Not only has Tammy interviewed spiritual celebrities including Shirley MacLaine, Melissa Etheridge, Russel Simmons, Olivia-Newton-John and Jane Fonda, she has also interviewed popular spiritual self-help authors and leaders including Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Judith Orloff and Louise Hay. Add to all this Tammy’s enlightening teachings about how to communicate with the Universe (and loved ones who have passed) plus how to uncover signs and synchronicity from the Universe, and you have the makings of an enlightening and fascinating interview!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How the death of her mother started Tammy on her inspiring spiritual path
- How Tammy’s original skepticism was transformed into her life’s work
- How Tammy was led to get Deepak Chopra for her very first cover story
- How stuck/unprocessed emotions are behind all illnesses
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS KAREN:
- What is synchronicity?
- Who was the medium who started your journey to enlightenment?
- How are you healing yourself from allergy and food sensitivities?
SHOW LINKS:
http://www.elevatedexistence.com
CONTACT INFORMATION:
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Listen to the podcast here
Tammy Mastroberte – Founder, Publisher, And Editorial Director Of Elevated Existence Magazine
It’s World Kindness Day. Isn’t that ironic that we have Tammy on for us to do this?
You couldn’t ask for a kinder and cooler person to have on. I’m going to tell everyone about Tammy. She is the Founder of Elevated Existence, which is an online magazine, and the Publisher and Director of Elevated Existence Magazine, which is a multi-award-winning new-age spiritual and self-improvement publication. As a third-time award-winning writer, she has many years of magazine publishing experience.
Tammy, everyone is going to want to subscribe to Elevated Existence after this interview. I know you help many people through your magazine. It’s an outgrowth from your own. It’s a part of healing your own grief and rebirthing yourself. I know you’re also working on healing other parts of yourself. Why don’t we get going with you and have you tell our readers exactly what you do and what inspired you to pursue this calling?
First of all, thank you so much for thinking of me and having me here. For me, it started back when I was 22 years old. My mother passed suddenly from a brain aneurysm three days after Christmas in 1999. I had grown up Catholic. I had faith as part of my life, but I had fallen off from that at the time. When my mother passed, it rocked everything for me as it does for anyone who loses a loved one, especially when it’s a sudden out-of-the-blue loss.
There was no closure or goodbye. Nobody had any contact with her when it happened. My sister convinced me to go to a medium. It was somebody who, synchronistically, my mother knew about six months before she passed. She was introduced to this guy. This was back in 1999. Nowadays, mediums are on the television. It’s such a common thing and everybody knows about it. Back then, we thought that this guy that we knew about was the only person in the world who had this ability. He started popping up everywhere after my mother died. He is still out there, George Anderson.
I know that name very well.
He started popping up everywhere lifetime. I did a special on him. Dateline is one of the main primetime shows, did a special on him. He was on radio shows. He was in our area in New Jersey doing readings. It was nuts. It seems like, all of a sudden, we were bombarded with him. My sister kept saying to me, “Mommy knew about him. She’s trying to get us to go. There was no closure. We need to hear from her.”
She convinced me to do it. We finally decided to do it. He was doing readings out of New York. It was in Long Island at the time. Ten months after she passed, we drove out there for the reading. Me being a skeptical Virgo that I am filled out the form that we had to fill out. Everything was done through the mail because this was prior to PayPal, online payments, and all that. I lied about everything. We gave somebody else’s name, another friend’s home address, and phone number because we thought in case he’s not for real and he does research or something like that. We’re not going to give him info.
We went out and we did it. It was an hour reading. We recorded it at the time. I honestly can say that I was beyond floored within the first three minutes of the reading. He blew my mind. I left there knowing without a shadow of a doubt that my mother was in that room and that my mother was communicating because of the information that he gave that no matter what the internet is, you still could not locate this information that he offered to us. I just knew.
That launched me into this spiritual but not religious realm that people talk about. I started researching everything about him and everything about life after death. One thing led to another. About eight years after my mother passed away, I’d been in the magazine industry, and I wanted to put my efforts and focus into writing and helping people with the information that was helping me.
After looking around and trying to find a company to work for where there weren’t that many spiritual magazines out there back then, a friend of mine who I worked with at the time convinced me to start one on my own. After telling her she was crazy, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. It was about three months later that I started the company. Three months after that, we debuted with Deepak Chopra on our first cover.
