- Hello! Hello, peoples of earth
and whatever other planets may happen to be listening in. That was a joke. I don't actually believe there are other planets listening in. It's so great to welcome you all to another amazingly
special "Gathering Room." This one is one for the
record books, you guys. We've all been meeting
here, just you and me, for, I don't know, years and years. We've been doing this for years and years. Okay, I see people coming in. How you doing, folks? Now they're starting to show up. Ah! Susan and Akumi and
Anne and Judith and Steven. Woohoo! It's so wonderful to see you all. And I'm going to let the
room populate for a while because I don't want
anyone to miss a second of our very, very special guest today. Hi, Devon and Susanna and Lynn and Melanie and Ellen and Marie Jose
and Jocelyn, all of you. So wonderful. Yes, Marie Jose you have
made made it here on time, as you say. Okay, we're climbing up to that 100 mark. That's when I always start, so. 92. Hi, Tracy and Linda and Jessica. 96. Ah, and Linda and Ann Korinne. Always good to see you
from Lillehammer. 97! And we're there, 109. Hi, guys. Hi, everyone. It's so wonderful to welcome you to "The Gathering Room" today. We have with you someone who's
been a big part of my life since a moment in South Africa where a doctor handed me a
book and said, "Read this." And I read it and could talk
about nothing else for weeks. The author of that book, Anita Moorjani, wrote about her experience of
literally dying from cancer. She was in her final coma,
had a near-death experience, came back, and within just a few weeks was completely cancer-free and has gone on to live this amazing life
of comfort and inspiration to so many of us. Her new book, I don't have a copy of it, I've listened to it like
eight times on Audible. But this is what it looks like and you should go buy it right now. It's called, "Sensitive Is The New Strong: "The Power Of Empaths In An
Increasingly Harsh World." And it has gotten me through the night several times since I purchased it. And I think it'll help a lot of us here because there are a lot
of empaths on this line. So if we can welcome Anita in, please. - Hello.
- Hello! - Hi, Martha. Thank you so much for inviting me on and thank you for that
beautiful introduction. I was very touched to hear it. - It's so wonderful to see you again. The two of us met in physically in Sedona, and I wrote about you in my last book, "The Way Of Integrity," I forget. But I wrote about how we were
in that room interviewing, I was interviewing you, and the
Havalina's came to the door. Do you remember that? - Yes, that was funny. That was great. - I know. So it really happened, you guys. And the magic of Anita Moorjani
was a big part of that. So I really want to talk about your book. Your near-death experience is incredible, and I hope everyone's
already heard about it, but you have addressed this new book specifically to a group of
people you call empaths. So the first thing I'd love to hear is how you specifically define that word. What is an empath? Because I think a lot
of us are on the line. - Yes. So I started to realize over the years that I started to learn about it myself, like in, just in the last few
years, four or five years. And I started to realize that the people who resonated most with my work, my books, my speeches, my events, most of the people that
attended and followed me were in fact empaths and that's why I started
to study more about that and that's why I wrote the
book specifically for empaths. So here's the way I look at it. I see sensitivity as a spectrum where people have levels of sensitivity. So you have one end of the spectrum where you have people
that have no sensitivity. And thankfully, I think
very, very, very few people fall at that end of the spectrum. And then most people are
somewhere around the middle. You know what we call average sensitivity. And like everything, you know, there's always this bell curve where most people around the middle, but then at the other end of
the spectrum you have people that are extremely
sensitive, highly sensitive. And at the top end, we have what we would call empaths. Now, a couple of people
that helped me understand more about empaths were the
works of Dr. Judith Orloff and Dr. Elaine Aron. They kind of put the
word empath on the map. And I have been wondering
why as I was out there sharing my story with
my near-death experience and sharing it with the world and believing that surely
people want to hear this, surely they would want to
hear how the cancer healed so that they can use it in their own lives and other sick people can heal. But I found that a lot
of people in the world were not ready to hear that. But it was also wearing me down. I started to get burned out. I started to notice that I was taking on other people's energies. And I didn't understand why
I couldn't differentiate my own energy and my own
feeling with other people. And I started to become
aligned with people who were debunkers and naysayers, and I would feel in my own
body, I would feel drained. And so when somebody said to
me, "Maybe you're an empath," that's when I started to look it up and I realized, "Oh,
wow, I relate to this." So an empath is someone at
that extreme end of the scale, you know, which is the
opposite of no sensitivity. So you go beyond having high sensitivity. So highly sensitive people
are people who are aware of what everyone around them is feeling. So someone who has no sensitivity is not aware of how people
