Redefined is hosted by me, Zainab Salbi, and brought to you by FindCenter, a search engine for your soul. Part library, part temple, FindCenter presents a world of wisdom, organized. Check it out today at www.findcenter.com, and please subscribe to Redefined for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

[introductory piano music]

What’s most important about life? What is the essence of life? Is it what we do, how much we earn, how many social media followers we have? Or is it, do we live our lives in kindness to ourselves and to others? Do we live our lives in love to ourselves and to others? In nearly losing my life, I was confronted with these questions and it led me to the conversations that make up Redefined, about how we draw our inner maps and the pursuit of meaningful, personal change.

My guest this time shows us a way to ignite the power of the light within each one of us. In her new book, Speaking with Spirit, bestselling author and teacher Agapi Stassinopoulos shares with us a series of prayers. For her, prayer has nothing to do with organized religions or rigid structures. “When we pray,” she says, “we are not praying to someone or something outside of us. We pray to the deeper, wiser, higher, and more intelligent part of ourselves.”

Join us for Agapi’s tender, creative, and inspiring teachings about the power of prayers, and how to create our own personalized prayers to help us in our challenging moments and support our joyous ones.

[piano music fades]

“Coming home I used to be so lonely. Lonely at my house, lonely when I got back to sleep, lonely when I was alone. When I was with people, I was never lonely, but when by myself, loneliness would hit my home. And then one day I heard a voice, ‘Why don’t you move in? I live alone too. You would like it here. Move in with me.’

“I looked around and it was me talking to me. My house was empty. ‘Wow,’ I said, I left that beautiful place a long time ago, going out looking for others to fill my home. And I left my house empty. ‘Move in, move in with me. You would like it here. You’ll never have to pay rent, I’ll never evict you. You will be my honored guest. I know you, your likes, your dislikes, your little quintessential idiosyncrasies. I know you, I will treat you nice and kind and give you lots of space. Move in. Come, move in with me.’

“I looked into my eyes, my heart, and I saw the love for me. I surrendered. I opened the door and moved in, into my empty house that I had left a long time ago. It was exactly as I left it. It had just missed me. I moved in and never left, and never felt alone anymore, for my house filled with love once I accepted such a kind, tender invitation.”

Such a beautiful way to start us off, a prayer, a prayer from your new book, Speaking with Spirits, such a beautiful way. Thank you, Agapi.

Tell me, I mean, we are living in a time of loneliness, right? I mean, I heard a friend said the disease of the century is actually not COVID, the disease of the century is loneliness, that so many people are struggling from loneliness. Can you start us off with your story of loneliness and how did you come to arrive home?

Well, thank you so much. First of all, my dear Zainab, just being with you in conversation in your presence is anything but lonely. It does definitely . . . I would definitely move in with you if you ask me, anytime!

Anytime! We’re both single women, anytime. [laughs]

And the late Thich Nhat Hanh said, “There’s never been a time that it’s easier to avoid the relationship with yourself.” Partly now it is easier because we have so many attractive distractions with social media, with the endless technology, being constantly on our phones. I mean, I have discovered that my phone has become an extension of my arm.

And that’s where the loneliness is, because what has happened with the pandemic, because we have such less interaction with people, and a lot of the meetings and the events with people and everything that’s been such a habit for us, the world, as we know, has changed for all of us, we had to face the emptiness. And in my heart, there’s always been a prayer of finding Agapi.

Exactly.

[laughs]

Finding Agapi.

Finding Nemo, or finding Agapi, where is Agapi in all this crowd? It’s been progressive, because obviously I started my spiritual path clearly when I was in Greece as a teenager, because my mother introduced me to yoga and meditation as young girls, Ariana and I were initiated by Maharishi. Can you believe it?

