Raya Kouyat shares her transformative journey from environmental scientist to actor to somatic practitioner to author, revealing how intuition and presence guide her to authentic fulfillment.
• Going from environmental science to acting in New York to heal repressed emotions
• Experiencing a profound life shift in Costa Rica that led to becoming a somatic practitioner
• Opening a retreat house in California before COVID prompted another identity transformation
• Taking a two-year sabbatical around the world designed to discover “who am I without working”
• Writing poetry and her book “Life’s Poetic Glossary” as a form of self-expression
• Discerning between ego-based fear and soul-guided intuition through bodily awareness
• Recognizing how expansion in the chest and belly indicates alignment with true purpose
• Learning to release identification with roles and access our underlying essence
• Practicing presence as the ultimate purpose: “My purpose is what I’m doing right now”
• Using journaling and meditation to gain clarity and give fears a voice without being controlled by them
You can connect with Raya on Instagram at @RayaKouyat or visit her website where she offers free audio versions of her book as “gentle doorways into self-love.”
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey, lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. In this episode we’re going to be talking to Raya, and Raya was sent to me by someone who’s been sending me people to interview on my podcast, and I was totally intrigued because I immediately clicked on her link and was blown away with what I read on her biography. And then she was so kind enough to send me her latest book called Life’s Poetic Glossary the Humanity of Everyday Words, and I started to read it and I gained so much wisdom just from the way she wrote the book. She would take words and just kind of get her own description of it and used imagery that was so profound that every time I read it I caught something different and that, to me, was amazing, right. So, without further ado, raya, thank you so much for joining us today on Release Doubt Reveal Purpose.
Speaker 3:
Thank you, Sylvia. I’m so delighted to be here. Thank you for the introduction. I can’t wait to dive in to this conversation.
Speaker 2:
Me neither, and this is why we’re going to just dive in, because as I read your biography, I noticed you had several transformations, and that’s unheard of, because a lot of people stay stuck in their first act but never do they have a second, third, fourth, fifth act. I found that so intriguing. You’ve been an actor, you’ve now been an author, you have been in real estate, you’ve done this, and I just sat there and I was like, wow, this woman has done it all. So do tell us your story of transformation. What led you to write such a beautiful book?
Speaker 3:
Oh, thank you. So I have had a very diverse career and all of them have been different iterations of me, and I really love that. I’ve gotten to live many facets of myself because I’m very multi-passionate, which I think a lot of us are, especially those who are passionate about being in service in some way, and so I started as an environmental scientist. I was passionate about saving the environment and I got my degree. I worked in corporate, I worked for government, and I found it soul sucking and I had something in me that was just like like I used to imagine people in meetings breaking out into song and dance and things like this, like I was in the wrong environment, wrong habitat, and I felt this tug inside of me that wanted to be fully expressed. I’ve always had writing in my life.
Speaker 3:
I would say thanks to my mom, who really encouraged journaling when we went on family vacations and when we went out of school. So writing for me has been like my sanctuary always, and it’s part of what gave me the courage to take the leap and move from Calgary Alberta which is where I’m from in Canada to move to New York and pursue this calling that I felt to dive into acting. And that chapter ended up being extremely rich in terms of new creativity, the friendships that I made, and mostly it was about unlocking an emotional life within me that I was afraid to share in real life, within me, that I was afraid to share in real life. So it gave me an avenue, in a way, to be free, but in a safe setting. And then I went through a big transformation a few years in and it was basically a point in my life where I was. This is the kind of the core of my transformational story is that I was married at the time and we always thought that we would have children and when we decided to have a baby and you know, go for it my body shut down and I was really confused because I felt we loved each other and I also really wanted it to work and I also knew that there were so many things about it that didn’t feel right, and so my body was telling me information, and the pain of being confused, though, really led me to do some deep soul searching, and I went to the jungle of Costa Rica before anyone was talking about ayahuasca. I just went, you know, trusting the person who had recommended this to me, and he said to me you’re no matter what, you’ll see your demons. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that I needed to do it, and I did see the core of what was preventing me from trusting in myself and intimacy, and it was very painful to see it, but it was also very freeing, and it was that gateway that led me to a lot of different transformational modalities that were body oriented, because my blocks were definitely related to repressed sensuality and fear of intimacy and a lot of fear of not feeling safe in intimacy. So, then, that led me to become a somatic practitioner and to start guiding women to connect with their sensuality and in ways that could allow them to be the freest version of themselves, and I did that for well almost a decade, and I also became trained as a family constellation practitioner and those. It was again a very enriching chapter of my life because as I immersed myself in my own healing, I could support others because I knew experientially what the gateways that I had needed to go through. So it was very rewarding in that way.
