Natalie: Today on the show my special guest is Edie Weinstein and she talks about our shadow or our stranger that we carry with us that part of us that we don't often connect with and how we can approach it, how we can acknowledge it and how we can move through it. So, stay tuned.

Natalie: Hi, I'm Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. And today I have another special guest back with me, Edie Weinstein. How are you, Edie?

Edie: I'm doing marvelously. Thank you.

Natalie: Now, for those people that maybe didn't see the previous show, can we just quickly with your background and what it is that you do?

Edie: Absolutely! I am a licensed social worker. I'm an inner faith minister. I've been doing therapy in one form or another for about 30 years. I'm also an organ donor educator. I'm a journalist, I've done interviews. I've written a book called The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary. I'm a reiki master. I'm also a clown; I thought I'd mentioned that before like you around the sounds women and probably like a lot of your viewers. My resumes two pages and growing, I just keep adding stuff on.

Natalie: Yeah. You sound like me like you've had seven different lives when in this one life. Yeah!

Edie: Absolutely!

Natalie: Wow, that's interesting. So, you've got quite a bag of tricks there. Now, so tell us the type of people that you work with. What are the type of things that you do personally with people?

Edie: You're talking about clients that I worked with?

Natalie: Yeah. Yeah.

Edie: Yeah. Right now, I do drug and alcohol counseling for post and recovery that I work in psychiatric hospitals, work with individuals, couples, children, adolescence, adults, older adults that work in nursing homes. I also do what I call bliss coaching and bliss is brilliant, loving and insightful self-service. And coaching and therapy are two different things which you that know coaching is more short term call oriented. I know that you work with the law of attraction and that's a lot of what I do as I help people call into their lives and I call it manifesting and I call it m-a-n-e-a, manifesting the lives of their dreams and desires. So, that's some of what I do and because we teach what we need to learn and I've actually recently heard, "when you teach you learn twice".

Natalie: Yes.

Edie: I like that idea. I've had to learn, you know I practiced everything that I worked with my clients. Now, having said that I'm not adept in everything that I teach, I learned from them. I learned from everybody and everything. And that's been my growing edge is just to say "Okay. What do I need to learn today with the universe? What lesson? What message do I need to tap in to today?

Natalie: Yup. I know long gone are the days where people you know listen to someone barking things at them, that a specifically this talking theory. I mean now the people that really we're learning from the people that had gone through the experience themselves. You know they're actually walk the talk. They're actually going through the lessons themselves and teaching other people and experiencing and sharing that experience. So, there's a whole wave of us out there that are sort of part of that. Now, before we can jump on the show today, we were talking a little bit about the shadow. Can you just explain to our viewers you know what that is and what we're talking about them?

Edie: Well, a part of that conversation was that a couple of nights ago from the very first time I saw the beautiful movie that Debbie Ford made a few years ago called The Shadow Effect. The humming bean, a psychology student, I was familiar with the concept of The Shadow with regard to coil on which was the talk about. You know the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden. I think about the Billy Joel song Stranger.

Natalie: Yes.

Edie: You know that mask that we wear, you know we take it off to show ourselves when everyone is gone. And when I saw this movie, I laughed through it; I cried through it, I goose bump through it and goose bumps through my truth parameter. I saw so much in there that just not the stuffs out of this visage that I wear. So, the shadow isn't bad, isn't evil. They are the repress parts of ourselves that we don't give voice to and yet how many people in media, you know the things that we see, you know people that wage war or people that are attempting to express something politically and behind the scenes they're doing just the opposite. You know that's the shadow and what she recommends and that the other people who are in the movie recommend is that we take a look at it but we honor that part of ourselves and she would have said from what I've read about the night interview Debbie made many years ago and bless hear heart she died February this year. I would say that she had one of the biggest shadows that there was. And when I interviewed her on her book The Dark Side of the Lake Chasers that just come out and she was talking about waking up to the idea that there was a part of herself that she denied. Now, Debbie was a recovering drug addict herself, been in and out of rehab several times and finally recognized where that came from. And she went to a training; I'm thinking it was a landmark training and she's standing up talking and this woman in the back stands up and says "You're a bitch." Debbie thought "I know that. How did she know that?" Now, I so resonated with that because that would have been the worst thing anybody could have called me because "Who? Me? I'm not bitchy. I'm sweet, nice, kind, you know Shirley temple caught dancing for everybody's attention as I mentioned to you earlier. And I'm colorful, I'm clown, I'm a minister, I'm a lovey-dovey person and yet there are parts of me that only some people see that are not always bad. I mean we contain multitudes. There's that you know that Alanis Morissette song, I think it's called Everything.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: That my friend of mine actually sent today that we are everything. And when I saw that movie, you know I said "I have to acknowledge that I have repressed parts of myself." We have spoken in the previous interview about grief. I repressed grief so much when my mother died, she died almost two and a half years ago and I still don't feel that I've fully let my emote.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: Because you know I'm the go to person. I'm the caregiver. I'm the one who takes care of everything for everybody. So, I don't let myself fully feel and that makes me not particularly genuine. Because a friend of mine was saying last night "I don't get you. Not that I don't understand you but I don't get you." When I'm not and when you're not and we are not fully present to all aspects of ourselves, people that we love don't get us.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: They don't see us because we don't allow ourselves to be seen.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: So, I think part of the shadow is the fear of they won't love me if they notice about me and the truth is they know it.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: Everybody knows we have that stuff going on.

