away and then when I became a single mom. And I remember that we were writing Perfectly and Perfect together. And I said, you know, should I tell people this? And you were like, Kimberly, this is your reality. Because I had so much shame around this title, Single Mom, like I failed, I can’t keep a family together. In the Philippines, it’s still largely

considered illegal, so Catholic there. And so I was just like, I don’t want this, but this is it. I’m in it. These moments in life, when I realized my mom was gonna pass away, was like, this train is going, whether you want it to go or not.

Gary (55:50.76)
You’re in it.

Gary (56:00.799)
Yeah, and I think if sometimes you have to hop on the train, right, and just say, hey, that this is the way it is. I really do, really like so much of my spiritual journey is kind of learning to be able to accept the moment and accept where I am. No, it might not necessarily be what I wanted, but being able to accept really just, it opens that flow, right? And when you can have…

And I think we’re called to be flowing creatures, right? If your blood isn’t flowing in your body, you’re gonna die, right? And so if your spiritual energy isn’t flowing through you, there’s a certain death that you experienced. And it could be that you just, you don’t care about things. You stop caring about stuff. Now you can be resuscitated, right? Through, again, through practice, talking to people. doesn’t even have to be like in depth spiritual practice, but being able to like talk to the right people, know, put yourself around positive things.

Kimberly Snyder (56:31.971)
Yeah.

Gary (56:55.817)
to really try to get you out of non-acceptance. But yeah, it’s our reality. And when we can accept reality, mean, Michael Singer says this, and I had the great pleasure of working with him, and he wrote The Untethered Soul, and he and I worked on the Surrender Experience. It’s just like, it is, man, it just is. mean, yeah, it’s just, you gotta just be where you are right now, and that’s it. I mean, it doesn’t mean you can’t work toward doing something, but just accept where you are right now. If you wanna change, that’s great.

Kimberly Snyder (56:58.083)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (57:13.838)
That talk was amazing.

Gary (57:25.449)
But even 10 minutes from now or an hour from now or a day from now when you’re trying to change, accept where you are right now. You can always strive for more. But that acceptance is transformative.

Kimberly Snyder (57:38.628)
It’s amazing, Gare, just hearing you and then going back to your amazing book. There’s this theme of acceptance, surrender over and over again. And yet we’re reading about these saints hundreds, sometimes thousands of years later because there was this impact, right? The Saint Teresa do small things with great love. And I know for myself, being a recovering perfectionist, always striving for achievements. Well, I have to get this grade or…

You know, want to make the New York Times bestseller? Let’s make these big goals. And it’s like you get them and it’s like onto the next thing and the monkey mind keeps going and the stress. It really is these moments, our lives. Like this is it. Like right now we’re having this conversation like this moment will never be just like this. It’s like, what is the quality of this moment? How surrendered, how loving, as you put it, Garrett, how open is the spout of love in this moment?

Gary (58:34.025)
Yeah, and I think it’s to really take notice of, know, Eckhart Tolle talks about living in the now, right? he’s right, it’s true. The more that we can focus on where we are right now, but I would even go a step further, and this is probably maybe attachment or not, but what can we do to kind of just appreciate where we are now? Yeah, live in the now, but there’s a certain level, I think there’s something behind us that can appreciate.

Kimberly Snyder (58:56.576)
Yeah. Yes.

Gary (59:01.619)
those moments and the moments with your children because you know what? They changes every day. Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (59:01.635)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (59:06.05)
or even with the flat tire this morning, was like, appreciate, I’m glad we’re on the side of the road and we’re safe. Like, it was so uptick.

Gary (59:12.095)
Right, absolutely. Right, and being able to say thank you. So living from a place of like saying thank you. And that’s one of the prayers that I pray throughout the day, which is just thank you, thank you, thank you. And the other day I was going through, I was doing a meditation. So I teach meditation as well. And we were going and I was teaching the class and I was like, we’re just gonna say thank you for every one of our body parts, right? And so we went through our toes and through our feet and through our legs and our torso and.

Kimberly Snyder (59:21.87)
You’re

Kimberly Snyder (59:32.74)
Wow.

Gary (59:38.269)
you know, arms, legs, fingers, eyes, nose. I mean, you got hundreds of your internal organs, hundreds of things just in your body alone to be thankful for. Even if something’s not working, like the knee’s not good or your kidneys are bad or something like that. And yes, those can be very, very detrimental. But the fact is, is that you have hundreds of other things that are working and being able to live from a place of thankfulness.

Kimberly Snyder (01:00:04.42)
Mmm.

