Episode S01E03:
Sexual Expression from a Soul Perspective with Jerome Braggs
Coming into closer alignment with the soul, and fully embodying ourselves are a couple of the highest pursuits in this life. This is according to today's special guest, Jerome Braggs. Jerome is an intuitive healer who brings kindness, awareness, love, and honesty to his work with clients, and into his everyday life too! Having Jerome on the podcast is truly an honor and listeners can expect to come away from this episode refreshed and inspired to delve deeper into their purpose and find more meaningful joy and pleasure in the world around them. In our conversation, Jerome unpacks how to understand the human soul, and how true pleasure anchors the soul in the body. We also get into how to shut out the external noise that can distract us from our inner truth and soul's message. Other topics covered include how to understand illness, why retreat and silence are so important, the power of sex, and how to better connect with what is truly pleasurable. Jerome is such a gifted speaker and has so many amazing juicy bits of wisdom to share with all of our listeners, so make sure not to miss this episode!
Key Points from This Episode:
- Jerome explains what he means by the words 'soul' and 'source'.
- Ways to get more in tune with the soul; Jerome talks about the importance of unpacking and releasing.
- The specifics about retreating and what it means to take a step back from culture.
- The metaphor of the caterpillar, the cocoon, and the butterfly, and the lessons to take from it.
- How illness and brushes with death can wake us up, and how to respond to the call.
- Mistakes in bed; a few pointers from Jerome on a better understanding of sex.
- How pleasure relates to the soul and body; a mechanism for anchoring ourselves.
- Recontextualizing the message of illness and why it's something we should listen to.
- Prioritizing what is important to us; Jerome's experiences during his near-death experience.
- Understanding the presence of God during sexual intercourse.
- Why pleasure should never be a source of shame and how to separate the two.
- Self-care and desire; Jerome explains why clouded judgment leads to confusion.
- Embodying the self and why this is so attractive to others.
- Where to find Jerome online and how to make use of his amazing offers!
Tweetables:
“We can limit the fullness of ourselves, based upon what we believe our color says about us, or what we believe our gender says about us, or our sexuality says about us.” — @JeromeBraggs [0:06:59]
“The caterpillar goes through a cocooning period in order to become the highest version of itself, the version of itself it was meant to be.” — @JeromeBraggs [0:11:37]
“Your soul knows, very intimately, what would turn you on, make your life feel like it's on fire and delicious, and make you feel most alive.” — @JeromeBraggs [0:16:17]
“Pleasure anchors the soul into the body.” — @JeromeBraggs [0:24:25]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Zoë Kors’ Links:
Zoë’s Book: Radical Intimacy
TRANSCRIPT
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] ANNOUNCER: You are listening to the Radical Intimacy Podcast, with sex and intimacy coach Zoe Kors.
[00:00:15] ZK: I met Jerome Braggs, through a mutual friend, spiritual badass, Jill Prescott, several years ago. At the time, they were doing a series of talks together, and I was immediately drawn to him; his voice, his energy, just the way he expressed himself. I reached out to Jerome several months later to do some personal anti-racism work, as I stepped more fully into leadership and public speaking.
My three sessions with him helped me immeasurably in further defining what I know, what I don't know, and what I have to say about it. Let me tell you about Jerome Braggs. Jerome is a highly gifted intuitive healer. In 2004, he was diagnosed with AIDS and kidney failure, and then given seven days to live. Seven days.
On his deathbed, he had a near-death experience, where he was told the key to true healing and well-being is to wholly love yourself. That near-death experience catalyzed a mystical multi-year journey, where he learned how to heal himself and manifest a deeply delicious life through the practice of self-love.
Today, Jerome helps spiritual seekers heal themselves and manifest truly delicious lives through his teachings of self-love. Jerome teaches that when we love ourselves, all is well, all is coming and all is delicious. I found out firsthand about wholly loving myself, as I lay in the ICU in December 2019. It was a few months before the pandemic reached the United States, and I had managed to contract an aggressive form of pneumonia, which turned out to be Legionnaires disease. Under the threat of intubation, I was preparing to die.
