You work hard. Now play harder with the all -new Nissan Armada.
It's big, spacious and powerful.
It features a twin -turbo V6 engine that delivers serious strength.
Inside, there's room for up to eight passengers, perfect for bringing the whole family along.
With an impressive new engine, incredible towing capacity, and adventure -ready technology, this is the first Armada to earn the pro -4x badge.
Whether you're tackling tough roads or exploring new horizons, the all -new Nissan Armada is built to keep up with your adventures.
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?
Have you said, cool beans, in the past, 90 days.
Do you think discover isn't widely accepted?
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99 % of places that take credit cards nationwide.
And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back.
Welcome to the now.
It pays to discover.
Learn more at discover .com slash credit card based on the February 20, 20 for Nelson report.
I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
When Eat, Pray, Love was first published, Elizabeth appeared on The Oprah Show to talk about how her book had sparked a revolution and stirred something up for millions of women.
Little did Elizabeth know the next leg of her own journey was just beginning.
She married the Brazilian man that readers fell in love with in the book, whose real name is Jose.
Making peace with this idea of being married again was not easy.
She documented that soul -churning process in her follow -up book, Committed.
After eight years of writing about her own life, Elizabeth returned to her roots – fiction writing.
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth created a passionate, independent -thinking heroine not unlike herself, Alma Whitaker.
This daring novel about a 19th -century botanist quickly attracted excited readers and accolades from critics.
In the fall of 2014, I was thrilled to have Elizabeth join me on the Life You Want Tour.
Thousands of women cheer when they hear her urgent message, you can take the lead and be the hero of your own story.
On stage, or with her beautiful writing, Elizabeth aims to inspire.
The phenomenal success of Eat, Pray, Love was just a hint of what was to come.
So you know her as the author of Eat, Pray, Love.
So many people do. And her memoir sold more than 15 million copies, appearing more than, was it 200 weeks?
It was a long time.
It was a long time, more than 200 weeks on New York Times bestseller.
That's like almost four years.
And the story has just reached into almost every corner of the world where women have access to reading and touch women's lives.
It's a beautiful, rare, and amazing thing.
People will come up to me and they'll say, I'm sure you hear this all the time.
They always begin it with that, right?
Yeah. I'm sure you hear this all the time.
But your book changed my life.
And I'm still capable of bursting into tears at that, because I don't mind hearing it again.
I really don't. You know what?
I really don't mind it.
Because people hear a lot of bad stuff in their life.
Because it's your life that got changed.
Yeah. Like, I've heard it from someone else, but not from you.
Your life. Like, it's amazing.
But what does that mean?
I would say, when somebody says, you changed my life, I'd say, and what does that mean?
Right, right. In what way?
What did it show? I feel like what I'm hearing from people mostly about it is that for some reason, and this just boggles my imagination, there are still just huge swaths of women who never got the memo that their lives belong to them.
And there's this instinct that they have that they needed permission slip from the principal's office for anything.
And I feel like in a way, Eat, Pray, Love kind of was a permission slip from the principal's office that said, You are allowed to ask yourself some really important questions about your life.
You are allowed to take accountability and ownership for your own journey.
You're allowed to ask what serves you sometimes, because I know you've been trained up to serve everyone.
But you're allowed to turn that on yourself and honor your own life that you were given.
And I feel like it just got to people somehow that they hadn't quite put together if they could do that.
You know what is so fascinating?
You know, we're doing the life you want to her.
But one of the things that I think I just see people like enraptured over your words when you say, I did the same thing that my mother did and her mother did and her mother did and her mother did.
And people can see themselves in that.
Because we've just sort of, so many people, I broke the chain for my family cycle, but so many women have just done the thing that was always done.
13th grade. 13th grade.
You get married. You do that.
And you just do it?
It's the next thing.
Yes. Then comes the baby, then come.
And it's just not thought.
It's not always chosen.
Yes. It's a reflex. And the idea that you have the ability to change that if you want to.