around them are feeling, they're only aware of how they feel. So we tend to call them narcissists. It's all about me, me, me. I don't care about what's in it for you, I only care about what's in it for me. Then you have all the most
people fall into the regular, you know, the mid, and then the people that
are highly sensitive are the people like
they neglect themselves and it's all about you, it's all about serving
you and serving everyone to the point that they become tired. Empaths are one step further where when they are around
people who are suffering, who are struggling, who are traumatized, they actually feel it in their own body and they cannot separate
their own feelings from the pain and the hurt
of the people around them. So if you look at all the, everything that's been
happening in the world, like over the last year and a half, all the fear, and all the
breaking news and all, empaths literally feel that in their body. They feel the fear that's
happening around the world. They feel the trauma of everyone else. So that's how I would define it. - Yeah, and there's a great quiz. I love a quiz. I hate writing them
but I love taking them. In the book that we'll, you know, show you where you land on that scale
of sensitive to empath. I think probably everyone
here is highly sensitive. So, you know, the fact
that naysayers came at you for that beautiful book you
wrote, which is so validated by all your doctor's
reports and everything. As you're saying that, I
think, "Oh my God. How?" If something is directed
right at you, I mean, it's hard enough for an
empath to avoid the feelings of someone who's just on
the bus with you, right? If someone is bringing
that type of negativity and it's focused on you
and it's targeted at you, I've had that happen to me and it's like being physically beaten. And I really want to hear
how you coped with that and what are some methods that we can use to keep ourselves from being battered by this type of energy. - So there are many ways to, many tools that we can use. And so, first of all, we have to realize that as empath, and even if you're just a
highly sensitive person, even if you're not a full-blown empath. And again, the difference is an empath feels the energy of other people, a highly sensitive person
is still sensitive, is still impacted by things
that are said to them. So what I wanted to
say is that things like what other people are saying,
criticisms, feel very loud. So you could have 99 positive
comments on your social media and one negative one. And if you're highly sensitive, that negative one will be louder than the 99 positive ones combined. So the first thing is to be aware that you have a tendency to do that. We have a tendency to blow
things that are painful, that are hurtful. We have a tendency to
blow that up or out of, you know, out of proportion
because those things feel louder in our energy field. So we have to be aware that
we have a tendency to do that. And one of the things that I learned, one of the tools I learned, is so at first the reason
I used to get burned out is because the negative
comments were louder. So there would always be, you always have that one person, even if it's one out
of 300 or 500 who says, "Oh, what you're saying is woo-woo." Or there'll be someone who says, you know, because I'm teaching people
that you have to love and value yourself. That's what I discovered
when I was on the other side. And I realized that I didn't
realize that I mattered and that I had a purpose
and that's why I got cancer. And so you'd always have
this one person that'll say, "Oh, so are you saying that
my so-and-so who has cancer "doesn't love themselves "and all they have to
do is love themselves? "That's ridiculous," or
something like that. You know? You'd always have one person saying that. "And are you saying that my
so-and-so who died from cancer "did that just because they
didn't love themselves?" And so I would always have
to be really clear and say, "I'm just sharing my experience "and if it works for you, take it on. "If it doesn't, I'm not trying
to convince you of anything." So I would kind of cater
my language as well. So it teaches you to cater your language because one of the things that sensitive and empaths tend to do is
we tend to speak in a way that avoids criticism, because we are so sensitive to criticism. But here's what I realized is that as I tailored my story and my language to cater to the critics, I started to attract more critics. - Oh, wow. - Yeah, so I just wanted
to throw that in there which was so interesting for me, because I realized that
I was going out of my way to win the critics over. - Wow.
- And sensitive people and empaths have this tendency to do that. So I would cater my story
around talking about the proof, talking about the medical records, talking about that, thinking that this will
ward off the critics. And instead it's like,
oh, I, you attract people who are non-believers where
their friends are saying, "Hey, you need to listen
to this. She's got proof." And they are the kind of people that will poke holes at anything. So because you're trying
to win over the critics, you're just going to attract
more and more of them. And I was like, "What's going on? "Why are people still criticizing me? "I'm giving them everything,
you know, that they want." And that's when one day I
just had this epitome, like, "Oh, of course, I'm
playing to the critics. "I'm pandering to the critics. "I'm focusing on the critics. "That's why I'm attracting more of them." And, yeah.
