Episode 8 Who is the Healer? With Ronen Divon

[CHRIS McDONALD]

The Holistic Counseling Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Behind the Bite, Full of Shift and Impact Driven Leader, go to www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Welcome to the Holistic Counseling Podcast, where you discover diverse wellness modalities, advice on growing your integrative practice, and grow confidence in being your unique self. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. I'm so glad you're here for the journey.

[CHRIS]

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling podcast. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. I can't wait to share with you today's guest, Ronen Devon, and his knowledge with holistic healing is amazing. I've gone to him for Reiki and let me tell you, he is the real deal. I've gotten so much amazing healing from him. He's been walking his spiritual and holistic paths for well over three decades. Ronen has traveled the world spending time with teachers, masters, healers, and guides. He's gained wisdom that spans multiple traditions. Ronen is a Reiki master, a channeling healer working in mediumship, and a Yoga and Tai Chi instructor. Welcome to the podcast Ronen.

[RONEN DIVON]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[CHRIS]

So glad you could be here. So can you share more about yourself and your work?

[RONEN]

Sure. So I felt called to do this work. Wasn't something I was really planning to get involved with in my earlier career. I was more involved with business development and web stuff.

[CHRIS]

I didn't know that about you.

[RONEN]

Yes. 22 years at big companies.

[CHRIS]

That's something new.

[RONEN]

Yes, New York City, other companies there, and so the employees, I was one of the first companies to do web back in '96 way ahead of the curve. But yes, I had a part of life into spirituality starting with [inaudible 00:01:56], Tai Chi, Chi Kung and the philosophy behind that, and then encountered a guru and became involved in the national for eight years. That [inaudible 00:02:4] so I departed and then ended up getting more involved with Chemonics practice from south America, which helped me to find my path into healing and giving up all the work I was doing before and focusing on healing for the past few years. And it's been both very challenging in a good way, but also the most rewarding work I've ever done.

[CHRIS]

So what made you move over though? Was there some kind of calling you felt, or just felt that draw towards more holistic, I guess healing?

[RONEN]

It was the notion that when I was younger, it was the whole notion of being the next Bill gates, the next Steve Jobs, changing the world and then the realization that first I have to do work on myself. And then it's more individual work. If you want to change the world, change yourself and then help individual people around you. There's no need to go and start a revolution. It's all done in small portions and everything adds up together. And the calling came from my work I was doing in south America with those traditions over there. And it was very strong. When I was trying to resist it, things did not go well for me on the business side. And I, with him, with the art of surrendering to the calling and basically trust and do a leap of faith and start from scratch in this area. And sure enough, when I started things started to move very quickly in a very upward direction for me. So whenever I followed the calling or the instructions or the guides, whatever you wish to call it, the universe provides very positive feedback. So ---

[CHRIS]

That's lovely. So you work with guides, your spiritual guides as well to help you?

[RONEN]

Yes, we believe. So, I'm following, I don't follow religion. I follow, I'm actually sort of anti religious and because I believe the difference between faith and religion is that religion tries to mold you into a path of somebody else, be the Buddha, Jesus, Muhamad, Moses, while faith is a direct connection between you and what is divine for you. And even those deities I mentioned had their own direct experience and that transformed into a religion. But at the beginning of the journey, it was more faith. And so that's the direction I'm following. And in terms of practices, I practice something that's called spiritism, which is not a religion. It's more an approach. And in spirit is, back to your original question, there's a belief that we have a soul family and when we are spirits, souls occupying a human body or physical body, can be an animal as well, decide to come back to this physical world to gain experience, knowledge, learning because in the astral plane where the spirits reside not much can be changed.

There's no time and space. So you have to come back into the physical world to go through those experiences, to at least, for some family, join and accompany us in these journeys with the sides. One is your guardian angel and the other one is your mediumship mentor. So we all have them. You just set it up out to access it. And this can be a very quiet voice in your mind, either a vocal voice, like a lecture voice, or just knowing what's right and what's wrong in the specific situation, not what's right and wrong in terms of human though, but in terms of universal. And as you become more attuned to that, and you learn to distinguish between that and what we call multi spirits that are so often take us away from my past, the instruction will appear.

[CHRIS]

I'm glad you said that because I think a lot of people may not be aware of the spiritual-ism that you mentioned. And it made me think too, I'm like, "Wow." So I do get sometimes as to me it's almost like a whisper. I'll hear something about or get an idea like, "Oh, well I should do this with my Holistic Counseling Podcast," or something comes up and I don't know where it comes from, but maybe it is some tuning into spiritual guides.