How did your mother . . . I’m very curious about your mother. So tell us more about your mother, because your mother was married to your dad, but at one point they got divorced, and she’s raising her two girls together. I don’t know how old were you when your parents got divorced, but you talk about your mother as being very clear in her spirituality. And I’m very curious in how she saw spirituality versus religion in how she raised you, and how had that impacted you?

Absolutely. She wasn’t religious, Zainab, she was unbelievably spiritual. And what I mean by that, she was like a woman of the earth and the heavens. She was almost like, you know how you love, I see how you . . . You loved the animal kingdom. My mother literally would go to the ocean when we lived in LA, take bread crumbs, and feed hundreds of seagulls. I have endless pictures. The seagulls would just gather with her. But the same thing with every, every in the animal kingdom, but also with people, she had this open heart of abundance and generosity. “Our home,” she used to say, “is a church.”

So except, as I say in the book, except of weddings, funerals, Easter Sunday, and Christmas, we didn’t really go to church. We were not religious in that way. But her spirituality came from a connection to the soul, the truth, the bigger, the larger-than-yourself energy. And again, let me just clarify with our wonderful listeners here that for me, in the book I explain very clearly what I mean by God. I don’t define it. How could I possibly define it? I say, “All of us are part of something larger than ourselves.”

Let me ask you about that. Let me ask about God actually, because I love your perspective on God. It’s very controversial . . . God, I think, is a very controversial thing. The other day, I just met a young man and he was just, every other word said, “God.” “God, God, wherever God leads me, wherever God . . .” And people who listen to this podcast know I actually I’m in love with God. And yet I found myself so uncomfortable at his frequent mention of God. And I went to that judgemental state. “What is he saying? Is this a religious fanatic? Is he like a “reborn again” or whatever?”

And I had to catch myself because I was disturbed sort of of how much he mentioned God, even though I love God. You have a very particular perspective on God, as in, and I love your perspective because you say, “When we are children, we all go and talk about God and connect with God. And that sort of gets erased as we get older.” Can you tell me more about that?

To me really Zainab, it’s very simple. And one very quick story is I remember a friend of ours when she was at our home for dinner, and Ariana said to me, “You know, Jennifer is going through a very hard time. Her boyfriend left her, she lost her job. Her mother is sick. Can you go, please talk to her?”

And when I talked to her, she indeed said to me, “I’m having a terrible time. I feel my life is over. I’m forty-two.”

And I went, “Oh my God, Jennifer, do you ever pray?”

And she said to me the question that thousands of people are asking me, and I’m sure they’re asking you, “Who do you pray to?” If you don’t believe, if you don’t have faith, if you’re not following a particular tradition and religion, who do you pray to?

And the same question has come to me from meditators and people who practice yoga, and people who go to retreats and read endless books. And they know there is something bigger, but who do you pray to?

And I said to her, “Jennifer, do you know you have 36 trillion, approximately, cells that are making you right now? So you are way beyond the Jennifer that you know. Do you know that this life force, as my mother used to call it, is for you? It’s a force that you can claim, that you can call, that you can own. Find it. You have your blueprint, you have your code. And Jennifer, I can’t tell you how that’s going to go, because I got the Agapi code. So let’s access that. The spirit in me calls the spirit in you alive. Let us pray for you. I have had experiences, and I talk very openly about it, where my third eye opened and I felt the light and I said, “Oh my God. I’ll never be alone anymore.” So although I don’t live in that consciousness all the time, I have references, and that’s why I can speak with authority and I can speak and write books about it and I can access it and help other people as other people have helped me. So in that moment, as we prayed, we felt the light. We felt the spirit, and we cried and she said, “Oh my God. Nobody has ever done that for me.” So in that moment something shifted in her. Indeed, actually, it was extraordinary because a year later when I saw her, her life is completely transformed.