- Interesting. Yeah, I mean, your subtitle is, "The Power of Empaths In An
Increasingly Harsh World." And what you're saying
right now makes me think, "Wow, your sensitivity "and your extraordinary level of spirit." You know, you were
terrified of getting cancer and you got cancer. Then you're terrified of
critics and you bring criticism. I mean, I don't want to say to anyone what you fear will come to you, because I don't think it's
that's not your message either. And I don't think that's true. But you have so much power. Like, because you're
kind and soft and gentle, you don't use it as power
to manipulate people. But as you've loved yourself, have you found that you
are beginning to feel the power of that gift
that you've been given? - Yes. So what I want people to know is that you do have a
tremendous amount of power. You actually have the power
to attract the critics as well as the power to attract the people who resonate with your message. Once I realized what was
going on, I was like, "Oh wow, I get it." So what I had to do is I
actually had to now focus on the people who
resonated with my message. And this is the hard part. But if you can do this, this is where the shift really happens and this is the magical point. And it really is about reading the comments of the people who say, "Oh my God, Anita,
I love your message." In your case, "Oh my God,
Martha, I love your message. "Can you please tell me more?" And catering and pandering to those people that want to go deeper, even if you know the critics are not going to like what you say. Even if you know the
critics are going to say, "Oh, this is woo-woo. "Oh, you were probably misdiagnosed." Or, "I don't think you
went to the other side, "that was probably the drugs talking." Even if in your head you
are hearing those messages, ignore them and listen to
the messages of the people who are saying, "Oh my gosh, Anita, "what you're saying is helping me so much. "Can you tell me more? "I'm dealing with cancer right now. "Can you please tell me more?" Listen to those messages,
the people who want more. And as you start to do that more and more, that audience gets bigger
and bigger and bigger. And then what happens is the
critics and the naysayers, they start to fall away but there will be a few
of them who will be like, "Oh my gosh, I think she's onto something. "I think I'm going to try it." That's the trick.
- Wow. - Focus on the people who
love you and love your message and speak to them and speak your truth without filtering it for the
critics and the naysayers. That's what you have to do. - That is brilliant. And it's, as you're saying it, this is something that
happens to me a lot. I do this every week,
every Sunday, when I can. And I can feel the level
of energy in the audience rising or falling. And as you're talking, I feel so much energy
just pouring into me, pouring into the group. I hope you all can feel it out there because to me it's tangible. And it takes me to the next question I had which is this is through all your books. During your near-death experience, you learned that the absolute
central point of your life should be self-love. And every week somebody
comes here, you know, one person or another will say, "I'm just having a difficult time. "Like, I want to love myself, but I don't. "I don't know how." So if somebody never
had a grounding in say, being lovingly parented, if they had a terrible childhood or got stuck in a war or something, how are you? I mean, I remember when I met you, you were so good at
like walking me through the how of how to love oneself. How to be happy in a given moment was what you were teaching me. But this self-love piece, I really wanted to hear
how you break that down for people who have
trouble loving themselves. - So there are a lot of things that people who have trouble
loving themselves can do. One of the things that I've noticed is people who don't love themselves, they are terrible at
receiving, receiving anything. Receiving compliments,
receiving gifts, receiving love, receiving abundance from the
universe, receiving messages. They don't receive. They're really, really good at giving. They give and give and give of themselves, but they're terrible at receiving. So the number one thing is to be aware. So actually, even before that, the number one thing is to be aware that you do not love yourself. And so it's an awareness that, "Oh wow, I don't love myself "and I need to love myself more." Because there are people who still feel loving yourself is selfish. So be aware that it's not selfish. It is absolutely not selfish. Particularly if you are
someone who is sensitive or an empath, please know
that the world needs you. The world needs you more now than ever. And when you don't love yourself, it means you don't take care of yourself. It means you don't allow
the Spirit of God or Source to come through you when
you don't love yourself. It means you suppress yourself. The world needs you right now. Because what does it mean
to be a sensitive or empath? It means you are someone who
serves other people naturally. You are someone who is
a healer, a teacher, a natural rescuer, a natural helper. That's what it means to
be someone who's sensitive or an empath. You love helping people. You feel good when you're
doing good for the world. So if you don't love yourself and you don't take care of yourself, you're going to allow