How did you get that? That was a fabulous get for you.
That was huge. That was my first discovery of synchronicity. I teach so much now about signs and synchronicity. What I teach about is how to communicate with the universe on all different levels, but signs and synchronously play into that. The biggest synchronicity or when I finally started realizing the universe, spirit, God, or whatever you want to call it is behind everything going on in our life. We don’t realize it, but when we start connecting the dots, we realize everything is leading us somewhere.
The Universe is behind everything going on in our life. We don't realize it but when we start connecting the dots, we realize everything is leading us somewhere. Click To Tweet
I made this connection because the reason we got Deepak Chopra on the cover for the first issue went back a year before I even started the magazine. I wound up getting a random coupon in my email for $400 off of a Chopra Center event that was happening in New York. I decided to go to that event. I wound up meeting people and spa directors there. Chopra Center is based in California, but at the time, they had a center in New York.
I went to a Perfect Health Conference there. I learned how to meditate. I decided I wanted to work for myself in some way again. This was one year before I started anything. All of a sudden, I decided to start this magazine, and then suddenly, I realized Deepak Chopra was coming to New York in April. I started the company in March. I realized he was coming to New York in April. I went to that event. I told them I was starting this magazine, I wanted to cover the event on the cover story, and I wanted to cover him and put him on the cover. They probably thought I was completely insane. They gave me some information that I could email to get a photo I said, “I want a photo of him for the cover.”
The reason I was finally able to get him not only was that event synchronistically happening when I decided to start this magazine so that I didn’t even have to travel anywhere because it was right in New York, I couldn’t get the photo. I literally got into the subway on my lunch hour because I was working in New York at the time. I went down to that Chopra Center.
I had my brand new letterhead with my logo and everything in my hand. I went in and I said to the woman behind the desk, “Can I speak with the spa director?” She said she was in a meeting. I scribbled a note on there explaining who I was if she remembered me, this is what I’m doing, and my cell phone number. By the time I had gone upstairs into the Starbucks to get myself a latte, she called me and said, “I remember you. There’s no reason why we should not be able to get you a photo. Let me see what I can do.”
By the time I got back in the subway and back to my office, I had several photo options in my email. It was that connection that I had made a year before when I had gone to this event and decided, “I learned meditation,” and realized, “I want to work for myself. I want to cover these topics.” At first, I thought I was going to be a freelancer. I had no idea that I was going to start a company, but that connection and then the fact that the universe knew that I was starting this magazine and Deepak Chopra was going to be in New York, all those things lined up.
To be honest with you, I even knew about the fact that there was a Chopra Center in New York because I found Wayne Dyer. He talked about it on one of his podcasts. That even led me to realize there was something in New York. I realized all of that was set into motion way before I even knew what I was doing or that I even had an inkling of what I was going to be doing. The universe set all of that up for me.
There are a lot of synchronicities with my own story, which we’ll talk about another time, but it’s fantastic. Could you talk to some of our readers who do not know what synchronicity is and how it affects their lives? I think they would be very happy with this information.
We hear the term all the time like, “That was synchronous sake.” You hear that term or the word coincidence a lot, but the term itself, synchronicity, means two or more events that somehow are meaningfully connected or people will refer to as a meaningful coincidence. One thing is similar to the other. It could be the same exact thing repeating or it could be one event leading to the next event where you realize all of these dots were set up and you can connect them. The term was created years ago in the 1920s by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.
He coined the term. The cool thing about him is he was working as a psychologist. He had patience and clients. He started realizing that when they started uncovering and noticing the synchronicity, these meaningful coincidences in life, they started making progress in therapy where they had not made progress before. He became obsessed with it and started studying it and trying to understand it himself. He has written a lot on it.
One of my favorite quotes by him is when he says, “In all chaos, there is cosmos in all disorder a secret order.” To me, that sums up synchronicity completely because what we see with our eyes as these chaotic, random events that are disorderly and nothing seems to connect, there’s cosmos or spirit behind that. There’s this secret order that we often can’t realize until we start looking back and connecting those dots for ourselves.
