Blueprints for Liberty: How Cooperatives are Designing the Freedom Cities of Tomorrow

[00:00:00] See, hello everyone and welcome today. I'm excited to have Did I say that right? Yeah. Zara Starchild. And we are going to have a conversation about knowing [00:01:00] thyself and why it's important to know and understand ourselves and how it can help us better navigate many of the challenges that we face in our everyday life. 

Cheryl Johnson: So I'll let her take a few minutes to introduce herself and what she does, and then we'll just jump into the conversation. So have at it. 

Zara Starchild: Wonderful. Hi, thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much, Cheryl, for inviting me on. And I just want to thank all your beautiful listeners for tuning in. Super excited to delve into this topic with Cheryl of Knowing Thyself, the ancient philosopher Socrates. 

We just looked up claim that term, know thyself. And that has been a real major theme for my life. Um, and my expansion, my growth, and it continues to be. And I look back on my life and different spots within my life where I met different spiritual initiations on my journey. I didn't call it [00:02:00] that at the, at, at the time, but that's what they were, where I was. 

Put into positions where I had to choose to continue the old way or the traditional way or the way of my family versus the authentic, the authentic path of my own being and my own soul and how that has made all the difference in my life by really trusting myself, my soul, my heart, my desires, my visions in leading my life to this incredible place where I am at the moment recently landed kind of in this living situation that is like living on vacation in this beautiful little tiny cottage in this paradise of a lake on the side of a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. 

And I get to live and work and love from this beautiful [00:03:00] cabin through the process of knowing myself and trusting myself and, and moving through the boundaries and the fears and the projections that we have acquired over the lifetime and choosing over and over again to continue to follow that path of expansion, growth, next steps into my becoming. 

And I know that you're Cheryl, you're a an advocate for leader, for leaders and mentor for leaders and and I believe we're all leaders on the inside waiting to come out, waiting to bloom even if it is just about leading ourselves into the direction and life of our dreams. So yeah, excited to be here. 

Oh, who am I? We totally forgot about that. I am an international energy healer channel teacher. I help people develop their spiritual gifts such as in intuition, psychic [00:04:00] visions, mediumship manifestation. Yeah, it's, it you know, there's a, there's a common idea out there that You need to be born psychic or you need to be born spiritual. 

You need to be born the seventh son of the seventh son in order to have access to information that is beyond the physical and it's simply not true. It's simply not true. And so I have developed and, and grown these gifts within myself. I did not have them. I do not remember having them as a child in any way, and one of the things that I do is help others open their own gifts so they can be self guided, so they can be guided by their own higher self, their own heart, their own passion, and the part of themselves that is above the physical world, and able to see the path ahead. 

So connecting people to [00:05:00] that greater self that has a lot more information than our little physical personality self. (ad here) 

Cheryl Johnson: Thank you so much. Yeah. And I think, I mean, I'll be honest you know, a couple of years ago, topics like this kind of scared me. 

I think because I didn't really understand them, or I thought they were too I don't know just Crazy people. And I, I, this is so stereotypical. And the reason I say it is, you know, you're driving along the highway and you see some sign along the side of the road that says psychic, you know, and then you think, oh, okay, that's interesting. 

And if I'm going to go in there, you know, can you tell me my fortune and tell me my future and, you know, all those kinds of things. And I think. You know, I, I'm not saying whether that's an accurate representation of the person who engages in that type of business or, or not, because I don't know. I, I didn't ever [00:06:00] stop and see, but I think in the world we live in, especially, and I, I can't remember, or I'm a student of history. 

At what point we really moved away from these ideas that this ancient wisdom that people had for thousands of years and then all of a sudden science now, if you can't, you know, use the, what is it, the scientific method to prove something exists or doesn't exist, then it must not be real. And if it's not real, if you can't, you know, see it, touch it, feel it, then It doesn't exist. 

And I think it's really done us a disservice. I think we, it's moved us to a place where it, we really struggle to get to know ourselves. And I think of two books that I read a long time ago. One was I don't even know the name of the book, but main takeaway that I got from it was learning to be congruent with who I was, and it [00:07:00] had me sit down and list all my values, and what was important to me, and that type of thing, and was I living true to those values that I had listed there. 

And the other one, and I can't remember the name of the book either, but it was all about simplicity. And as you're talking about living in, you know, the Adirondacks, I'm like, Ooh, I'm jealous. Even though I have a nice little property here in central Virginia and I love it and similar in some ways, but you know, it's just so nice. 

To be back in nature and be able to slow down and the name of the book had something to do with simplicity and it was just really all about uncluttering your life, getting rid of all the stuff that we collect and, you know, that stuff, not only does the stuff, I think, prevent us from getting to know who we really are. 