Speaker 3:
And then cut to. I mean long story short, but I had a crossroad where I left New York, I moved to California and it was really for lifestyle. I couldn’t. I became too sensitive, I couldn’t live in the city anymore and California had been a dream. And that’s where I started more of my coaching practice and I was speaking on the topic of sensuality and becoming liberated in the body and mind and heart.
Speaker 3:
And then, in the background, I had always had real estate as my main bread and butter, I would say I invested from a very young age, at 23 years old, and I kept. I mean, it wasn’t often that I bought and sold property, but it was my stability that gave me freedom to do a lot of the things that I did and I was in a position where I had to sell the property that was making me money because of legal issues that came up with the property and suddenly I was making like I had zero income. So it was so scary and I and I knew that it it was time I couldn’t keep living the way that I was living, because it was almost like I was being a slave to my freedom by managing this property all the time. And so it gave me a gateway to do one of my dreams, which was to open a retreat house that could accommodate people who were doing transformative work and creative work and there to collaborate to live their purpose. And I did that for a few years. And then COVID hit, and that was another crossroad of like. Okay, I could muscle through this and do what I know to do, which is manage and appease all of the governments that be. But again it just it felt like it was an identity death and I trusted in kind of a vision and a deep intuition that there’s something beyond this that I can’t even imagine what it is, and managing this, this business, was not part of it. And so I got the hit to sell and I invested again in real estate where I could have a passive income.
Speaker 3:
And then I lived around the world for two years on a sabbatical just to see who am I without working, who am I without ambition, who am I without me be of service and needing to give. Who am I? And it was one of the most liberating gifts to myself. I did everything guided by intuition. I had a mentor and a friend who has incredible gifts, and I learned a lot from her in the process as well. So, about really living my life purely from intuition, without needing to be in the constructs of being accountable to anyone but myself, so it was a huge gift to have that.
Speaker 3:
And then, after the two years I landed here, during those two years I was writing and I wrote a lot of poetry, and that’s another story about the poetry.
Speaker 3:
But essentially, in my time abroad, I really felt this connection with voicing the unvoiced within me in ways that that that could I, I believe, could only be done with poetry and through metaphor, because there weren’t words for what I had to say without metaphors, and so I found it deeply satisfying and gratifying and I didn’t really think about these words being for anyone else, but it was more like self-love for myself. And then I had the idea for this book, which I wrote in end of 2023 after percolating on it for a while. So it got me to distill some of my own life lessons and the things that I personally want to be reminded of into these deep dives on everyday words. And and it was such a joy to write it it was just I wanted to publish for a long time and I had many books that were in my pipeline over the years, but this was the one that was just effortless and I just knew it was going to give joy in some way, and it has.
Speaker 2:
So that’s my story. Jeez, where do I start? Because you’ve gone through so much and I took a mental note as you were discussing and I can totally see why you and I felt the connection, even though we had never met before. There’s so much, there’s so many parallels in what you write about and what you talk about and how you have gone through your journey that I really want to dive a little bit deep. I know you discussed moving through life, through intuition. I caught that early on as you were beginning your story or transformation.
Speaker 2:
In the interview you said something along the lines of I knew, I felt it within me. I felt this pull and for me, I’ve understood that being the soul pulling us in the direction of who we were meant to be and created to be, versus the side of us that gets raised and that gets pulled into the fear, because when we are born, we’re fearless and then we start getting told along the way you can’t do that, that’s not safe, that’s not good, and certain layers start to form around us and those layers are the ones that inform us initially on where to go. But it sounds like you were pulled in the corporate world like that and then soon found yourself saying this isn’t for me and feeling that. Well, can you describe a little bit more what that pool feels like for you to help the listeners maybe identify it, more so than what they’re hearing in their head?