I reached out to Jerome for his best guidance. What he told me in a series of four voice memos, not only turned my health around that night, it changed the trajectory of my life. I invited Jerome to come share with you all about the soul, self-love, our purpose, peeling away the layers of distractions that keep us from our truth, and the truth about sexual expression from a soul perspective. Get comfy. I think, you're going to love to hear what he has to say and how he says it.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:39] ZK: Jerome Braggs. Welcome.
[00:02:42] JB: Thank you.
[00:02:43] ZK: I'm going to dive right in and ask you, if you can define for us what the soul is. What do you mean when you talk about the soul?
[00:02:54] JB: The soul is who you are, is who you truly are. The soul is a facet of source. It is a facet of all that is. What I mean by facet is it's a part of it. It’s particularly the facet of source that gets to have a you experience. Source is the all, and it is not individualized. It is one. It is oneness. The soul is the part of source that is allowed to have an experience outside of oneness.
It gets to have an individual experience of you. You are still the soul, the still source. It's the individualized aspect of source that gets to have an experience of you. The soul is the wholeness in the truth of who you are, is the part of you also, that never forgets. It never forgets who you are. It never forgets what you are. It never leaves the energy of itself, the frequency of itself. When I talk about soul, I'm talking about that. You may call it the inner being. People call it all types of things; their divine self. The soul is the facet of source that gets to wear your face and use your name.
[00:04:22] ZK: Wow. Okay. When you talk about source, are you talking about God?
[00:04:28] JB: Yes, and also, no. Yes, in the aspect of source is the creator. It is the all that is. It is the beginning and that has no end. It is love, for lack of better terms. It is unconditional love. It is the consciousness and the energy of unconditional love. I say no, because on our human lives, we get conditioned into many different understandings and definitions of what God is. A lot of times, we view God as being judgmental. God is being male, sometimes. We view God as something that is wanting you to prove yourself for your worthiness.
Those aspects don't have anything to do with source. Those are things that we made up. Source has no judgment. Source is the unconditional love. Source is not male or female. Source is all. That's why I say yes and no. I grew up with the term, God. I like the term got personally, but I also know that there comes with that term, a lot of other baggage and shame and fear that really have no place in our understanding of source.
[00:05:49] ZK: Yes, I understand. It makes me think about Ram Dass. I've done a lot of work with Ram Dass. Ram Dass used to say, there's the soul, and there's a role. The role is our personality and the things we do, and the lens that we put on that we see the world through. It reminds me a little bit of that, when you say, it's the part of us that remembers, or the part of us that remembers who we are, when the rest of us does not remember where we came from.
[00:06:23] JB: Yeah. It's the part of us that doesn't get socialized, and doesn't get conditioned. Socialization and conditioning is not all bad. There are some socializations and conditionings that actually benefit us, and that could actually help us in our expansion. There are parts that aren't. The soul wants to experience color and race and gender and nationality. It wants to experience that, because that gives it a unique perspective that is different. It gives it a unique, individual experience.
It is also not that thing. We can limit the fullness of ourselves, based upon what we believe our color says about us, or what we believe our gender says about us, or our sexuality says, or what somebody else, really what somebody else has said, our color and our gender and our things that is. The soul is the aspect of you that is even beyond the definitions. Really, is the wholeness of love itself. That is the thing, and that's the challenge. That's what we're all trying to remember and embody and express, why we’re in this form.
[00:07:35] ZK: Yes. How can we remember better? How can we tune into and hear our soul and what our soul has to say to us?
[00:07:45] JB: Yeah. Tuning into the soul is more about unpacking things, releasing things, than it is about adding things to you. The soul will speak mostly in – we like to say silence, but it's more space between the thoughts. You want to do things that give you space from your regular train of thought. Things like, meditation, walking in nature, spending time, just being silent and breathing will help you a lot, will do that.
Also, the big things is you've got to take some time, like the process of really reconnecting to the soul is a process of isolation in the beginning. Not complete isolation, but you've got to step outside of culture for a period of time. It’s necessary, because you step outside of culture, you connect and make the connection that allows you to reintegrate into culture, but you are re-integrated with your wholeness and you can operate from that.