Because then we're just more, more busy create trying to collect more stuff, which requires us to work harder. And, you know, as we spend so much time at [00:08:00] work, and I was a workaholic for years and I had a come to Jesus moment, said, no, you're not going to do this anymore. And ever since then, you know, it's been 20 years ago or so I've been able to really slow down and learn to appreciate. 

What's happening around me, learn to listen to what's happening inside of me. And I am by no means an expert in this area, and I'm still feel like I'm a novice. So I'm engaging with people like Zara so I can learn more about it. I'll let you take it from there. 

Zara Starchild: That's awesome. Yeah. So my brain wants to go off in three different directions from what you've said there. 

One of the things that you shared was in regards to the scientific method, which is if we can't prove it scientifically, then it doesn't exist. And That kind of mentality came in probably somewhere in the 1800s, right? And [00:09:00] it's, it's still very prevalent today and just your reaction, you know, you, you shared your reaction to the psychic on the side of the road and not really wanting to put, to dip your toes in out of a fear of being labeled as crazy, really. 

It's, it's very interesting the, I watched some media programs. a while back and they were sort of demonstrating how the program that I watched was about how the how the media, it was demonstrating how the media would make fun of and ridicule They would deliberately bring people on to interview and then they would make fun of and or ridicule them, making them look silly, such as shaman or any kind of new age person, any kind of psychic person. 

And so they would make jokes and they would sort of demean that person on the air. And, and we, I'm, I'm a child of the 70s and 80s and we grew up [00:10:00] with that. We grew up with a lot of ridicule of things that are different and luckily I believe that's really starting to dissolve and open up. 

Now, people are becoming more open, more accepting of diversity in it, in and of itself, which is a beautiful thing. So the, that's the one thread that you, you said here was, if you can't prove it scientifically that it doesn't exist, that creates this reaction in me that in regards to the the, the belittling of the imagination, right? 

On a spiritual retreat several years ago, we were led into a seven day experience of being fully enmeshed and immersed within our imaginational realm. And it was very difficult, as an adult, to continue to participate in this [00:11:00] imaginary fairyland for seven days. And I resisted a lot and finally we, we got through it and there were big, big gifts through it. 

And one of the things that I realized through it is that in experimenting with opening and being in my imagination, It opened my abilities, my creative abilities, it opened my ability to channel, it opened my ability, my ability to receive insights from my higher self, or from my guides, or from God, or from Jesus, or from whatever source that was wanting to communicate with me, and it allowed me to this greater peace of mind because there was just this greater connection. 

I was reconnected to my imagination. And I want to share just the value of the imagination because the imagination that has been so devalued, especially when we were [00:12:00] children, Oh, that's just your imagination. That's just your imagination. The imagination is actually one of our spiritual doorways to solution consciousness. And I just want to say this in a very practical way. Every single invention Every single thing that we have in our material world that is man made was sourced from the imaginational realm. All new products, all new solutions, all new inventions, all new technologies come through the imaginational realm of the individual, of the engineer, of the inventor. 

And so this imagination, which I believe is a very high spiritual gift. The ability to reside and open your imagination is of incredible value, not only to inventors, but to all of [00:13:00] us that are experiencing challenges in our lives. And one of the sayings that resounds really powerfully within my being is that the solution to your problem cannot be found within the same vibration of the problem. 

And what that means is when our minds are fixated on what's wrong and how to fix it, our minds are in the problem. They're focused on the problem. They're focused on the challenge or the obstacle and the way through the obstacle. And one of the techniques, real simple techniques to, Move through that obstacle, that challenge, easier, efficiently, faster, is to step out of the problem, bring your mind out of the problem, [00:14:00] and open it up. 

Open the mind up, come out of the space of the problem, and reside your mind or your mental attention. in what's all, this can go in many different directions, but in the realm of possibilities, just opening it up to the realm of possibilities. And instead of trying to have our mental body, our mind try to fix the problem, if we step out of trying to fix it ourselves and just kind of like ask God, ask the divine, ask our higher self, what do I need to know about this? 

What do I need to do about this? And. If we go into a space of like listening as if we were listening to the other side of a telephone, and we're not going to hear the answer audibly, most of us, but if we just go into the space of [00:15:00] listening, then we're moving our mind from focusing on the problem to, we're taking the mind pattern out of focusing on the problem, to shifting to a completely different vibrational experience of the mental body, shifting it into a question and a receptive mode of listening. 

And just by doing that, just by making that switch into the listening mode, Five minutes, every five, every few, every few hours or so, just go into a five minute, like, listen. And you're, you're shifting your entire vibration from the question to the answer, to receiving the answer. And what I find happens with this again and again and again, is that though the answer may not come in the moment of the asking, the answer [00:16:00] will show up through some means. Whether it be through the imagination, maybe we wake up with the answer, maybe we go to sleep with the, and we, on the way into falling asleep, we get the answer of vision. Maybe a friend calls and tells us something, and that gives us the answer. And I know you wanted me to really ground these concepts into physicality. 