Speaker 3:
Absolutely Over the years. It feels like. For me it’s a contrast between the lack of feeling. A pull often feels like contraction, like I feel heavy in my body. I feel often like squeezed together and the pull feels expansive inside of my body. The way I physically feel it in my body is a warmth in my chest and I feel like it almost feels like my belly is expanding to the outer edges. And I feel it mostly in my heart. And I say this knowing that, not that this isn’t going to be the same sensorial experience for everyone, because everyone is so unique. I think in you know how they feel their own pull, but for me I felt it like there was. It just feels like there’s something more beyond what I’m seeing outside of myself and I often have no idea what that looks like, but it’s definitely a sensation of, yeah, there’s more in what I am seeing and experiencing in the right here, right now. So I think that’s something that I really pay attention to.
Speaker 2:
And I’m glad that you answered it the way you did, because it is very different for everyone. I will say, for me that pull feels. First of all, for me it comes across as a very persistent thought that won’t leave me alone and it’s coming almost out of nowhere, like totally unrelated to what I’m currently experiencing, but just very persistent over and over and over again. And then, like you, I feel the warmth in the center of the heart and a tingling sensation when I do make the move, whether I see because I don’t see what’s beyond me, like beyond that pole. But the minute I step in there it’s like this peace washes over me that I’ve made the right decision for what the soul is guiding me to do versus what the ego is telling me to do. Inside my head, that doubt that clouds me, that makes me feel unbalanced and I’m almost sick to my stomach because it just doesn’t feel right. It feels like in total disalignment to who. I’m almost sick to my stomach because it just doesn’t feel right. It feels like in total disalignment to who I’m supposed to be, based on the circumstance I’m currently facing. So when what I describe in Faith, I Thrive my book, it’s like when change hits you right.
Speaker 2:
In your case, you had several crossroads.
Speaker 2:
You hit First it was after corporate America, then when you finally moved to New York and you’re in this relationship and you want to, you know, start moving through your relationship, and then you suddenly have this crossroads and you move to Costa Rica and then you become this healer and all these, all those are crossroads and you don’t know where you’re going.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you just know that if you stay exactly where you’re at, it’s going to feel wrong, yes, and, like you said, heavy. It just doesn’t feel good and you feel like what most people call stuck, but they don’t know how to describe it. And that’s why I wanted to kind of share my experience, so that whoever listens to this podcast interview can maybe, maybe some of the things you describe hits them squarely in the heart and it’s meant for them, and maybe other people that are listening will be like, no, but I feel more like what Sylvia described, and then they’ll know. That’s when my soul is blaming or versus my ego. And I know that you wrote discernment in here in this book. Tell me a little bit more about your process of discernment as it pertains to the ego and to the soul.
Speaker 3:
Yes, thank you for that question.
Speaker 3:
It’s such an important word for me. One of the revelations that I had about the word discernment personally is that it’s the superpower behind judgment. Whereas judgment is often based in fear and the lens of something being right or wrong, discernment is more so, the intuitive part for me of knowing internally what feels on or off and we could use the words right and wrong in that language too but it’s not morally right or wrong, or what’s right and wrong according to the playbooks that we see outside of ourselves, so which is often what judgment is is kind of oriented around. So discernment for me has been a real important pillar for understanding the differences between moving towards something that makes me feel expansive inside and moving away from something that makes me feel contracted, but also discerning which of those experiences that are making me feel contracted is the situation that I’m in or is it my orientation to that situation? And often I find there’s an orientation to that circumstance that needs a perspective shift, and then I can be realigned again, even though the circumstance hasn’t changed at all.