If you don't have a space where you are allowed to do that, you just flail around a bit. Now not everybody will do that. There are people who never did that and they were able to do that. Every soul's journey here is different. How, especially in the West, the journey of the soul really is there has to come apart, where you're born into culture, culture conditions and socializes you, and sometimes traumatizes you.
Then, there has to be a period where you step back. What I mean by culture is your environment, your family system, your gender identity, your racial identity, all of that, your nationality identity. You got to step back from that for a second and spend more time and alone time and do these things; meditate, walk in nature a lot, be silent, just brief, so that you can begin to feel and hear what your true self feels like, and sounds like and what it wants and what it says. Then, when you get a connection with that more, and you begin to feel it and you sense it and you follow it, then you can reintegrate into the world. You're like, “Oh, okay. I know what those people's voices sound like, and I know what mine sounds like.”
[00:10:17] ZK: Yeah, that's incredible. My question for you is, when you talk about retreating, or you talk about stepping away from culture and your identity that you inhabit out in the world, and in the systems that we live in, are you talking about, “I'm going to go take a 15-minute walk”? Or are you talking about like, I'm going to go on silent retreat for 30 days? What exactly are you talking about, tactically?
[00:10:43] JB: I'm talking about, "I'm not going to watch the news, or the television." I'm talking about, "I am not going to prioritize what my family and my peer systems are asking of me. I'm going to actually put them on mute for a minute. I am not rudely, not in anger, or negativity, but I just need to mute. I need to stand back."
Instead of calling them every day, and asking their opinions on something, I call once a week, and maybe I don't ask their opinions anymore. I'm just talking about spending time in retreat away. It could be at a retreat, or it could just be, I'm going to be in my own space for a minute. This is what our biggest metaphor that we have adopted as human beings that we look at for transformation is the butterfly. Because the caterpillar goes through a cocooning period, in order to become the highest version of itself, the version of itself it was meant to be. It has a cocooning period, where it has to separate itself from the rest for a period of time and really isolate and really focus on self.
Then, it undergoes a period of transformation in there, and then it could come out, and then it's there for the world to see. That is engaged in the world and is everywhere. You have to have that cocooning period.
[00:12:10] ZK: Yeah. The cocooning period doesn't always necessarily feel good. It can be scary. The caterpillar when it goes into the cocoon, it completely liquefies and disintegrates. Let’s go of its entire identity. All of the caterpillar network, all of those relationships that it has, and the soil and the leaves and all the familiar terrain, its whole consciousness, really. Then it goes into this thing and completely liquefies.
[00:12:47] JB: Yeah. What I love about that process is this. It's not like, it's destroyed, right? Because I think when we talk about that process of it, people think, “I'm being destroyed.” What is actually happening is everything that is not going to serve and nourish the butterfly gets removed. All that is left is what can nourish and support the manifestation of the butterfly.
[00:13:19] ZK: Okay, okay. This brings to mind, there's a great saying in tantra, a great concept, a metaphor that when you are in the process of transformation, the way that it said, and my lineage of tantra, the way that it's said in my lineage of tantra is that if you want to sit with the mother, you can knock on her door, as long as you want. Eventually, she'll let you in. She doesn't just open the door like a normal person. She reaches through the keyhole, and grabs you and drags you through slowly. That idea that not everything gets to go through the keyhole with you. Some things have to just fall away. Whatever is going to serve you will make the journey with you, right?
[00:14:07] JB: I want to change the verbiage, just a little bit, of when we say, serve you. Because everything serves you, actually. Some things serve to help you understand what you don't want. Some things help you to serve what no longer works for you. Some things help you serve, which is by understanding this is the wrong direction.
When you understand how the soul moves and moves you through a transformation, because when we think about this, I'm letting go of things that don't serve me, this and that, it always has this concept of who’s suffering? The soul is not about that. What the soul is actually about is helping you remove yourself from what doesn't nourish you. That is what doesn't feed you and help expand the true sense of who you are, and who you came to be, and the joy that you deserve.