And one of the experiences that I had with this was I was also a fitness instructor, a group fitness instructor for a very long time, and I developed plantar fasciitis, which is an incredibly painful pain in the heel of the foot and so I would wake up with it, and I would have a very difficult time walking, and it went on for a year. 

or more. And I believed I had to stop teaching fitness classes. I, I was on that verge of stopping pulling myself out of teaching the fitness classes. And then one day I just asked, I'm like, you know, what is this? What [00:17:00] is this? How do I fix this? How, what do I need to know about this problem on my foot in order to continue to do what I love? 

And one, It was either morning, it was either evening when I was falling asleep, or morning when I was waking up, but I had my attention on the pain in my, and discomfort in my foot, and I heard a voice in my head, I just heard a voice say, it's not your foot, it's your ankle. I thought, well, that's weird. 

Okay. So I just followed it. And I went and I got an ankle brace. And the problem cleared in a week. This, this problem, this actual physical pain I had in my body for close to a year cleared just by shifting my mind out of like, ow, my heart, my, my, Foot hurts. Ow, my foot hurts. It must be from my teaching. I must have to stop my [00:18:00] teaching. 

That was where my mind was going into. It's not your foot, it's your ankle. Wearing an ankle brace and then having it completely cleared up. Does that make sense or did I go off on a tangent there? 

Cheryl Johnson: No, it makes perfect sense. It makes me think, you know, it was probably 10, 10 plus years ago. I engaged, I've been a consultant most of my life and I engaged and invested in a company called Mental Training and they train high performance athletes as their number one, you know, target audience. 

But they also, You know, anybody that I think their motto is, we train people to perform their best when it matters most, something like that. And I mean, we've all heard this, so this isn't anything new, but it just made me think of one of the primary things they teach these high performing athletes is to visualize. 

And they don't visualize [00:19:00] themselves performing badly, because that just makes them perform even worse. What they do, and I mean, it goes into your imagination, and it's hard. And I found as I was coaching and trying to get people to engage with this, you know, visualization exercise, it was really hard, and if I was working with youth, their parents were like, why am I paying you all this money to, you know, this is ridiculous. 

And I, because I would say, okay. You need to imagine yourself, let's say you're a soccer player, on a field. What does the grass feel like? What does the day feel like? Is the sun shining? Is it hot? Or, you know, what are you wearing? What do your clothes feel like on your skin? You know, how does it feel when your foot hits the ball? 

And then you just visualize yourself, you know, doing these various skills. And you, you visualize yourself doing them perfectly because in your mind you can make, you can do them perfectly. Now translating that into [00:20:00] your body is a different story, but the more you visualize yourself doing it and they've done MRIs and of people's brains and things that show that when you are so fully engaged with this process, that the same thing is happening in your brain when you visualize it as when you actually do it and One of the examples that they give is like playing the piano They had somebody and I'm I also play the piano, but you know, there's those that they did this study There's those that didn't practice at all. 

Obviously, they didn't get any better There's those that practice the piano in their mind and then there's those that practice the piano Just physically, you know, get, sit down and play the piano. And then there's those. that both practice in their mind and physically. And of course, we, we all know the answer. 

The, those were the people [00:21:00] that performed the best, but what they were so amazed at was the people who literally practiced in their head did as well as those who only practiced physically. And it's like, how can that be? 

Zara Starchild: Isn't that incredible? 

Cheryl Johnson: Yeah. You're, I think, and I mean, we've heard this said a thousand times too, you know, we only utilize 10 percent of our brain, I'm not kidding. 

I think we don't even use 10 percent of our brain. I think our brains are capable of so much more and there's so much energy around us that we don't even realize exists that we are just totally under utilizing all of the power that is available to us. 

Zara Starchild: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of my main one of the main things that I teach is awakening your light body. 

And the, through the course of teaching the light body course, what I'm actually [00:22:00] guiding students and people to do is activate what I believe is activate those latent parts of the brain that give us access to these multi dimensional aspects of ourself. Um, and, and that's what I mean about these spiritual gifts such as just, just, there's a spiritual gift just of knowing this. 

It's it's called clarisentience, right? And it's, No, or no, Claircognit, Claircognitance, something along those lines, and it's just pure knowing, like you know, and so, and it just comes, it just comes into you, you know it and that, like a quick example of that is just eating at a cafe with a friend, and then suddenly you know that your parking meter has run out, and there's a parking guard coming, you need to get up and go throw a quarter in there. 

And so you get up and sure enough you throw the quarter in and then you see the parking guard come down the street and [00:23:00] that's an actual experience that I've had to this, this greater aspect of my own being, my own knowing the field of who I am that's beyond my physical body. Oh, excuse me. You might want to edit that. 