Now this was a seed, Zainab, that was planted, and why we must seek these teachers and these people that are connected. I know that you are connected. I have felt your connection every time you do something on Instagram or you are in the presence of people or you speak. It doesn’t matter what you do. I can sit down with you and have coffee and feel the presence with us, right? So I know that you are connected. Now you have a journey how you got there, with your challenges and your suffering and your service, and I have a journey how I got there again and how I keep getting there. So when I say God, I am referring to a transcendent power beyond what words can possibly describe. Connect to the spiritual cosmic, larger-than-life presence in whatever way resonates with you.

Mark Nepo, the poet, often asks his audience if they believe in something larger than themselves. 99 percent of people raise their hands. “I guess,” then he says, “we are all mystics.” So whatever your word you want to use—God, the light spirit, the high self, divine intelligence, the one, the I am, the big blob in the sky—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you learn to call it and call on your maker, call upon the power that lives in your every cell and in your very own breath, and anybody who is listening to this, we don’t know if you might be the next person to uncover a way for all of us to get there because we’re all looking for the roadmap.

Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of this whole story. It reminds me a few years ago I invited a very intellectual journalist friend of mine that I was intellectually always intimidated by him. He’s like . . . But he was curious about my meditation practices and my spiritual path, and I was like, “Yeah, sure. You want to join?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” Anyway, so we meditated with a group of people for hours and he, at the end of the—and I left him alone and he, we did that retreat together—and towards the end of the day he came back and he said, “When I was young, I was connected to God and I had these spiritual experiences and these connections, and as I got older and more intellectual and in college and in politics and all of that, I was . . . I started getting embarrassed to talk about my spiritual connections, and I started eventually, over time, cutting any spiritual connection that I have to the Divine, to God”—he called it God at the time. You’re saying it doesn’t matter what we call it—and his biggest epiphany, his biggest opening that retreat was that he reconnected to this part of him that loved and that believed and that . . . It doesn’t have to be defined in anything. It was he connected with his own spirit, I would argue, and it was so beautiful, and so what you’re arguing is, and you wrote that particularly in the book, that we all have that experience as—

I also must say, my love, I don’t want to use the word “arguing” because I would never argue. Somebody says to me, “I don’t believe in prayer. I don’t believe in God. I think we live here and then we die and that’s done.” I would say, “Right. God bless you.” Because for me to start to persuade somebody . . . I mean I might just say, “Can I hold your hands, and do you mind if we just evoke the presence?” And maybe there is an openness there. But never . . . I have learned that, obviously I’m sure you’ve learned it too, that I can never argue about the power of prayer or the existence of the Divine. It’s like—

Yeah. But you are basically reminding us of, at least in the process of your book, is reminding us of the innocence and what we had felt when we were children in our innocence and in our joyfulness towards spirit, and that how with all our values of identity and all of that we may have cut this part of us, and then you’re promoting the re-ignition of that within ourselves basically.

Exactly. Within ourselves, and somebody read my book, and a lot of the comments after reading the book, people said, “My God. I’m rediscovering prayer. I’m finding that I hadn’t, I haven’t been praying because I felt shy or silly, or I would pray in difficult moments, like when my father was in the hospital I would pray. Then my father got out of the hospital and I stopped praying.”

I want to go to two places. One is one of my favorites. I mean, there are so many favorites—I have your book in front of me and I have it full of marks everywhere—but I want to read one paragraph in it where you say, “Our culture constantly signals to us that we are valued according to our accomplishments, finances, education, and even appearance. Most of us live in deficit. We constantly do so that we don’t feel that sense of deficiency. We are super connected to the external world, but we neglect to cultivate and connect to our own internal world.”

Tell us more about that. So one, what are the tools to connect to our own internal world? You have talked about being in the presence of nature, for example. What else? You’ve talked about praying. What else can people do?

