Weaving Life's Tapestry: From Time Magazine to Theology with Catherine Duncan

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what's up, my good people?

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Welcome to the cj money way show.

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Today I have special guest who's an author, spiritual consultant and former chaplain.

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Welcome to the money way show, katherine duncan.

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How you doing, katherine?

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I am good, great to meet you today you too, uh glad that you uh came on the show today.

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Uh, I'm really ready to hear about your journey on some of the things that you have done in life.

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So before we start, let's talk about your book, everyday Awakening.

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Yep, my book Everyday Awakening.

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Here it is.

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It was published last summer, last July, and I'll say it was a calling.

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I, 10 years prior, had a vision that I'd be writing a book and in fact even told then my teenage children and husband that I'd be writing a book and they thought great, mom, that.

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I'd be writing a book and they thought great, mom, there was the beginning of the pandemic, having some more time, I my my private practice, all went online, but at night I would sit down and it just started pouring through me.

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I just writing this book, so it's called Everyday Awakening Five Practices for Living Fully, feeling Deeply and Coming into your Heart and Soul, and it comes out of three life-changing experiences I've lived through.

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I've faced my death twice my husband, who's now doing well, but eight years ago had a really traumatic, critical health incident.

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And then years of being a chaplain and being with people in crisis and to life.

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And what did I learn?

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And what it means to be alive right now.

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And that's what my book is about.

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Oh, okay, so you say you started it three years ago.

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You started writing during the pandemic.

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Yeah, in 2020,.

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I just was writing night after night after week after week after week, and the whole book just poured through me.

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Yeah, so a lot of times when you get into that writing phase and, like you say, when it's there, you just start it.

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Because I published a book in 2015.

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And it took me, I think I held on to that book.

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I was writing on that for like 15 years, beginning of 2000.

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And it was amazing how I was able to keep the notes and the things that I had, the notebooks and the concept.

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So writing a book is intriguing, you know, from going from corporate America to being a chaplain.

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How was that experience?

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It was a bit topsy turvy, it was a bit of an upheaval.

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I would tell everyone listening, you know, be careful what you pray for, because I surviving, facing you know, very grave illness as a child.

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That's when my faith started and like asking the universe who do you want me to be?

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And I was with Time magazine for a number of years Really fun, glamorous, very fun.

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But then I was really feeling a nudging inside like this isn't it?

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Like this isn't where I'm being called.

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And I I thought that I'd be a manager for Time Warner in Chicago, new York City, and they even gave me the job and I couldn't say the words yes, they just wouldn't come out of my mouth and anyway, that was kind of the end of that career after that experience.

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But I uh, yeah, you know, I had the courage to leave and I just it was clear to me that I needed to listen, deeply, listen to where I was being called.

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I stepped off the path of a fast track corporate career that was fun, intense, with Time Magazine and not long after it just came to me to study theology.

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I mean, I'd been voraciously reading books on life and meaning and purpose since a teenager and a girlfriend out of nowhere, like have I thought of studying theology?

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And like never thought of it.

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And when I looked at the graduate theology programs my body started shaking like quivering, like it was just a knowing.

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And then I started graduate school.

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My family, my husband and children were so supportive.

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My father then, he's been gone for years, an entrepreneur.

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I vividly remember him yelling at me like yelling, why would I leave Time Magazine to study?

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And he said geology.

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And I'm like no, it's theology.

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Yeah, not that he wasn't had a faith, but he was just like what?

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Like what are you doing with your life?

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You know, it went outside the paradigm of what life was in our family system.

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And anyway, once I started graduate theology school, I just like I was guided every step to this path.

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I'm at today and it was about listening listening inward.

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OK, that sounds very interesting.

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Listening inward Okay, that sounds very interesting.

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So, excuse me, tell us how gratifying it is to have your own private practice and to be counseling others to find more within themselves.

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Yeah, for years after I got out of you know, getting a master's in theology divinity I'm an ordained minister I did work as a chaplain.

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I worked as a chaplain with our level one trauma hospital, hennepin County Medical Center, and then a hospice chaplain with Fairview Hospice Rich work.