[RONEN]

It's not likely. You know kids have their imaginary friends. Often that's their guide, but they learn to ignore it because society does accept that. So we shut this down very early on. At least in the west, in the indigenous societies, it's actually being encouraged. So you see indigenous people are much more intuitive, both about feeling and about other things because they learn how to stay with the heart versus to give total command to the mind. Some of the work I do when, we can talk more about healing but part of the healing is also guiding is to allow people to break the programming the society put into them, move from those limiting beliefs and then open up to whatever is their destiny. Many people come to me, even for Reiki and I asked their intentions for Reiki as well and, "The intention is to find my life's purpose, et cetera."

It's there. It just clouded with all kinds of different ideas of what your parents expected you to do, or society expected you to do, or the spouse expected you to do, your kids. And once you can let go of those notions, everything becomes more clear. It's always been there. It's like Michelangelo's famous saying about the sculpture or the buried in the storm. All you need to do is to chisel away what hides that from you.

[CHRIS]

So it's always been there inside?

[RONEN]

Yes, always. And it started from the beginning with one of my kids from a very young age, knew that he wants to be in the world of music and spoke to him. He has a decent voice and he did go to study music at VCU. Right now he decided not to pursue a career as a singer, even though he does sing and perform, but he decided to switch into music therapy. So he found a specific path within the world of music that is very satisfying for him, but he was following his heart in the beginning. And when I was growing up in as well as many in my generation coming from the second World War or that's where, my parents are not that old, the lack of mentality and the fear that you won't have an income and what's going to happen drove many of my generation and following generations to do what is better for them financially, or seem to be more secure financially than what they were actually supposed to do.

And years go by and you feel uncomfortable in what you're doing, but this problem is very deep and then fears settles in and you're stuck in that position. I was lucky in that sense Lucky is not maybe the best, but my father passed away when I was 15, which I'm very sorry for, but he was also a very dominant figure in the decision-making for me and my brother. He directed my older brother to study electronics back in the seventies, when that was just an emerging field, because he knew it's going to be very strong and he was right from the financial perspective, but they still today do nothing that that was my brother's calling. And my middle brother also in a different direction, me pushing in the eighties to study computers, because again, he had a very good foresight to how computers are going to be taking over and back in the eighties it wasn't that clear.

So, but without his influence, it allowed me to follow a different path, which for me at the beginning was filmmaking and brought me to New York from Israel to study that, which is actually my bachelor's. But as life, I moved on this journey, this yo-yo between the seeking of financial security and following what I really wanted to do, which at the time I still didn't know, was very confusing and confusion is what I find a very common element with many people, even in the sixties. It seems they didn't know what they want to do when they grow up. It's a very distinct sort of situation. So you have that much less than indigenous societies because they encourage kids to follow what they want.

I have been doing certain work, shamanical work over the past few years as part of the calling I had and I do this monthly with a group of people that come to sit with me and I give a theme for the weekend. Everybody have their own intention, but also give back an overarching theme. And the last ceremony I did back in late February, the theme was living the dream and as ---

[CHRIS]

I love that.

[RONEN]

Yes, it's really something we say often, but we don't always understand what it means. And as I was sitting there and doing my own work while facilitating the work for others, visions common and voices come. And it's a very specific environment that is very conducive to this than before. I was thinking about the son I mentioned earlier that the went to study music and I realized that my wife and I very suddenly were pushing him to take music therapy as a minor in college because of the concern, knowing that the musicians were already making it. And he ended up actually making nothing in his major and dropping music. And he's coming actually to visit tomorrow and we're going to have lunch with him and I want to make sure that it wasn't us that killed the dream because I started to feel really guilty about it.

I know that he really loves music therapy and he enjoys it very much. So I don't think we did, but I made the decision that weekend to sit with each one of my kids and ask them, "If money and time were not an issue, what would you like to do in your life? And I will be there to support you."

[CHRIS]

It's a great question.

[RONEN]

Yes. And it's not something that's very easy for them even to answer sometimes because of the confusion that goes on, but bring it up as a question. It starts a process. I want to be a writer. I want to be an actor. I want to be a scientist. Whatever that is my role as a parent is not to force my fears and my dreams onto my kids, but to support them, to fulfill whatever their dream they have even if ---

[CHRIS]

Exactly.