Natalie: Yeah. I know we've always know something's going on isn't it? So, that's so interesting because I mean I think there are parts of us that we go "I don't want anyone to see that." Maybe our close partners or something like that might know it but we repress it because its maybe it reminds us a part of our lives that we don't wanna remember.

Edie: Right. Yup! I think that's part of it and again as I've acknowledged I don't many major loses. Early on my life my grandmother died when I was four. That's the only major loss I could see. But I wear this visage of the caregiver because my parents made it look so easy. They did it all. They raised my sister and me. They both work. They both volunteer. They both took care of their elderly mothers when they got ill. So, I tend to idealize that when I had no clue what fears they've harbored but they never showed me. I had no idea. When I was a child I was diagnosed with asthma shortly after my grandmother died. Go figure. You know the ideas breath, lungs, asthma, crying and stuff. And then I was also pitch and totally flat foot so I work with competed shoes. As a result, I decided I'm not gonna let anything slow me down. I'm gonna keep going, keep pushing, you know I had to excel. So, I think that's part of my shadow, is wanting to be seen that way not letting to be weak and vulnerable, you know we quote "weak and vulnerable".

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: Not letting anybody take care of me which is pretty darn arrogant.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: To think that I don't need anybody to take care of me but I can take care of the world.

Natalie: Yeah. Yeah.

Edie: That's my shadow. That's part of my shadow. And then there's the resentment when I do take care of people. So, if your viewers can take a look at the parts of themselves that they disown and it doesn't have to be dirty, icky, messy, nasty stuff. It could be that part of me is manipulative. That you know that part of me isn't clean, as in totally clean and healthy. So, it doesn't make me a bad person. It means I've got some stuff to work on.

Natalie: Yup. And so how do we work on something like that?

Edie: At first to acknowledge that it's there. To acknowledge that nobody is ever all or nothing, anything. There are no obsolescence.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: We come into this world with if you believe in reincarnation with baggage. We've already come in with a baggage.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: We've already come in with soul contracts. If again that's what you believe, I don't tell anybody what to believe. We've come in with agreements, with relationships, with other souls that incarnate together with us and sometimes they're easy to walk with. Sometimes there's relationships that are easy, sometimes they're really difficult and I think the people that push our buttons are our biggest mirrors. I have people in my life like that that I allow to push my buttons and they're m greatest teachers, and I can choose to learn from them or I can choose to resist. So, again start where you are.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: What's your life like now and you know with the law of attraction that your life is as it is as a cumulative effect of your persistent thoughts, persistent feelings, beliefs whatever it is. Same thing with the shadow that again I'm not formally trained but this stuff is just coming through right now as we're talking about and from what I saw from the movie that when we deny the shadow Debbie uses an example that I've used for years. It's like pushing a beach ball under the water. You can get pretty darn tired trying to hold these beach balls down more than one usually.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: At a time, eventually it's gonna pop and pop you on the chin and I've been holding beach balls down for so many years that I'm exhausted.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: So, I think that's a part of it is letting go of the beach balls and to know that it's gonna be okay.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: And to know also that the support is there. To get you through whatever you and I and everybody watching this has survived everything that's ever happened in our lives.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: Cause we're gonna tell about it. So, there's nothing we won't survive until it's time to go and then when it's time to go whatever awaits us is whatever awaits us.

Natalie: Yup. Cause that's the thing, I think we all have it. And I think that the first thing that we shouldn't be doing is judging ourselves or beating ourselves up over it which is really you know we're really good at, well, I'm really good at. You know beating myself up over you know.

Edie: That's alright.

Natalie: Cause my thing is weakness, I've got this thing with weakness. It's like my big red heart button. And so, of course, when I don't do something well or you know I don't live up to my own expectations and I'm my worst enemy. I will beat myself up worst than anybody else can. But we don't wanna do that. We don't wanna be surrounding this with negative vibration. What we wanna be doing is just acknowledging it and going "Okay. It's there. It's part of who I am." And then, once you acknowledge it I think maybe choosing to say "Will this you know affect my decision or my behavior moving forward? Or what do I choose instead?"