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It was incredible.

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I felt so called to that work, so called to that work.

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But then again, at the very end last year of my hospice chaplaincy work, I was again starting to feel like I'm ready to work in a bigger, broader scale, not just, I mean, as a hospice chaplain.

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You're with someone dying every day.

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It's very intensive, sacred work and that's a calling and I so that's the nudging to huh, maybe I should start my own private practice, and I did.

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I'm grateful to connect with a few different.

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I work with a medical doctor who does really lovely integrative medicine work.

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His name's Dr Greg Plotnikoff and it just my private practice just took off and it's in my work with people.

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I do a lot of work one-on-one, I do a lot of speaking and then my book launch, but it's helping people really heal physically, emotionally, spiritually.

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How do you find that deep sense of wellbeing and healing within?

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And that's the work I do, being and healing within and that's the work I do.

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Okay, so, like you say, you take this, you travel, you speak around and you do seminars and things of that nature.

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So how is the feeling?

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Because I've never been, you know, one on stage to speak in front of people, a vast variety of people, and give my thoughts on certain things, and so, like the first time you went and did a speech in your field, how was that feeling?

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Well, of course, I was a little nervous.

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I was nervous, I'll tell you, the first time, going on a live podcast.

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I was like uh, the first time doing Facebook live, I was like, uh, you know it's just.

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But I'll tell you, there's been a lot of firsts since I especially even launched my book.

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But you know, one thing that's really helped me so much is that the work I'm doing I realized it's not about me, it's about, you know, if I can help one person, that's all that matters.

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I remember when I was on our local TV station I've been on TV now a couple of times here with my book launch and the first time I was up over half the night I was like, you know, like it's kind of like, oh my God, live in studio, their morning show.

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But it came to me.

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It's not about Catherine, it's not about me.

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If, like, if I can help someone, that's why I'm doing this, it's to help.

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Can I share some wisdom?

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and then I was like, huh, everything's okay yeah, um, yeah, I know you as far as speaking.

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I have spoken in church and things of that nature, so I'm not, you know, really shy of speaking, but it's like when you do go speak in front of some people that you don't know or whatever, it's just the anxiety of it, like, am I going to say the right things?

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Am I going to forget what I put down?

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I'm not going to forget what I put down, and a lot of times and I know probably you speaking in various places, a lot of times, some of the things you wrote down and you try not to look at it while you said it, you just go a whole other direction.

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You can't get back to that point.

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So now you start freestyling, and so I've learned to, uh, basically just memorize what I'm gonna say and, as you said, from the heart and because a lot of things, like you said, it's not about me or whatever, it's about helping others, and so I'm glad that that we got people like yourself that's out there that put others before themselves, and we need more like you, kathleen.

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Oh, thank you and I'd say, speaking and comment, this winter I had a really big talk with, uh, local media hero names kathy werzer, delightful and we went on stage and there were a lot of people there and I had no idea what she was going to ask me.

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I was like, here we go.

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And you know, the thing that helped is I just right.

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When we sat down, I'm like, okay, universe take over, and I felt it and I just asking for that guidance from beyond, that's it yeah, yeah, you know the word does.

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say say, when you get that, don't worry about what to say or what you got, because he's going to give you the things to say and guide you through that.

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He wouldn't put you in that position if he wouldn't, if you weren't already prepared for it.

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And it works.

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Trust me, it works.

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So you said that you know you had near-death experience.

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If you don't mind, would you mind sharing with us, like, what did you witness on the other side, as I was reading something that you were talking about?

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Yeah, so in my 30s I and interestingly I was already feeling, starting to feel this nudging.

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It was the last few years I was with.

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I was with Time Magazine for 10 years and I was starting to feel this nudging of like, ah, even though I was glamorous and I was doing well and I was making lots of money and meeting lots of people, I was, my heart was feeling restless.

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And this was a whitewater rafting trip in Costa Rica in early January of 20, or actually it was 2000.

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And I, just I had trepidation even going on this trip and white water rafting.