It’s literally about, I'm trying to get you to a higher experience of joy. We need to let go of the things that you have accumulated, that are actually keeping you from your highest joy. When you understand that, this may be uncomfortable. Why is it uncomfortable? Because I've been attached to it, and I've been thinking, this is my path. This is not actually my path. When I understand this, that my soul is not trying to diminish me, or trying to get me – This is another thing we get when we think about, I remember there was something in the Christian sense, where they would say, “Not my will, but your will, God. What I want is the will of God for my life.” Well, that was cute to say, but so many people were really afraid of that, because what we've thought is that the will of God is very different from mine.
The will have your soul, which is the same thing, the will of your soul is not. Your soul knows very intimately, what would turn you on, make your life feel like it's on fire and delicious, and make you feel most alive. It knows that. It is only ever trying to lead you to that. When you are going through transformation, and you are in a shedding process, it is not because, oh, this stuff was really good. I really loved it. My soul, I guess I'll just follow what my soul says. No, your soul is saying, I promise you, that was limiting you from everything you say you really want. Can we let this go, so that we can become what we really, really wanted to be?
[00:17:06] ZK: Oh, I feel that in my solar plexus right now. I really feel that. It takes me back to when I was lying there in the ICU and communicating with you through Facebook Messenger. I had lung stuff going on. I was under threat of intubation. I knew that I had this one night to get it together, and understand what my body was needing.
You told me that the body, when it's lung stuff, generally, it's not enough joy, that I'm not letting the wholeness of life into me and not enough joy. I really took that to heart and stepped away from all – I mean, this is a situation where I was afraid for my life. I was having conversations with my son's father. Really, having conversations that I needed to have, in case I didn't make it. I really let all of that go. All of that anxiety, all of that fear, and I just communicated with my soul, and really asked the questions, what would bring me the most joy? It was so crystal clear, it was write the book, write the book.
Here I am now, a few years later, having written the book, and written the book that I thought I wanted to be with one publisher. They ended up at the last minute, not making an offer. I went with another publisher, and had the perfect editor for me and wrote the book that I really wanted to write. I go back to that feeling sense in the ICU there, really, just at that moment of wow, my role, or my identity all went away. Nowhere to be found.
Of course, I'm in an ICU. Nobody's visiting me. This is pre-COVID, just pre-COVID. Nobody's visiting me. I'm hooked up. In the ICU, you're hooked up to everything. Then, it goes to command central. The nurses didn't even need to come in to see how I was doing, because they're getting on their computer screen, everything; my oxygen, my pulse, everything they need to know. I really was in this protected bubble, cared for and held. It was really an extraordinary opportunity, really one of the most powerful nights of my life.
I get that. I would never wish for people to be able to connect and hear their soul in such a powerful way. I would never wish for them illness, but that is one of the ways that brings you back, yes?
[00:19:54] JB: Yeah. It's funny you say that, because people ask me all the time, because I also have had a near-death experience. I tell people all the time, I wish everybody could nearly die, because there is no greater wake-up call than that. More importantly, in the wake-up call, for some reason, you will finally pay attention. Whatever it is that life, because your soul is speaking to you right now, each one of us. Insistently, always because your soul loves you, and is here to pay attention to you only.
It is speaking to you all the time, and it is guiding you and it is saying, “Come over here, instead. Come over here. That's not it. Come over here.” Because of our conditioning, because of our constant mental chatter, because we're just not taught. It's not loving to expect ourselves to know how to do something we weren't taught to do. In our culture, we are not taught what the soul is, and why it's so important to pay attention to it. We're not taught how to do that.
It doesn't mean that we're still not in the process of not listening to it. Nearly dying, strips away every excuse that you have, most of the time, for most people. It strips away every excuse that you have to not listen anymore. You, in order to survive, if you really wanted to survive – now, some people are so tired, that they're just ready to go. If you really want to live, what you do is you ultimately, you just surrender. You let go of everything else, and you're just open. In that opening, you can hear.
[00:21:41] ZK: Yeah, loud and clear.
[00:21:44] JB: Really clear. It's very clear. Now, will you take the courage to follow what you hear is the next step? Like you did, you wrote the book, you follow the steps. That's the thing. I do not want you to be killed. This is why we teach now, so that you don't have to follow in our footsteps. If you find yourself there, I have so many clients who call me on their bed and one of the things I often say that shocks the hell out of them is, “Congratulations. Congratulations. You're ready.” You're going to finally come back home to yourself and live the life that's meant for you.