Yeah. Even if, and the story that you tell on stage, even if you can't leave where you are right now and go on your own quest. Right, right, right.
Yeah, well that story I love so much, because for years, years, women have come up to me and said some variation of this.
I would love nothing more than to do what you did to drop everything and run and to go on a quest and to travel around the world and find my true self, but I can't because I have A, B, C, D, E obstacles.
Yes. I have an elderly relative who I take care of.
I have young children who rely on me.
I'm the provider for this household.
I have contracts with people who I love and who need me, and I can't just run away from them.
And I've struggled over the years to figure out how to answer that when they say, how can I go on my quest when I'm in that situation, which is most people, to be honest. And I got my answer a couple of years ago in a bookstore in Washington, D .C.
A woman came up after the signing, and she said, I want to tell you about my mother.
And she told me this story.
Do I have time to bring it here?
You have time to tell her?
Her story is about her mother, who was Irish Catholic, grew up in a very traditional restrictive household in the 50s.
Did what her mother and grandmother and grandmother and grandmother did got married at 18, had five kids in a row.
And when the oldest was 10 and the youngest was two months, her husband left her and never came back.
And she was alone to raise the family.
Just picture that, the oldest is 10, the youngest is two months.
You're 28. You have a high school education.
No, as you're telling that story, I can't, you know, I'm thinking, where was I when I was 28?
And just the idea of managing.
Five children. Yeah.
Even if it was one!
Even if it was one.
You know, it's five.
Five kids. And the heartbreak of somebody walking out on you, too, that you have to process in addition to rallying.
So her husband got tired, got fed up, whatever.
She couldn't take him in.
They never heard from him again, left. Took a train and left. And she had to figure out how to hold that family together, and she did.
And I don't know the details of how she did it.
I just know she's heroic.
She did it. But she did something else, too, which is that she made a decision that very day that she realized he was never coming home, that her life was not always going to look like this, this much sorrow, this much oppression, this much poverty.
And she made a promise to herself that someday, she was going to see the world, and then she got a coffee can, just a regular, humble, empty coffee can, stuck it in the back of her closet where her kids couldn't see it.
And starting on that very day that her husband left her, she put $1 in that coffee can and started a practice every day on $1, no matter what it took to get it, because it wasn't always easy to get it, but she figured her family was always desperate, always poor.
There was never a day when $1 was going to break them.
She could spare that and sacrifice for it.
And it took her 20 years until all those kids were grown.
She never touched that money, she just added to it, coffee can after coffee can after coffee can.
And when the last kid was out of the house, she cashed in the coffee cans.
She bought herself a ticket on a freighter ship, and she sailed around the world alone as she had always promised herself that she would do.
So the message of that is, you might not be able to begin your quest today, but you got to get your plan.
Get your coffee cans going.
Take the long view if you need to.
But don't give up on that question in you about the world and your place within the world.
Take whatever time you need, but make your plan.
And begin today. I just love backstory.
Me too. And now are women writing to you and telling you about their coffee cans?
Suddenly it's the coffee can revolution, right?
All over Twitter they're sending me pictures, I started my coffee can today.
Or they're dialoguing, they're somewhere like, I got my Oprah chai tin from Starbucks.
That's a good, that's a good care.
I'm like whatever the vessel, doesn't matter.
Somebody is like, all I have is an old pickle jar.
Is that okay? Yeah, that's okay.
It's a shoe box, I don't care.
It's okay. It's a plastic bag, I don't care but begin honoring your quest and your journey by making that commitment that every single day you're gonna do something cause you're either going away from it or you're going toward it, right?
Yes. Whatever your destiny is.
Yeah. You work hard. Now play harder with the all -new Nissan Armada.
It's big, spacious, and powerful.
It features a twin -turbo V6 engine that delivers serious strength.
Inside, there's room for up to 8 passengers.
Perfect for bringing the whole family along.
With an impressive new engine, incredible towing capacity and adventure -ready technology, this is the first Armada to earn the Pro4x badge.