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And you know, we had helmets, vests, everything, and the rapids were extremely high because of rain.

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So they were level three, level four rapids, and we were on a boat, eight people and just, and the head of our raft, if you can believe it, was the head of the Costa Rica rafting Olympic team.

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He was crazy, and so, instead of going around the rapid, the other boats were going around, we were going straight down the middle and I was in the back corner and I just didn't have the weight to hold on when we hit these rapids and next thing, you know, I was deep underwater and I was like this is it I'm gonna die?

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I mean, from my childhood I just like I'm now gonna die.

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And this white light came around my whole body and this voice, crystal clear to this day, said living or dying is fine.

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And this peace just came through my body, just like whatever was going to happen, I was going to be okay.

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And it gave me the courage.

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I just I just let go, I just surrendered.

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And next thing you know, I think cause I surrendered, my body kind of uncurled and came out.

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Next thing I was pulled by my life vest onto a boat and I couldn't speak, I was just in shock and I had to keep going down the rapids because we were in such a remote area of Costa Rica and it was just, it was a I.

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So I survived.

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I interestingly two days later flying back to Minneapolis and was in a taxi coming to my home and I called my mother, very religious, and I told my I was, you know, I'm home, mom.

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I was telling her, and out of nowhere, she had never life.

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She doesn't share dreams, that's not my mom.

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But she said, catherine, I dreamed I slipped into a river and I almost drowned and then she woke up and it was the exact day that this happened.

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Wow, and it was just you know.

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For me it was a turning point.

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Within a matter of weeks I gave my notice I already was going to make a stellar year in 2000.

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I gave my notice.

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I thought you know what I don't?

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I don't I, how do I?

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How am I going to listen to where I'm being called?

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I need space and luckily my husband was supportive and they were shocked that.

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You know, here I was one of the top salespeople leaving.

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But you know what it opened the space to deeply meditate, pray, listen.

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I did some consulting work to then hear about the guidance I was being guided to go back to graduate school.

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Oh man, wow, that was an experience.

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Well, you're out, you know, I'm just thinking about it.

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You're out having fun, you're having a good time on the rapids and everything, and the next thing, you know, everything just get turned upside down.

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Well, I mean, I think I was just saying something about it.

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We don't know sometimes the path that God takes us through or why we got to go through some of the things that we got to go through.

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But I was listening to you and you said that once you just let it go, it was just a peace around you and say, whichever way it go, you know you're going to be okay and and you know, I just can see that at that point.

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And then see you now what God has led you to and the things that he opened up in that experience.

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So, yeah, so I thank God that that you're still here today.

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And so, kathy, can you explain to us?

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I was reading something.

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How can you live a multi-dimensional life?

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Something?

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How can you live a multi-dimensional life?

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Good question.

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I talk about this in my book.

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The very first practice is come back to the present moment.

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I think so many people live.

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We live in our mind, we live head up.

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Our mind is running us all day long Go, go, go, go go.

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When we're in our mind, we are in the past, the future, we're not even here.

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Our body is always in the present moment.

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So I start my first practice come back to the present moment, can you and it's a choice we're all making every day, either consciously or subconsciously but take some moments to just be in the present moment.

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If it's your breath, if it's, you know, walking in nature, it's just where you can just feel into the moment, feel into right now, even just while I'm talking, right now can you feel the energy moving in your hands, whatever your hands, your fingers, your hands.

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When you do that, your thinking mind stops, it just brings you down into your body and it's when we're in the moment where we can feel peace and ease and grounding which I think people are longing for.

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It's not found in your busy, fast, chattering mind.

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So I believe, again, we're all making choices to create more moments of presence and peace and consciously cultivate that into our life and it's in that presence, in that stillness, where every one of us gets guidance.

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Every one of us has a gift, if it's a sensing, a feeling, a seeing, a hearing.

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So when I say multidimensional, I think you know you can practice to learn to live as your anchor in the moment, which I feel like you know you can live in the moment, here and now.

