238. Unexpected Paths, Fulfilling Lives: Ken W. Stone's Journey of Purposeful Transformation

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together. And since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness.

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You see, happiness is a choice and the choice is yours. Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Henstone it is such a pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for joining me. It's wonderful to be with you, Sandy. Thanks. Yeah.

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So you're known as the soul a. That's a big goal to take on.

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I guess it is, yeah. All right, so tell us about that. And most importantly, I always like to hear how people got to where they are today because there had to be some sort of thing that happened in your life that flicked the switch and you're like, okay, this is where I need to be going in my life. Yeah, that happened. And a friend named me the soul archaeologist.

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After I had done some work with her, we were sitting one day and she said, just tell me about what you do. And I said, well, you know, I've already done sessions with you. And she said, I know, I know, but just start talking about it just for fun. And I said, okay, well, I guess one of the things that God does through me is kind of help people uncover the buried treasure of divine presence that's already within every single human being. And she said, you're the soul archaeologist.

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And I said, okay, sounds good to me. Because you're digging up stuff, right? That's right. We're uncovering that treasure. Yeah, it was sort of like that for discovering this path.

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For me, it was a little bit of uncovering a treasure that I guess must have been there but I was completely unaware of. I was working in the financial services industry as a mortgage lender. I was going to say you look like an accountant. Yeah.

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Forget the stereotypical. I expected to see long hair and the like an accountant? Yeah, no, there you go. Somebody said, you look like a software engineer to me the other day. And I said, okay, sure, whatever.

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Yeah, accountant. Okay, sounds good. So I was originating loans, and I had really been wondering, what is my purpose? It was a weird question for me to be asking at the time because I thought I knew what my purpose was. I thought I knew that I was supposed to help people optimize their financial assets and their tax strategy.

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And all this excitement, the part that I look right now, I was playing that part in life. And yeah, there was a talk going on in the community where I live that I saw I read a headline in the newspaper. It said world peace through inner peace. And I thought, wow, that strikes a chord. I got to go see this.

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And after the talk, which I found fascinating, I went up and asked the guy who was teaching talking some question, and he gave me the best man hug of my life. And I'm a hugger, so that was meaningful. And then he looked me in the eye and he said, why don't you come learn how to meditate? And I thought, okay. And so I learned to meditate.

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And that was August of 2007. And then I felt really drawn to go to an in residence meditation retreat with the same person, the same organization. And while I was there in the closing meditation process, after five days of profound whatever, difficult stuff to talk about, but really extraordinary difficult to put into words, not hard to talk about. Anyway, there was a fellow participant that I was randomly paired with, and he wrote on a piece of paper, you should be working as a healer. And I started sobing uncontrollably.

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And I had no idea what the word healer meant. I just had no concept of that. And when we came out of silence, he said, you're going to learn. You've done this in many prior lifetimes, and this is more natural than breathing for you. And I thought, you need to go see somebody in a psych ward.

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What's wrong with you for saying that? Those words seem so bizarre to me. And even as I cried more. And then I hired him to do an intuitive reading. The first one of my life, a couple of days after Christmas that year, because my life was falling apart.

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And I wanted to know, is my life going to work out? Is this going to turn out okay? And all he would talk about was healing. And I came away hearing him say, you already know what you're doing. You don't need to be trained.

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Just go do it. And so as I recall, on the 1 January 2008, somebody had a migraine that I was with. And I said, hey, apparently I'm a healer. Should we see what happens? Can I try this out?

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And I put my hands on their head. I didn't know what I was doing, and my hands and feet started buzzing and their headache went away. And that was the beginning, or the next step in the beginning, I guess. Wow, that's incredible. And I said before we started, before I hit record, I was like, we have a lot in common.

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And the very first time I meditated was in 2007. Yeah. I took a course, a meditation course, and it was like over the phone kind of thing, because he was in California. But then I went to retreats, did a day of, um, that whole it's very when you have that experience, especially when you completely disconnect and you're not talking and that particular day, we sat in meditation for roughly 5 hours.

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It's amazing what opens up for you. Isn't that the truth? Yeah. Somebody asked me after that, it was a five or a six day retreat, the last day of which this guy said, you should be working as a healer. Somebody asked me when I got home, what was that like?

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And I said, well, this is not going to be a very environmentally conscious example, but it's a little bit like driving down the highway at 100 miles an hour in a dump truck, and the back of the dump truck is wide open and all your stuff is just flying out everywhere, and you have to deal with it as it's flying out. But after a couple of hundred miles of that, you're not carrying any of the baggage you were carrying around anymore in your life. Never mind the metaphor of littering. The last couple of hundred miles, I didn't think I littered anywhere. It just felt like some it is extraordinary if anyone listening hasn't done that.

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Sounds like we would both recommend it. Yes.