[RONEN]

So that's something that came up out to me ---

[CHRIS]

That's what I wonder too, with a lot of people who are interested in holistic treatments and healing, do you think that stops a lot of people from pursuing that?

[RONEN]

Absolutely. Yes. I get that a lot. There is something to be very wary of when it comes to that; is the notion that I'm here to heal the world. And really the first thing anybody that is on this path needs to realize is you have to start work on yourself. Don't go offer to anybody else what you're not willing to do for yourself. Giving advice is very easy. The other thing is what we call, we have a prayer that my teacher has channeled called releasing the savior complex. And it's a beautiful prayer and it talks about where you're coming from when you want to save others. Because more often than not, there was a lot of ego going on there. I found the tough, now let me save you. No, I don't need saving. I need you to do your own work and when I need support I'll approach you.

So that brings me to another point that I find disturbing with people that work in various helping professions, including healing and mental health; is, we have another saying in spiritism, 'it is the way of darkness to act without permission. If it's the way of light, do it on your free will.' That means that I'm not going to be providing advice unless I'm asked to provide advice. And if I have an advice I'm going to ask permission first, "Would you like my advice on this?" And if that other person says no, then no is is a no. But often if you say, "Let me help you. I'll do this for you." That's not free will. That's forcing work on somebody else. And we are coming from a good intention, but it's done in the wrong way. And so I really encourage anybody working in distinct to always bring that to mind, always ask permission before doing something.

Even touching, when I'm doing healing, I always ask permission. "Do I have your permission to touch you? Or do I have the permission to do this and that?" And the answer by the way, I don't always insist on that to people that don't come from spiritism. But the answer is, "yes, I give permission." Not just, yes. It has to be a very specific and dry. And then there is the full understanding that they allow me to do the work I want to do. For example, when I do Reiki, because it's hands-on with women, one of the points is on the heart, on the chest, many hover over the breasts, which is fine. But I ask permission. "Would you give me permission to place my hands on the upper chest, above the breasts? And almost always the answer is yes, but I'm not going to, even a client that comes back. I'm going to ask again and again, because something has changed since the last time I've seen them.

[CHRIS]

That's true. So you do have to look out for that kind of thing and liability issues.

[RONEN]

Yes. That's from the human law perspective, but I'm honoring their freewill. I'm less concerned here with the, yes, there is the MeToo movement and everything you do today is scrutinized much more than it was before. But I still want to make sure that I have the permission to touch them anywhere, basically.

[CHRIS]

What would you say to a holistic provider that wants to add more holistic things to their practice, but they're thinking in their mind that, "I don't think I'll get clients. I won't make money off of this." Is there anything you could say about that?

[RONEN]

So the first month when I started this, I made a whooping hundred bucks for the whole month. And that's where faith came in. Recording was very strong and very clear because again, insights in those ceremonies in South America, I asked at some point to see myself in previous lives. And I've seen myself as a healer in every single life. This was earlier in my journey, about eight to 10 years ago and I just said, very cool. I didn't really make the connection, didn't connect the dots that I also came to do that in this life. I just forgot. So when the message came much louder and clear a few years into this work, before I turned into healing, that was my main concern. "How would I support myself?" I have four kids at the time. They're still home. My wife was just starting own business.

When I moved to North Carolina from New York, I decided not to work with the banks anymore. So I took every penny I had and bought the house for cash and I have no savings. So it was a do or die, so the situation [crosstalk] and I can tell that every month some miracles happened and money came in, not through the work I was doing to support me while I was building my practice, which happened fairly quickly, by the way, I guess, because of the guidance. My work is good. People refer to me now. I'm also very good at Google. So I get a little close from the internet. I mean, my schedule is four months ahead, but it wasn't like coming from the financial cognitive mind. It was more trusting that whatever I need to do, I'll do. So I started with Reiki and some energy work that I learned in South America and then sound healing came and became a portion of my practice.

I'm interested in crystals, but it never really came to me yet as a proxy. So I incorporate a bit of that. I work with certain things from South America that are legal in the US like Kambo or from any sense, which is basically a situation taken from a specific form in South America, which is a venom, a very potent venom that can kill, but when it's applied in the correct way, allows the person to purge and heal. I mean, I healed my thyroid, my hyperthyroid, that was incurable without ---

[CHRIS]

Wow that's amazing.