[00:22:28] ZK: Jerome, one of the other things that we're not taught how to do is have sex. I'm really interested to hear the soul's perspective on our sexual expression. What is sex all about? What are we getting wrong? What are we not understanding about sex? Can you help us out?
[00:22:47] JB: Oh, so you're asking me for a three-month workshop. I'll give you a bit. I'll give you some nuts and bolts to that, will really help us heal around this topic. Sex for one, is for pleasure and for oneness. I'll start with the oneness piece. When we have sex with another person, why it feels so good outside of just the physical good feeling, emotionally, energetically, why it feels so good is because you are merging energetically and consciously with the person and you are experiencing oneness. You are experiencing source.
In sex, when you are not coming from a space of woundedness, and you're not coming from a space of – well, it’s still woundedness, but you're not trying to take power from the person. You're not coming from a place of feeling unworthy. You're not coming from a place of fear of shame in the sex. When you do that, when you have sex, you experience a very high level of source energy in that time. You are literally almost transporting yourself into the dimension of oneness. That is one of the reasons why sex exists.
Here's another reason. We've talked about pleasure, and that is you're giving your physical body pleasure. This is very important to understand, which we're not really taught. Pleasure anchors the soul into the body.
[00:24:32] ZK: Okay, pause. Pleasure anchors the soul into the body.
[00:24:38] JB: Yes.
[00:24:39] ZK: So important. So powerful.
[00:24:41] JB: This is very important to understand. There are many ways to experience pleasure. Sex is one of them. Pleasure anchors the soul into the body. It keeps the frequency of your soul into this reality. Things like sex, eating good food, working in your passions, things like that, like hugging and touching someone you really love, that anchors the frequency of your unique soul into this body. Physical things that bring pleasure and awareness in the body make you aware of your physical body, anchor your soul here.
We have been taught to abandon, deny, and shame all the things that make the soul present in the physical plane. This is why so many of us are experiencing illness. This is why so many of us are feeling disconnected. This is why we have so much shame around sex. Sex, when you are approaching it from your authentic and your true self, and you are having it with somebody who was approaching it from the same, and it is, you all want to – By the way, it's the type of sex you want to have with who you want to have it with, how you want to have it.
When you do that, you are literally anchoring your spirit further into this life experience. If you don't, when you're not having experiences of pleasure consistently, on a consistent and frequent basis, when you're not having enough pleasure, and sex being one form of pleasure, your soul isn't anchored. That's when you start to become sick. That's when you start your exiting process. This is when you start to exit this life experience.
[00:26:40] ZK: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:26:42] JB: This is why when we had this conversation, illness is an indicator. It’s not a punishment, or a betrayal by the body, especially chronic illness. Illness is a form of saying, it's not something is wrong with your body. It’s something is missing from the body. That is the frequency of your soul has been missing for too long. You're not doing enough of the things that bring the frequency of your soul into your body. Why, you have to get into the why you're not doing it, but it's really the things, again, doing what you love, having a lot of joy, having a lot of pleasure. These things anchor the soul here.
[00:27:28] ZK: You know. what occurs to me, Jerome, is that feeling that we've all had at one time or another/ I live near the beach in Southern California. I often think of those evenings, a summer evening where it's beautiful temperature, and I walked down to the beach, and I watched the sunset. I'm so present and I'm so in alignment with the universe. That's how it feels. Those are the words that I would use to describe that.
I feel more alive than I've ever been. I could use those words to describe a beautiful lovemaking session, and not even necessarily with someone that I'm in relationship with. One of my things is to take the shame out of having sex with someone that you're not enmeshed with, and attached to and all of that. Because I've had some of the most powerful, cosmic experiences and loving experiences with people who I didn't even necessarily know their name. I didn't know anything about their identity, and it didn't matter. We were so present with each other.