Speaker 2:
So that’s good, that’s a good observation and that’s a good way of distinguishing between the circumstance, which a lot of people just view it through, the circumstance, the view like just okay, what happened? The what happened versus what is my mind saying that happened? Yes, because our minds, as I understand it, being a life coach can also, and this is where the ego now the ego is not the enemy here. The issue with the ego is it’s your self-image, and if your self-image is comprised of fear-based belief systems that are kind of driving that thought process, that’s what needs to shift, not so much yourself per se, it’s how you view things Right, discernment between the ego and the soul, and why intuition plays an enormous role in moving through our lives in the direction that will give us the most joy and fulfillment, because those are topics that you and I talk a lot about and it’s not usually the definition that people claim.
Speaker 2:
Joy and fulfillment looks like if we in the States I lived abroad and you did too, so you can understand where I’m going with this we tend to view joy and fulfillment when we get exactly what we want financially, like having that status and that success and everybody’s view of success a little different and sometimes vastly different right. The more we achieve in the United States, the more successful you are, like you have these things you’re acquiring, but you and I both know that that is not what sustains us through our journey. What sustains us through our journey is those moments of joy and the fulfillment we feel when all of these things are aligned within us, our ego, our soul and our spirit are one, and when we’re moving and like succinctly and and viewing life through that lens of joy versus judgment, right Acceptance versus you know again what’s against judgment right.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I really appreciate this point that you’re making in discerning the difference between fulfillment like an internal fulfillment, or versus the things that we think in our minds will give us fulfillment, or that we think we want because X, y, z is going to equal happiness. And that’s such an important muscle of discernment to exercise, because often the wants are just there, because we feel a scarcity in some way in our lives. And so for me, that line of discernment comes when I know, and I can measure the metric of am I fulfilled by the simple pleasure of doing this one thing every day, or however many times, versus am I doing it to get somewhere? Am I doing it with the agenda to get somewhere Because I think that thing’s going to make me happy?
Speaker 2:
It’s the checking off the box, right, like some people do it to check off a box, but it doesn’t bring them any sense of fulfillment or joy, it’s just something they’re used to doing. They’ll be like why are you doing that? What purpose is that serving in your life? And sometimes they can’t answer the question because they just do it out of habit and they don’t know where that habit came from. Right, yeah.
Speaker 3:
So habit is a whole other topic. Discernment has been such an important part in the meaning of the lived experience around. Discernment, for me personally, is that, you know, when we talk about being brave and being courageous and releasing our doubts and releasing our fears, which a lot, I think a lot of people like you and I want to do right, because we don’t want to be living out of fear, fear. And so sometimes what I’ve noticed in our culture of personal growth that there’s this message do what scares you most, overcome your fear. And I just want to give an example of where that’s not beneficial and where discernment comes in very, very useful. So my example, soul. So my example I used to have a lot of fears around intimacy and there was a man who I worked for in one of my moonlighting jobs um, very late nights doing massage work, when I was acting in New York, and he offered me a ride home.
Speaker 3:
And I knew innately that I was afraid of this man, probably for good reason, but I had this messaging inside me that I need to get over my fears. So accept the ride home, discernment. And we’re talking about being brave and even following an intuition, because we even if it following anything where it might be scary, there’s that kind of fear, but then there’s also fear that’s telling us something important to listen to, and having the discernment between the two is super important. So that’s what I wanted to say about that we know that fear has a place.
Speaker 2:
It’s just the way that certain people use fear. It doesn’t get quite to the same. So I’ve taught this to my 10-year-old girl. She suffers from anxiety and we know that anxiety is very fear-driven right the what-ifs, and, as I’ve told my daughter, it’s like, hey, if you get a feeling about a person that is telling you to run, you run. You do not question that. If you are being chased by, if you see an animal and your body is telling you to run, you do run. If you’re standing close to a cliff and your body is telling you step back, you step back. Those are appropriate uses of fear.
Speaker 2:
Fear has its place. It’s just not what is being shared on social media, what is being shared like in news. You know bulletins around the world, that kind of fear and how people use fear like to propel them towards the success in life. That’s the fear that needs to be shifted over to this other lens that you’re talking about, where intuition takes center stage, where the beyond, like knowing that there’s something beyond us that is guiding us into this beautiful light that we have yet to shine, because we’ve been so afraid to shine it that now is the time to start doing that. For me it was.
