Season 1, Episode 10
You Deserve to Have it All with Gila Golub
This week, I’m pleased to be talking with my own consciousness teacher, Gila Golub, who helped me with my wake-up call back in 2014 and her teachings have influenced my conscious work practice that I offer in my clinical practice.
Gila was drawn to consciousness work when she realized she was replicating old childhood wounds in her present life and relationships. After years of working with other teachers, she learned a lot about herself and how her early childhood experiences molded her perceptions of the world and was able to heal. Now, people seek her out for guidance after their own wake-up calls for change.
In this episode, we’ll discuss the common wake-up calls people experience that pushes them to seek healing and consciousness work. We talk about the difference between a behaviorist and developmentalist upbringing, and how that has shaped us over generations.
Gila opens up about some of her own experiences coaching herself through abandonment wounds and helping others learn to shift their perception of reality to find self-love. She has even been able to help women with their fertility issues through her teachings.
When you transform your limiting beliefs, you can understand that you deserve perfect health, effortless abundance, and loving relationships. And that includes your fertility journey.
Key Topics/Takeaways:
- Where do our thoughts come from? [3:09]
- Some of us are born more sensitively than others [8:12]
- How old is your abandonment? [11:23]
- To have a baby, you must first love yourself [17:28]
- We are organisms of attachment [22:48]
- How to meet our own unmet attachment needs [25:28]
- It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you [37:33]
- Remembering why we’re here [43:21]
- Transforming the unconscious through process work [50:57]
Watch the Episode
Read This Episode Transcript
Lorne Brown:
By listening to The Conscious Fertility Podcast you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown, I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.
Today on The Conscious Fertility Podcast I have my teacher, not just a teacher, but my teacher, Gila Golub. And Gila is a… I don’t always know how to describe you Gila, so I use the term, you’re a teacher of consciousness. My experience in getting to know Gila is personally, many years ago, around 2011-ish I had unrelenting anxiety that came out of nowhere, paralyzing. And a colleague of mine suggested I check out Gila, and I did her three workshops, and I attend her weekly circle, and it’s been like transforming for myself. As she will share with you, you have to heal your mind. She’s going to talk about that today with conscious work. And she’s influenced my practice. I do a lot of conscious work in my practice.
And watching you, Gila, in circle and with the groups that you support, all these different modalities, like the people that Gila has studied with and trained with, the Bruce Liptons, the Gabor Mates, Eckhart Tolles, Gordon Neufelds, on and on and on. And I think people like me will say, “I studied with Gila Golub,” right? And so it’s a privilege for me to have you here, not just to share with my listeners but how you’ve transformed my life. And I kind of want to start off with wake-up calls, because my wake-up call was anxiety, unexplained, it didn’t make sense to me. Other people’s wake-up calls could be a divorce, or bankruptcy, death of a loved one. Many people come to you because of medical diagnosis. And for our listeners, they’ve come with the diagnosis of infertility.
And so I think in your workshops and how you work, you always say people come to you because of their wake-up call. And the first thing I remember… I mean, you say many things, but one of the first things that sticks, and I want you to go into this, is you share that our thoughts create our reality, but only 100% of the time. And so what do you mean by that, and where do our thoughts come from?
Gila Golub:
Well, when I am vetting a client who wants to take my workshops, that’s the vetting question. Do you get, do you believe, do you understand that your thoughts create your reality, but only 100% of the time? And if they don’t laugh then, they don’t get in. So, where do our thoughts come from? Well, we are all at the effect of multi-generational family trauma, really millions of years of trauma. And we are also all at the effect of unmet attachment needs, and when you talk about my teachers I would say that one of my main teachers is Gordon Neufeld, with whom I’ve been studying attachment theory for 35 years. There are two main tracks to my work I would say, and one of them is definitely attachment theory, that nothing stands alone. And so the other track is what we call consciousness, and what is consciousness?
To sum it up in a sentence, I would say it’s remembering the truth of who we are. So where we get our thoughts from, well, those are the messages that have come down to us from thousands of years of multi-generational trauma. Those are the messages that we came in with, that we got at the very moment of our conception. Yes, we got messages at the very moment of our conception, the vibration of that conception. Did people want a child, or was it an accident, or were they in shame, or guilt, or fear because they weren’t married and their religion said it was dirty, and wrong, and sin? So we take on messages from the moment of conception, many of which do not contain an invitation to exist at all, or an invitation to exist as the gender, or body type, or personality type that we are.
Some of us are a size 12 personality and a size 2 family. We took on messages in utero, during the birthing process, and during those incredibly formative first six to eight years of life. And the bottom line message that almost all of us take on is that we are inherently unworthy, unlovable, that there’s something wrong with us, that we’re not good enough, because we were all raised by behaviors. So I often say that there are two ways to raise a child, behaviorism, which says you must perform and is completely fear-based, and developmentalism, under which comes attachment theory. And when I say attachment theory, I mean that which was developed by John Bowlby, who coined the term attachment.
And then developed by geniuses like Gordon Neufeld, and Dan Siegel, and so on. So in attachment theory and developmentalism, to be loved unconditionally is your birthright. So those are the main differences in the two approaches, and we were all raised by behaviorists, 95% of parenting literature is still behaviorist.