Whether you're tackling tough roads or exploring new horizons, the all new Nissan Armada is built to keep up with your adventures.
Are you still quoting 30 -year old movies?
Have you said, cool beans, in the past 90 days?
Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted?
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99 % of places that take credit cards nationwide.
And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back.
Welcome to the now, it pays to Discover.
Learn more at discover .com slash credit card, based on the February 2024, Nelson Report.
At 31, Elizabeth Gilbert seemed to have it all.
A beautiful home, a thriving career, and a happy marriage.
But underneath her glowing success, she was filled with despair.
Desperate to free herself from a life she felt was not her own, she divorced her husband and set off on a spiritual quest that took her to Italy, to India, and Bali.
That transformative experience became her bestselling memoir, Eat.
Pray. Love. Today, with more than 15 million copies in 46 different languages, Elizabeth has inspired a generation of women around the world to seek their own hearts journey.
Do women write to you all the time trying to figure out how to stay on course for the quest for themselves?
Do they write to you about that?
They do. And honestly, I feel like, and I think Pema Shodron, who we both love.
Yes. She says, the older I get, the more I think every problem is just fear.
And I feel like I'm seeing that too, because the questions that people come to me with seem to always boil down to some version of fear.
It's either I'm stuck, and I'm scared to make a move to make a change.
Or it's what I call the haute couture high end version of fear, which is perfectionism, You know, until the path is perfect, until the way...
OPRAH WINFREY. Oh, that's perfect.
The haute couture. Yes, because perfectionism is its own thing.
Perfectionism is just a really glossy...
But it's also I'm really scared of not...
It's just fear. ...
of presenting myself in a way that doesn't look like I'm perfect.
Yeah. It's just fear in, like, really good shoes.
But it's still fear.
And I feel like almost every question that women come to me with on Facebook, on Twitter, in person, when they're stuck, it's fear.
What amazes me is that you started this revolution.
You weren't trying to start a revolution.
You were just taking care of your own self.
And wrote this book, Eat, Pray, Love.
And even now, as we're on the Life You Want Tour, I saw a Facebook post that you did the other day.
I was just sort of in bed, and I was scanning.
And I wanted to thank all the people who had come out to Detroit, I think it was.
And I was, you know, went to post something, and I saw this post from you thanking me, which just really opened my heart in such a way.
Oh, but you're giving such an incredible thing, not just what I was trying to convey in that post, is that you're not just giving this to the 10 ,000 people who came to be there, you're giving it to me, and I'm allegedly there as a teacher, but I'm actually there as a student, because I'm only talking for 45 minutes, and the rest of the weekend.
You see me. I'm on it, like this on the edge of my chair.
So, that's what I wanted to talk about.
Drinking it in. That you say that I'm just there taking notes emotionally, spiritually, and literally in the guise of a student when I'm not speaking, which is really only for 45 minutes.
I'm sitting in the front row with my heart, mind, wide open.
And I'm learning from Mark Nepo and Rob Bell and Iyanla and Deepak, from the brave audience members who rise to speak, from everyone who's there to share and to grow.
And then, you go on to tell this beautiful story that your friends shared.
Yes. Can you tell us about that story?
I love this. I brought my best friend to The Life You Want To Her.
My best friend Ray Elias.
She got to meet Gail.
She's your Gail. She said to Gail, I'm Liz's Gail.
Which is what people say to me all the time.
They say it. And Gail's so sweet.
I'm like, she was so gracious about it.
So we were both on fire when we came home from the weekend, because we were just sharing and bouncing off everything that we had heard. and I was saying, isn't it incredible, because you and I do this work.
Like, we show up for our lives, we are present in the day.
We are trying to bring the light.
We are like always, and yet there's always another ascension that you can do.
And Rhea, who used to be a heroin addict, and homeless, and in prison, and you know, just like a lost soul who pulled herself up from that.
