Megan Mary: [00:00:00] Welcome. Today I have Bracha Goetz. She is a Harvard educated author of 41 books that help children’s souls shine and a candid memoir about her journey to joy. Thank you for being here today, Bracha. I really appreciate

Bracha Goetz: it. Thank you.

I’m so happy to be with you.

Megan Mary: One of the very special things about Bracha is that she is the same personality type as me. So we were both tickled when we found that out and I’m so happy to have another INFJ here today that I want to talk about that in depth and let our listeners who are that connect with that and who don’t know what that means find out a little bit more about us through that.

So basically, I’m just going to talk for a little bit about the INFJ thing. And then, and then I’m going to say some, some characteristics of [00:01:00] INFJs and we’ll talk about it. So for people that don’t know what we’re talking about there’s the Myers Briggs personality assessment. And we are basically one of the very rare types.

It is 1 percent of the female population. So. Yes, there you have it. Now, the primary function, of course, of INFJs is introverted intuition. And so, of course, that lets us really hold a special place in the world because we are so intuitive. And INFJs are often referred to as counselors and nurturers for that reason.

So tell me a little bit about what you feel the INFJ is, and then I’m going to read some other statements that really resonated with me and we’ll

Bracha Goetz: play with those. Yeah, and also like, this is Myers Briggs we’re really strong idealists. If [00:02:00] I had to pick a word about myself, that’s who I am. I, in some ways, I’m almost barely in this physical world. Because I’m, I, I live so much in a spiritual world. So actually for many years I was suffering because I was never taught about the spiritual world.

And I, I felt something was so missing from my life, but I had no idea what it was because I was only taught about this physical world. And so I didn’t even understand the desperation that I was feeling and the intense hunger. Where was it coming from? I didn’t know I was a soul. So learning, finally getting the spiritual nourishment I was craving, totally changed my life and brought me so much happiness.

It, it, it really fills my life up every day with joy now because I’m getting that spiritual nourishment. [00:03:00] Without it. It’s really hard for me to survive in the world.

Megan Mary: Yes, and I resonate very much with that feeling like you’re not really completely in the physical world. And people going, come back here, come back to this, this is, this is reality.

It’s like, well, maybe, maybe it is, but it’s an illusion also,

Bracha Goetz: right? Yes, exactly. And the J part of that I N F J. Is interesting in that we like to get things done. We like to accomplish things. even in this world. But what we like to accomplish is kind of in the spiritual vein of helping people of healing people of making the world a better place.

That’s what our lives are devoted to. And sometimes what’s it’s either a J or a P at the end and the P people sometimes might have a harder time in accomplishing, but [00:04:00] we’re that part of us is concrete. We like to get the things done. That helped the world be better.

Megan Mary: Yes, and that plays perfectly into the first bullet point on my list, which is intrinsic drive to help others realize their potential.

Yes. It’s so spot on.

Bracha Goetz: I gotta tell you this. On my application to go to Harvard, I didn’t even know why Harvard wanted, accepted me and wanted me there, but on my application, in fact, for all the Ivy League schools, that’s what I wrote about, how we’ve got to utilize the human potential. I didn’t even know, you know, I didn’t know about this INFTP stuff back then.

But that my whole essay was about actualizing our potential. Yeah. Well,

Megan Mary: that’s why they admitted you, of course.

The second thing I have is crave a meaningful life and deep connections. And that is. Though [00:05:00] there’s two things there, and both things are really important. Having meaningful life, having, living a purpose, knowing what your purpose is, knowing that you’re making a difference, but also the deep connections, which is part of the reason that I created this podcast and called it subtitled deep discussions, because that’s the kind of conversation that I want to have.

I would rather have one small. Moment of a deep conversation than an hour of polite conversation.

Bracha Goetz: Oh, it’s unbearable. It’s actually unbearable for people like us, you know, I love. Podcasts. Because it’s we have a DMC immediately. That’s all we do is talk about the most important stuff. I feel like podcasts were made for people like us.

Megan Mary: Absolutely. Yes. And I’m so glad to have discovered them for a while. But I mean, so Complex, complex, you know, we are very [00:06:00] complex characters and we live in a world of hidden meaning and possibilities. Now, if that isn’t true, if that isn’t what drove me to dream analysis, I don’t know what else would have.