Lorne Brown:
We’re going to talk a little bit about fertility, and hopefully you’ll share some of your stories because I know people have come to you wanting to have a baby. But they’ve come in from divorces, we said, other medical diagnosis, financial ruin. And you don’t seem to get caught up in the narrative of why they come in, you look for this old trauma and you look for where they did not get their attachment needs met.
Gila Golub:
Well, the wake-up call is what brings them, the story is what brings them, and a wake-up call, as I say in the beginning of level one, can be to do with health. And that would include fertility, it can be to do with relationships, that can exclude fertility. And it can also be about abundance, finances, which also could affect our ability to create fertility, all three of those. And so you’re right, I don’t get caught up in what we call the story. Because the bottom line is everyone believes that they are inherently unworthy, unlovable, maybe broken.
Lorne Brown:
And this can affect how we experience our life, and it ties into your thoughts and creates your reality. And what I find interesting, Gila, is sometimes we’re looking for this big trauma event. Like you mentioned some people weren’t invited into this world, meaning some people were adopted, they didn’t get their birth parents. Or they were supposed to be a boy and they ended up being a girl, or vice-versa. But you’ve shared stories where somebody feels unlovable because their parents were late picking them up from daycare.
Gila Golub:
Exactly.
Lorne Brown:
So you use the quote often, and I’m going to think of the quotes I see on your walls. You mentioned your environment creates your mind, and then your mind creates your environment. Maybe you can tie that quote in, I think it’s from Dan Siegel. But for our listeners, a lot of them are hearing for the first time how they were brought into this world already with an agenda, with influence. And then certain messaging, I don’t know why we take them on so negatively. But certain messaging, like your parents show up late for daycare, how that can give us subconscious messaging that we’re not worthy, or-
Gila Golub:
Well, some of us are also born more sensitively than others, which brings us to the whole subject of the orchid child and the dandelion child, which Thomas Boyce writes about in a book of that title. So yes, some of us are born far more sensitively than others. First of all, the trauma is not what actually happens, the trauma is how it lives in you after it happens. So the trauma could be horrific sexual abuse, but if it had a place to be released, to be addressed, to be understood, then there may not be lasting trauma. There are many, many elements and factors. So yes, it could be horrific abuse, being beaten and all of that awful stuff, verbally and physically, or it could be your parents being a few minutes late picking you up from school or from daycare.
If you’re born that sensitively and your parents are a few minutes late, then there could be a sense of abandonment, of betrayal, of not being loved, of not being important, of not being cared for, that could stay with you for the rest of your life and be activated in all of your relationships, your friendships, and your life partners, and your business partners, and even with your own children. So the bottom line is, everyone has to do their own work.
Lorne Brown:
What do you mean by like, it gets activated?
Gila Golub:
So if you have an experience in your life of being abandoned, I was left in the hospital for the first month of my life. So I don’t even ever have a day without a sense of abandonment, I just know what it is now. I know how to recognize it, I know how to re-parent that inner infant, that one-month-old infant who was left in the hospital for a whole month, you know, with a rolled-up towel with a bottle on it, nobody ever held me. So I know what it is, so we’re on the effect of that. And if we had an experience of abandonment early on, or we came in with that, we will probably recreate that or replicate that in every relationship we have.
Lorne Brown:
So are you suggesting that how we experience reality, our reality, is based on our subconscious programs? Are we creating our reality, and do we have the power then to change that?
Gila Golub:
95% of our thoughts are unconscious, 95% of our mind is creating our reality. Do we have the power to change that? Neuroplasticity, we absolutely do. And when is it too late? Absolutely never, we always have the power to change it, even when we’re 93.
Lorne Brown:
And you said that there’s not a day that goes by that you don’t experience abandonment. But the difference with conscious work, the process work that you have done, is you’ve made the unconscious conscious, and now you get to choose differently then. So you’re not unconsciously in a reaction mode, you are consciously navigating your reality.
Gila Golub:
That’s right.
Lorne Brown:
Is that what’s happening?
Gila Golub:
Yes, it takes a lot of training but you can take yourself out of any story. For example, a couple of years ago I was being picked up at a department store to be taken to an event. I was going to be picked up at 1:30. At 1:20 I texted the person who was picking me up, and I didn’t get a response. At 1:25 I texted again, at 1:30 I phoned. No response, no response, no response. I was standing outside the department store in the rain, and I could feel it happening. I could feel my breathing change, I could feel my hands sweating, I could feel, “Oh, abandonment.” But I was able to identify it. And then when I identified it, I asked myself how old it was. Because every reaction we have as an adult is a replication, every reaction we have as an adult is a replication.
So I asked myself how old it was, and I did that thing where I flipped back through time, and I found myself in the nursery of St. Paul’s Hospital in the beginning of June of 1943. And there I was, and I could hear the sounds, I could see the white walls, and I could re-parent my inner infant. As soon as I did that my phone rang, my ride said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll be there in five minutes,” and I knew that my ride wouldn’t be there in five minutes. But I was very happy to have that time to re-parent my inner child. When my ride arrived I wasn’t quite ready to look her in the eye and say hello, so I did a process of taking myself inside.
It’s called Psych-K, you know it well. And I had a statement that I said over and over and over to bring myself to peace, to the present moment, and to remind myself that my ride was innocent and I’m innocent. It took me about five minutes, and then I knew that I had arrived there. My eyes opened, and I was completely present, and I was actually laughing and joking with my ride. We went to the event. Now, while I was standing on the steps of the department store, I was in panic. I was thinking, “How will I get home? Will I take an Uber, will I take a cab? Can I get the bus, can I call my husband,” you know? I’m a 79-year-old woman, I know how to get around. Why was it that over the top?