things to happen to you. You're going to become depleted. I know that because that's what I did, that's what happened to me. Please know you're no good for the world when you don't love yourself and you allow yourself to be depleted. So be aware that you are sensitive, you are a natural caregiver, helper, healer, teacher, rescuer. The world needs someone like you so you need to value yourself, you need to take care of yourself. And so be aware you have this tendency that you're very good
at giving and you don't, you're not good at receiving. So start by allowing yourself to receive. Allow yourself to receive
by even giving yourself time or a gift every single day. It could be in the form of anything like giving yourself time
to soak in a relaxing tub or going for a walk or
sitting and meditating or going out in nature. Something that you always feel
you don't have time to do. I want to tell you a little
bit so people get an idea of what it's like when
you don't love yourself. When I was before the
near-death experience, I was someone who was
such a people pleaser and such a doormat that
no matter how tired I was or how many problems I
had, or how depleted I was, If somebody came to me with
a problem, I would be there. I would be helping them. I would put my life
aside for other people. And even when I was sick and people were helping
me because I was sick, I would feel, "Oh my gosh, "I don't want them to go out of their way. "I don't want to inconvenience them." I was more concerned about other people, even when I was sick, even when I was really
sick to the point of dying. And so, you know, you can say that the cancer I had was a wake-up call. It wasn't. Death was the wake-up call. - Oh wow. Yeah.
(Martha laughing) - So I don't want people to
figure this out after they die because most people will
choose not to come back because it's so beautiful
on the other side. I would rather you figure this
out while you're still alive and that's why I share what I share. And if I had known this earlier, not only would I have not got sick, I would have realized much sooner. I would not have gone
all the way to death. When I was on the other side, I asked this question,
you know, of Source, of Energy, of the universe. I said, "Why did I have to
have such a big message, "such a big lesson of dying, "just to figure out I had to love myself?" And the answer that came was, "You were getting a lot of
wake-up calls along the way "but you weren't listening. "Like you still felt
other people's problems "were bigger than yours "and you had to worry about
inconveniencing other people. "Even when you were too sick
to take care of yourself, "you still worried about other people. "So it was you. "You allowed it to get to this
point before you realized, "'Oh, my life matters. I matter. "'I need to take, I need
to put myself first.' "It was you that chose
to take it this far." - Wow. That is intense. And you're very humble
always, but also, you know, the immense magnitude of your experience and the effect that you had on the world, and it was kind of magical. Like Dr. Wayne Dyer came and found you and invited you to write a book after he heard about your experience. Am I getting that right? - Yes, you are. You're
absolutely getting that. - So it's not like you went out and tried to publicize it. - No.
- He came to you. - In fact, it was the opposite. Because I was so sensitive
to the naysayers, I... So I was kind of pulled in two directions. One was when I was on the other side, I learned that I had to come back, that I needed to come back because I had a purpose to complete and my purpose wasn't fulfilled yet. I didn't know on the other
side what my purpose was. And it was only after I
came back that, you know, I had to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life
and I had to figure out how to integrate this
experience into my life. And so I just started writing and writing and writing about it. And a couple of people. So I was living in Hong Kong at the time and a couple of people
like newspaper journalists had heard about what happened to me and they interviewed me
in the local newspaper. And so I thought, "Oh, I
want to share this story. "I want to shout it
out from the rooftops," because I thought it would help people. I thought, "Who wouldn't want to know?" I actually thought that maybe I have found something that would help cure cancer, you know? Because if people knew that
when they diminish their light and their inner light, it makes
them so small and suppressed that it allows disease
to come into their body. And so I understood, like I was 1010% sure I understood why I got the illness. - Right.
- So I thought people would be interested to know. I didn't realize that it would
attract as many naysayers as I mentioned to you. And so it made me stop sharing. I completely thought, "I don't
want to share this anymore." And yet I was torn. There was a part of me that felt my purpose was to share the story. So what I did was I shared
it on an internet site that was about near-death experiences. I didn't put my full name on it. It was just called,
"Anita M's NDE," which is, stands for near-death experience. - Right.
- And then I felt, "Okay, I've set it free. "It's on the internet, "anybody who wants to
know about it will know." And literally, I put all the
details of the self-love, of the person I was before,
of how fast I healed. If you printed it out, it would be like 20 pages
of just single-line spacing, letter-sized paper.