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The thing is, when you learn how to meditate, and there's lots of different variations of meditation, and it's really just finding something that works for you and that you resonate with. And what I have found is because I did this for so long, that now I can sit into meditation and I can get there very quickly, and I can do it at any time during the day. Exactly. Yeah. Opening that interior space, that being space is such an extraordinary resource.

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It's such an extraordinary experience, and it's something that can flood into every part of our lives, our interior life, and every part of that, and as if there's a difference, our exterior life as well.

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What a beautiful experience to anchor a life change in. Yeah, for sure. And I think what people don't realize, I think people think they have this vision of what meditation is, and you have to sit a certain way and you've got to hold your hands. No, it's not like that at all. And the other misconception that people have, and I think not only a misconception, but what people don't, are failing to recognize that the most successful leaders of today's world and the billionaires and millionaires of today's world incorporate meditation into their daily practice.

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And I attribute their success because it's all up here. Success is 80% mindset, 20% tactics. So if you want to be successful, you focus on that space between your head, and part of that is meditation. It is such an extraordinary foundational practice. It can make such an extraordinary shift in every part of someone's life, and it continues to play a really important part of my life and my experience.

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And yeah, it's wonderful to hear you reflect on it. Yeah, I don't think I've talked about that very often on this on this podcast. All right, so back to you. So you had your first experience now. Did you know what you were doing?

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Like you said, you just yeah. Okay. Because I ended up after I learned meditation, everything, I ended up becoming a Reiki master teacher and did a lot of healing work for a few years with my hands and pulling in the divine. So it sounds like you just intuitively knew what to.

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Mean. I would say it was even more the lynn is the gentleman who said you should be working as a healer, who then know many prior lifetimes more natural than don't. It seems to me that I couldn't be doing the kind of work that I'm doing if I hadn't done this in many prior lifetimes. That now sort of makes sense to me. For sure.

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It's more natural than breathing. And that was the experience I had on that first dynamic. But, I mean, that was actually a hands on thing, and that may have been the first and last time I laid hands on somebody. I don't do that anymore. I didn't do that the next day or the next month.

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I didn't have a clue what was happening. And I didn't really understand things at all for at least two and a half or three years. It's like these opportunities would just materialize and somebody would be referred. It wasn't like I was out trying to tell people, this is what I'm doing. I was terrified about it.

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I wanted to keep it hidden. I was on Twitter, but I was totally anonymous. You couldn't figure out who I was on Twitter? Who gets on social media and doesn't tell people who they are? I had a website that I also hid the registration and made sure no one would know who I was on the website.

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I did exactly the opposite of what most people do when they're sort of like, TADA, here I am. I was saying not TADA, here I am. I was saying, oh, my gosh, this is so difficult for me. This is not difficult to do, but difficult for me to handle emotionally. I don't understand what's going on.

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This is so out of my lane and what I've experienced in my life so far. I need to be able to communicate about it, but I'm not ready for anyone to be able to identify me as the source of these comments. So it wasn't like I was out asking for business. People would have an experience with me, and then they would say, I want to refer so and so. Or they wouldn't even ask me.

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I would just get a call from somebody, and they'd say, hey, so and so says, you're too weird for words, and I need a session with you. And I'd say, okay, that sounds about right. It does seem pretty weird to me. We might have a conversation about it. They might say, well, what's going to happen?

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And I'd say, I have no idea what's going to happen. And they're like, can you describe it? And I would say, no. I mean, I had no language. I had nothing.

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It was just in silence. My hands and feet would start buzzing at the time. I would convulse, uncontrollably. There would be spontaneous noises coming out of me. For me, it was this bizarre, beautiful, extraordinary, scary, disruptive, so much more meaningful than anything I'd ever experienced before kind of dynamic.

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And it just kept happening that way over and over and over again. And I would have a thought, I wonder if this is like, some strange party trick. And then I'd work on somebody, and I remember there was a guy that I'd met at the meditation retreat, and he called me up, and it was just like, let's connect after six months, kind of chat. And he said, what have you been up to? And I said, well, apparently I'm a healer.

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And he said, well, can you find it in your heart to heal me? And I was like, man, there's nothing to find in my heart. Yeah, we can do whatever. And this is somebody who he had traveled with, maharishi mahashiogi in the Mean. He had all the spiritual credentials anyone could ever want or hope for and was totally open to Eastern and Western medicine, had done all these things.

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Nothing had worked. And he I don't I don't even think we need to be on the phone, do we? And I was like, Well, I guess not. I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't need to be. It's not like we're going to say anything.

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So he went out and meditated on his lake and wherever in the Midwest he was, and I live here in Colorado. And I ran down to my truck in the parking lot of the mortgage practice and got into my truck, and I worked on him for 20 minutes. And then it took us weeks to get in touch with each other. And I started worrying, like, what happened? Did some horrible thing.