I just choked on my gum. Or not. Leave it authentic. But yeah, so let's see. Yeah, you're gonna have to edit this because I just lost track. Shoot. You were talking about athletes and piano players performing, practicing, performing. I'm better. Right. Okay. So yeah, one of the things that I wanted to say in regards to your example of the pianists that just practiced in their minds I also had read, read some articles about bodybuilders that did the same thing. 

Like they, they just trained in their mind and their muscles actually grew as if they were lifting the weights with their [00:24:00] body, which I thought was pretty out of this world. 

Cheryl Johnson: It is. And it's amazing because they're now training athletes who get injured to continue practicing just in their head. And it helps them heal faster. 

You know, obviously it keeps them in a good positive mental frame of mind. And then of course they can, then they don't see, they don't lose skill while they're recovering. So yeah. And it goes back to, it's like we talked about was. I think we're so, we underutilize this brain of ours and this energy that's around us. 

And, and as I've been studying, and believe me, I am not a scientist and I know very little about quantum mechanics and quantum physics and quantum all this, that and the other thing. But as I've started understanding these particles and from a scientific [00:25:00] perspective, all of these things that are around me that I can't see, touch, feel, or whatever, but they're there. 

Yes. It all of a sudden I feel like I have a greater awareness of myself and I, I don't, I'm, I'm like, I can't put two and two together to make sense how that happens, but it does. 

Zara Starchild: Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, in regards to knowing thyself, I believe that 90 percent of the world is walking around with this very, very limited understanding of who they really are and of the power that they actually have to influence their future. 

reality and the power of the mind as we were just talking about with the visualizations, with the imaginations, with the opening to solutions. And I believe that that, you know, has been designed as part of our evolution as a human species, right? We, I believe we had to turn down or [00:26:00] dumbed down maybe some of these intuitive senses that we have in order for greater physical survival or greater focus on the physical. 

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but we were talking before you started the recording about the ancient Mayans who had incredible information about medicinal plants and astronomy and all kinds of things. And all of the ancient buildings that were like, the pyramids that were built with monoliths with exact precision. 

I mean, yeah, it's just, just completely amazing. You know, one of the things that I wanted to share from the topics that you brought up was about this beautiful little cottage lake house that I had. I'd like to tell you guys the story about how I manifested this place. So, it starts with myself living in a three story house in Kingston, New York. 

I lived on a really busy road, a [00:27:00] really busy street. It was very loud. It was very noisy. And one day I, I recognized that I had manifested my life exactly how I wanted it. I had time for painting. I had time for art. I had time to work out. I had time to dedicate to healthy meal prep, healthy eating. I had a great house. 

I had a small income that paid the bills where I was And I realized that the only thing I didn't have yet was my house on a lake. Like out of all the things that I really wanted in my life, the only thing I didn't have at that moment was the house on the lake. And so I said, I'm going to manifest this lake house and I'm going to do it this year. And all, and just, just so you know, all of those other things that I had manifested, I had done it through the intention of manifestation. I had been involved in energy work and awakening the light [00:28:00] body spirituality from a very young age and always practiced the tools that I was learning and growing into. 

And so I had sort of. manifested the house in Kingston. I had manifested the cushy job that I only had to work a few days a week. I had manifested all the time for art. I had manifested a passive income. And like I said, the only thing I didn't have yet was my beautiful home by the water. I just said, I'm going to, I'm going to manifest that this year. 

And I had saved up about 10, 000 to 15, 000 over the last couple years, which I was planning on putting towards some kind of real estate investment. So that was in the bank. And so what I did was I actually took out a journal. I actually bought a journal. I bought a really nice journal and I started to write in the journal, creative writing as if I were already there, which is what you were talking about. 

So I [00:29:00] would creatively write every morning while I was having my coffee, I would write about sitting on the screened in porch, breathing the fresh air, listening to the, the waves crash against the beach, the smell of the grass, the sound of the beetle on the dried leaves, like all of the stuff, what was going on inside the house. 

Every morning I did this for weeks. And it was a beautiful experience, a really lovely experience to sit and have coffee and dream like that, right? So, and that's another example of going into that imaginational realm. And so I would sit and I would do that. And then after a couple of weeks reality started to get a little wonky and it's not an experience. 

Even, even those of us that are really experienced on the path. When reality starts to get like glitchy, it's always a really kind of a feeling that's a little unsettling, even when you don't believe [00:30:00] reality is real anyways. But, so I, so I calmed down a little bit. I stopped writing in the journal for a little bit just to kind of slow down the process. 

And then I resumed it a couple months later and after a few writings in my journal, I walked to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and I thought to myself, man, I really need to make some more money so I can buy this lake house that I want so bad. And I literally, again, I heard a voice in my head say, that's a limited belief. 

And I was like, what? And I heard, that's a limited belief. And so I said, Oh, wow, it is a limited belief. And I suddenly understood that something that I had been thinking, saying to myself, vibing with, which was, I need to do this before I can have that. I need money before I can have the lake house. I need [00:31:00] my business to grow so that I can have money so that I can have the lake house. 