Because it was that old, but I was able through a lot of training to recognize it. The person who was my ride I saw about a week later, and she said to me, “I didn’t know such a thing was possible, I didn’t know you could fall into a wound like that and then take yourself out.” Well you can, you can fall into any wound and take yourself out. It just takes a lot of training.
Lorne Brown:
And so when you fall into your wound, this is, you’re going unconscious?
Gila Golub:
You’re in the past, or you’re in the future.
Lorne Brown:
Right, so you’re not in the present moment. And this is what-
Gila Golub:
That’s right.
Lorne Brown:
… we keep hearing from all the experts, is this present moment, and there’s tools and process work to get you in the present moment, is where the opportunity for shift to happen. And I like your story, how you got yourself out of the story, because this seems to be what happens with the conscious work and the tools that you share, if you’re at the effect of it, as you said. You’re an infant again, and with these tools you get into that present moment and one of two things happen, and this ties into your thoughts creating your reality. One is that your perception of the situation changes, so you’re no longer triggered, you’re at peace in an unhappy situation, you’re at peace, your ride’s late.
Gila Golub:
And then vibrationally, you actually send out vibrations into the relational field of whoever that situation is with, and literally raise the vibrational field.
Lorne Brown:
And then the second thing is, which ties into what you just said, is then sometimes miracles happen and the reality changes, the environment changes, and that person picked up and called you, and so this is what I love about the work. You know, this podcast is greatly inspired by you, because something that really landed for me is you said two things. One is you can’t change anybody else’s behavior or mind, you can only heal your own mind. So, that responsibility comes to yourself. It was empowering to know that I don’t have to work so hard at changing politics, changing the economy, changing my parents. I just have to work on me, and then when I shift I see things differently because I’m different. That was very nice.
The other part, though, is I’m in the healing profession, I wanted to heal the world. And I heard from you that to heal the planet, this idea, you first have to heal yourself. And that’s where the idea of this podcast came, because the wake-up call for our listeners is in a fertility diagnosis. And if we want these children to be raised by developmentalists, so people that attach to their children, versus behaviorists, they come here, wake-up call, “I need to try and get pregnant.” So, “Oh, here’s something that may work, conscious fertility. I’ll give it a listen.” So we go from conscious fertility, then to conscious conception and pregnancy, to conscious parenting. And the line I heard from you is, “If we could attach to our children in one generation they would all heal.”
Gila Golub:
If children were raised by developmentalists, particularly with attachment theory, there would be no need for drugs. Because what are we anesthetizing ourselves from, what is the opioid crisis anesthetizing us from? Not being in the right attachment, not being attached.
Lorne Brown:
So how do you tie this into the fertility journey? Because these women want this baby so desperately, and-
Gila Golub:
These couples.
Lorne Brown:
Yes, these couples. Women and men, women and women, sometimes men and men. But yes, to the guys that are listening, thank you for paying attention and listening to this podcast, I don’t want to exclude anybody. So, they have this strong desire for this child. I always wonder how you tie this into… And maybe elaborate a bit about the definition of attachment, like, what’s happening here? Because they already know they’re going to love this baby before this child’s even born.
Gila Golub:
Oh, what a good point. But do they know how to love themselves? So the actual destination of the journey that I take my clients on is to have a big, juicy, passionate, committed, and completely unconditional love affair with yourself. So I’ll tell you a little story. In my workshops we do process work and a lot of teaching, and one of the processes we do is called a clearing, and we do a clearing with mum, dad and self. And I had a client in a workshop who had been-
Lorne Brown:
But mum and dad are not physically with you during this clearing?
Gila Golub:
No no, no no, you never do these processes with the actual person, thank you. And I had a client in this workshop, her dad had been my client years before, and he’d come to me so he could clear with his own children, which did work out. But his daughter was not interested in coming to me, even though she’d been trying to get pregnant for 11 years, and had tried many, many kinds of processes, including in-vitro. But she didn’t want to come to me because she was fundamentalist, in a religion that she didn’t see me as part of. I think we’re all part of everything and we’re all one, but she didn’t see me as part of it. But eventually she came, and on the last afternoon of the workshop we do something called the self clearing, where we vent about our judgments on ourselves.
And then we come back to the truth of who we are, that we are souls, that we are innocent, and so on. And as I was listening to her do her self clearing I said to her, “Oh, you think you’re a sinner?” And she said to me, “Oh, I am a sinner.” And I said then, “Why would God give you a baby? It’s time for you to remember the truth of who you are, to remember that you are a spark of the divine, that you are part of God, that you are innocent, and grace, and love, and peace, and that you deserve to have it all. Perfect health, effortless abundance, loving relationships. And for you, a baby.” Two weeks later she was pregnant, nine months later her dad and her husband and herself brought the baby up to my house.
And I have probably 60 or 70 stories about… One of them was I was having intramuscular stimulation where they put the needle in until you scream. And I said to my osteopath, I said… Who had been talking about her fourth trip somewhere for in-vitro. You know, I knew she was Irish Catholic with the tick, tick Irish accent. And I said to her, “Do you have a patient right after me?” And she said, “Yes I do.” And I said, “Then take the needles out right now,” there are about 30 needles in my back. And she said, “Oh no, I’m not finished.” And I said, “Well, then I’ll stand up with the needles in because we’re going to do a process.” And I did, I did a process with her where I brought her to find the thought where she was guilty, that’s what the program said for a long, long time, for a thousand generations.