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Why won't he return my calls? And then we get on the phone, and he starts telling me that was the deepest spiritual experience of my life. And all my symptoms cleared within 24 hours. And my relationship with my wife is better than it's ever been. And I stopped eating in these foods and drinking these things spontaneously.

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And all this awareness, I mean, my jaw was coming unhinged. It felt like somebody was hitting me with a two x four. It was like, this is not a party trick, what is this? And there was no confusion on my part. It's not me.

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I mean, I can't be causing this. I have no idea how I would cause this. So it just became so clear. Divinity is working through me, I guess, or I get to witness this thing that's happening. And, yeah, it's been a wild and extraordinary ride, but very much not something that I, let's say, welcomed in initially.

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I fought with it, I resisted it, and not something I really even understood or knew how to communicate about for a long time. So how do you communicate what you do now, now that you've been doing this for a number of years now? What is it that you do? If I'm like a new client, I come to you, I'm like, I've heard great things. Can you just explain to me what it is that you do and how you help and assist people in their own healing?

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Well, what I would say is that somehow, some way, the way God moves through me, it opens up a deeper experience of the divine within you, within your body, within your being expression at the most essential level. It's not about your thoughts, though your thoughts will change. It's not about your feelings, though they will change. It's not even about your being expression, though, that will definitely change. And it's likely going to be visceral for you.

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You'll feel it in your body and what you'll feel, I have no idea. Think of it as the divine mystery. And the healing that so many people have sought me out for is I perceive as a byproduct of that dynamic. It's not even the point. People will say, Do I need to tell you what's wrong?

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I'm like, no, because it doesn't matter. And I don't mean it doesn't matter in a disrespectful way, I just mean God's going to do whatever God's going to do. And if that isn't an acceptable name, substitute in Divinity source, the tree fairies, whatever, it doesn't matter to me. And I don't think divinity cares either.

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And that process is going to we think of it as a transformation, but really I perceive it as an uncovering. It's something that's always there, right? So you'll uncover something within you that you have been seeking, but instead of being a seeker, you will be somebody who experiences. And the minute you start experiencing, your perspective is going to be transformed in a way that's almost impossible for me to speak of, and it may be almost impossible for you to speak of, but everything will be different in your life experience, even if the circumstances of your life, nothing changes immediately. And as if we continue to work together, as you continue developing a deeper, more intimate experience of that divine mystery, all these other things will begin to show up.

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If you want to think of it this way, your spiritual gifts, your deeper purpose, all of these things are going to happen. And if we keep working with each other, at some point the aspects of your life that you hold as things that you think you're responsible for creating, those things will come up to be transmuted. Because ultimately, as I've discovered and experienced and witnessed in many, many people, it's like divinity is waiting to more fully express through each of us through an azas. And when we get out of the way, something beyond our wildest imagination expresses, and sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with what we think we want. I'm a perfect example.

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If you'd said, hey, you're a healer and you're going to change people's lives in absolute silence and blah, blah, blah, talk about spirituality, you're going to be a spiritual teacher, I would have said, no, thank you, I don't want anything to do with that. I did say that for quite a while, but it will fulfill a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. And that's another thing too. So many people have the ability and have practiced, mastered, I'm going to create the life that I want. And almost without exception, those very same people are unfulfilled and unsatisfied, right, because they think they have to create it.

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And what they're doing in the awareness and the vernacular that I have now, they're trying to, from within the illusion of separation, create something in that consciousness that solves the discomforts of the illusion of separation. And you can't do know we have all sorts of examples from history, einstein quotes and so on, but just very simply, it's impossible to resolve separation while you're in separation. So the resolution to separation, the resolution of the core wound, whatever language we want to put on all of that, and whatever language we want to put on divinity, again, I don't really care. I work with people of all faith traditions and spiritual backgrounds and no background at all. Doesn't really matter.

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When we open up to that, something begins to move through us, in us, as us. And that alignment, that deep alignment with who we truly are at the core of our being, when that takes place throughout every level of our being not only in our bodies and our minds and our feelings and so on, not directed by thought, just an expression, like a fountain of resonance ripping through every part of our being. It erupts into every part of our lives. And yeah, I could go on and on, but I guess that's not a very succinct answer. But it is how I tend to talk about this process when people ask, I love it.

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So can you just share what is your greatest if you will success story that you've experienced to give the listeners an example of how you've helped someone in a remarkable way that even you are like scratching your head. Like, how did that happen? I mean, I scratch my head all the time, so it's basically every single and I mean, just to be clear, I am not creating it. I want to be really clear about that, and I know you understand that, but I want to be clear to everyone who's listening credit where credit is due. This is very much the divine in through and as each of us, and I don't send anything to anyone I work with that's already within them.