Gary (01:00:05.011)
You know, and thankfulness for your family, thankfulness for your job. Even if the world is in hell and so like topsy-turvy, there’s so many things to like be thankful for. And the mystics, I guess, or the saints, right? They would find things to be thankful for when they were imprisoned, when they were suffering, when they were on the verge of death. And the one thing that we didn’t talk a lot about is that so many of these early saints died, right? And died for their faith, right? But these people went.

being thankful to God to have the ability to do that, to be able to be a person of faith, even if it meant dying for it.

Kimberly Snyder (01:00:46.628)
You know, this appreciation is part of the heart align meditation, which we, you know, wrote about together when you were reading the book, this openness mind says, I blame you, the victim hood, the complaining. It’s so small and it really takes us out of that flow. And it’s really easy to complain. Isn’t it?

Gary (01:01:07.481)
It’s really easy to complain and I do feel sometimes bad for the heart because the heart has to listen to all this garbage all the time, right? You know, and it really is, I think about, you you think about like someone who’s saying the craziest things, then you have this organ, the heart that’s just listening to it all and going, yeah, yeah, okay. Right. And so I do feel a little bad for the heart because the mind can come up with some really wild stuff, but

Kimberly Snyder (01:01:12.728)
you

Gary (01:01:36.187)
Again, coming back to like spiritual practice, know, through just moments of solitude, being able to just have a few moments to yourself, even if it’s just in the bathroom where you just kind of like can be quiet, put your phone away, you don’t have any distractions. You know, when you’re able to kind of get into these moments of solitude, and that’s something that the saints, many of the saints experience, moments of solitude, because you need, we’re distracted all the time, but being able to just have a moment of quiet. The more that you can

Kimberly Snyder (01:02:00.28)
Yeah.

Gary (01:02:06.131)
do that, the more you start hearing, right? Spirit, source, God around you. It’s constantly communicating with you. It’s just a lot of times we can’t hear it because there’s too many conversations going on. And so if you and I were talking back and forth and talking over each other, we wouldn’t understand each other. And so much of what we do through life is this constant chatter, this constant conversation that we’re having in our head. So we can’t hear what the divine has to tell us because…

just too communicative, there’s just too much going on.

Kimberly Snyder (01:02:39.268)
Well, even in busy life, right? You’re really busy, Gare. I’m really busy. Sometimes I pick up my kids from school just in silence. I don’t do a call. I’m not listening to podcasts, no music, just to carve that out. So if you look in all of our lives, there’s these little, like you said, in the bathroom, after the shower. Even when you have kids, even when you have a job, you can still find these little pockets and I do find them really nourishing and you can just keep tuning into the heart and not, when there’s noise all the time, it’s so.

I find life just so much more arduous and tiring.

Gary (01:03:14.621)
Yeah, I mean, it wipes you out. And so as your book talks about heart resonance, being able to kind of fire on all pistons, so everything’s kind of going off at the same time, right? Your brain’s going off at the same time, your heart’s going off, your body is aligned with your emotions. When we’re struggling, because we’re doing so much physically and we’re not doing enough for ourselves spiritually, then all of a sudden we experience these kind of

breakdowns, right? And maybe it’s just, you know, the breakdown is we yell at a kid or, you know, we, I don’t know, get angry at somebody who cuts us off. Yeah, or just, yeah, or just something, you know, all of a sudden, we have these like mini breakdowns, which can over time add up. But, you know, all right, so we’re stuck in traffic. There’s not much you can do about it. Like, don’t, don’t hurt yourself.

Kimberly Snyder (01:03:56.462)
or eat a pile of cookies, right?

Kimberly Snyder (01:04:11.97)
Yeah, exactly.

Gary (01:04:12.559)
you know, the more that we can just accept the position that you’re in. Now, it’s very, very difficult if you’re being attacked, you’re being in a brutal relationship. It’s very, very different. I don’t want to say like it’s not like that doesn’t hold true to, but it’s much more complex on how that how that truth like is applied there. Right. And so obviously get yourself help and all of these things like that. Don’t settle for for anyone abusing you or doing anything like that.

Kimberly Snyder (01:04:23.64)
Great.

Gary (01:04:42.473)
but there’s this idea of being able to just kind of accept where we are just for this one second, this one second, the next second, the next second, and then take the action that you need to take, right? Because if you can accept where you are, okay, I’m drowning, I have to accept this right now, now I take action, right? Instead of, or I’m in a terrible situation, I need to get myself out, I’m accepting this right now, I’m not fighting it, now I can take action. So it allows you to kind of focus and…

Kimberly Snyder (01:04:49.058)
Yeah, and then take the action that’s needed.

Kimberly Snyder (01:04:59.917)
Yeah

Kimberly Snyder (01:05:07.982)
Exactly.