That’s inspiring and that could help a lot of people when they think that certain things are going on and they ignore it. Instead, they could sit back and say, “Is there a meaning to this? Am I being told something? Is there something I should follow here? Should I wait to see what else comes along?”
What I noticed the biggest thing about it, to me, is once you start tapping into the way that the universe is communicating with you, the signs that are being sent to you from your guides, your loved ones on the other side you, and once you start realizing that everything is leading you somewhere when things happen to you in your life, which by the way, life is uncertain. Every day, we aren’t exactly sure what’s going to come next. We have no idea what lies in front of us.
We know that things will go wrong eventually. That’s the way that human life is designed. What I noticed about people when they start learning this is that when something goes wrong or something goes a way that they didn’t expect or they get disappointed by something, they still feel the emotions. You still might be disappointed. You still might be upset, but what I notice about myself and others who follow this is you start realizing, “Distinct, and I’m totally upset about it, but I know that it’s leading me somewhere.” You have more faith in what’s happening to you now and what’s ahead of you because you know that there is a plan. Once you start finding it in your own life, it almost gives you that certainty within the uncertainty of life that, “No matter what’s happening, it’s leading me somewhere and I’m going to be okay.”
Synchronicity: Once you start finding the plan in your own life, it almost gives you that certainty within the uncertainty that no matter what’s happening, it’s leading you somewhere and you’re going to be okay.
I can totally relate to that. I often think about when things happen, I pay attention to synchronicity. I also think about, “Is there a lesson I’m supposed to be learning?”
I have a question because, for us, less spiritual gurus out here. It makes total sense to me where you’re seeing these items are happening and they all align to be making like a purpose. One of the things that I’ve always thought of, this is cool, but it was serendipitous where random things happen. Is that what you would say when one thing happens, that’s serendipitous, but synchronicity is when that happens more than once. It aligns and you have you’re a-ha moment where you are like, “These things are leading me somewhere that’s beneficial for me.”
What I teach about is signs and synchronicity. When you’re talking about that serendipitous moment or when something aligns for you, it can fall into either of those categories. What I say is sometimes, the universe will send you the right person at the right time. I give the example of green juice where everybody is like on this kick of green juice. We need to be drinking more green juice. Now people are talking about plain celery juice in the morning and all this stuff.
Synchronicity: Sometimes, the universe will send you the right person at the right time.
You may have heard about it, but you don’t do anything about it. You go into a bookstore. There’s a clearance rack. There are one million different books on all these different topics on the clearance rack. You look, and all of a sudden, you’re like, “Look, 101 green juice for recipes. How weird? I was thinking about that. Maybe I should get this book.” You buy the book, you go home, and the book that’s on your counter and you don’t do anything with it.
Maybe a week later, you’re flipping through the channels and all of a sudden, you see the documentary Fat Sick & Nearly Dead with Joe Cross, which is all about how he used to completely rehabilitate his life and health. You’re like, “I bought that green juice book. I should be doing that.” You still don’t start. You don’t get the juice or you don’t do anything. 4 or 5 days later, a friend calls you and is like, “I bought this great juicer. I started doing these green juices in the morning.”
Finally, you’re like, “I get it. I’m getting the juicer.” That’s how the universe talks to us. It puts these things into our path. Sometimes, it’s the right person at the right time, the book that has the exact answer that we need, or whatever you’re looking for. It’s like, “This is perfect. I was thinking about this and it showed up.”
That’s a one-off moment, but there are also times where you will realize like, “Now that I’m looking back, thank God, I got fired from that job because if I didn’t get fired from that job, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I’m so much happier now. Thank God I got fired from that job or I lost that job interview and didn’t get that job because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have stayed with this company or been with this company now. Now I met the person that I’m going to marry.” That’s the other side of the synchronicity.
When you talk about those moments where you’re like, “This aligned perfectly,” that’s what I’m talking about in terms of signs or synchronicity is that there are no accidents. We think things are “coincidence,” accidents, how weird or how strange that this showed up, but I don’t believe that they are accidents.
I believe that there are events and occurrences in our lives that we haven’t either connected or found meaning for yet, but that everything is leading us somewhere. Even if that means it leads us to a place where maybe we wouldn’t want to go. Maybe we make a decision, and we end up in a place that’s causing us pain. That doesn’t mean that the universe is not going to work to reroute you and send those people, opportunities, books, emails, or whatever might pop up to direct you back to where you need to go.