- Wow. - That's how long it was. And they put it on the
homepage of their site and the owner of the site said, "Wow, this is remarkable. "We're putting it on our homepage." And I thought, "I've done it.
I've fulfilled my purpose. "I've set my story free, now
I don't have to talk about it. "I don't have to do anything. "Anyone who's meant to read
it will hear it or read it." Well, what happened is that somebody sent a link to it to Wayne Dyer. And when he read it, he
said, he contacted Hay House and said, "Please track this woman down. "She's somewhere in Hong Kong. "I need you to track this woman down "and I need you to invite
her to write a book, "which I will help her promote." So that's kind of what happened. - Wow. Wow. Talk about your mission
going out into the world. And now it's millions and millions. As I said, I was in South
Africa, like out in the bush, in the middle of nowhere, and this doctor hands me your book. It's gone everywhere. And I wanted to ask as we get toward the end of
our little broadcast here, you know, you do talk about how the world is getting increasingly harsh. And even by the standards of
the news when I was growing up, things are so much worse. Like, even if you try not to
pay attention to the negatives, there's a lot going on, right? And it is getting increasingly harsh. Do you feel? I feel that your mission
was fit to this time. And I wanted to ask you, you're reaching out to
other empaths with this book and trying to strengthen and heal them. Do you feel that there is a rise in the mission, the positive missions of
people similar to yourself, that is it matches the
darkness of the time? Does that feel like a
historical moment to you? - Yes, it does. I feel that empaths have a purpose during this time. I do feel there are more and
more coming to the surface. I feel that even the term is gaining popularity for a reason, because it matches with
this current time we're in. We are going through a
very interesting time where even before COVID I feel that where we were was
absolutely not sustainable. - Yeah.
- When you think about like, think about the biggest
countries in the world, the biggest global leaders, the biggest powerhouses of this world. Even before COVID, what
were all the leaders doing of the biggest nations? Whether it was China, America, Russia, South, North Korea,
what were they all doing? They were the biggest nations of the world and they were spending all their time, money, and resources
instead of healing the world and feeding people,
they were just comparing the size of their nuclear weapons. - Right. - Just think of where the
focus of the world was. - Yeah. - And so we really should
be using our resources to heal the world and to feed people. And I really do believe that
if there were more empaths and sensitive people in
positions of leadership, we would have a very different world. But most empaths and sensitive people are even afraid to be out there, to be seen and to be heard. And I actually believe that
even something like COVID, it kind of brought the world to its knees and it was like a reset button. And we have the opportunity of going in a different direction. But in order to go in
a different direction and not be at the brink
of our own extinction, empaths need to stand up. And they don't have to go and
become president or anything. I honestly, I mean, even,
I wouldn't want that role. It's such a, yeah, because it's such a divisive
world we live in right now. But at the very least,
empaths need to realize that they matter. You matter. The world needs you now. Don't hide. Don't, you know, don't. Like you need to learn to love
yourself, at the very least. You need to expand your energy. You need to know there's a
reason why you are intuitive, why you have this connection
with the other side. You need to know how powerful you are. You are a six sensory being. The people who are living in fear and the loudest, most
aggressive voices among us believe that this is a
finite, five sensory. Sorry, yeah. Five sensory,
three-dimensional world. We are much more than that. And I want empaths to
come into their power and realize that we can
actually change the world, even if we do it from the
quiet of our own home. We can actually shift the energy. That's what I talk about in my books, at my events, my videos, and so on. We can change the energy. - Yeah, and people can feel right here that you have changed the
energy of this circle. And, you know, I call
it "The Gathering Room" because I want people
like you to, you know, and people who are, have humbler lives, to get together and hear each other. And that's what you've done today. You've brought us into a higher frequency and gathered more people. And I really believe that you are one of those extraordinary lights on earth that is brightening up this dark time so that we can all come to
where you are and learn. Remember, don't focus on the critics, focus on the people who are
receiving you with love. Go for that with all your might. Don't dim your light. Give to yourself and receive it gladly so you can develop that self-love that will help us change
and heal the whole world. So, Anita, thank you a
million, trillion times for your life, for your writing, and for your mission on this planet. I am so grateful that you are here. (loud kissing) - Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you do as well. Love you. - See ya around! Bye.
- You will. - Lots of love. - Lots of love. Bye.