And then I did a process to take her from guilt to innocence, and two weeks later she was pregnant with a beautiful baby. When she said to me, “Well, I’ll just go for the next in-vitro, and I’ll see how that goes.” And I said, “How much does it cost?” She told me and I said, “You could save all that.” And she did, his name is Shamus.
Lorne Brown:
And when I look around your workshops, I see different nationalities and different religions. Because there’s no religious basis to conscious work, but-
Gila Golub:
Yeah
Lorne Brown:
But people come in with their religious beliefs, and a lot of the religions, I don’t think anybody has a patent on guilt, right? All religions think they resonate with the guilt program, but I think many religions run a program of guilt, you’re guilty at some level.
Gila Golub:
A lot do.
Lorne Brown:
So I really want to share with our listeners the part that how you’re raised and what you’re brought into these world, these programs are running whether you’re aware of them or not, and they could be limiting what you get to experience in life, or self-sabotaging yourself whether it’s intentional or unintentional. And you talk about how important attachment is. You shared a story, maybe our listeners don’t remember her but she was on the radio and TV, a Dr. Ruth story. And I thought that story really expresses how the environment impacts your mind, and then the mind impacts your environment, which is part of creating your reality. So, do you want to share your Dr. Ruth story?
Gila Golub:
Just before I share my Dr. Ruth story, I’m just going to remind everyone a piece of basic science. Every particle in the universe has a driving, overriding force, every particle in the universe has a driving, overriding force to attach to a particle like, quark to quark, atom to atom, mammal to mammal. We are organisms of attachment, other examples of attachment are magnetism, fusion and gravity. So it’s a big deal, it’s everything. And the way that Bowlby described or defined attachment is the drive or relationship characterized by the pursuit and preservation of proximity. So, that’s the basis that we’re working with in understanding what attachment is. So, if our most fundamental attachment needs are not met, and they are not met in a behaviorist world, then if our attachment needs are not met then we will spend the rest of our lives looking outside of ourselves to have those needs met.
And it may end up that we have to anesthetize ourselves against the unbearableness of not having our attachment needs met, or it may be that we end up with five different life partners, looking for someone from outside of ourselves to fill us, which isn’t possible. So, the Dr. Ruth story. Dr. Ruth was an American psychiatrist, she is still, she’s still going strong, a sex therapist. And she was being interviewed a couple of years ago by Tavis Smiley, who said to her, “Dr. Ruth, how do you explain that by the time you were 10 years old your whole family had been slaughtered in the Holocaust, and you ended up coming to America and having a wonderful marriage, and a wonderful life, and a very successful career?”
And she said in that amazing, thick, German accent, “Well Tavis,” the answer to her question was in the question. “By 10 years old, I had been raised in a wonderful, loving, cultured family. It was an Orthodox Jewish family so there was structure, ritual, and ceremony, and I had a grandmother who absolutely doted on me. So with that start in life, I was able to endure and thrive because I had that basic attachment to begin with.”
Lorne Brown:
And so this emphasizes how important that attachment is in the early stages, which is why I’m looking for conscious fertility all the way to conscious parenting. But here’s my question then, what about all the women and men that are trying to have babies now, and they didn’t have a grandparent that doted on them, or they didn’t have loving parents? How does this get resolved now, then?
Gila Golub:
That brings us to the Bradshaw work, and his book on homecoming. We can re-parent our own inner child, we can do our own work and have a love affair with ourselves. Remember the truth of who we are, and remember that we do deserve to have it all. We would need some guidance to do that, yes.
Lorne Brown:
So this is the empowering part, we’re going to… I want to hear this again. We get to re-parent ourselves, so we don’t go and ask if our parents’ still alive to do it for us. Our third, or fourth, or fifth partner, or if you’re on your first, we’re not looking for them to do it, we’re not going to make this baby, if we’re so lucky, do it, right? That’s the worst thing.
Gila Golub:
Oh, that’s right, oh.
Lorne Brown:
So it is empowering because you get to do it, you don’t need anybody else to… You used the word fill you up, you get to fill yourself up, you get to make yourself conscious, you get to reparent yourself.
Gila Golub:
Exactly. In fact, the destination is really to be willing to be the only one to see you, acknowledge you, validate you, appreciate you, accept you and love you.
Lorne Brown:
And what has been your experience and your clients’ experience when they are willing to be the only one to see them, to see who they are, to hear themselves, to love themselves, to understand themselves? What happens in their external world when they do?
Gila Golub:
Healing. I see couples healing, I see families healing, I see parents healing with suicidal teenagers and suicidal 20-something-year-olds. I see that happening every single day in my practice.
Lorne Brown:
So the common theme I see in conscious work, and I really saw this in your work, this is where I got my eyes opened the most to it, is that your external world is truly a reflection of your inner world. And it’s kind of like, you know, from the perception when you look at the sky, it looks like the sun is moving across the sky, the sun is rotating around the Earth. But we’re aware, the smart scientists tell us that the Earth is actually rotating around the sun, right? But the perception tells us differently. It makes sense, it seems that if you want to change the relationship they’ve got to change, right? That person, because it’s their fault. But you’re saying it’s not their fault?