[00:28:45] JB: Yeah. See, this body is the greatest form of technology ever created by the soul. It is meant to experience pleasure and joy. People always ask me what my – what's our purpose here? What's my purpose? Why does the soul come here? The soul comes here to expand the frequency of itself through pleasure and joy. Pleasure and joy are literally, your life's purpose. You're to experience them in higher and higher forms as you go along while you're here.
[00:29:23] ZK: Okay. That makes me really excited to live.
[00:29:26] JB: Right? I'm so glad you talked about what you just were saying. Because on my deathbed, when I had my near-death experience, the things that came up, as I was having a life review, my life was flashing before my eyes, there were things that I began to yearn to do just one more time. They weren't, I wanted to clock into work one more time. They weren't, I wanted to have an argument with somebody one more time. It wasn't, I wanted to make some more money one more time. It was things like, “I wanted to eat my mother's spaghetti one more time. I wanted to tell the people I loved how I really felt about them one more time. I wanted to have sex one more time.”
As I begin to have this idea that I'm not going to be able to do that, I felt such a sense of loss. What it may be understanding, I've hence done work with people on their deathbeds. I've talked of souls on the other side. I've done all this work since then. What I have come to really – but this was the beginning of my understanding, was that what makes life worth it, what life is to the soul, is it's about the things that make you feel joy and pleasure and love. That's it. That's the entirety of what the focus of life is for the soul.
[00:30:53] ZK: Is it safe to say that when we have sex with someone who we want to have sex with, when it's fully consensual, when we're present and enjoying ourselves, and we feel good, that that sexual experience is fulfilling on our soul’s purpose?
[00:31:13] JB: Not only is it fulfilling your soul's purpose, but in that moment, you two have both anchored God into that moment. You have literally brought more God into the planet.
[00:31:29] ZK: I often say that, when we make love, it's the universe making love to itself through us.
[00:31:36] JB: And expanding. It's making love to itself and it is expanding.
[00:31:44] ZK: How beautiful is that?
[00:31:46] JB: Again, we've just been so socialized in our systems out of the truth. Why do we think that the only way we bring life into this world is through sex? I mean, it's right there. We actually come through this world through some form of sex. We come into this world. We literally, a soul is anchored into the planet, through sex.
[00:32:17] ZK: Into a body.
[00:32:19] JB: Into the body, again.
[00:32:24] ZK: I mean, that's another episode to talk about, how we have ideas that are imposed on us that are so opposite of that. We talk about pleasure. I mean, I don't know. I often route it back to puritanical culture, but I think there are probably several sources of it. We talk about things like, guilty pleasures, or this tastes so good, or this feels so good, it should be illegal. It's not okay. We need to feel some shame around feeling good. Or that pleasure can only happen after I was impeccable on my diet for four weeks. Now, I'm going to have a whole chocolate cake.
[00:33:08] JB: Then I feel bad about it, right?
[00:33:09] ZK: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[00:33:13] JB: Pleasure is the thing. Also, if you have that chocolate cake, so let's stay here for just a quick second. Eating that chocolate cake, when you have a goal in mind, and your belief system says that goals take something else, eating that chocolate cake in that moment is not actually pleasure for you. That's not pleasure for you.
Pleasure isn't just doing things that are out there. Pleasure actually, is this function of I am doing things that not only physically feel good to me, but also, emotionally feel good to me. What's pleasurable to you today may not be pleasurable for you tomorrow. What's pleasurable for you at this point, or phase of what you're doing, when you have a different goal, well, may not be the pleasure. What is pleasurable for you never, never deserve shame. I think, ever deserves shame, by the way. As a soul, it doesn't deserve shame.
It may deserve awareness and say, “Hmm, do this feel good to me? Did this makes me actually feel I was moving towards where I wanted to be? If not, then oh, this is just an awareness that this is not in alignment with where I'm trying to go right now.” There was no shame in that, there was no energy of I'm wrong. There was just this particular thing isn't actually nourishing me towards where I want it to be. I can let this go for a minute.