Just that whole desire, knowing that there is a hidden meaning. Gifted with deep insight into people is the last bullet point, which, of course, yes.

Bracha Goetz: Beautiful, beautiful. I’m so grateful that you found your way to this. It’s so rare. What you’re doing is such a rare thing in this world. I never met another dream analyst before, you know, and this is something so important in, in my religion in Judaism in the Hebrew Bible.

Dreams play a really significant role. So this is fascinating to me to meet you and and just [00:07:00] learning about what you do.

Megan Mary: Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot. Well, I want the listeners to hear about your enlightenment journey too. And you mentioned a little bit about it at the beginning that you had a spiritual hunger that you did not realize that you had.

And you, you wrote a autobiography about that. So talk a little minute. First, let me ask you, what does enlightenment mean to you?

Bracha Goetz: Enlightenment. You know, when things were really difficult for me, the whole world seemed gray. Nothing mattered. Everything lost its color. And then, you know, it, it became like in the, in the movie, The Wizard of Oz, when the colors come back, everything’s vivid and beautiful.

That’s [00:08:00] enlightenment to me. The light is shining out. From everything now, it’s a whole different kind of world than that world that I barely wanted to live in anymore, where nothing mattered and everything was gray. Yes,

Megan Mary: that is a beautiful analogy. I love that. So talk a little bit about the scarcity mindset versus the abundance mindset.

I, I love this concept. I feel like so many, so many people, including so many women struggle with this. Mindset maintaining that abundance mindset and how the scarcity mindset can really just affect your whole life course when you’re when you’re clinging to that.

Bracha Goetz: Yes, clinging. That’s a good word. That’s the word.

When there’s a scarcity, you are clinging to any little pleasure you get. And [00:09:00] a very easy pleasure to get is the pleasure from food. Let me food is designed to be pleasurable. I mean, it could have been we took a tasteless pill every day and that would fuel us or it could have been. We didn’t need any food at all and we just survived like that.

Instead, it was designed with all these natural, amazing, pleasurable experiences for us to consume. But what happens is. When we feel that there’s a scarcity of pleasure in our life and we’re eating something pleasurable, we just keep stuffing our faces with it. If we feel that sense of scarcity, that there’s not enough pleasure in our life, it doesn’t happen as much.

With the natural pleasures, like, like an orange, it’s, it’s hard to eat a whole bag of oranges. That’s not what happens, [00:10:00] but a person will eat a whole tub of ice cream, a whole bag of potato chips, a whole box of chocolate chip cookies, because that food, it’s designed to be. as delicious as possible and as addictive as possible.

Well, this, the natural foods are designed to be as delicious as possible and as nutritious as possible. They’re, they’re totally different substances. So we, we can’t even blame ourselves when we overeat because We’re just our bodies are responding in the way the food is kind of programming us to respond in an addictive way.

So, that, that just that thought alone can take away a lot of the shame and guilt that a person feels when they’re overeating because their bodies just responding in the way that The food is, is making the person respond, actually. But anyway, back to what we were saying, [00:11:00] which is that the feeling like there’s not enough pleasure in this world is one of the things that makes a person overeat or take other addictive substances into their lives or addictive behaviors.

They get stuck there as a way of comforting themselves and as a coping mechanism to. not face the emptiness within. Yes.

Megan Mary: And like you said, that can happen in any, any form of addiction and also any behavioral pattern, even if it’s not full blown addiction in that way. Yes.

Bracha Goetz: When we feel like there’s not enough of something or we’re stressed or panicked or worried about the lack of something.

And we’re focused on the state of lack, then we can’t at [00:12:00] the same time be focused on the state of gratitude.

Yes, yes, we can’t have those two feelings at the same moment. If we’re being grateful, then we’re not being miserable in that moment. It’s amazing. It’s all like you said, the focus, what we focus on grows.

That’s what gets bigger. And, so that, that focus on what we’re lacking in life. just causes us to feel even a slight disappointment. A person gets in the habit of just filling up with that comforting food to cover up those feelings of disappointment. And it just becomes, after a while, it’s just a habit of in life.