Speaker 2:
I was always afraid because I I grew up in a home that my dad I love my dad. He passed away last year, but he was always someone who came from a broken home and came from a lot of abuse. He had a lot of anxiety around him. I grew up that way, so I carried the anxiety not just in my mind but genetically as well. That fear gives a lot of energy, but it’s not a good kind of energy. It’s not.
Speaker 2:
It’s the addicting kind that can keep people stuck in this phase that they don’t know what to do once they don’t have it. You know, it’s kind of like a mini drug of sorts. You know, for them they get addicted to having this energy and once they start shifting into a space of joy, they don’t know how to be in joy. They know how to do things to create joy according to them and their lives, but they don’t know how to just be. And you mentioned something at the end of your story of transformation. I really want you to dive a little bit deeper for the members, and that is the last two years that were so liberating for you, because you talked a lot about being, and not having to be successful. Can you talk more about that?
Speaker 3:
Absolutely so. I want to frame this by saying that it came at the end of what I call an identity death, where I was so my identity was so caught up in the value of doing like managing things that I I needed to kind of let go of. That way I was interfacing with the rest of the world, whether it was even personal relationships or my business. There was a part of me that always felt responsible for someone else or something else and trying to push through.
Speaker 2:
I didn’t feel for you because I’m right there right now. I’m in this stage. This is why you were sent to me. This is so weird. Okay, go ahead. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3:
Synchronicity. So I was very conscious that I was letting go of that and even though in my circumstance, I had nobody to be accountable to, even at that stage I wasn’t in a relationship, so I was literally free in every single way you could imagine. And I still needed to catch those internal moments when I had an impulse to manage something like to manage a decision, instead of just trusting that more expanded feeling that I could connect with inside of myself, whether it were, you know, to book an Airbnb or to choose the next country I went to. There’s a part of me that just wants to do hours of research to find the right place. So it was really catching those moments where my operating system would still gravitate towards managing or, like my mind, wanting to make the logical decision based on how I would make a decision before. So it was. I think the richest part of that phase for me was consciously having the time and spaciousness to check in, because when I did that, everything that I was doing ended up being more efficient. And I think one trap that a lot of us get in and I did this too was thinking that, oh, it’s going to be more efficient if I plan this than that, than this, than that, whereas actually, if we’re more attuned to what we’re connected with on the inside in terms of a compass, we don’t need to do any of those things and it will. Just, we will be connected, just like you and I are connected right now. It sounds like it was effortless for you, it was definitely effortless for me, and we get to have this rich conversation where we’re aligned in our shared resonance. And so for me it was, even though in the circumstances over those two years I I had so much freedom it. It was also a process of being aware of every moment and I really leaned into that and it was wonderful.
Speaker 3:
The countries that I went to they each had a specific quality that seemed to give me exactly what I needed right then, and I couldn’t have planned that. I went to Lake Atiklan in Guatemala, where I rented a glass house on a mountain overlooking the lake, which is a volcanic lake and there’s crystals underneath, so the quality of the water has a really specific energy because of the crystals that formed in the volcanic matter years ago, and it had such a pure feeling of nature and I felt that before. I’d never been to that place before, but I could feel it in my bones like, oh, this is the next step. And I was with a friend who had been to Lake Hattie Glance. She’s like, yeah, what you’re describing matches this. So I couldn’t.
Speaker 3:
That’s not the same as like going through a bucket list right Of where I think I want to go next. It’s a different kind of attunement and there’s value to both. Right, like there’s value to checking in with our heart’s desires and seeing, like what is our bucket list. And then there’s also a value of just opening a little bit more to experiencing something, like you said, which is beyond what we know, it’s beyond what we can even imagine. And that was magical. It was really magical to just embrace that period and fully lean into that trust, full trust in being guided.
Speaker 2:
I’m loving what you’re sharing because I think it’s in alignment with the question I’m going to ask next in that Do you feel like this chapter that you’re in right now? Because it feels like you’re in this presently right? It feels like you’re in this presently right? This I tend to call them like levels of life to where later we graduate into, when we transcend.