Edie: Yeah. And it's amazing to me or it shouldn't be that somebody that I have never physically met is saying the exact same things that I say.

Natalie: Yeah.

Edie: I joked that I got this inner dominatrix with a whip, beating myself up and I would never do that to anybody, literally, physically any which way I would never do that. And I remember a time when I was in graduate school while I was having dinner at a friend's house who's preparing dinner and I said, I don't remember what I said. He said "I had this image of you standing over yourself with a whip. When are you gonna put it down?" And all these years later and I graduated from graduate school in 1985. I had friends still asks me that question, "When are you gonna put that thing down?"

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: And it feels like it's time now because you feel, I don't know whether you go through this too but a sense of it's never enough, I am never enough and never gonna do enough, be enough, succeed enough, reach enough people. And yet, everyday something shows up like this, this interview showed up and we never know the reasons why we connect with people and what purpose we're gonna have in our shared connection.

Natalie: Exactly!

Edie: So, that's part of it.

Natalie: I know. And that's you know I think maybe it was in the last interview we did, we talked about bliss as being having these connections and these conversations which is the thing I love most about what I do is that we have this. But you know, but everybody has these, these thoughts like I opted all to have a photo of "why would anyone listen to me?"

Edie: Yup.

Natalie: Like I'm some kid from some small town in Australia or one of the children like who enough would listen to me? But I think if you're speaking from the heart and you're speaking from experience and your true intention and motivation is to make a contribution and to help people. Then, you know you need to trust that what's coming through is the right thing.

Edie: Yup. And that's you know I think about that too. I call myself bliss mistress.

Natalie: Yes.

Edie: The title of my book as I'd mentioned. But I call myself that because I've learned that I can choose to live in bliss. So, bliss isn't always walking on sunshine. No, bliss is sometimes still in silent. Bliss is sometimes believe it or not, I mean this last few days since I saw that movie, although I can't say that most people would say that I've been feeling blissful. There's a sense of exileration and excitement that comes from this new discovery. So, for me bliss is discovering new things everyday and the friend that coined with me made me bliss mistress. He said "If you're going to be doing this, you better be living it." So, when I talk to them "This is how you're living your bliss that I always counts, you know this is what I'm doing."

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: And we all have what I call impostors syndrome which was you're referring to you know "Who am I? You're the Mary Williams in court. Who am I? You're the really gorgeous, who you're not to be.

Natalie: Yup.

Edie: And I think you probably did the same thing I do. It should an invitation to the universe and say "I wanna do this." So, when use as example, if you're having a party and you sent out invitations, why would you be surprised when people showed up at your door at the appointed time.

Natalie: Yeah. Exactly!

Edie: Would you lock the door and keep them out or would you let them in?

Natalie: Of course.

Edie: And yet, when we asked for something and it shows up, we say "Oh! Oh, no! I'm not ready, no."

Natalie: Yeah, yeah.

Edie: So, I'm learning to keep the welcome mat out. I'm learning to keep the door open when what I've asked for comes into my life.

Natalie: Yup. Great!

Edie: So, that's fun.

Natalie: Great! That's fantastic wisdom Edie. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today again.

Edie: My pleasure.

Natalie: It's been wonderful. We have so much information to share. You've been absolutely fantastic. Now, if we wanna send people somewhere where they can find out more about you and what you do, where can we send them?

Edie: Well, a couple of things. I have a website www.liveinjoy, l-i-v-e-i-n-j-oy.org. They can listen to my radio show on blog talk radio. It's called It's All About Relationships every Thursday night, Eastern Standard Time at 8PM and its www.VividLife.me. I also write for belief net, something called the bliss blog. I write for something called the whirling like spinning whirling blog. I write for Elephant Journal, Wisdom Magazine, Bella's Free Magazine, the Identity Magazine all of it, just Google my name. I tell you what would the best way just Google my name and see what comes up and I'm also on Facebook, you could follow what I'm up to there too.

Natalie: Wonderful!

Edie: Thank you.

Natalie: Well, guys if you click on the banner to the side there, you'll actually go through to the live in joy website. We'll choose that one just for start one.

Edie: Thank you.

Natalie: Okay. So, thanks again Edie.

Edie: So far so good.

Natalie: It's been an absolute pleasure. And now guys I encourage you to share this video and the information in it and you can do that by clicking the Facebook button and the Twitter share buttons above. And if you haven't done so already, make sure that you put your email on the box above there; I'd love to send you my Manifesting with the Masters Video E-Course. Includes masters like Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and Joe Vitale. It's actually valued $87 but I'd like to send it to you for free but you have to put your email in the box first. So until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. We'll see you soon.