[RONEN]

So, and this all came from this medicine. So that's a side note, when conventional medicine tells you that there is no other way, they're right. In what they know, there is no other way, but we have medicine, we have acupuncture, we have shamanic medicine. There's so many other things that modern medicine does not acknowledge and that may be providing a solution for a health situation. And I do like to cooperate and collaborate with other people. I have a friend who's an acupuncturist and people that work in other fields and if it's an area that requires a different sort of feeling, including therapists. Maybe the issue is a combination of the energetic field, the spiritual field, but also there's the mind. And the mind is so stocked and mental health can provide a solution. So it's really fine. We have a tool set. What will be the best combination of tools to help the client in that specific situation to come out of it? You know, I mean there's stock therapy, my wife is an art therapist. Some people are not very good in communication via their voice and [crosstalk] maybe the solution. Some people get stuck with the art and then my wife [inaudible 00:17:59]. It's really finding the right venue for the clients. I'm not surprised for me, what's right for the client.

[CHRIS]

So what, in your opinion, so what do you see most often that slows healing down with clients?

[RONEN]

Yes, that's actually the base of this specific episode with the podcast. We are the biggest sabotagers of our own healing. What I'm going to say may upset some people so I apologize in advance if that's the case, but I'm going to explain it. I find that every single situation that we face we created, and it's not resolved until we're ready to go. And I'm talking about kind of dramatic situations like cancer, rape, being shot, all of these things, sexual abuse. And again, that's my belief in spiritism. We created those scenarios before coming into the body, because we wanted to have a certain experience, which in the human body is like unthinkable, but there was a reason why we have to create that sort of very dramatic situation in our life because, I presume you know and probably quite a few people listening know, we grow only to create friction. When everything is very smooth and easy and nice, it's very challenging to make any changes because we're comfortable.

[CHRIS]

Right.

[RONEN]

So for all this to happen, to shake us, like COVID, by the way, is doing that worldwide ---

[CHRIS]

I was going to say that.

[RONEN]

And I think that's about that separately, but we need a storm in our life to shake us so we can see something that we haven't seen before. So sometimes something as dramatic as a heart attack or cancer is what we need to reprioritize what we're doing with our lives. And if we can really understand that, then the issue is going to get resolved. If we do not, it's going to continue. Foolishly, about a year ago, I posted something very briefly about that, that we are responsible for everything that happens in our life on Facebook, which I've not, I haven't done stuff like that since ---

[CHRIS]

Yes, don't do that.

[RONEN]

Yes, no. I have about 4,000 followers and I realized not everybody is open to this. I've got backlash on me, people saying, "Do you think that my stage four cancer is something I invited? Do you think getting short is something I invited? Do you think a girl being raped in India is something that she invited?" And I ended up doing a blog post about it because Facebook is not really allowing for longer discussions explaining the whole thing. Behind me is, a few people understood what I meant. Some are not friends anymore, which is fine because friends come and go. And so it's really understanding that. But the thing is say, take somebody who is a cancer survivor or a sexual abuse survivor. What they find is even though they say they want to heal, there is a benefit for carrying the trauma. Because if I tell anybody I'm a cancer survivor, I get pity. I think they look at me differently and I have excuses why I don't do certain things because I'm a survivor.

[CHRIS]

That makes total sense from a psychological perspective. Because as therapists, we see that a lot too. What am I without this depression or anxiety or trauma? Who am I? Moving on from that, it can be scary.

[RONEN]

It's scary but it also gives us an excuse not to do work.

[CHRIS]

An excuse too, yes.

[RONEN]

And so in our work, my group [inaudible 00:21:17]. I don't know the real St. Francis. I hope that he was what we believe he was. And I do trust that he was, but he didn't leave too much writing behind me. But one of the things he said was 'misery, selfish.' So because when you say, "I'm miserable," then that means that, "Leave me alone. I'm not going to do anything. I need you to do stuff for me." So the advice we give for people in misery is pick up the phone, call somebody that you haven't spoken in a while, and don't talk about yourself." Ask them how they're doing. How can you help them?" The moment you reach out and try to help somebody else, that moment you're no longer miserable because you cannot be miserable and giving at the same time.

[CHRIS]

Absolutely. That's a great treatment for depression.