Speaker 2:
When my father passed away last year, I called it. He graduated into heaven, and people were like what are you talking about? And I said you know, we go through life learning how to be and how to exist, because we don’t know how you know, and we’re taking the examples of the people that surround us and that teach us, and it’s not always right for the person we are meant to be right. So we journey through life and then we some of us are lucky enough to have the sight, the vision, like he did. Early on he knew he was going to be a doctor, and so he, because that was his skill set, that’s what he was highly gifted in, but not everybody is like that, all right. And so my question to you is do you feel like the stage that you’re in right now is preparing you for a much for something in the future that you need to like that this is going to serve you.
Speaker 3:
That’s a very powerful question. I just got chills up my left side. I would say undoubtedly yes, based on knowing life so far. So I’m 52 years old and so far everything I’ve done in life prepared me for the next thing. So from my lived experience I can say yes.
Speaker 3:
And on the other side, what comes to mind when you ask that question is I feel for myself at this halfway point like the earlier chapters of my life were very much about getting to know who I am and dissolving those barriers between my true self and like mechanisms that I have in mind inside of me that would prevent me from being that. And it’s not that I don’t still have, you know, patternings and we’re, I’m human, so I I have patterns inside that I certainly am always becoming aware of in the moment. But I feel this stage of life is really about shining and it’s so simple and it, because it’s so simple, it feels so fun and there’s nothing more to do to become. So I would qualify this stage of life the way I feel it internally is that I am embracing the art of just being and shining and and that’s it Like there’s. There’s no more courses to take, there’s no more like healing programs to go through. There’s just like just have fun, just have fun.
Speaker 2:
Just enjoy, right, just be. And people don’t understand that concept in this country. They really don’t. It bothers them a lot. And the word joy they can’t even describe it in their own life. I’ve actually asked people what is joy to you and they’re like stumped, oh. But they can answer what does fear feel like? Like that Real fast, because we know that the mind is conditioned to look for the negative, because subconsciously we’re fed all these negative images. So we’re very aware of them, right, consciously aware of them. Where you and I have done some work internal work you mentioned journaling as being one of the things that your mom used to encourage you to do, and in journaling you are connecting to the divine a great deal than most people realize. What other things have you done to kind of clear your mind of all this noise?
Speaker 3:
It’s always a little different depending on what phase I’m in, though I would say definitely meditation has been a pillar for me because that gives me the chance to have distance from my thoughts and feelings and to know what’s true, not true, and to have inner clarity and space inside of me in order to be discerning.
Speaker 3:
That’s definitely been part of my practice for a long time.
Speaker 3:
The journaling is also, for me, a form of meditation, where it’s in my daily life. Now, every morning I journal and I get clarity, so I’ll meditate and then I’ll bring up certain images or thoughts that seem most prominent in my meditation and I’ll give it a little extra time to give voice to, you know something that might feel off and something that feels amazing, and see where I live between those two contrasts. If that makes sense that’s how I often get my clarity through journaling is giving it space to have a voice, including fears, because when I see my fears down on paper or and or if I speak them out loud to someone who I really trust, they lose their power and at least I can see them outside of myself and I’m not going to be driven unconsciously by them. So having space to just give voice to those, those fears, even though we know like it’s not, it doesn’t have to be our reality, but to let them have a place so that they don’t run the show well to acknowledge them.
Speaker 2:
Right, because sometimes all our fat patterns and fears we want from us is acknowledgement of the role they played in our life to help us move us through to the space where we’re in now, because without that person you don’t. You know, we learn a lot through our survival stages, and I survived, you survived something terrible in New York, you know. And then Costa Rica. That is surviving, and then. But the surviving leads to the thriving part as well. It’s all part of the stages of development that we’re being put through, depending on our gifts. Right, like you became this person because of what you went through, of the pain you went through. You took pain and you gave it purpose, like immensely purpose. You started to help women come to terms with their sexuality, with the intimacy, with those issues that were part of you from long ago. Right, so it’s in my case. I always say God uses all of our choices, whether it’s in alignment with who he thinks we were created to be or who we were created to be according to him and who we think we were created to be. Right, and those two can be in disalignment, but sometimes we can turn it around and do the work and say thank you for this part, because without this part I wouldn’t be this amazing, transformative person, I wouldn’t have gone through this transformation quite the same way.