Gila Golub:
It’s the perception that’s got to change.
Lorne Brown:
It’s the perception-
Gila Golub:
And that’s the Bruce Lipton work, exactly. He spent four years in a laboratory at Stanford proving that a cell in a Petri dish would go toward protection, and mutate, metastasize, or go toward growth and thrive, based on the cell’s perception of the cell’s environment. So yes, it’s all about shifting our perception.
Lorne Brown:
And so this makes inner work, and this is why I find it empowering. Because let’s say… Like, how would you work with, or your thoughts around a lot of the couples that I see, whether they’re same-sex couples or heterosexual couples, the fertility journey can add a bit of extra stress to the relationship. And a lot of times they’re saying, the common… “He’s not showing up, he’s not doing enough, he’s not supporting me.” How does that make you think? If that person was sitting in front of you, what’s your thought process on that then, when it comes to conscious work?
Gila Golub:
I love the question, by the way. So the answer is, it’s not the first time you’re not feeling seen, and heard, and supported, then you have to really find out when was the first time you felt that? So you have to follow the feeling. Whatever feeling you’re having, whatever reaction you’re having, it is not the first time you’re having that reaction. And people do not come together in relationships by chance, it’s not haphazard. We choose a partner who will bring up our own unresolved issues, so that we can see what they are, so we can heal them. So if your partner’s, you say, making you feel not supported… What was the other thing you said?
Lorne Brown:
“You’re not showing up for me, you’re not doing your part.”
Gila Golub:
I had a phone call like that this morning, I really did. So, those feelings that you’re having of somebody not showing up for you, of not supporting you, that feeling of being unsupported, how old is that? Because it’s definitely a replication.
Lorne Brown:
I’ve heard you say many times, all-over reaction is just an age regression.
Gila Golub:
An age regression, all overreaction is an age regression. So to whatever extent you’re overreacting you have to ask yourself, “How old am I right now? Am I a teenager, am I three, am I two, am I having a tantrum?” All overreaction is an age regression. So it’s not the person in front of you, the person in front of you may be showing you that feeling, maybe really putting it in your face. But it’s a replication that can take you to the original wound, so that you can heal the original wound.
Lorne Brown:
And first of all, this is work, conscious work is… It’s not like we sit there, and it’s kumbaya, and it’s easy, right?
Gila Golub:
No.
Lorne Brown:
You’re working it, you’ve got to work. I don’t-
Gila Golub:
But only for the rest of your life.
Lorne Brown:
Only for the rest of your life. But it does get better, right?
Gila Golub:
Yes it does, it does get easier.
Lorne Brown:
Yeah, and the neural networks change, the processes get easier. Well, because they become habituated, right? Just like you’ve habituated the stuff you don’t like, the good stuff can get habituated as well. But it doesn’t look like there’s a place to blame others.
Gila Golub:
That is correct.
Lorne Brown:
Now, this is the part, there is no self-judgment. You are having compassion for self, this is a chance to be accountable and responsible, so you have to be grown up. There’s accountability and responsibility, because you are now making the wound conscious. So you don’t get to play victim anymore when you do conscious work, is what I’m thinking.
Gila Golub:
And you’re right, there is absolutely no-one to blame, including yourself. It’s never, ever, ever about blaming self, there is no-one to blame, there is only healing to be done.
Lorne Brown:
So I want to talk a little bit about the term you call holy relationships, I call them conscious relationships. Because again, a lot, not all, but a lot of the people I see and that are trying to have babies, they’re in pairs. There are many people who are single doing this as well, so this also applies to them because the punchline is you have to have that great relationship with yourself. But can you describe what a holy relationship is?
Gila Golub:
Well, the way I define it is the willingness to see the wholeness, completeness and innocence of self and others.
Lorne Brown:
And I think the self has to come first. If I can’t see-
Gila Golub:
Definitely.
Lorne Brown:
… the innocence in myself I can’t see in the other, correct?
Gila Golub:
That is correct.
Lorne Brown:
So this goes back to your thoughts creating your reality, if you don’t heal your wounds and become conscious and awake and aware, then everything is just a feedback reflection to you.
Gila Golub:
That is exactly right. So your partner is a mirror, your partner is a reflector, that’s their job. And your partner’s going to reflect back to you what’s going on in you. In other words, if somebody said to me, “You’re stupid, old and ugly,” that wouldn’t be coming from them. That would have originated in me, and be getting reflected back to me by them. I had a marriage that was really ugly, and horrible, nasty, just a real shitshow. And we went to conventional counseling every single week for over a decade, and it just got worse and worse, it was actually counterproductive. And finally I was all the while doing the attachment work with Dr. Neufeld, but I also started to do consciousness work.
And slowly, slowly, I could see differences. And then there was a huge blow up, and we were getting divorced. Anyway, bottom line, today I’m in a really happy, sweet, effortless marriage, it’s the same guy. Not only is it the same guy, but we have grandchildren now. We spent all of yesterday afternoon at the beach with our children and grandchildren, it’s really worth doing your own work.
Lorne Brown:
So I want to kind of chew on this a bit more. So it’s not the situation that’s causing the stress, then. So what is it?
Gila Golub:
Your perception of the situation, your thoughts about the situation. Or as Byron Katie would say, wherever you’re arguing with reality. Because the only thing that causes suffering is a thought, so if your thought is arguing with reality then there’s the suffering, there’s the stress.