This was. You know, in spiritual terms and manifestation terms, I was putting all of these quantifiers before I could have the thing that I wanted, which was the lake house. And so in that moment, and it was just a moment, it's taking way longer to explain it than it happened, but in the moment I understood that that was a limited belief and that was the last piece. 

of energy that was blocking the manifestation of this lake house. And so I just started to say to myself over and over again, out loud, I can have the lake house now. I can have it now. I'm, I'm, I'm opening to receive it now. It's coming to me now. And I just started saying that over and over and over again. 

And I swear to God that the lake house came into my [00:32:00] field within two weeks. of that. My mother called me up and she said, you wouldn't believe it. My friend knows somebody that's selling this lake house and I'm going to buy it and I'm going to fix it up and I'm going to sell it. That's what my mom said to me. 

And I, and, and I said, mom, that's mine. That one's mine. And and then long story short, it was a shack that hadn't been used for 30 years. It's a, it's a, a small place, less than 2000 square foot. But we, I had manifested a beautiful, amazing partner, a beautiful, amazing man who happened to be a car, a contractor several months before this. 

And so we were in a beautiful relationship and then this beautiful. Well, it was, it wasn't beautiful at the time. It was a shack, literally full of squirrel beds and bees nests and, and 40 year old filth. But we came in and we spent, my partner and I spent two, we spent every weekend for [00:33:00] about two years, gutting the place and putting it back together. 

And, oh, and the best thing about this is that this was during the middle of the pandemic. This was in 2021, early 2021, and we purchased the lake house for 40, 000, which is unheard of basically and my partner convinced me to get a loan instead of using the full on cash that I had saved up. So I got a loan for 30, 000 and I bought this lake house for 10, 000. 

And we're like, chilling and loving it now, two years later. We go swimming like two, three times a day, and it's just freaking amazing. But yeah, I share it all with you because it was literally through visualization and the imagination. and the belief and then clearing one of the limiting beliefs that was holding, holding it back for so long because I [00:34:00] had done vision boards before. 

I had tried to manifest this for like a decade, for at least a decade until I finally said I'm doing it. Yeah. So I just put that out there and in regards to knowing thyself, also knowing what it is that you want, getting really, really clear on it, but then there's levels and layers to receiving it. So there's limiting beliefs about that it's going to take so much time, that we have to do this before that, that I'm not good enough, and, and all kinds of different programs that are running in our, in our emotional body, in our mental body, in our physical body even. 

So knowing thyself is Again, multidimensional. We have all these different aspects of our being that are in play within our, within our physical body, within our mental body, within our emotional body, within our personality. In the [00:35:00] energetic healing world, we call them soul aspects or sub personalities. 

There are little voices in our head often that say that, that, in some form of another are limiting what we can have, what we can do, what we can experience. And they're there based on past experiences and they're there with the intention to protect us from getting hurt again. But knowing thyself as being able to kind of hear them. 

See them, know that they're operating, and then bring love to them, really, to help to clear them and release them from our being. Or bring truth sometimes to them. Just speaking truth to them. Yeah, 

Cheryl Johnson: multiple things are going through my mind. And I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, does this mean it's like, you know, Aladdin and the genie pops out of the bottle and says, Oh, here, grant you three wishes and you get [00:36:00] whatever you want. 

I think it, I think it goes so much deeper than that. And I think it's, It's not, I mean, and I will never underestimate the power of visualization, but this going back to knowing yourself. I, I always tell people this because you know most, most kids when you ask them What do you want to be when you grow up? 

And they're like, oh a doctor, lawyer, you know They have really high aspirations in their life. I was like, I want to be a flight attendant, you know, I was like, okay. And so I don't know when I turned 18. And I remember, you know, and this time with you, this was in the 70s, early 80s, you know, we didn't have computers. 

We had typewriters. Right. I would type up a letter and, you know, send it off to all the airlines that existed at the time. They'd send me back their applications. I'd have to type up every application manually and and make no mistakes. You know, your little whiteout and different things that we had, but, oh. 

And this went on for several years and every six months I'd get rejection [00:37:00] letters saying you didn't get it, you didn't get it, you didn't get it. And then I won't even go into all the details, but when I was about 21, it just miraculously happened. I won't even go into that story, but it just fell in my lap one day. 

I didn't even apply for the job. And but then after I had been working as a flight attendant for about six months, hated it. I absolutely hated it. And I was like, I've spent my whole life wanting this. And I was when I was in high school, I used to walk a lot. And that was the time I would visualize I didn't know that's what it was. 

But you know, and I would dream about all these things I wanted. And I believe that I brought that into my life through that process. But, what, it wasn't being a flight attendant that I really wanted, what I really wanted was to travel. And so, you know, [00:38:00] sometimes they say be careful what you ask for, you might get it. 