Speaker 2:
And I’ve gone through the meditations and I’ve done meditation through different stages of my life and one of them was really powerful where I kind of gained the three different identities. I’ve gained the three different identities, so my childlike self, my 20 to 30 year old self, and then I’m 50. So they’re like 40 to 50. And I’ve actually like combined them into three and just said thank you, thank you for everything you have taught me thus far, because without you I wouldn’t be this unstoppable powerhouse, I wouldn’t be here without you and I thank you.
Speaker 2:
And the more you do that with your fear and acknowledge it and name it and kind of take the power away from what it wants to do in your mind, like releasing, truly releasing that doubt into I release it to God. I’m like I don’t need this, take this from me. You release it in meditation and journaling. People release it in nature. There’s lots of ways to release our doubt right, our imposter syndrome, like who we think we can be and versus who we are you. I find it so, so interesting. But going to the part, the question on purpose what is your divine purpose? Do you have one, or do you think it’s a seasonal purpose, depending on the stage you’re in in life?
Speaker 3:
I relate to purpose as what I’m doing right now. So it’s, it’s literally like my purpose right right here, right now, is to be talking with you and sharing from my heart to yours, receiving your heart and and being able to feel the richness of connection. That’s my purpose right here, right now. And if I take that definition in a more global sense, I do feel, let’s say from a more meta level and I don’t want to get too existential, but in a meta level, I do feel like connection is the purpose for being alive. It’s being connected with ourselves and knowing who we are, and then with others. So I would say that’s been true for me. Every single step of the way, no matter what iteration of myself, I’ve been living in my outside identity, whether it’s an actor or whether it’s the founder of a retreat business or an author, it is essentially the same through all things. And further to that, you know you mentioned essence and identity and I just would love to highlight those two things and how you were speaking about. Those two words are both in my book and I have definitions for both and the way that you were speaking about.
Speaker 3:
You know fear-driven choices from the ego and we all have ways that we can let go of that. And what I found is that sometimes, you know, especially in those earlier phases of my life where I did need to heal and I did need to, and I’m not I’m always healing right, like that’s always just a part of living, but it’s a stage, like you were saying, as, if you know, the earlier stages are the bud underground, and then it grows and pushes through the surface and becomes a flower to bloom. We could use that metaphor to talk about growth in general and what we do to release our fears, no matter what stage we’re in. But there’s something about identity and how we become identified with who we think we need to be in order to be ourselves, and I think that’s one of the things that we can get really tripped up on, like doing things that we think we need to do in order to be ourselves.
Speaker 3:
And essence, for me, is the antithesis of that. Where essence is, we know who we are in our hearts and there’s often not words for that. That’s why I love poetry. Um, that’s why I love poetry, because you know, you can say I am love, I am beauty, I am this, I am that, but we all have a specific signature and I think the more that we marinate in our own unique essence, the more the identity things that we identify with that aren’t helpful.
Speaker 2:
They just naturally fall away yes, they do they because they start to feel you start to feel in disalignment. It’s it’s a really funny feeling on the inside it just does not, it doesn’t leave you alone, like for me. It doesn’t leave me alone. It’s like this just doesn’t do it for me and and it’s something that happened last January, to back up the November prior to the January, I started to really try to find my identity in Christ and when I started to read scripture and really meditate and pray and get into that state, I found that a lot of the old ways that I viewed life and the lens I was looking through things just did not feel right anymore. I just could not justify that anymore.
Speaker 2:
And it happens a lot in my marriage now where I’ll hear my husband talk and say, well, you know, blaming and criticizing and all that, and it just doesn’t. It just doesn’t feel right because it’s in disalignment to who you are truly in your heart of hearts. Right, when you go back and you become the person you were once born, without all the trials and tribulations, without the layers of experiences that happen to us, the essence of us, right, the gift, the core of us, starts to come out once we start growing out of those layers right, those identities that just don’t fit us anymore. And something happened and there was a big problem between my brother and I and I a lot of people would tell me, oh no, you’re justified to feel that anger and you’re justified in your and that’s the human way of viewing things, right. But when you look at it through a different lens I like a much higher level sense that human side just doesn’t feel good anymore.