Lorne Brown:
But what happens if I don’t like the situation? Am I resigned to it then? Like, what do you mean by my thoughts creating my reality, and so I don’t want to argue with it? But what if I don’t like the situation?
Gila Golub:
Then you can do process work. So in most processes, you find the feeling that the situation seems to be evoking in you, the feeling. And then in most processes you find how old that feeling is, and then you find that you’ve got an inner child in there who is the one that’s reacting to the situation, not the grown up you. Or maybe you never grew up, maybe you never achieved maturation, so it’s time to get some help with that.
Lorne Brown:
And so tying this into, again, the relationships then. Because I’m sure when your listeners heard you say that they’re a mirror, I’m sure there were a lot of buts. “But, but, but he,” right? And so really, it’s about being willing to do your own work.
Gila Golub:
Can I give you an example-
Lorne Brown:
Please, please.
Gila Golub:
So I get phone calls, people who aren’t ready to work with me because I require that your thoughts create reality. And I’ll have somebody call in and say, “But my husband, he was cheating, and he went out with all these hookers, and he did this, and he did that.” And then I say as gently as I possibly can, “Can you tell me where you cheat on yourself? Can you tell me where you don’t honor yourself? Can you tell me where you say awful things to yourself? Can you tell me where you judge and criticize yourself? Because your partner is just a reflector.” And mostly they can find that, if they really want to work. Very often they’ll say, “Oh my God, all the time.
“I’m always calling myself stupid, I’m always criticizing myself in my own mind.” And they find it, and then that’s brought to consciousness, and then they can choose again, they can choose to notice it, then they can choose to change their thought.
Lorne Brown:
And I’m paraphrasing, but it acts like wifi. You put out a vibration frequency, and one of two things happen. You’re not triggered by it, you still may not like the situation, partner cheating on you, but it’s not that trigger.
Gila Golub:
Well, the partner isn’t cheating on you, right off the bat, there’s no such thing. If cheating is being done on you, it’s you, that’s it. So it does call for accountability, yeah. And you may have chosen somebody from your past, you may have chosen a partner that is doing what your father did, or what your mother did. But it’s all healable, because so did they.
Lorne Brown:
And when that heals, then your perception of what’s happening in the external environment changes. Because the reason this is so important from the fertility aspect is, life is about flow and receptivity, a big part of it, especially when it comes to fertility. And when you’re fighting with reality, we call that chi stagnation in Chinese medicine. I’ve heard friction, resistance. You know, when you have resistance on an electrical wire it slows down the flow rate, the speed. And so we want flow, and so when you’re fighting with reality there’s that friction. And when you share everything that’s happening in the environment… For example, if somebody’s in a relationship and your spouse is sleeping with somebody other than you, the thing that I learned from you is, stop…
And that’s why I call my notice, accept, choose again, but I got it from you is, stop, and this is a reflection. So, how am I cheating? Like, what’s this feel like, and then where is this in me? So, how can I ignore what’s happening out there and find out that feeling, not the… Not like cheating, like physically sleeping with… It’s the feeling, what’s it bring to me? And then finding that in me, and the regression to find out where I have that feeling where I’m not being honored, or I don’t feel respected? Where’s that in me, where is it in my program? Because if my thoughts create my reality, thoughts lead to feelings, behaviors, then I just change my perception of everything that’s happening. If I can get out of the story and just pretend that that is just feedback from the universe, and where can I find this in me, and take it as a gift…
You said it earlier, it’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you. Can I use this as a gift to help me find the wound, so if I can clean up that wound I don’t have to experience that in the external world anymore, or perceive it?
Gila Golub:
Well, as long as you’re not attached to a form and an outcome.
Lorne Brown:
Now, what do you mean by that, Gila?
Gila Golub:
Well, if you’re doing something so someone else will change, you’re not doing anything. I cleaned that one up, Lorne. If you’re doing something to change someone else’s behavior, we are here to heal our own minds, not to change anyone else’s behavior. And that’s how I live, that’s how I live my life and my marriage. And it’s so much easier than thinking somebody else has to change so I will be happy, because there are not enough somebody else’s, and not enough changes that they can do. There’ll always be something else if we’re looking for this happiness from outside of ourselves.
Lorne Brown:
And I want to tie this into fertility, and I’m going to tie this into other health conditions. But people have come from the fertility perspective, so why are we talking about consciousness for fertility? What does this have to do with fertility? Again, that’s part of the story, that’s in the external environment. And what you’re sharing, have been sharing is that when you heal on the inside things transform, things start to change. So, just go to work on the inside, and what does infertility bring up for you? So that would be kind of that question, what feelings come up, right?
Gila Golub:
Very good, yes. What does it bring up for you?
Lorne Brown:
And so that’s where we get to work. In my practice, when I do the conscious fertility work, the first one or two sessions people are really talking about the baby. By the third session, they’re talking about stuff before they were nine years old, so they’re not talking about the baby anymore. The feeling’s the same, and so that’s where they get to start to heal that stuff, and flow starts to happen. I want to talk about though, I use the term, I’ve seen things that I can’t unsee. So there are people in our group that have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and cancers, they do this work, it’s no longer about trying to heal the cancer, it’s about healing, again, trauma and wounds, and not being attached to form and outcome. And some people had spontaneous, miraculous healings, like I’ve seen things that I can’t unsee in your groups, right?