She said, back when I was a junkie, I used to say, I think you hit rock bottom.
There's always another trap door.
There's always another bottom.
There's always another bottom.
There's always something lower.
And she said, and now I'm in this moment in my life where I think that's good and it's fine, and I figured out so much, and I'm full of grace and full of life and gratitude, but there's always another level up.
There's always another ascension, more grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow.
And that's how I felt when I came over for that weekend and I wrote on that, that Oprah did that, she just gave me a rope letter up to another level of my soul.
We all did that, I love that.
Another rope letter up to my soul.
Yeah. Now what I love that you're talking about on this Life You Want Tour is the hero's journey.
And I, who have loved Joseph Campbell and quoted Joseph Campbell and talked about following your bliss and, you know, so many wonderful Joseph Campbell quotes, I never knew that he felt that way about women in the journey.
Well, we love Joseph Campbell and we should love him, and I do love him and I still love him.
You know, and he was just the reporter really.
Yes. I mean, in a way, it wasn't that he was a misogynist. It was that he was accurately reporting world history.
There are no women in the hero's journey.
Which is guess what?
Let's talk about the hero's journey.
Yeah. So the hero's journey.
So Joseph Campbell, great 20th century scholar and teacher, a real master, a real encompassing genius, spent his entire life studying the myths, the fairy tales, and the religious origins of every culture on earth, looking for common threads, right?
And he discovered that there is this one story that never stops being told.
And it's been told since we became human.
We're telling it now.
We tell it in every language of the world.
It never goes away.
And that's the hero's journey.
And it's very recognizable.
It's Luke Skywalker.
It's Odysseus. It's Moses.
It's Nemo. It's Bambi.
And you know, and it's a restless youngster who gets called to the journey, goes through the road of trials, suffers through dark nights of the soul, finds his teachers, faces the battle, loses his fear.
That's the shorthand for the hero's journey.
We need that story.
It's a beautiful story.
inspires us, it shows us the way, but it's never included women.
And that's a big oversight that the most important human story that has ever existed doesn't include women except as side characters.
You can be the hero's mom.
You can be the helpless virgin.
You can be the old crone, but you can't be the hero.
That's only for men.
And I had a problem with that.
And Joseph Campbell got challenged on that a lot by a lot of these women, who would just say, can you please give us some examples of the female hero's journey, and he would say, no. Because it doesn't exist. And then he would give the reason, which I also have problems with.
And you would say the reason is that women don't need to go on the hero's journey, because the hero's journey is all about the process through which a broken person becomes whole.
Women don't need to do that process because women aren't broken.
Women have no unresolved emotional issues.
You and I know that.
Women are totally whole already because women possess this extraordinary power.
They're the life givers.
They're the womb. They're the only ones who can generate life on Earth, and therefore, their purpose is obvious, which is to have babies and only to have babies.
As you're saying, as you're standing on stage saying that as we're traveling the country, I mean, I just marvel at the fact that you and I and every other woman watching were born at this time.
So lucky. Because you talk about the fact that, and I don't think we as women people appreciate it enough, that really, we're the first generation that really has been allowed to choose for ourselves.
To write our own story.
And to write our own story.
The first, and I say it all the time.
We're a new species of humans.
But it's astonishing.
It's just astonishing.
And the problem and the reason that sometimes we feel half insane is that we don't have what men have. We don't have 30 ,000 years of role models to show us how to be the hero.
We don't have any, really, until very recently.
That's right. We don't have Odysseus.
We don't have Moses.
We don't, you know, we, Odysseus is out there.
David and Goliath, anybody, yes.
He's out there sailing around the world.
Where's Penelope, his wife?
She's got that big scene at the Loom, weaving and weaving and weaving and waiting and waiting and waiting for something to change to her life.
Yeah. Because she has no agency other than her job, which is to be loyal and faithful.
Well, he's out there sleeping with goddesses and sailing around the world.
You know, so it's understandable to me when women hesitate on the brink of the journey and wonder.