[00:34:45] ZK: Jerome, I believe that the majority of people, at least that I run into are very confused about what they want. Like, staying with the chocolate cake analogy, sometimes it feels like self-care to eat a piece of chocolate cake. Sometimes it feels like self-care not to eat a piece of chocolate cake. I think, that our faculties for discerning what we actually really want, what actually will bring us pleasure, because there are plenty of times where I'll eat a cookie or something, and I'll know as it's in my mouth like, “Oh, my God. This tastes so good. Oh, my God. This isn't.” If I was really honest with myself, I would say, although I'm experiencing pleasure, this actually isn't what I want. This isn't really nourishing me right now.
[00:35:36] JB: Yeah. It may be pleasure, but it's not pleasureful. Meaning, it's not full of pleasure. Here's the thing. One, we don't understand what we really want, because we're doing too much of what we don't. That will cloud – so your true self, again, you don't need to add things really in to get to your truth. You have to take away all the stuff that's on top of it. When I'm working with somebody, usually, the first thing I ask them to do when they are confused about what they want, is we make a list of, because here's the thing, you may not be clear yet about what you want, but I can tell you, you are clear about what's in your life that you really don't want.
If you can get clear about what are you doing, that you don't really want to do, that is draining for you, that feels stressful to you, that you really hate or whatever, make a list of those things, and then you stop doing those things. If you remove them, maybe you don't do it all at once, because it may be too much of a shot. You just removed just a little bit. What you'll find is the more and more you start to release the things that you don't want, what you want starts to rise to the surface more. You start to become more clear.
Or so, again, if you're doing things that – I'm trying to be clear about, what do I really want to do around this eating thing? Okay, well, let's talk about what you don't want to eat. What do you feel you really don't want to eat? If you stopped doing that, all of a sudden, it will come into awareness, is just your clarity is cluttered, because it's too full of this stuff. It is not gone. You don't need to go out there and search for clarity. You just need to remove the things.
[00:37:29] ZK: Yes, right.
[00:37:30] JB: The opposite part of it. As you get that, you're just like, “Oh, wow. You know what? I actually do like these cookies, but I just want to eat them once a week.” Then you go to – “Okay, I'm going to eat on Tuesday. I'm going to eat cookies.” Then you eat them on Tuesday, and you feel euphoric, and you don't feel any sense of guilt, or shame, or anything. You're like, “Oh, this is what I was looking for.”
[00:37:55] ZK: Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is that being able to tune in to our soul and feel a little bit more connected, and a little more clear, or hear more clearly, is as much of a process and a practice almost, of being still. We're coming full circle now. The more time that you're able to just step back into your cocoon, check in with yourself, retreat, put up some boundaries, whether it's a long period of time, or just periodically, we will be able to tune in. It's not so much about, okay, my soul doesn't ever want to eat cookies. It's much more about every day, what's going on here? What's going on in here? I'm motioning down in through the center of my being. What's happening?
[00:38:58] JB: Yeah. Bringing it full circle again, the reason why you want to step back away from culture for a minute, is because what is it that I really want, versus what am I being told that I want? A lot of the stuff is you have to peel back, will be, okay, this actually – what you'll find is, “Oh. No, I didn't actually want to do that. This is what my parents wanted me to do.” Or, “I didn't actually want to eat that way.”
I remember for me, finding a diet, or finding an eating program that really worked for me was a journey, because I was following all these authorities and external experts, and not hearing what my soul was really wanting. This is the thing about following external and not following yourself. What's being set out here is going to change constantly. Today, it'd be this and tomorrow, there'll be a whole thing that says, what you just heard yesterday isn't right. You need to be doing this. Then tomorrow, what you just heard yesterday is not right.
You'll get to a point where you're running like a chicken with his head cut off. You can diminish your life down to where you only feel safe doing this small bit of, on any topic. Eating that. Anything. About the whole gamut of things. You really have to step back and to really do the work of getting in tune with your soul and what your soul is saying, because your soul knows what's best for you more than anything externally.
Yes, you can get advice and guidance externally. I'm not saying don't do that at all. You will need it at some point. Even then, your soul will guide you to where the advice is. They will give you the signal of which advice is the one for you, and which is not. We've got it turned upside down. We're doing external advice, or external authority over internal insight, when it should always be insight over external information. It should always be that. In order to get the insight, you've got to get back and step back, so you can hear it.