As a newbie out there, I’m sure we’ve all had these a-ha moments, but we don’t ever notice how they might start to connect. If we do have one of those, we should start to pay attention to other things that might be aligning with it, or do you take notes or recommend that maybe so you can look back or keep track of these?
I signed a contract. I’m writing my first book on the topic of signs and synchronicity. It’s a how-to book. It won’t be out until 2020 because publishing takes forever. I came up with a five-step process called sync, which we’ll help people uncover it. What I say in terms of if you want to start uncovering and finding it in your own life, you can pick one event and start questioning it like, “This is how I met my husband. How did I meet my husband, wife, or my significant other? So and so introduce me to them. How did I meet? That’s right. I decided to go to this college, and that’s where I met her.”
You start tracing things back and you can start realizing how different things begin to begin to connect. That’s one way to do it. In terms of once you start noticing these things, you definitely want to start keeping track of them because we quickly fluff them off like, “That’s cool. I was thinking about this.” We don’t bring it into our awareness and realize that it was something that is meant to help, maybe there was something behind or maybe the universe, spirit, or whomever is trying to get through to us trying to communicate because communication and dialogue is a two-way street.
Not only are we constantly sending messages out through our thoughts, actions, and feelings. We’re constantly sending things out saying, “This is what I want. This is what I want to create. This is what I don’t want.” The cool thing is we are getting answers back. The goal is to open your awareness to start realizing it because the more that you start recognizing it and you say yes to it because the second step and that whole thing process is saying yes and not saying, “I don’t know if that was the Universe. I don’t know if that was a sign from a loved one who passed. I’m not sure about this. I’m not going to take it,” you’re blocking it.
If you can say yes and, “I’m going to accept this, be grateful for it and look for more direction.” You start opening yourself up to it. I always say, “Life goes from random chaos,” to a series of miracles because now you start realizing everything in your life is a miracle. It’s showing you that we’re not alone and that we constantly have this guidance available to use.
Life goes from random chaos to a series of miracles. Click To Tweet
You are talking about synchronicity. This is right up the enemy of grief and rebirth because when we talk to healers about how our health issues or whatever often come from blocked and unprocessed emotions, a lot of healers work with people about that. We’ve had quite a few people on the show who help people to release those emotions. You’re going through something like that.
I myself am in the process of healing. It’s called a mast cell disorder. It means that my body overreacts and does allergic reactions to things that I should not be having allergic reactions to, but I discovered a very good friend of mine’s book and then wound up interviewing her. Now I’m delving into that whole going in and finding those emotions, limiting beliefs, and the unprocessed experiences that are stuck within my body that are causing a lot of these symptoms.
Her name is Amy B. Scher. She wrote a book called How To Heal Yourself When No One Else Can. She has a new boo called How To Heal Yourself From Anxiety. My mother passed away many years ago. I’m still clearing stuff from that death. I’m still clearing my emotions. Our emotions get stuck in the organs, tissues, and chakras of our body. We don’t realize it until things start going wrong, and then we’re like, “Why am I sick? Why do I keep getting headaches? Why do I have these issues?”
That’s the way our body communicates. I’m talking about the universe communicating, but our body communicates with us to let us know something’s wrong when we’re having pain, when all of a sudden, you have arthritis in your name, or whatever it might be. That’s something that I’m in the process of learning and discovering how to clear all of that out.
When you say how to clear, for people who don’t understand that, how does that look like for you? There are many different modalities and ways to clear these issues from your body.
There are so many. To give you a quick rundown of it, what I do in a class that I teach people is how to use a pendulum to delve into the subconscious mind and get answers. Some people will use muscle testing or Kinesiology. I use the pendulum as my muscle testing because I find it works extremely well. That’s the first and foremost. You don’t want to be randomly clearing things. You want to know exactly, “What is the right thing that I should be clearing? What is the best method for me to clear?”
Some of those clearing methods are EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique. There is something called Chakra Tapping that my friend Amy talks about, which is basically similar to EFT, but you’re using the chakras. There’s a technique called the Sedona method. There’s a technique called Hoʻoponopono. There are many different energy-clearing methods. Another one is called thymus tapping, where you tap on your thymus gland to release emotions.