And I got it, but I remember after about six months, I was, had been really sick, and they were insisting that I continue to fly, and I don't know, anyway. Long story short, I, very religious person, I was, had gone to church, I was sitting on the back row of church and I was silently crying to myself how miserable I was and this thought just popped into my head and I was married at the time, you know, so it was like, Oh, you need to have a baby. 

And I was like, No, that wasn't on my radar. I'd done my share of babysitting. That is not what was on my radar. And I didn't not like babysitting, but I was like, you know, that's just not what I want to do. But I was at a point in my life where it's like, well. You've achieved your greatest aspiration, was to be a flight attendant, why not give it a shot? 

And I still remember the day that my first child was born, and if you've ever had kids, every [00:39:00] mother can attest to this, and I guess fathers to some degree. I just sobbed and cried, I was so happy, and I was just like, oh, this being a mother is the best thing that could ever happen to me. And, I just thoroughly, and my kids are all grown and, you know, have kids of their own now. 

I just remember how happy I was being a mother. And I think this kind of makes me think of, if I would have known myself better. It's not that being a flight attendant, I don't feel like being a flight attendant was a mistake in my life by any means. But it helped me better understand that I need to really know myself, you know, what was it about being a flight attendant? 

It's really that I like to travel. To this day, I like to travel, but I don't like to fly standby. You know, and so on the flip side, what was it I loved about being a mother? You know, I just, I don't know. I [00:40:00] love teaching my kids, spending time with them, helping them explore the world and learn about the world around them and, and all that. 

And then for years, you know, there was a period of time where I was just like, I felt like I was really what I call close to the spirit, you know, where I just felt like if I really thought about things and prayed about things that I could manifest them. And. It worked and people were like, wow, you know, you're amazing. 

But then I won't go into all the long story of that either. Had very, some very traumatic things happen in my life. And, and I just flipped the 180 degrees the other direction. It was like, I was just unhappy and there was so much trauma from all the things that had happened. And, and I spent years and years just. 

Like, why is it that I was able to make these things manifest in my life [00:41:00] before, but I can't now, and I had, it's because of all these blockages, you know, and it's really, truly only been in the last year or so that I've started to let go of some of those, not even realizing they were there, that I'm able to start manifesting things again. 

You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. 

Zara Starchild: Yeah. Yeah. So when I, when I'm working with people one on one, we're really looking at what those, what those blocks are and where, you know, the basics of knowing thyself is really like, you've got your physical body, you've got your emotional body, you've got your mental body, and then you have your spiritual body. 

And that's really simplified. That's a really simplified way of looking at it. They're all intertwined, they're all intertwined and they make up. The, the unique combination of who we are from where we've been. And then [00:42:00] also like where, where it is that we want to go, where we're going, where we're, what we're creating with our lives. 

And so one of the things that comes to mind from your story is that trauma, like traumatic experiences, and I've had my own fair share of those. I wish we were on video. I could show you, but just imagine you have, like a wide open hand, right? And the wide open hand is like opening, open to the sun, right? 

Open to the sun and the sun being like a metaphor for the divine. So the, the hand is open to the sun. We're in, and the hand is metaphor for the heart too, right? So it's, it's this feeling of openness, of expansion and of connection. And so when you were in your connection with spirit, when you felt close to spirit, you were like, open and you were receiving and your heart was open and you were able to receive into your reality the [00:43:00] desires of your heart. 

But when we get when we move through experiences that are traumatic or intense, what often happens is our Emotional body, our energy body will constrict. Our heart will be hurt. And, and, and, in the normal reaction of getting your heart broken, through grief, or betrayal, or abandonment, the heart closes. 

the energy of the heart, which is six foot around your body, they've measured, will actually close and it'll contract. And when we're in contraction, if you think about that tight fist, right? The tight fist cannot catch the rays of the sun. So when we're in the place of contraction due to the trauma or the intensity of the experience, then we're Actually in like closed off, we're guarded, we come [00:44:00] into ourselves and we're not in a space of receptivity to the solutions and or the grace that's wanting to come into our lives. 

Cheryl Johnson: Does that make sense? It does, and it's interesting because I was just at a mastermind not too long ago, and a gentleman who's, you know, really into elite mindset kind of training, and this is so ironic because my husband's usually, like, the one that doesn't buy into all of this kind of ideas. He's very much on the for lack of a better word, scientific side of things, where I'm more on the spiritual side of things. 

This guy gave us an exercise and he simply said, you know, basically take your hand and put it over your heart. Now reach in your heart and find something that you are, that, you know, that you really want, and then take it and pull it out of your heart, and [00:45:00] then extend your arm out, you know, and have it out here, And then think of something that, some place, something, you know, like your lake house, something, you know, some place or something that's really means a lot to you, and then take, after you've experienced that in your mind, take that and put it back into your heart. 