Gila Golub:
Well, they’re not exactly spontaneous, people worked really, really hard over a period of time.
Lorne Brown:
Wait, let me rephrase that. From the conventional Western medical establishment, because it doesn’t make sense from medical science, it sounds like a spontaneous, miraculous healing. From your work it’s like, “This is what happens when you heal,” right?
Gila Golub:
I was listening to an interview that Gabor was doing the other day, and somebody said spontaneous healing to him. And so I just picked that up from Gabor. “There’s no such thing as spontaneous healing,” he said.
Lorne Brown:
And there are people that have come with cancer who have passed, and I think of somebody I’ve become friendly with, you know, a lovely person. But they died with dignity, they died with peace, they died more whole and complete than most people I know that have health.
Gila Golub:
And the wonderful person you’re thinking of, and he also added six years to his life from what the doctors told him.
Lorne Brown:
And he transformed other people’s lives too, because he became-
Gila Golub:
Yes, many, many, and he got to see his children graduate from high school, and so on. So there were many other facets, yes.
Lorne Brown:
So many of the experts that I’ve been having on our podcast, they talk about consciousness, and you do your inner working, you tap into this inner being, higher self, and then you tap into something called big C, or big consciousness. What’s happening here then, when you say we’re healing our minds and these things are shifting, changing, we’re creating a reality, what are you subscribing to, what’s influenced you, what do you think is happening then when people go in and have these shifts, and they feel different, or they have healings, or they tap into… Do you think they’re tapping into a super consciousness, or something greater than ourselves? Do we end, do you believe? And this is just… I know people can’t confirm or dispel this, I’m just curious, like the person that passed, do you have a sense that they’ve ended, or that’s just the physical body that’s ended?
Gila Golub:
Well I know they haven’t ended, because we talk a lot, yeah. So I do something called family constellation therapy, where we actually are connecting with the ancestors. And I test mine all the time, and they come through every single time, big things and small things. I think it’s all about remembering, about 30 years ago when I took up this practice my kid said I should get a card, a business card. And I have to put what I do on it, and I said, “Well, I don’t know what to call it.” And they said, “Oh Mommy, you’re a rememberer.” So I think they were right, when I reflect. So I’ve been studying for 16 years, starting with studying with my dad, and on and on and on, and Vedanta, and on and on.
And I think what’s going on is this is an illusion, this is the maya, as they call it in Sanskrit, and we’ve just forgotten. Wordsworth says our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, you know, in Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth. And I think it’s everywhere, the message, that this is an illusion, and that we’re really souls, we’re just the vibration, the essence of love, and peace, and joy, and grace, and light, and that we’re all one, and that we just come through this veil, and we forget that. And it’s really hard to remember, because the ego, which… So, when we come into a body, we get an ego mind, and the ego’s purpose and function is fear. Because we do need some fear to maneuver through this illusion, that’s why it was so dangerous to run around with psychedelics.
Because it circumvented the fear, and then we would walk off cliffs and things like that, or stare at the sun until we went blind. So I think we’re just here to remember, and I feel really blessed that I went from a child of the First World War, my mother was literally born into the First World War, I was born in the Second World War. And all that she went through when the reactions that she had, and the wounding that I experienced from that, I just feel blessed that whatever star I was born under was relentless in looking for help. And when there was no help available in conventional therapy, I found consciousness work. And now I think it’s spreading, I doubt very much if it’s reached critical mass, some people say it has.
But I just, one person, one day at a time. And now as a grandmother, a bubby as we say, it’s a whole other trap, because I get to see the magic of these little people. I’ve got a two-year-old granddaughter and a seven-month-old grandson, and I never knew that such awesome wonder and magic could even exist, because they’re still connected in that soul place.
Lorne Brown:
Tying that into remembering, when you say we’re here to remember, we’re not here to remember our trauma, we’re here to remember what?
Gila Golub:
The truth of who we are. We’re here to remember we’re souls, we’re innocent. We are innocent and innocence, we are here to remember that we are all one, that we are eternal beings of light, grace, and peace, and we are all connected.
Lorne Brown:
And you often say when you transform those limiting beliefs of not deserving to have it all to deserving to have it all, what are some of the things that you believe we deserve to have it all because we’re innocent? Because I love when I hear you say them out loud.
Gila Golub:
Perfect health, effortless abundance, and loving relationships. And I consider this moment to be effortless abundance, I consider the work that I’m going to be effortless abundance. You know that saying, if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life, so… Except for the computer.
Lorne Brown:
Yeah, and you can tell you love it, and you do it so well. And you shared your age, so I’m not giving out any secrets. At the time of our recording, 79, and I think you said you’ve been studying for 60, 6-0, not 16, but 6-0, 60 years, right?
Gila Golub:
Well, since I graduated from high school I consider… You know, I was a flight attendant for 26 years and I spent many, many years in various libraries of the world, and libraries here studying before every major trip that I went on. So really studying, yeah. But not an academic.
Lorne Brown:
Right, right, right. And just again, look how vibrant you are. It shows you how this work keeps you vibrant and alive, and the mind, like when you’re working with people, it’s just mastery to watch. And again, you’ve influenced me so much, and I love the fact that I have you in my city to go to, to lean into. So it’s always great, and just the tools. So my patients will know that I’ll do like in my practice Psych-K work, you introduced me to the Byron Katie work, how you do the clearings, crazy, amazing. You know, for the listeners, I used to… People would come in and I go, “Okay, they get acupuncture, laser.” They would get this energy, psychology, modality, this and that. And I was watching Gila, how she just weaved everything in.