Well, I love journal writing. I have a journal by my bedside. It’s called “Agapi’s Prayers,” and it’s not just my prayers. It’s just I download. I just write something, a sentence, and I have this phrase that I use a lot that says, “Spirit, speak to me,” and then I download what I hear from Spirit, and people always say to me or ask me, “How do you know it’s Spirit and not you or your ego or . . .” And I said, “Well, you know when your ego is eating you up.” I mean, come on. You know when it says, “Well, she’s wrong and she did this and I can’t stand it,” you know who is talking and you know the power of the inner voice, the wisdom. So it might not be Spirit, but it might be your high self or your wise self or your soul. Again, you find the name. So I find . . . Zainab, I find pen and paper ground my being very much. So that’s one discipline that I like. It’s not even discipline. It’s something that I love to do.

Of course, meditation. I mean, I’ve been practicing what I call spiritual exercises. I have my spiritual teacher in Los Angeles who passed away. I practice in that whole movement, that I’ve learned my practice and that’s been my practice and my spiritual path, and I chant. I chant loud. I chant the Sanskrit word hu, which means God, H-U. So, and I’ve taught that to many, many people who say “I can’t meditate,” and I’ll just do it right now just for all of us and you’ll see how beautiful it is. You come present in your heart because every practice that we do, if our heart is not engaged, then we’re just in our head. If you’re meditating, if you are cooking, if you are finding that you’re writing, or whatever it is that you do, if your heart is engaged, you’re kind of already there. Does that make sense?

But I have a question about that actually, because many people doubt their inner voice. They hear an inner voice.

Yes.

You’re walking in nature and you hear something saying, “Do that.” And how can one trust their inner voice, that voice they hear within them?

You know the man who was in New York and he asked another man, he said, “Hi sir.” He said, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” And the other man says, “Practice, practice, practice, practice.” Do you know that joke?

No, I don’t.

Oh yeah, that’s it. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice, practice. So how do you get to know if your voice is accurate? Practice, practice, practice, practice. I mean for me, I mean I wrote this book Unbinding the Heart because before this book I wrote Wake Up to the Joy of You, and Unbinding the Heart: A Dose of Unconditional Love and Wisdom, and I discovered because of my spiritual practices and because my teacher, John Roger, was so loving and so filled with heart presence, that when he hugged you or when he spoke to you, you felt unconditionally loved.

So I learned through the teachings and through the practices, the retreats and seminars to open my heart. And once my heart opened, everything in my life made sense, all the nos, all the rejections that I had as an actress, for many, many years I tried to have a career, which was isn’t happening, the men that I wanted to marry, and they didn’t want to marry me, they didn’t even want to be with me. And then the men wanted to be with me, I didn’t want to be with them. So there was a lot of division in my consciousness, but once my heart opened, I started to study myself and then I started to live from that place. And my path found me, before that book was the goddesses and doing my one-woman show that I found my spark and the courage and the confidence to tap into my creativity and share it in the world.

So there was a very specific moment in my life that I said, “The world isn’t giving me what I want. I’ve got to go find Agapi and give me to the world.” And that I love to share with people. And over the years, Zainab, I have spoken to hundreds of thousands of people in big events from that place, to say you’ve got it, but you’ve got to find it, own it, birth it, you’ve got to birth it. And the birthing is not easy.

I mean, I look back at my life and I have had not fear—terror. I have had terrified to go live my life because the world owned me. And one day, and I love this phrase, I think it’s in the Bible, to be in the world but not of the world. And the more I mature or the more the years go by, the more the world kind of subsides and the inner rises. So that the world doesn’t . . . Who thinks what of me, or how do I look and who is doing what versus to what I’m doing. So all that of the comparisons, the striving, the wanting to be something more—my God, that is the greatest erroneous thing we do in our consciousness to think that if we did more, if we accomplish more, if we had more degrees, if so, and so loved us, if we had more followers on Instagram, we will be valued more—[emphatic Greek phrase], stop! We’ve got to stop the insanity, who we are.