No wonder they don't feel like they have permission to do this.
No wonder it's scary.
Who did this before us?
Your grandmother didn't do this.
Right. You know, maybe your grandmother did if you were like British aristocracy and she was, but probably not.
But for you, at the point of literally not a nervous breakdown, but breaking down emotionally.
You were at the point where the choice to stay would have been worse than daring to.
Scarier than leaving.
Yeah, scarier than leaving.
Yeah, that's when we change mostly, right?
I mean, unless you're really evolved, you usually don't do the work to change until not changing gets worse.
Isn't that the nice end?
That quote? Yes, yes.
Something like, until the status quo is actually scarier than the transformation.
Right. Yeah. And I had to step up and stand on my own two feet and say, this life is not my destiny, and I have to leave. And it was terrifying.
And it's also hard. We spoke earlier about doing what your mom did, doing what your grandmother did, doing what every, all my aunts did, every woman I ever knew got married.
And what everybody expects you to do when there's something else calling inside of you that says this ain't it.
This ain't it. This is not my dream.
This is not my path.
And it's especially hard. See, I don't come from a dysfunctional family.
I really admire and revere my mother.
It's really hard not to imitate your mother when you admire and revere her.
Because I wanted to be like her.
She was strong. She was capable.
She was confident. She was beautiful.
I married the same age she did.
Of course I did. You know, the difference is, I wanted something else.
I was made to be something else.
You work hard. Now play harder with the all -new Nissan Armada.
It's big, spacious, and powerful.
It features a twin -turbo V6 engine that delivers serious strength.
Inside there's room for up to eight passengers, perfect for bringing the whole family along.
With an impressive new engine, incredible towing capacity, and adventure ready technology, this is the first Armada to earn the Pro 4X badge.
Whether you're tackling tough roads or exploring new horizons, the all -new Nissan Armada is built to keep up with your adventures.
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?
Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days?
Do you think discover isn't widely accepted?
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past, Discover is accepted at 99 % of places that take credit cards nationwide.
And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back.
Welcome to the now, it pays to discover.
Learn more at discover .com slash credit card based on the February, 2024 Nelson report.
So do you believe that the hero's journey is a part of our DNA?
Yeah, I do. And Joseph Campbell made that argument really persuasively, and the best evidence there ever is of that is that it's told that story precisely the same way, has never been told any differently, and it's told precisely the same way in societies around the world that have never heard of each other.
You know, you go to the middle of Pappa New Guinea and you ask them what their great heroic tale is, and they're gonna tell you Moses, Jason and the Argonauts, Luke Skywalker, like the names of the heroes change and the settings change, but the path is so much exactly the same that it really is kind of the blueprint for enduring difficulty.
So it always begins with the call.
The call starts the thing and then the refusal of the call.
First comes the call, then comes, do not ask me to do this.
Do not, take this cup away from me.
Yes. I am not a hero, do not look at me.
I do not have the power.
I am just a kid. I am just a regular guy.
The call won't leave you alone now.
And then you begin the journey.
And then comes the road of trials, which we all know, because we've all been there.
It's so interesting, because I'm just a producer on the movie Selma and Martin Luther King, classic, classic hero's journey.
You get the call. Doesn't really want.
Don't ask me. Don't ask me to do it.
I just want to have a normal life and have a church and be a nice preacher.
But can't refuse a call.
I'm not your hero. Yeah, I'm not your hero.
And Destiny's like, yeah, you are.
Yeah, you are. Or, and you know I say you can answer the call or you can refuse the call.
Really, he could have refused the call.
He could have refused the call.
He could have insistently said, it's not me.
But he chose to answer it, and doesn't it make for a better story?
Do you think the call is the same for men and women, that we all have that calling, that yearning to step out?
Yes. I absolutely do.
Whether you choose to hear it or not.
I absolutely do. I think that call comes in the middle of the night, and the call begins, I mean, look, the word quest is question, right, like every quest begins without question.