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So right now I'm talking to you, I'm really deeply present but, I'm using my mind to talk, so I'm present, but I'm using my mind and, at the same time, I see spirits, I see angels, I'm a mystic and I see different dimensions of reality.

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All of that right now, and that's what I mean by multidimensional.

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There's so much of how we can experience and live our life, and it's a choice we're making.

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Yeah, that's intriguing.

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So you say that this is one of the parts of your book that you speak about these things right here.

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Yep the five practices.

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Come back to the present moment, connect with something greater, whatever that is and for some you know it's energy, true nature.

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I'm really about being inclusive, open.

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There's so many paths and so much different language here, and can there be an opening to what that is for everyone?

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And then grow your trust, embody love and hold openness, and I believe these are the steps to really finding that deep presence, that aliveness, the preciousness of life.

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It's here.

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Oh, okay, well, okay, I guess that will lead into my next question then.

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So how can you heal and live from your heart and soul and awaken the true nature of yourself?

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I would say just what I've been saying.

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I would say it starts with cultivating moments of presence, feeling into our, our heart, feeling that I mean the deep knowing and the wisdom it's in our heart, it's in our soul.

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Can you start to feel what it is for every one of us?

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Feeling into that?

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And that is where the guidance is, that is where the answers are.

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I mean, that's how, where I tune in every day.

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I mean, in fact, from the moment I wake up, asking for guidance and feeling into that sense of inner vibration, the connection with all through the day, at night.

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I mean it's a mindful price, just a habit.

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This is how, where I live and how I live and how I help people.

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Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about I mean, I know we've been talking about this to a certain degree about living in the presence and connecting with something greater than yourself and holding that openness that you were talking about?

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Well, I think the first step to all the other practices I write about in my book is cultivating some moments, if it's a minute, if it's five minutes, where your mind isn't running you.

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It's so easy for our mind to go, go, go, go go.

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I think society and the world promotes it.

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It's about being really bright and thinking and how do you live in the world?

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But taking a break.

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And when you take a break, when you can have moments of presence, you can start to sense and feel your true, like true nature, your energy, feel that vibration within, feel your heart, feel your soul.

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You can literally, I think, feel that vibration, essence in your being.

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And then from that, when we accept the moment, which you know coming to the moment, accepting the moment Wow, that's easy to say, isn't it?

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Accepting like, wow, life is so messy it's hard, I get it, but when you can expect the moment for all it is and just being still being present.

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That's where, then, we can listen, we can hear guidance, sense guidance, feel guidance, again, like we all have this ability.

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And, and here's an example when I worked at our level one trauma hospital, I did a lot of evenings, a lot of overnight shifts.

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So I live about 15 minutes from downtown Minneapolis.

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I would have the pager for the hospital and I would go to bed at night and I was the only one on for the hospital.

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I would literally hear the helicopter go over our house.

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My pager would go off.

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I would have 15 minutes to get into the hospital.

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Usually it was the emergency room, the stabilization room, high trauma, as you can only imagine.

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It was a lot, unfortunately, just tragic, uh, accident shootings, all this and I would be there, the patient family, the doctors, a lot of death, and it was a lot.

00:21:37.848 --> 00:21:40.253
It was very sacred and it was a lot.

00:21:40.253 --> 00:21:46.080
And, let's say, two, three in the morning, I would leave because they didn't have a room for us to spend the night.

00:21:46.080 --> 00:22:00.115
I would go to my car outside the hospital to drive back to my home, knowing I was on till 8am, and sometimes I get to my car and I would feel like, okay, I'm ready to be done.

00:22:00.115 --> 00:22:06.553
And I'd put a prayer out like I'm ready, and I would literally hear the words you're done.

00:22:06.553 --> 00:22:09.685
Or I would hear you have one more call.

00:22:10.468 --> 00:22:27.273
I would hear this, and so that's an example of being just so steeped in the moment to hear, to listen and the guidance we can receive so I mean, like you say, a lot of times, you have to be, be still and to be able to hear.

00:22:27.653 --> 00:22:39.402
You know certain things and a lot of times, as you was alluding to earlier, you said that how society, how you know we built in society, just to you know, keep moving, moving, moving.