There are many different modalities available to us to move these emotions throughout our body, discover and change the limiting beliefs that we have that could be holding us back, whether that’s health-wise, the flow of money or love into your life, trying to build a business or whatever it might be. Limiting beliefs will stop you every time. There are ways that we can get into that subconscious mind. I use the pendulum, but there’s muscle testing to find those beliefs and then find the best ways to clear them and reprogram the brain.
Synchronicity: There are so many different modalities available to us to move these emotions throughout our body and actually discover and change the limiting beliefs that could be holding us back.
This is such a wonderful interview. People will benefit much from this. We always ask what a person’s tip is for joy in life with all that you’ve experienced, you’ve been through, and all that you’ve released. What would you say to the readers that is Tammy’s tip for how to find joy from all the things that they’ve been through?
My first thing is so many times we focus on what’s going wrong in our life because we’re always in this problem-solving mode of like, “What do I need to pick and change?” The first thing is to find some time throughout your day to focus on what’s going right because there are things, believe it or not, that are going right. You woke up this morning. You went to work. You had your coffee or whatever it is. There are things that are going right. Maybe you didn’t hit traffic on the way to work or whatever it might be.
Focus on what’s going right because that will bring you more joy and that will put you into that gratitude zone where all wonderful things come from. The other thing I want to share is I went to George Anderson’s medium for reading. That reading was back in October 2000, but I transcribed it years ago. One of the things that my mother talked about specifically in that reading while he talked about things to let me know that it was her and all of that stuff and comforting things, but she also gave some advice.
I like to share it with other people because I figure anybody who believes in life after death when you’re on the other side, you have a very more open and loving viewpoint to life in this human experience. Anytime I get advice from someone on the other side, I pay attention to it. What she talked about is something I think we all deal with we are always afraid of what’s coming next, something wonderful or good will happen to us and now we’re scared that something bad is going to happen.
I want to share with you the advice that she shared on this when it comes to accepting the joys rather than not accepting them. This was through George Anderson. She said to us, “People are always afraid of things going wrong. You don’t have to live in fear. You’re always ready to prepare for the bad things that come in life. Why not start to absorb some of the joys that come in life?” In her life review on the other side, the higher souls asked her, “Did you partake of the joys that came in your life as well as the hardships?”
She said, “Frankly, you have no answer for that because we’re conditioned to always have to put up with this or that or that life stinks. They ask you in your life review, ‘Did you partake of the joys that God sends to the world into your life?’” Her advice was, “Remember willingly and joyfully take the joys that come to you because if they come to you, you’re entitled to them. A lot of times, people will turn them away, thinking, ‘This isn’t right. This isn’t the thing to do. I’m not entitled to them.’ That is incorrect. Accept the joys that come to you.” That is my advice and my mother’s advice.
Synchronicity: Remember willingly and joyfully take the joys that come to you because if they come to you, you’re entitled to them.
A lot of people will benefit from that advice. Now, you’re spreading the gift of your mom to even more people. We’re grateful to have you here.
I have one quick question before you jump off about your magazine. Where do we go to get it? Is it online? Can you subscribe to have it delivered? Can you let the readers know a little bit about that?
The magazine itself is totally digital, but it is viewable on any device. It could be your phone, tablet, or desktop. It looks like a regular magazine. You turn the pages like a regular magazine, but the cool thing about it is that it has video embedded into it. For every cover story, we have a video embedded in that cover story that you can watch. You can click play and watch it. It is free to subscribe to. If you go to ElevatedExistence.com/Subscribe, you can get access to it. It comes out four times a year. Every March, June, September, and December.
I’m looking at it and subscribing right now. This is fascinating. I wish we could dive in about pendulums a little bit more. Irene has always been teaching me how to do it. I’m curious about all these new techniques you’re coming up with. I would love to chat with you again when your book comes out. Keep us posted on that because this whole synchronicity thing is very eye-opening. It’s fun to look back at your own lives. I hope we’ll have to talk again.
Guest’s Links:
- Tammy Mastroberte’s Website
- Amy Scher’s books How To Heal Yourself When No One Else Can and How To Heal Yourself From Anxiety referenced in this episode
- Subscribe to Tammy Mastroberte