And so, you know, I, I did the exercise. I was like, yeah, that's cool. Didn't do anything for me, but he said, and he said to the group, he said, did you actually feel energy being put back into your heart? And I was like, no, I didn't. But my husband was like, yeah, this is weird. I did. I was like, okay, this is weird, but that's, I think, because of some of the trauma and things in my life. 

I have this tendency nowadays and I have to get out of this mindset is when I pulled it out there and I thought of something nice, as soon [00:46:00] as I found myself pulling it back into my heart, it's like, yeah, this is dumb. This doesn't work. I hadn't even got my hand back to my heart and I'd already said, you know, That's not going to work. 

Zara Starchild: Yeah. Yeah. So that's, so that's, those are, these are, this is beautiful. This is a great conversation because that's, that's the importance of knowing myself is to like actually hear and notice those kinds of things. Responses, automatic responses that our mind creates within ourselves, restrictions, limitations. 

And that really, like, exactly what you said there, like, that doesn't work, that's, you know, that doesn't work, that's not going to work. That voice. is not the voice of your higher self. That voice is not the voice of your truth. That voice is, is, is created from our past, a past experience [00:47:00] usually of some kind of disappointment that we've experienced. 

And so it negates the possibility for growth, expansion, receiving based on the fact that it doesn't want to be disappointed again. So it's a, it's a voice that protects, doesn't, it doesn't protect you, but it imagines that it's trying to protect you from being disappointed. And that's, that's a minor one. 

The disappointment one. There's, there's much bigger ones out there as well. Like, The voice that, there's voices within people that believe certain things about men, or women, or, let's just, that's an easy one to do, like, they'll, they'll have had people who have had traumatic experiences with partners, romantic relationships. 

If these [00:48:00] experiences haven't been brought to the light, meaning, meaning really looked at and, and understood and unraveled, what was my part in this? What was I trying to What was I trying to receive in this? What was I trying to give in this? What was I trying to share in this relationship? What was my part in the dissolution of the relationship? 

What did I believe about this person? Like, these are questions that we want to ask ourselves when the thing that we thought that we wanted didn't work out in the way we wanted. And in, in the process of going through the grief, loving ourselves through the grief, loving ourselves through the betrayal, loving us ourselves through the abandonment, then we can heal those voices. 

We can bring them into our heart. We can sort of calm the voice within us that says it was all our fault, or we're not worthy of anything or all. [00:49:00] Men slash all women are bad. And if we don't do that, if we don't bring our bring the illumination of our mind to these parts that believe in limitation, then we continue to create our reality from the belief in limitation, the belief that we hold. 

Just like you were talking about quantum mechanics before and the basics of the quantum mechanics is the observer effect. The person that's looking at the light, They expect to see a particle, they see a particle. Another person that's looking at the light, they expect to see a wave, they see a wave. 

Then they expect to see a particle, they see a particle. So they, they notice that the light that they're looking at, the scientists, they're actually looking at particles of light or waves of light. They've noticed that the, the makeup, the fundamental makeup, how the particles [00:50:00] move or exist. depends upon who's looking at them and what we believe about them, what we believe we're going to see when we look at the particles. 

And because everything, all of the material world is actually just made out of light, made out of particles of light vibrating and congealed in different ways, in different formats, it all shifts and changes as we look at it, depending on what it is we expect to see. So if we expect to see that all men are philanthro, philanthroers or, or all men are adulterers, then we're going to see it everywhere, everywhere. 

But if we believe that we are worthy of a beloved, sacred partnership. We are worthy of being cherished, loved, honored. We are worthy of sharing our own love, honoring and cherishing another. If we believe this, [00:51:00] then We will see that. We will attract that. We will manifest that. And that is the whole point of knowing the self. 

The whole point of knowing the self is becoming, from my perspective, is becoming that conscious co creator of our own realities. (ad here) 

Yes, and I think that is beautiful. I think that's, that's a good note to end on. I think you summarized it really well, because 

Cheryl Johnson: In essence, we create our own reality. And I think we don't believe that. I think we believe that there is a reality and our responsibility, for lack of a better word, is to observe the reality as it exists instead of creating our own reality. 

Zara Starchild: Yeah. Or function within the reality that already exists rather than. 

Yes. Yeah. Recreating something new. Yeah. We were taught that. We were taught [00:52:00] that. 

Cheryl Johnson: We were, and it's interesting as I, like I said, going back to ancient wisdom too, I think that, I think, from a religious perspective, and I'm not knocking religion because I'm definitely a very religious person, well, religious and spiritual, is that I think religion has kind of hijacked a lot of these concepts, and if you believe in Jesus Christ, you almost have to believe there is Satan, That's the whole purpose behind, you know, if you get into the whole religious story. 

And something very fascinating that I'll bring up briefly here was, I don't know what possessed me one day to, I don't literally mean possessed, but I was thinking about what the word occult meant. And I've always associated it with satanic things. And so many of these spiritual things that we've talked about are associated with satanic beliefs. 