And the question's always the same question.
How do you know, though, that you're being called to something?
What are the signs?
You get the question.
Here's the question.
What have I come here to do with my life?
You're telling me you never got that question?
That's the question that begins every single quest. What have I come here to do with my life?
There's no one who hasn't had that question come to them.
That's the call. That's the call.
It's like whispering in your ear.
If you haven't, you're pretty numb.
You're just pretty numb.
You're really not paying attention.
You're really not paying attention.
You're really watching brick and write at 4 in the morning and eating ice cream.
And you're really not listening.
You're not listening.
Because everybody has gotten in one form or another.
That is the call. What have I come here to do with my life?
What have I come here to do with my life?
Now, you can choose to ignore that question or you can pursue it.
And the pursuit is the beginning of the journey.
Now, isn't it true, though?
I knew this for myself.
when there came a time for me to leave Baltimore and everybody around me was saying, no, there's no way you're going to succeed, I didn't hear it as much as I felt it.
I felt that if I didn't move from where I was, for whatever I was being called to here, obviously, in Chicago, I felt if I didn't do it, that a part of me would die.
I felt that I would just sort of, like, not physically die, but that a part of me would sort of shrivel up in some way, and that I would not be emotionally, spiritually myself.
Did you feel that? You felt that too?
Yes, absolutely. And I had a friend who said to me, you stay on this path.
You might actually die.
Like, you might get very sick.
You might crash your car into a tree.
Like you might get so depressed that, you know, like you might literally die if you don't change.
Really? And I heard that.
And that is, I think, what makes people sick.
They just, parts of them just?
You just atrophy. Atrophy.
You die in pieces. And we've all seen people who have sort of shut down in pieces and die.
And also, that feeling that you kind of don't have a choice, right?
Like, I had the same thing when I used to tell people when I was a teenager that I was going to be a writer.
Like, nobody ever said, here's a line you never hear.
Oh yeah, that's where the big money is, kid.
You know? Follow that.
That's an easy path.
You'll get there. You know, like no one ever in history said that.
It didn't matter what they said, because I had no choice.
This is what I knew.
This is what I came here to do.
I don't have to succeed.
Succeeding means answering the question, following the quest, wherever it ends.
You know, the point is, like, did you try?
You know? Did you show up?
And a part of what you make so clear is that everybody gets called, you can choose to answer it or not.
Once you do answer it, you're gonna be faced with obstacles and challenges and people who look like friends or not.
Yeah. Oh, it's not easy.
Like, I mean, I think what I really try to communicate with people is that we try...we're a little bit delusional in this society the way we sell changing your life as if it's something like fun.
Waaa. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. And what I say is, like, if you're doing this, if you're going to answer the call, and you're going to transform, you're going to change.
And really step up to who you're supposed to be in the world?
Get ready, because - Get ready.
Yeah, it is not a day at the beach. Like, you know, expect to be challenged.
Expect to be hurt. Expect to feel lost. Expect to feel despair.
Expect to be double guessing yourself at every turn.
Like, it might - because that's what the road of - they don't call it the road of trials, because it's like a joyride.
You know? They call it the road of, Joseph Campbell called it the road of trials, cause that's exactly what it is, but every single one of those obstacles, challenges and temptations that you have to learn to manage will help you gain your talents and powers and shed your fears so that when it comes time for the climactic scene in every hero's journey, which is the battle, you're ready because every single one of those obstacles prepared you for the battle.
Yeah. You know? And then, then you lose your fear and then you become the hero.
What was your actual battle?
So we know the leaving, the going out, the eating, the praying.
What was the real battle?
The real battle for me was my own self -abuse, was to learn how to stop, how to drop the knife that I was holding to my own throat.
So that I was never good enough.
I was never, you know, I couldn't let go of my failures.
I couldn't let go of my shame.
I couldn't let go of anything wrong I had ever done.
I had an inventory that was so long.
And that happened in India.
And I remember it very well because I was in four months of meditation.