[RONEN]

Yes. I had that client. She was, I use the door that I don't favor, a survivor of over 20 year marriage to an narcissist. And he dumped her for another woman and she came to me and she was in a very bad place. And besides doing the right thing and other energy work on her, because also do, an energy worker do extractions, that goes into a whole different field of shamanism. And I gave her homework. I told her, "Go volunteer in a home for abused women." It's not an easy, I didn't know much about it, but apparently you have to be screened and ---

[CHRIS]

Yes, oh, it's a process.

[RONEN]

To start that process. Yes, but she did that. And she's now in a very different place because she let go of the misery. But so long as it's ---

[CHRIS]

So she let go of the misery.

[RONEN]

Yes she did.

[RONEN]

She finally found somebody else. She hardly sees me anymore. She just comes from maintenance. But it's really about letting go of the notion that you're survivor. My wife had thyroid cancers years ago and for 13 years or so, she was sticking to the survivor thing. And again, she started to do this work with me and then she let go. She let go of the whole thing and before that, there was traces of the cancer. Even though they took the thyroid out, there are traces of the cells in the body, but very minute and they couldn't really do much about it. When she started to do this work more seriously, it's now zero. It disappeared completely.

[CHRIS]

Amazing. Wow.

[RONEN]

Yes, it's really, I mean, now I have the blood work to show that. So it's letting go of these things, starting with sexual abuse. And I know quite a few women in that area and it's very hard for them to let go of that sort of situation. So abusive parent, it was there to teach you something, maybe more compassion towards others, maybe understanding insecurities. And we also say that sometimes the person that abused you, maybe they, you have used them in a previous life. And this is kind of setting the record. We don't know the big picture. We only know the small portion of our life right now.

[CHRIS]

I like that perspective. So we don't always know the big picture and there could be more to the story.

[RONEN]

Much more. There is a story I read from a guy that does this sort of work in the west coast and he was working with a woman that was really severely depressed and anxiety and all kinds of other issues. And he did work with her as bond medicine and what they discovered, and a lot of that came from her father. Her father was super abusive, sexually and turn out in the way, that the work that they did, that they had a previous life in the second World War a time where she was a Nazi concentration camp guard and he was a Jew and she abused him severity. So they came back to this life to settle score. So he was the father, she was the daughter and he was abusing her. Once she saw that in a vision, she was able to forgive her father and then everything got resolved.

So it's coming to that place where you understand that the person that did that to you is not coming necessarily from where you think you're coming. I went to very long processes over the years, the past few years, when I was doing this work of looking at people that I felt did wrong by me and forgiving them. I didn't necessarily called them and told them, "I forgive you." But with myself, I sat down and I let them go. Even when somebody recently did something that was really upsetting for me and I was very angry at her, I realized that if I'm angry at her and I want to disengage, if I keep on being angry, I'm not disengaging. I have to forgive and then everything is resolved and I can move on to the next chapter in my life. So it starts understanding that everything in the living the dream, a ceremony that I did in the process, the weekend, I offered people to imagine their dream or going towards a dream, like a hot air balloon. They're trying to rise and live the dream. But everything that did not forgive is the heavy sucks that keep them down. So to live your dream first, you have to cut all those things that slow you down from going there. And it can be nothing to do with what your dream is. But if you're not fully forgiving to yourself and others, you cannot rise. That's where we stand.

[CHRIS]

I want to remember that. We cannot rise if we don't let go of those things. And that really does hold people back.

[RONEN]

Yes. And after going you to clean and clean more and clean more. And the more you clean, you find more spots to clean. There's works done in South America and mediumship, they call it the [inaudible 00:26:23] is a white table. So in white table, the metaphor they give is that in the day-to-day lives, we eat over a plain wooden dining table. And if crumbs fall down, you can't really see them too well because they kind of get merged with the surface of the table. But if you put a white table, everything shows. You can't anything. So in that specific work, they put the white table on and they invite darkness in so everything shows. It's a very challenging work, but you can't hide. You see your ego, you see where you were doing things supposedly to help somebody else, but it was to boost your own self-value and validation.

And then you ask yourself, but the work that you do there does not do the work for you. It just shows you where you are and now the question is, what do you want to do about that? In some work, in sometimes medicine, we say that we are like a cup of water that had dirt in it and over the years dirt settles in and you think it's good clean water. But when you do this sort of work and you're stirring up the cup, everything rises. And now the question is, what do you want to do? You want to clean the cup and change your patterns and change your perception, start to remove some limiting beliefs, or do you want to allow the dirt to settle back down? And again, you're going to be on the delusion that everything is okay, but there's going to be some weight at the bottom, that's going to be the depression, the anxiety, the underlying cause for this that's going to continuously bring you down.