Speaker 2:
And I remember reaching out to a good buddy of mine who knows scripture really well and asked me a couple of questions, much like you did, right, like the questions that you asked yourself, and it just it fell apart. That whole argument fell apart. It just didn’t have any argument to it, right, and I knew intuitively what I needed to do, which is to apologize and take ownership of my role. Even though everybody was on my side and everybody said no, he should apologize first. I was just like no, it doesn’t feel right anymore and it shocked everybody, you know.
Speaker 2:
But it’s it’s that feeling of knowing that you’re the essence and and your identity are not the same thing, it’s totally different things all together. And I feel like a snake sometimes where we constantly be shedding the, the snake skin. We’re constantly shedding, shedding all those layers that just don’t belong don’t belong. And then you get to a stage where you’re just like being like you are right now. You’re being, enjoy, being in fulfillment, and it feels awesome because there’s no weight, there’s nothing weighing you down anymore, there’s no in your head. We would still feel convoluted all the time, and what people don’t realize is the habits that we have on a daily basis play an enormous role. So any last minute tips as it pertains to your good habits that you’ve adopted through your life, raya, that you can share with our audience yes, yes, and it I think I want to.
Speaker 3:
it dovetails off of what you just shared, which was really powerful the connection between the you know the example that you shared with your brother, and what I heard in that was that when you got the higher perspective, there was no charge in the emotional part and you were then free to take accountability for yourself and your side.
Speaker 3:
And that is certainly one of the practices in my life, right now that I devoted to you know, because if ever there is something where I’m feeling something happened to me or I have that kind of like feeling of being trapped by someone’s behavior, I know there’s something I’m probably not taking accountability for in my participation in it, and the moment that I can see what that is, then I’m free right.
Speaker 3:
So my, my offer to those who are listening would be to really pay attention when there is charge to something and examine, like, just give yourself a reality check whatever thoughts and feelings you’re thinking about that other person, like some of the ones you mentioned that others were saying, like he should never do that, he should apologize first.
Speaker 3:
When, in my experience, when I turn those thoughts on myself first, when, in my experience, when I turn those thoughts on myself such as, oh, I should apologize first, and not that I should do anything, but I just feel into that lens and see where is that true. And more often than not there’s another facet that I’m not seeing, that I can take accountability for, and sometimes it’s not going to be right away where I get that clarity, but by giving it attention and keep questioning whether something is really true or not is one of the most freeing things that we can do for ourselves. So that’s what I encourage in terms of just, you know, coming back to being and challenge any thoughts and feelings that you’re thinking, or especially thoughts, because those inform our feelings.
Speaker 2:
So Powerful Raya. Thank you so much for joining us today. On Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. If people wanted to contact you and be, you know, in touch with you or buy your book, how can they reach you?
Speaker 3:
I would direct them to two places. One is my Instagram it’s at Raya Kouyat and the other one is my website, where I’m currently offering free audios of my book, which are meant to be just doorways into reconnecting with self and being connected with the truths that most of us know inside, that we forget because we’re distracted by other things or thoughts about what we think we should be doing. So it’s just a gentle medicine to come back to ourselves, and they’re free, so I offer that as a little gentle doorway into self-love.
Speaker 2:
I love it, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for today. You are a godsend to me and I know the timing is. It’s always on point and it’s always on his timing, so I’m never amazed. I’m always just in awe of how people seamlessly coming to my life at the precise moment. I need to hear certain things and I’m sure some of the listeners will feel the same way with the immense amount of wisdom on this call. Thank you so much. Raya To the listeners of Release, doubt, reveal Purpose. Remember Matthew 514, be the light. Have a wonderful week, stay safe. Love you all. Now Bye.
Speaker 1:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a 25 000 private vip day with sylvia worship herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.