[00:53:00] And When I looked up the word occult, it had nothing to do with Satan. There was not a mention in any of the definitions of Satan. It was just kind of mystical, you know, and we've once again associated mystical with satanic things. And I believe we negate a lot of the ancient wisdom that has existed since the beginning of time, if there is such a thing as time, because man created time you know, that, 

For whatever reason, these terms got hijacked and they're, they lead us to think about things that aren't really, they're not the real definition of these words or these concepts and ideas. 

Zara Starchild: Right, right. You know, 

when that, what you're sharing right now is really, really interesting and it brings us back to something that we were talking about at the very beginning of sort of like, how did we move out of that connection to all that is into this place of, of real limitation [00:54:00] now? And now you're bringing up the concept of religion and, and the idea that, The, from, from the history of religion, what I've experienced or read or looked into, when these religions were originally forming they were, one of the very fundamental things that they did was they actually took, they separated the, hm, how should I say this? 

Let's, let's use the concept of original sin. The concept of original sin in the Bible. did not exist in the Bible. Does not, it actually doesn't exist in the Bible. It was, it was later added in the Bible from some French Bishop, I think, in the Crusades, created it. It wasn't from the original Bible. This, this guy within the crusades created the concept of original sin. 

I can't even remember his name now. My, my [00:55:00] brain doesn't hold details like this, but that concept of original sin was implanted into the human collective consciousness through religion. And what happens on an energetic level is your, crown chakra. Your crown chakra is your energetic connection to your spiritual divinity, to your spiritual access, your crown chakra, to spiritual communications. 

And one of the blocks, one of the energetic blocks to your crown chakra and to accessing your spiritual connection is the frequency of guilt. So guilt, it was a seed of guilt that all, all of us are bad because we were born from Adam and Eve. The original sinners, and that was a concept that was told and retold, and told and retold and told and retold, and the whole idea. 

of this concept of [00:56:00] original sin was to separate humanity from their own knowing of God so that humanity would need, would believe that they would need to come to the priest or the or, or the hero font. who was the master, who had the Bible, who had the knowledge, who had the direct connection to God. 

So if you wanted forgiveness, you had to go to the priest to get forgiveness. You had to, if you wanted to access to God, you had to go to the priest, you had to go to the church. And so, it was the original founding of these big religious organizations was based upon a control, accessing control over people's minds, people's behaviors, people's thoughts what people were doing. 

And, and in that way, [00:57:00] You know, that's probably how we moved from having access to our innate knowingness, right? Like, back in the the indigenous peoples of the earth, they had communication with plants. They knew which plants were medicine. They knew which plants were poison. and they knew it, some of them knew it through being passed, the wisdom was passed on ancestrally, but some of them, the original ones, they got that knowingness directly from the plant entity, from the plant, the sentience of the plant itself, or from their connection to God, their connection to higher self, their connection to spirit, said this plant will calm your nerves, this plant will be antibacterial. 

So we, we've, it is, it is our natural, I believe it is our natural state of being to be in connection with God. with God, Source, Divine, Creator, Spirit, all that is, whatever name you want to call the divine. We [00:58:00] have that direct access already and it is only through these veils that have been placed on our consciousness that limits or blocks our ability to do so because we don't think we have that ability. 

We think we're programmed, we're programmed to think that we're limited. And in the whole knowing of the self, it's like to look at these programs and say, is this true? Is this serving me? 

Cheryl Johnson: Yeah, that's, I, I really like that idea. I, as you, as you speak these words, it resonates. It's like, okay, I know this. And yet. 

I feel like I'm knowing it on a different level, and I really appreciate that, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share. all of your knowledge and wisdom with us today. I'd actually like to maybe at some point in time do another one because I there's I just have a hundred more questions and ideas and thoughts that are going through my head. 

And I [00:59:00] think that as we start exploring these ideas that people will become more and more interested in knowing thyself on a level that we just have gotten away from for so many years. So thank you so much for taking your time to share today. 

Zara Starchild: I love this. Yeah, I had a great conversation. Such a beautiful energy with you, Cheryl. 

Thank you so much. Thanks for the invitation. And I don't know if I mentioned this in the email, but I do have a free gift for your audience if, if you are open to receiving that it is a gift of a free grace for the soul crown chakra activation. So, bringing grace into the crown chakra. To illuminate the petals of your crown chakra so that you do actually have greater access to your own divinity, your own higher self, your own connection, your own higher guidance, your own intuitive knowing. 

So, I will give [01:00:00] Cheryl the link for that and you guys can find it wherever she puts it. Yeah, 

Cheryl Johnson: in the show notes, and I was going to mention that, you know, all of Zara's contact information about herself and her programs and this wonderful gift she's willing to share with us will be in the show notes, so I encourage you to engage with those. 

So thanks again for sharing your time with us and until we do it again. 

Zara Starchild: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Bye bye.