So I made a decision at some point that I'm not willing to carry that anymore. And it's not always easy. There's a song we play, it's The Brilliance of the Truth. And there's a line over there that says, those are the sorts of problems. Those are issues to work. It's a very interesting line. So what does that mean? It means that somebody comes to correct you and telling you you're doing it the wrong way. Maybe when you're driving, try to take a right instead of the left and you say back, "No I've been driving like that for 20 years. That's the best way to go." Go ahead. You know, you don't know that on the left side, in our short time, it will save us 20 minutes, but if you want to be proud, then suffer proudly. So the question is, do we want to do the work or do we want to continue to suffer proudly?

[CHRIS]

Sounds like a lot of inner work, to really work on yourself. I mean, all these holistic modalities are awesome, but the client really has to be willing to be their own healer.

[RONEN]

Yes. And that's the major challenge I have, by the way. People come to me, I have very good reviews, thankfully on Google and people come to me, "Oh, I read the reviews and decided to come to see you." And they're under the impression that I'm like a Jesus sort of thing and when I put my hands on them then they're going to be healed the next day.

[CHRIS]

You grew on top of the mountain Ronen.

[RONEN]

Yes. You have to want to heal? I'll facilitate in whatever I can, but you have to do the work. I'm not the healer . I'm just a facilitator. You are the healer. And that, by the way, goes in both directions. I have friends and acquaintances that do healing and they do like the notion that they are the healer and the healer. And that's already like a red flag for me. Nobody's a healer for other people. You can only hear yourself. You can help other people by facilitating some healing modalities, but they have to receive. And it's so interesting, I have a client not too long ago and she had a possession and the moment she came, it was first time clients in the lobby of the office before even doing anything, she was screaming. She was very uncomfortable in my presence and I already went, "Oh oh."

[CHRIS]

You're in trouble.

[RONEN]

And as soon as I put my hands on her, I mean, she was not resting on the table. She was shifting and moving and I had to on the first session read an instruction, which I hardly ever do. I always start to do Reiki, but the spirit that was possessing her for a very long time, and there's a long story behind that, but for privacy, I'm not going to disclose anymore information, recognize that I have the capacity to kick its butt. And it just didn't want to be there. Luckily she stayed and I finished that process. She sees me now on a regular basis until we clear everything that has to be cleared. And it's a very different experience for her once that spirit was gone. But this can happen when we are very young. We can be in an environment with people that are alcoholics, addicted in many different ways, bring their own traumas.

Kids are very susceptive and parents basically pass on the traumas to the kids and then they're stuck with stuff from their parents. And it's very challenging because you think, "What can I do? I didn't do anything." No, you chose to come to a certain lineage. And that's another thing that's very interesting. And conservatism is a question to ask, "Why did you choose to come to this specific body, to this specific lineage, to this specific gender, to this specific color of skin?" We made those choices because there was something for us to learn or to do. In some cases, situations, a person came to specific units because they have to heal it. So it's up to them. If they don't heal it, the next person is going to get the same issues. So it's a very heavy responsibility for each one of us. That's why I'm saying again, we have to do our own work. There's no work that anybody else can ---

[CHRIS]

There's no easy way around this or avoiding it.

[RONEN]

No, no. There was something I've seen recently and while I'm talking we look it up, that I really liked, continuously doing more and more training. I don't believe that you've done at any point in your life. There's always more that you can learn. And in our welcome email to a training I'm going to be doing in the summer, somebody said there is a modern misperception that when one walks the spiritual path, life is smooth, good, easy, and joyful. It may be more accurate to say that today's spiritual path is changeable, dynamic, rugged, challenging, and sometimes chaotic. It is your choice whether to walk this path with grace, love, joy, and power. So I think that sounds ---

[CHRIS]

That's fantastic. Can you send me that? I'll put that in the show notes.

[RONEN]

Yes, yes.

[CHRIS]

That's powerful, isn't it?

[RONEN]

Yes, it goes very well.

[CHRIS]

So that brought me to the question of what is a good takeaway that you could share today, but that's a good takeaway right there.