And I think the other day, when we’re in conversation, somebody said, “What is my purpose?” My only purpose on this earth is to wake up to who we are. And if going for a career and being a mother and getting married and doing all that, that life, you can engage and participate, but have this voice inside, this calling that says, show me how to wake up to who I am. That’s you and your maker and your sacredness, my friends. No book can teach you. No teacher can transmute it to you, but if you go with your sincerity and your love and your humility and your reverence and you ask—oh my God, you will be held and you will be heard.

That is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. And it basically talks about a certain level of surrender. Like, you started your dream, your wanting to be an actress and it doesn’t work, and then you sort of, you go to your heart, you surrender to your heart, you cultivate your heart and low and behold, your own path, your own purpose seeks you, finds you, and then it becomes an integration.

You are an advocate of leaving room for what I would call nothingness. I’m not sure if this is how you express it or not, but leaving room to do nothing, because that’s sort of where the creativity comes. Can you share because a lot of people are judgmental about leaving nothing. I mean, imagine we brag our culture about how little hours we sleep or how many hours we work.

I mean, I still find people saying, oh, I’ve been working fifteen hours a day, twelve hours. So in this culture, how do you allow . . . What does nothingness mean, nothingness in terms of doing, how do you allow it? What’s the judgemental voice that goes into your head, and how do you manage it?

And I think come to the judgemental thing that you just said, when we were talking, Zainab, about how do you stay open in your heart and be present in your heart, I think that is the antidote is like . . . Not stop the judgements, because that’s also hard to do, how do you stop the judgements, but forgiving the judgements so that I have this practice where I would say, I forgive myself for judging myself for feeling upset. And it’s not easy, but you can feel the softening of your heart. And I’m looking for that chapter, by the way, Zainab, of “The Art of Doing Nothing.”

I would love for you to read it, actually. Let’s see.

See the sweetness of doing nothing, yay. Page 20, “The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.” It’s funny. The first phrase of the chapter four is, “Greeks love to lounge. They’re so good at it. They nap. They spend endless time chatting with one another, they linger over long meals, unlike English and American cultures, the Greek culture has nothing fast about it. As a young girl, I remember seeing people resting by olive trees in the Greek countryside, eating their lunch at a leisurely pace. And I remember the beautiful holidays we would spend in the Greek islands by the sea, sunbathing, gazing, and taking in the beauty of our surroundings.”

My mother was amazing about that whole concept. She used to say, “Darling, you’re not present at all. Don’t miss this moment.” She would say to people who would come to our home and they were busy and she had these great things, Zainab, she used to feed the FedEx guy who used to deliver packages at our home in LA. And the guy would come in and my mother—to drop a package, and they’re in a hurry—and my mother would say, “Oh God, come, I’ve made some amazing lentil soup, come and have a bowl. And Todd would say, “Mrs. Ellie, I’m in such a hurry. I’m in FedEx.” And my mother said, “Don’t be in a hurry. Don’t miss this moment. Come here,” and she would totally teach us about this amazing practice. And she was just extraordinary about taking her time. And so she taught us a lot, but of course we came back in this country, and everything changed because everything is about doing here.

It’s true. I have to say, the one time . . . I mean, you know what, it’s not about less doing, that’s what I discovered, it is you can still accomplish the same accomplishments with more effective doing. The best year of my life is a year I studied in London and I had to work as well, as well as study. And I was an adult student, I was excited, and I also had a lot of fun. And it was the year where I exercised every day. I partied all the time. I studied and did very well in my studies. And I worked and did very well at my work and I was like, wow, I can actually accomplish all of that. Because in the States, you sort of go extreme, you’re just like, I just worked until there was nothing left in my soul to give, or you go on vacation and you just drool from fatigue just to catch up on your sleep or whatever.

And there’s an extreme. And when I’m hearing from you and coming from another culture also that allows for a slowness, it reminds me really of one of my favorite teachers, Angeles Arrien, who is no longer with us. And she said, “Everything about Earth, rhythm—”

Everything about Earth, did you say?