[00:41:15] ZK: Yeah. I hear you say that, and it feels so powerful. Isn't that really what we want? I hear people say to me often, “I want to be more confident. I want to feel comfortable in my skin. I want to be that woman that I saw walk into the party and everybody's head turned, because she was so embodied.” That feeling of having your soul firmly rooted in your body. That's really what we're needing, what we're wanting.
[00:41:52] JB: That's what we want. That's what we yearn for. That's also what we find most attractive. There's a reason why people who are embodied are very attractive to people, it's because the most attractive thing more than how your body looks, more than any of that is you having all of your light. Somebody who has their light becomes a lighthouse. There's a reason why things are drawn to the lighthouse. When you're at lights, people will be naturally drawn to you. You don't have to worry about doing more sit-ups and doing – I'm not saying that. I'm a person that loves exercise.
I don't exercise, because I'm trying to draw you to me. I was getting more people when I was 300 pounds. I was getting people when I was 300 pounds, when I was 250 pounds, when I was 200 pounds, now that I'm less than that. It was because of my light. The times that I have been the most attractive to people was the time that I was the most embodiment. This is the thing that we've lost contact with. We're being invited to become aware of is everything gets better. Everything across the board; your health, your wealth, your attractiveness, your sense of peace, your sense of clarity, your influence in the world. All of that gets better, the more you bring your soul into your body.
[00:43:20] ZK: Beautiful. Jerome, how can people get more of you? How can they work with you? Where can they find you?
[00:43:27] JB: Yes. You can find me at my website, jeromebraggs.com. I'm also all over social media. You can Google me. I’m everywhere. I mostly engage on my Facebook page, Jerome Braggs Intuitive Healer, and on my Instagram page @JeromeBraggsIntuitive. You can work with me. I have private sessions that I just opened back up this year. If you want to work with me one-on-one, you definitely can do that.
Or, I also highly recommend my online course, Your Self Love Academy, which is a nine-module course that takes you deep into some very topics we talked about today, about how do you truly connect with the wholeness of your soul and bring the frequency of your soul, which is love, into your body and manifest the delicious life that you truly want it and heal whatever ails you.
[00:44:22] ZK: Beautiful.
[00:44:23] JB: That's it.
[00:44:24] ZK: Check the show notes. I'll put it all in there with links. Jerome, with a nod to James Lipton of Inside the Actor Studio, I'm going to ask you the following nine questions borrowed from the French journalist, Bernard Pivot, and his show, Apostrophes, okay?
[00:44:40] JB: Okay.
[00:44:41] ZK: What’s your favorite word?
[00:44:43] JB: Delicious.
[00:44:46] ZK: What's your least favorite word?
[00:44:49] JB: Yuck.
[00:44:52] ZK: What turns you on?
[00:44:54] JB: Happiness.
[00:44:57] ZK: What sound do you love?
[00:44:59] JB: Chimes. Wind Chimes.
[00:45:02] ZK: What sound do you hate?
[00:45:06] JB: Right now, my neighbor's dogs barking off.
[00:45:11] ZK: What's your favorite curse word?
[00:45:13] JB: Shit.
[00:45:16] ZK: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
[00:45:19] JB: Dancing. Professional dancer.
[00:45:21] ZK: What profession would you not like to participate in?
[00:45:25] JB: Attorney. I worked as a paralegal for a while, and no, absolutely.
[00:45:34] ZK: Finally, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
[00:45:42] JB: It does exist. Well, there won't be pearly gates for me though. If there were pearly gates and I got there, I want God to say, “Well done. You are so loved.”
[00:45:58] ZK: Jerome Braggs, thank you so much for visiting us today at The Radical Intimacy Podcast. You are so loved.
[00:46:06] JB: Thank you so much. This was a blast.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:46:10] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Radical Intimacy Podcast. We are committed to facilitating courageous conversation about things that are hard to talk about. To support what we do, please subscribe, review and refer us to your friends. To connect with us directly, visit theradicalintimacypodcast.com. To learn more about Zoe, visit zoekors.com. You can buy Zoe's book, Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve, wherever you buy books. You are worthy of love and belonging. You are enough. We see you. We got you. We love you.
[END]