00:22:39.402 --> 00:22:52.682
And so let me ask you this last question so with you, is it a place, a certain place that you be at, where your most inner thoughts come to you, like, say, like, for example, with me?

00:22:52.682 --> 00:23:13.163
I think a lot of my thoughts come when I'm in the, in the shower, and that's why I do my, that's why I get my most thinking that, and my wife be like man, why you been in the shower so much it's not that I'm taking, you know, shop is that this is where it's like it just meets me at and I and I start getting all these ideas and and all these thoughts.

00:23:13.163 --> 00:23:15.268
So where, where would this place be?

00:23:15.268 --> 00:23:15.689
For you?

00:23:15.689 --> 00:23:23.826
Some people, it may be the car or the, you know, the couch, but where's that quiet place where the spirit come meet you at?

00:23:26.009 --> 00:23:33.057
I would say it comes to me when I meditate, when I have prayer time.

00:23:33.057 --> 00:23:42.964
And I would also say I feel like I get a lot of guidance all day long, because my husband even jokes.

00:23:42.964 --> 00:23:44.769
He's like are you, where are you?

00:23:44.769 --> 00:23:45.792
Are you here in this world?

00:23:49.425 --> 00:23:53.053
Or where are you, catherine, catherine, but no, I wake up.

00:23:53.053 --> 00:24:10.009
The first thing I do in the morning I have a ritual of, before I get out of bed, some moments of gratitude, thankfulness, feeling the gratitude, thankfulness, highest vibrational energy that we can hold in our body, thankfulness, love, I feel it moving in my body.

00:24:10.009 --> 00:24:16.190
And and then I have some moments of prayer and it sets a tone for my day.

00:24:16.190 --> 00:24:23.027
I talk, you know, to the universe, my angels, through the day and then at night, same thing.

00:24:23.027 --> 00:24:34.023
But, you know, when I really sit half hour, hour in silence, if it's silence, if I'm meditating and prayer, that would be more concentrated, where I really get a lot.

00:24:34.023 --> 00:24:40.740
And that said, I get a lot intuitively, as I said, I am a mystic.

00:24:40.740 --> 00:24:42.705
I get a lot, I see a lot.

00:24:42.705 --> 00:24:56.069
And so I think if we're open and wanting to have an openness, open heart to sense, see, feel all our senses and the intuitive knowing, we can get guidance throughout our whole day.

00:24:56.411 --> 00:25:37.824
We can you know I'm going to let you go on this one, but I'm just sitting here and I'm listening to you and you say that you get it throughout the day and as you were saying that, I was thinking like, like, with the capacity that the levels of life that you have lived in as far as being a chaplain because you said earlier that you were with people in the hospice you know that was dying every day and so that's like a different level of where you have to be at, because it's like you never know at any time that you have been commissioned, where you're with somebody that you have to be at, because it's like you never know, at any time that you have been commissioned, where you're with somebody that you have to pray with them, pray over, to pray with the family and things like that.

00:25:37.844 --> 00:25:43.221
So I know that that takes a different type of mindset and so you have to always be ready.

00:25:43.221 --> 00:26:00.642
You know at any given time unlike you know a lot of other of us that don't we pray or we sit back and we read and things of that nature, but I don't believe that it comes to the extent or to the level that you have experienced.

00:26:02.204 --> 00:26:08.337
I would say the veil between this life, the other side, for me, is very thin.

00:26:08.337 --> 00:26:26.161
I mean, I've witnessed thousands of people leave their body, which is unusual, but it's also informing, for seeing how life, the transformation we go through and transcendence at the end, has informed for me what it means to be alive right now.

00:26:26.161 --> 00:26:35.352
I mean I really get on such a deep level from not only myself facing my death but witnessing so many people and I'll tell you, one of the biggest takeaways is love.

00:26:35.352 --> 00:26:36.942
That's all that mattered at the end.

00:26:36.942 --> 00:26:40.672
People wanted love, love with their family, embodying love.