“Earth’s rhythm is slow to medium, the pace of earth, it’s slow to medium.” And we humans move so fast that we lose the connection to each other, to Earth, to animals, to our hearts because we are moving so so so so so fast that we do not allow ourselves that slowness of slow to medium, where the creativity comes, where you still can accomplish a lot. I want to ask you to read that poem or that prayers rather about slowing down.

So “Dear beloved, I feel the pressure and the panic of time going. I feel that I don’t even have time to have a moment with you”—that’s the prayer about timelessness—“Inside my head I hear these words all the time, I don’t have enough time, there is no time, where did the time go? My heart longs to experience a sense of timelessness, to be above time, to know that in my constraints of my mind and the physical world, I can still attune to the universal clock that has a rhythm, a pace like the river of life that flows and knows its direction.

“I ask now that I may open my mind to know the timelessness of my existence and in the midst of my doings, my actions, my to-do lists, and all the demands of my life, I ask that I move into the rhythm that the universe has so brilliantly and intelligently constructed. Just as the planets turn on the X-axis in their own time, may I become connected to the divine timing of my life. I ask that the peace that reigns all things be reinstated in me right now. I call it forward. I allow it to supersede my thoughts and emotions and overtake me as I become more of an observer and less of a warrior. I am grateful for allowing this in my life. I am grateful to know that there is another way. I ask that day by day, I may be redirected to move into the natural flow of my spirit. Thank you, and so be it.” So that’s about timelessness.

That’s so beautiful. Your book is full of “dear beloved,” “dear beloveds.” And reading it, as hearing you right now, has brought a lot of comfort to my heart. And at the beginning, I thought you were saying “dear beloved” to God or to Spirit or to Divine. And I’m just hearing you again, and “dear beloved” could be to us as well. It’s to us. Dear beloved Zainab, or all the billions of cells in me or in you or in whoever you are. It’s so beautiful.

Have a day. I just want to encourage our listeners—have a day where you just actually relate to yourself as beloved, dear beloved Agapi. And just do it as a practice and say “Today, whatever I do, I will honor the beloved in me.” And you go, “Oh, that’s silly. I don’t know what that is.” Just fake it till you make it.

I want to ask you about prayers to others, because you talk about it’s not only powerful to pray for yourself. It’s also very powerful to pray for others. Can you talk about that?

Yes. Again, I feel, Zainab, that we really are healers, and there is so much evidence now and scientific evidence how prayers have worked when people are sick and not well. And I know in my spiritual community, we always evoke the light. My nieces now, who are so wonderful and I love them so much, they say to me, “Nana, send the light. Let’s put this in the light.”

So when they have meetings or my older niece recently got married, and we had to just really put everything in the light, so that we’d all be safe during COVID. And that, in itself, sending the light, but consciously praying with someone. Get on the phone and somebody says, “Hey, I’m just about to commit with my boss, and I’m going to ask for a raise. Can you do a little prayer for me?” And I go, “Absolutely, and let’s pray. Let’s ask that the light fill you, surround you, and protect you. And tell me the name of your boss. And okay, let’s send him the light. And we ask that you stay present, that you move beyond fear, beyond the fear of being rejected. We ask that you come from your strength and your power and knowing your value.”

So that’s what I would pray for somebody who would be going for an interview. And I have a chapter here, “Pray When You Are Going for a Job Interview.” So that you don’t move in with your anxiety and you’re wanting so much that you can actually block it. And anything in the day, just for your day, just asking for the light, to go with grace and ease.

I know, for me, when I was going through a very transitional time in my life, I was in New York. I had a book to write. I was away from my family, and we went to Los Angeles to visit Ariana and the girls. And we had a beautiful dinner with my spiritual teacher and some of my friends from my spiritual community. And we would always do wishes, especially in the new year. Or even if we just gathered, we would always call in the light and put our wishes in each other’s blessings.