Gary (01:05:11.783)
and essentially fire on all pistons.

Kimberly Snyder (01:05:15.768)
Gare, I could talk to you forever. You are one of my favorite people to speak to on the entire planet and definitely my closest confidant, like I said, from writing, from a creative perspective. Your insights are from a different planet. And I really mean that, I mean, you’re channeling in a way that I have never seen before. And this is why, know, Deepak Chopra will never work on a book without you because you give so much support.

to these writers, we recognize their names, but you are behind that. So I would like to really recommend to everybody, because you’ll get some of that really channeled energy through Gary’s writing. The Saints, Angels and Demons book of practice, I think is even to just read a Saint, not even every day, but you know, couple of weeks, or maybe even just one a week and to focus on the teaching of that Saint. That’s what I’ve been doing, Gare.

I just keep the book around and I think it’s a really beautiful practice. you know, as people come through my house and they see the book, I mean, it’s just so unbelievably gorgeous. It’s such an incredible holiday present for yourself or others. So much heart in this care. So thank you so much for sharing just a tiny, tiny sliver of these hundreds of pages of brilliance.

Gary (01:06:39.263)
Thank you. And you mean so much to me, you know, Kimberly. So thank you. It’s always wonderful talking to you. And I could talk to you for years and years and years.

Kimberly Snyder (01:06:46.596)
I remember we came together, I don’t know if we told this in the beginning, but we met through Radical Beauty because you were a Deepak’s editor and then we came together to write this book. And I remember when you and I met at that coffee shop, that cafe, we just really was like soul friends. We really hit it off. And you’ve just, I learned so much from you, Gare. And you understand.

so much. know, we talk about Buddhism, we talk so much about the Gita, we talk so much about Yogananda, we talk about the Catholic saints, there’s this flow. And you are one of those souls, those very rare souls that are here embodied, but it’s like you’re in between worlds. And, you know, I’m just so grateful that you’re my friend. And I’m just so grateful that everyone can have access to some of that brilliance through this book.

Gary (01:07:16.891)
So, bye.

Gary (01:07:29.341)
lot.

Gary (01:07:37.759)
Thank you.

Kimberly Snyder (01:07:38.612)
once I’ll say it again, saints, angels, and demons, because so much of it, you know, I’m reading it and I’m reading it in a very different way about some of these other people, these saints that I’ve read a lot about, but it’s coming through differently. And I think it’s because you’re really tuning into that. The energy, that heart field, you know, call it the Akashic records, call it whatever you want to say, but there’s this, there’s a field where, you know, the yogis say the Akashic records where everything is stored, right? All knowledge.

Gary (01:07:56.511)
Thank you.

Kimberly Snyder (01:08:08.268)
and you can tap into it and you can kind of go in and pull things down to this earth.

Gary (01:08:13.715)
Yeah. mean, think it’s, you know, Carl, Carl Yuen calls it the collective consciousness, but I think it’s, I think it’s just eternity. You know, I mean, if you, if we’re eternal beings and I do believe that we have souls that go on that, that preceded our existence here and we’ll go on after we’ve passed, then we can tap into that eternity. Right. And so spiritual experiences is, isn’t so much development. It’s, remembering who we really are. So.

Kimberly Snyder (01:08:16.26)
I’m so humble here.

Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (01:08:28.45)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (01:08:42.98)
Mmm.

Gary (01:08:43.647)
Yeah, so I’m just so grateful and thankful, you know, to just spend time with you, Kimberly. So thank you.

Kimberly Snyder (01:08:49.928)
always, Kara. I wish I could talk to you all day every day. But for those of us that were wanting to know more about your work, we didn’t even talk about Meditations at Midnight, which I also love. It’s a very short, wonderful book to keep at your bedside table. Talk about micro shifts. You have so many books. We worked on Chill a Gorilla together. Tell us again where we can learn more about you and your work.

Gary (01:09:14.751)
Sure, just garyjanson.com or just check out my Amazon page at Amazon.

Kimberly Snyder (01:09:19.864)
Amazing, and we will link to this directly on the show notes at mysaloon.com. I’ll also be adding a direct link to the book. Say it again, Saints, Angels and Demons, the A to Z guide to the holy and the damned. What a title, Gary. Thank you so much, Gary, sending you so much love. Love you so much. And everyone, we will be back here Thursday as always for our next Q &A show.

Gary (01:09:33.737)
There you go. Yeah, there you go.

Thank you, Kimberly. Love you so much. Thank you so much.

Kimberly Snyder (01:09:47.502)
Remember that you can submit questions as well on our website, mysalina.com. Sending you so much love and we’ll see you back here soon.

Yeah.