00:26:40.711 --> 00:27:05.300
I saw so many people as they passed on, you know, have a glow about them, just this light and love around them, you know, before they died, and then seeing the transition from leaving their body, seeing them leave their body, and so you know it is a world I've lived in deeply and and I write about this in my book for all of us like, even, how do you work with energy?

00:27:05.300 --> 00:27:17.929
I mean, for me, I'm so attuned to energy because, as you can imagine, when I was working at the trauma hospital, you just can't take in the intensity, it's trauma that you're secondhand witnessing.

00:27:17.929 --> 00:27:27.563
So even, how do you work with energy on a daily basis and I talk about you know so I'm very attuned myself every day Energy, how much I take in, how much I don't.

00:27:27.563 --> 00:27:35.615
How do I work with energy, how do I work in the world, who I am in the world and how do I keep really deeply grounded to be able to be of service.

00:27:37.501 --> 00:27:38.704
Yeah, that's, that's wonderful.

00:27:38.704 --> 00:27:48.240
So, Catherine, with that you say with that being said, is there any other projects that you're working on that we can look forward to in the near future, that we can look forward to?

00:27:49.582 --> 00:27:50.403
in the near future.

00:27:50.403 --> 00:27:52.224
I you know I see another book.

00:27:52.224 --> 00:27:58.912
I do, and I already see the title, but right now my heart is with Everyday Awakening, launching my book.

00:27:58.912 --> 00:28:02.615
I do have more podcasts and speaking events coming up.

00:28:02.615 --> 00:28:08.351
You can find all that, if you're interested, on my Facebook page.

00:28:08.351 --> 00:28:10.865
Learning to Live is my company name.

00:28:10.865 --> 00:28:13.787
I'm on Instagram, catherine Duncan, m-a-b-c-c.

00:28:13.787 --> 00:28:19.487
I have a YouTube channel with guided meditation, so a lot of stuff out there, yeah.

00:28:20.390 --> 00:28:20.730
Okay.

00:28:20.730 --> 00:28:25.406
So you asked me the question that I was going to ask, like what could I get your book from?

00:28:25.406 --> 00:28:27.967
You have a new follower in me.

00:28:27.967 --> 00:28:28.990
I will be following.

00:28:28.990 --> 00:28:34.670
Start following you today, and so is there any last words you would like to say before we leave?

00:28:35.760 --> 00:28:39.551
Yeah, my book I'm on Amazon, barnes, noble, all over nationwide.

00:28:39.551 --> 00:29:06.130
I would just invite people listening right now, invite you to tune in about how are you living your life, and my message is you don't have to wait till end of life or a crisis or upheaval to choose, to feel into the aliveness, that fullness of life, that preciousness of life that's here right now, but it's not found in our mind.

00:29:06.130 --> 00:29:11.523
It's found in the moment, in our heart, cultivating feeling into our heart, feeling love.

00:29:11.523 --> 00:29:16.279
These are things I've worked on practice since a child, a young teenager.

00:29:16.279 --> 00:29:24.019
So I would just invite you to think about how are you living and, um, the full vibrancy of life is here.

00:29:24.019 --> 00:29:26.544
It's here for all of us yeah.

00:29:27.085 --> 00:29:31.531
So, with that being said, as he say, how are you living?

00:29:31.531 --> 00:29:33.515
How are you living your life?

00:29:33.515 --> 00:29:35.182
That's the question for the day.

00:29:35.182 --> 00:29:36.644
Go pick up the book.

00:29:36.644 --> 00:29:39.391
Uh, go pick up the book.

00:29:39.391 --> 00:29:40.854
She left you the website.

00:29:40.854 --> 00:29:42.763
She left you the instagram.

00:29:42.763 --> 00:29:44.386
She left you a facebook page.

00:29:44.386 --> 00:29:45.630
Hey, check it out.

00:29:45.630 --> 00:29:50.988
Katherine duncan, right here on the money way, show we out hold on one second captain.

Weaving Life's Tapestry: From Time Magazine to Theology with Catherine Duncan

From Dimmed Sight to Insight The Awakening of a Storyteller