And I was going through a very hard time, and my spiritual teacher prayed for me in front of everybody. And he said, “I ask that God blesses Agapi with a new opening, new opportunities.” And I remember the phrase he used, Zainab. It was amazing. “Boost her confidence.” And I really felt I was being injected. I had an infusion of confidence. “Boost her confidence, so she may know what to do, how to do it, and to feel acknowledged by the spirit of what she’s overcome.” And it was so beautiful.

That is truly beautiful. And I think a lot of people don’t like talking about light and spirit and prayers. The truth is, I feel, most of us have the secret. Surround yourself with the light, pray, meditate, connect. I really know some of the most amazing people in this world, amazing in their accomplishments and all of that, and they do exactly that.

They need help from an energy to come to them. They access the light. These are . . . To the cynics I’m speaking. The truth is we are all doing it, but we don’t talk about it because we want to pretend that we are all mind-oriented or science-oriented. The truth is most of us are doing it, are praying and accessing the light, are trying to ignite the power within, struggling, the loneliness of the century, as we started the conversation, is from that disconnection. And we are all trying everything possible to reconnect again via music, via prayers.

We have rapid questions to end our conversation. What are your favorite movies that you always go to to ignite your solace or joy or whatever? Do you have a one or two movies that you—

Yes. My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, the musical. Oh my God, the beauty. [sings] “I could have danced all night. I could have danced all night.” Every song there, I just love. I recently watched Encanto. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s in Columbia. It’s the new Disney animation movie. A dream, absolutely stunning. And of course, Chariots of Fire. For me, that just is my one most favorite movie. And Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates, and the great scene at the end where they dance. And he is heartbroken because his wife died and his son died. And he says, “When you are in pain, dance, my friend, dance.” And English writer, who is very constricted says, “Zorba, teach me to dance.”

I love it. [laughs] I love it. How about books that you always have by your nightstand or with you?

Oh, I have to say, like you, Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Kahlil Gibran, these are my guys. Thoreau, his Walden, the book about his walking and Walden. Wordsworth, Whitman, Whitman. Poetry, for me, is where my soul sings and—

Beautiful. And you have your own, I would say, book of prayers, and many of it sounds also like poetry, Speaking with Spirit. How about songs, songs that you always go to for solace or joy?

Well, let’s say I’ve shared this pretty much in every podcast I’ve done. If you are ever feeling down and you’re ever feeling you need a little jolt, just go to YouTube and listen to Ode for Joy—Ode for Joy, Beethoven’s Ninth, Ode for Joy. There is one particular orchestra with 10,000 people in Japan, chorus and musicians, and they sing Ode to Joy. And you die and go to heaven. So Beethoven never fails.

And my parting words to our beautiful listeners are just remember every day you are never alone. And that’s my message in Speaking with Spirit, that you walk hand-in-hand with your invisible support, your life force, your God. And I pray that all of us, more and more, will know that, that it will transform the loneliness, the separation from ourselves, the separation from each other. And we would find, as Rumi says, whatever between right and wrong, there is a path, and I’ll meet you there. So let’s all meet there. And I hug you. I send you all my love. And Zainab, you fill my heart, and I have no words to say how much your life has meant to many, many people. But to me especially, you are my treasured friend, and thank you, and I love you.

[closing piano music]

That was Agapi Stassinopoulos. For full transcripts of this episode, please visit www.findcenter.com. Do remember to subscribe to this podcast. It is free, and I would truly welcome your comments on it. You can also follow us on Instagram @find_center. To learn more about Agapi’s work, please visit www.wakeuptothejoyofyou.com. Redefined is produced by me, Zainab Salbi, along with Rob Corso, Casey Kahn, and Howie Kahn at FreeTime Media. Our music is by John Palmer. Special thanks to Lauren Aiello, Neal Goldman, Caroline Pincus, and Sherra Johnston. See you next week when we’ll be joined by the amazing professor and author Elaine Pagels.