And that was my battle.
It was the four months in that meditation cave, alone, with no distraction, no friends, nothing except me and it.
And the it was the anger, the sadness, the sorrow, the shame, the pain.
And we were in there.
You know my head like most of our heads is a neighborhood you don't want to walk around alone in at night.
That's right you know it's not nice in there and when you're forced to be there and I just Remember the day that I finally this was my victory in my battle all my demons all my monsters That I've been carrying around forever The light came through and I realized They're not demons they're not monsters They're not dragons.
I've been making them more grandiose than they are.
They're just the orphaned parts of me.
They're just the fearfullest, most young, terrified parts of me.
They are scared to death, and they are throwing temper tantrums because of their fear, and now I have to tell them that it's going to be OK, and they will all go to sleep.
I am the mother of all of these parts of me.
And I remember just sort of in my mind, ascending above them all and just saying, I love you, fear, and now you go to sleep.
I love you, anger. You're part of me.
Go to sleep. It's fine.
I'm in charge now. I love you, shame, even you.
Come into my heart.
Go to sleep. You're safe.
I love you. I'm not leaving you.
I can't. You're part of me.
You're part of the family.
You're never gonna be away from me.
I love you, failure.
Come into my heart.
Rest. You're so tired.
You're so scared. You're just children.
You don't know how the world works.
I love all of you. I have space for all of you.
And together, we're just going to go forward now.
But Mommy's driving now.
And Mommy is the part of me who can embrace everything that I am in peace.
Well, I think so many people think if you wrote that book and you conquered your own dark night of the soul, where the hero finds he's lost and questions everything, What was your dark night?
Oh, God, I have so many of them.
I had a string of them.
Sitting when you quieted all the fears.
That was a dark, was that a dark night?
What I did. Yeah, I had a you know.
I think my reckoning was that I went away for 10 days once during that time to be in absolute silence for 10 days.
No books, no writing, no you know.
Just went to this island, 10 days of silence.
And I think I wept out 10 lifetimes of sorrow.
I would just walk around this island sobbing praying talking and just being like and I remember feeling like it was a peace summit in A way I was like all you guys.
These are the the battling demons We're all gonna have to figure out how to work together here because we can't be like this Like we're gonna have to figure out how to integrate this thing called a self.
What did you learn about yourself that?
Any voice that you have?
that attacks you in any way is not your highest self.
And I think the trick that we fall into sometimes is that I feel like we have these three layers of self.
We've got little scared kid.
We've got older sister perfectionist judge.
Who we think is the higher self.
Right? So little scared is like, I want all that ice cream.
Because I need it. Because I'm hungry and I'm scared.
Older sister scared judge says, you idiot.
You know like... You're always eating ice cream.
When are you going to stop doing this to yourself?
When are you gonna like...
And you think that's your higher self because it knows more.
Because clearly it's right, in a way.
Like you can't keep abusing yourself like this.
But if it's speaking to you in that tone, I can guarantee you that is not the voice of God and that is not your channel to God because it doesn't come in that tone.
If it's doing any of this, it's just a judge inside you, but it is not grace, because you'll know grace when you hear it Because Grace says, I don't care what you do, you're splendid and magnificent.
And I'm here, and I'm right beside you.
And we're going to get through this.
That is the only thing Grace ever says.
It never says you screwed up.
It never says you got to do better.
Like, Grace never says that.
You say that. Yes, that's right.
You know, Grace just says, love, come, embrace, save us, peace.
You'll know it when you hear it.
Is that what you call god, Grace?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's it.
You know, I said this to you before, God is the simplest definition I've ever used, whatever lifts your face out of the dirt.
Because we do spend a lot of our lives kind of like in the mud, you know?
And anything that lifts that, and ascends you, and gently comes and just says rise, rise, rise.
That's grace calling.
Thank you. Thank you Oprah for everything and all the light that you bring to us all.
Thank you. I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.
Thank you for listening.
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