[RONEN]

Yes. Well, there is another prayer that my teacher channel, which is my favorite three or four times, it's called the Medium Creed. It's basically for anybody who wants to practice mediumship. And for me, it's not just for mediums. It's how to be a human. And it's beautiful. It's pretty long. So I'm going to read it here, but I'll pick a couple of things from it.

[CHRIS]

Yes please.

[RONEN]

I run into people and again, a recent friend, I mentioned that there was a situation that brought some anger. She's saying, "I'm devoted to God. I'm the daughter of God," and a lot of criticism about other people, including myself. And for me you can say whatever you want, the question is how you express yourself and your action. And I'm going to quote that prayer where it says, "May my words and actions reflect my inner beauty and the personal journey of my own healing." May my words and actions reflect my inner beauty and the personal journey of my own healing. That means that if somebody is using certain words and he's always angry and criticizing others, is that a reflection of their inner beauty?

So as a result of this specific line, I dropped the F and S words from my language totally. I had to reprogram myself. And by the way I reprogram myself is by, because it's very hard to just drop words you're used to. When you drop something ---

[CHRIS]

How you do that?

[RONEN]

Something that you drop, you go, "Oh ---

[CHRIS]

Yes, exactly. I'm with you.

[RONEN]

Just giving this as an example. So I slapped specific words in my mind and then when I used to say that I would catch myself saying, not criticizing myself, but just immediately repeating it with a different word or shocks. I would do that for several weeks and then the mind got reprogrammed. After doing the thing with the S and F words, I realized that it's other words that I don't feel you want to use. I actually used two of them. I didn't want to do the reprogramming while we are recording this, but sort of and kind of, I find to be sort of, sort of ---

[CHRIS]

Good one.

[RONEN]

So you either do it or you don't do it, or try.

[CHRIS]

That's so true.

[RONEN]

As Yoda famously said, ---

[CHRIS]

I love Yoda.

[RONEN]

"Do or do not. There is no try." So I'm looking at specific words that are not conducive to where I want to grow and I'm dropping them out. And I would say it and then I would say it again without saying those specific words or replacing them with something else. And by the way, the other, before you were up, the other one I wanted you to mention from the power phrase, they allow others to criticize me and offer a correction. So I will keep on shining within the light. These give me any sort of feedback so I can keep shining. And the thing is we have a lot of freight. And freight really stops us from growing. So by allowing others, and the way I do that is I feel the resistance when somebody says that you're doing it wrong and not always in the nicest way. In the past, I would feel a lot of resistance. Now I sit with it and I don't have to accept what they say, but I'm going to sit with it. And sometimes the correction I'm receiving is not specifically about what I've done, but the overall energy I brought into what I did. My wife likes to say, "It's not what you said. It's how you said it." So we don't lose something to what other people say, because many of them are gifts that they're giving us if you really listen beyond their own drama and trauma.

[CHRIS]

True and not being reactive to what they say and really going within, right?

[RONEN]

And I think this is a mechanism of defense. So another teaching we have a lot in the work that we do is to stand in you weakness. Yes, I made a mistake and I'm going to go and apologize. And the more you are standing in your weakness the more you allow for connection from other people, because if you're very proud and you're stuck in a place, you don't allow other people. But if you admit to other people on your weaknesses, "You think I'm an idiot? You should see me doing this." That's when I'm really [inaudible 00:36:34] so that they can really connect with you.

[CHRIS]

Sense of humor. That helps too.

[RONEN]

So it's really just opening up and allowing the current of life to connect with you because that's what the current wants to do if you just let your defenses down.

[CHRIS]

Well, you gave a lot for us to think about, and I'm sure the listeners, their minds might be swirling a little bit too from all this, but it's all good stuff. I so appreciate you.

[RONEN]

I'm very open. I'm very, in terms of connection, if anybody wants to connect with me, Facebook or otherwise chat, et cetera.

[CHRIS]

How is the best way for listeners to learn more about you?

[RONEN]

They can go to openheartenergy.com, my website to learn a bit more, and then they can find my information for contact over there. I'm not a lot as I used to be on Facebook. Time is really crunchy, but they can also connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, the typical social media stuff. And they can mention the podcast so I know where they came from.

[CHRIS]

Yes, please do. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I know you were on my other one and it's just, I still learned so much from you.

[RONEN]

My pleasure. Any time.

[CHRIS]

And that brings us to the end of this episode, but thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you could be here and I could help you on your healer journey. Just Remember to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Until next time, take care.

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