And I thought about all the things that I’ve been learning, I love to learn, and it just kind of started happening in practice where I have no clue what tool I’ll pull out in my… I don’t know what I’m going to pull out, right? But it just comes naturally for what they need, and that was watching you and seeing that you don’t have that agenda. You just start off, “Who wants to work?” And people start, and usually you do… You know, everybody has structure, you usually use a Byron Katie, judge your neighbor to get you into it. But then you can see sometimes, you’re just pausing and it’s kind of like just kind of percolating into you, and then you go. And I really feel you’re connecting with the people, and it’s kind of like you say the soul work. They’re doing the work, and you are really, truly just the facilitator.
Gila Golub:
To be fair, I’m the opposite of the mass market. So I only take 18 people in each workshop, and I only do two sets of workshops a year now on Zoom. So I know my clients, I know every facet of their history, I’ve done family systems theory so I’ve done a genogram, a map of their family system. So that I think kind of blows you away sometimes, when I bring in all the elements of their families, yeah. And I believe in that, I believe in small workshops and one-on-one, yeah.
Lorne Brown:
So in closing here, I want to let people know that in our show notes we’ll have links so you can find more information about Gila, and so you can… If you’re interested in her workshops, you can look more into those, and maybe you’re one of the lucky 18 that get to do one of those. Because we’re here to remember who you are, and those workshops are a great way to remember that, talking from personal experience. And going back to this conscious fertility work, and so so much of it, talked at the beginning, like you’re programming this. I use the term subconscious, everybody has their different terminology but your subconscious programs that you inherited, you know? You came into this world with them, you didn’t choose a lot of these programs when you were born, right?
As you inherited them based on whether you were invited into this world or not, based on your race, culture, all these things you kind of inherited. And then that quote, “Your environment creates your mind, and then your mind creates your environment.” So what your environment’s like, and if you’re a sensitive child I heard you say, one of those, you really can take those things personal. And this starts to create more programs which are trying to keep you safe when you’re younger, but don’t serve you as an adult.
Gila Golub:
Exactly.
Lorne Brown:
And as you get older you start to see the world through the lens of your subconscious, and you start to, as you said, reenact. It’s not the word you used, but you-
Gila Golub:
Replicate.
Lorne Brown:
You replicate. So you keep replicating, I’ve heard you say it and Bruce Lipton, he says it. “Look, if you don’t like your reality then you’ve got to go do some work on yourself,” right? Like, if you don’t like what your reality looks like right now go do your inner work, because you’ve got to work on these programs. And it’s process work, so-
Gila Golub:
Can I define what process work means? Because a lot of people don’t understand that.
Lorne Brown:
Please.
Gila Golub:
So, 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. And so, one has to do work that does enter the unconscious. So, there’s many, many ways to do it, there’s no one book, no one teacher, no one guru, no one philosophy, no one discipline, there are many ways. In order to really transform the unconscious though you have to find a route into it, because it’s unconscious.
Lorne Brown:
Right. And this is the Einstein quote that you like, “You can’t solve a problem…”
Gila Golub:
Oh, Einstein. “With the same mind that created it.”
Lorne Brown:
This is what this is about, this is-
Gila Golub:
But it changed your mind.
Lorne Brown:
And so that’s process work, how do you do that? So this is not talk therapy, you’re not going to solve it by talking about it. You’ve got to get into the process of changing those old programs, those subconscious programs.
Gila Golub:
You do.
Lorne Brown:
It is simple, it’s not easy. I say that, Gila, because it’s simple… Pretty much anybody can do it if they’re willing and ready. It’s not easy, because if it was easy everybody would do it, that’s just my observation, right? It takes work, it takes discipline, it takes showing up, it takes being willing to be uncomfortable for a few minutes during the process work.
Gila Golub:
You have to want peace more than you want crazy.
Lorne Brown:
Oh, say that again, I love that.
Gila Golub:
You really have to want peace more than you want crazy. And a lot of people think that they had a really great childhood. They did have the best childhood their parents could possibly provide, but they still got messages that didn’t serve them. I’m just going to come in with a Marion Woodman quote, if I may. “Children who are not loved for their very beingness do not love themselves. As adults, they have to learn to nourish and mother their own lost child.” Marion Woodman was a brilliant Jungian analyst. So, “Children who are not loved for their very beingness do not love themselves.” Those children were not loved for their very beingness, they were loved for their doingness. So if you’re having trouble conceiving, there is a possibility that you don’t know that you deserve to have a baby, that you deserve to conceive and have your own child.
There is a very strong possibility that you don’t know that, that some messages that came in with you or came down to you from conception and on have told you that you were unworthy, inherently unworthy, and you don’t deserve to have it all. Well, we’ve got news for you. You are worthy, your soul, you’re innocent, and you do deserve to have it all. Perfect health, effortless abundance, juicy, loving relationships, and a baby of your own.
Lorne Brown:
I think that’s a great way where it should end. Gila, you’re wonderful, as usual. Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women on their path to peak fertility, and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram @drlornebrown, that’s D-R Lorne Brown. Or visit my website, Lornebrown.com. Until the next episode, stay curious, and for a few moments bring your awareness to your heart center, and breathe.
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