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I mean, the way I think of it is divinity in me and livens divinity in them and so on. Well, I mean, there are some fun examples, right? I can remember working with somebody once. It was like maybe an initial session, and she went to see her chiropractor, who she'd been seeing for 20 years, and the chiropractor freaked out because her spine was straighter than it ever been. And the only thing that had happened was we'd had a session the day before and none of what we did in the session had to do with straightening our spine.

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I just shared with you the guy who had all these amazing experiences. One of the things that people say regularly is that they're having an experience that is so holy, unlike anything they've ever encountered before, and that just continues to unfold. So I can remember there was a client, her husband had to call me because she was so depressed, she was so checked out. And he said, I guess you're kind of the practitioner of last resort. And I said, for some people I am.

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And he said, okay, well, I want my wife to work with you. And I said, well, how does she feel about it? And he said, well, she's open to it, but she's just not in a position to make the call. So anyway, we start working together and she said, what are we going to do together? And I said, well, we're going to do some soul embodiment work first.

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And she's like, what is that? And I said, Blah, blah, blah, let's just do it now. And so after three sessions, she came back and she said, it feels like there's an invisibility cloak that has been lifted from me. The other parents for my kindergartner all of a sudden are talking to me and they've never said a word to me before. So, I mean, there are those kinds of experiences that have happened.

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I've also worked with some really well known spiritual messengers, healers, speakers and so on. And I mean, the thing that's incredible is that it doesn't really matter who you are and where you are, there's always a deeper, more complete experience of divine presence that's waiting to rip through your being expression. Yeah, what's incredible in those situations, for me at least and very energizing, is people who are at that level in life, they're not messing around the work we're doing together, they are all in. And the kind of impact which for somebody who's sort of just becoming aware might be very subtle for them because they have such a refined inner awareness is huge. So we'll do a session and they'll be like oh my gosh.

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All of a sudden it's like dominoes falling down and everything clicks into place and they have this perception of here's where I fit. I now see how this aligns with my purpose and all these things are coming into alignment. One of the themes that showed up for a while in my private practice were spiritual messengers, a lot of whom were women who were in very challenging relationships, romantically because they had sort of I don't know that they would say it this way, but in retrospect, what became clear was they had sort of adopted a certain energetic expression for the purpose of sort of getting things done and being successful in their career. But that had moved them out of a place of alignment with their partner and often they'll want to do well, let's do work with the partner. I'm like, well, let's just do work with you individually first and then we can always do work with your partner and then we're doing work individually and all of a sudden their relationship completely transforms because of that inner work.

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I think that's a constant kind of miracle. And of course there are people have healed spontaneously and all those types of things as well. I really think though, that the key is that it's about the alignment and the resonance with divine presence. There have been a lot of people over the years who have said I'll hire you, but only if this and this happened. And I'm like, you know what?

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I have no idea what's going to happen. I can tell you what needs to happen is going to happen. But what you want, who knows? Well, and that's just it. I mean, we all say we want this, this and this to happen but what do they say?

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You want to make God careful, tell him your plans. Exactly.

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That's the ego getting in the way of this is.

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For sure. One of the things that moves me to tears is when people there are sort of two kind of these dynamics. One is when people encounter divinity for the first time in their being. That is such a what an honor to be able to witness and support that. And the other is when people encounter their deeper gifts and purpose and then if I'm privileged enough to have an opportunity to work with them on a sustaining basis.

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And the thing is, it's not like I'm sitting there putting ideas in their mind. Most of our work is in absolute silence. It's just this experiential expansion it becomes a playground for them to discover, uncover who they really are, and then go out and practice that in their life. I can't believe I get to do this for a living. It's unbelievable to me.

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It really is. And what a gift. It is a gift. It really is. And I'm glad that you were able to come to a point that where you were able to embrace it.

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Yes. Slowly but surely. That's awesome. I love your story. It's incredible.

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Incredible. So we're almost out of time. Ken, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience that we haven't talked about thus far? I think the only other thing that I would say, and this is some awareness that has come particularly meaningful for me in the last three or four years is this realization that all of us on the planet are doing exactly what we need to do to integrate. And by that, I mean to integrate and open up to our whole selves, to integrate the as yet unintegrated whole self or the separate self.

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And that is such a powerful point of freedom for me now to realize each person is on their own developmental journey. And it's a freedom for me. I think it's a freedom for others as well, to be able to realize, hey, I'm carrying my water, I'm doing my work, I'm doing what I need to do to integrate and open up to my homeless, and so is everyone else. And we're all just doing our best. We're doing what we need to do.

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Doesn't matter if it makes sense to anyone else. Doesn't matter if we agree with it, doesn't matter if it's what we would do. We're just doing exactly what we need to do. I love it. All right, well, if you want to learn more about Ken, definitely check out the link in the bio to have access to him.

00:30:13
And I love what you're doing. It's really incredible. It's been a joy to sit with you, Sandy. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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Thank you, everyone.

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You I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care, everyone.