But when we become aware of that habit, Then we can start to come out of it. And also the [00:13:00] recognition that there’s truly an abundance of ways to bring pleasure into our lives at any moment changes everything. I, I just want to mention in my 600 pound life, that, that Netflix show, they all say the same thing.

This is the only thing bringing me pleasure anymore, the food. So it’s, it’s about. Opening up to the possibilities of all the other ways. We can bring pleasure into our lives at any moment.

Megan Mary: Yes. And I connecting with, as you said, acknowledging the fact that we’re even in that mindset because that’s not obvious and it’s a continual process.

And I find with dream interpretation that can. very often uncover those subconscious feelings that you don’t realize that you’re walking around with in [00:14:00] your waking life, you may think, well, I don’t feel that way. And I’m okay with the way things are. But in the back of your mind, you’re actually not you’re actually focused on some other sense of Construct the way your life is perceived.

And I found the stories often tell that very well.

Bracha Goetz: Have you? It’s such an awesome healing thing that you’re doing. And like I said, so few people are doing this. I mean, you probably know other people, but I don’t know of any. And it’s such. It’s getting to that other hemisphere, and again, that’s a better, it’s, it’s such a healing way to come out of where we’re, where we’re stuck.

Megan Mary: So beautiful. And it holds that for us. It had, it holds that potential. It holds that possibility with through dream work. We can uncover those unconscious blocks. We can [00:15:00] reprogram those repressed feelings that we, that we’re holding and we can heal through the dream work because the more that we understand what’s going on in the dreams, the more we can address it, the more that it affects our waking life, the more that then affects the sleeping life and the dreaming life.

And it really has an evolutionary, as you said, healing quality and

Bracha Goetz: capacity. I want to ask you, Have you helped women specifically with their overeating problems through their dreams, that you’ve seen them take on a different lifestyle and approach to eating through, through your work?

Megan Mary: I have dealt with situations where for one reason or another, their mindset of scarcity or insecurity or other mindsets [00:16:00] are informing and promulgating their behavior in their waking life and they don’t realize it. So they don’t realize that there’s this undercurrent going on. And it certainly could benefit that.

I just haven’t had the opportunity to work with that specific client yet, but there’s so many potential applications for DreamWork. And that certainly is one, which is part of the reason that I wanted to discuss it with you today, because I feel like so many women struggle with that. And this is, this is another.

layer of self care and self care is so important and it’s even more empowering when that self care can be done with yourself from answers inside yourself versus someone’s trying to apply something to your problem and you struggling to integrate that into yourself. Why not just try and. get that answer from [00:17:00] within yourself.

It is already part of you. It is just separated. And that integration of that other self and those other feelings and those other preconceptions then leads to a wholeness, which in itself can be very healing.

Bracha Goetz: Yes. I’m just, if you don’t mind, I know I’m supposed to, but I just, I’m curious to know. Like what other what changes you’ve seen in people’s lives through your work like other addictive behaviors that have decreased or what types of progress you’ve seen.

Megan Mary: I think that, in general, it’s, it has the, I’ve seen that it can uncover subconscious. I’ll call them blocks, but there’s a lot of better ways to refer to that, that they are not aware of. So it could be a feeling of [00:18:00] insecurity or lack of self confidence or basically lost many times. So having dreams about being lost or being chased are very common.

And I’m not going to say that they mean the same thing for everyone because they don’t. But usually if you’re being chased, obviously you’re, you’re running from something, usually part of yourself. If you’re feeling, if you’re feeling lost in a dream or that you’ve lost your possessions or you’ve lost track of someone, that is your disconnection with that part of yourself.

And many times I talk about this in a, in another episode. If you have a dream that your teeth are falling out, that is also a very common dream that people report and that can have its basis in loss. It’s [00:19:00] a, it’s a feeling of loss, and it’s also can be a feeling of embarrassment or instability, transition, so many, so many different layers to that.

And so our dreams really. speak to us in our own unique language, even though there’s a lot of commonalities amongst, amongst dreams. And sometimes people can easily categorize them and say, Oh, well, I had a dream about being chased. So it’s just another one of those chase dreams. And it’s like everybody else’s chase dreams.

And it’s like, well, no, it’s very specific. What did you have on? What was the weather like? Was it night? Was it day? Where were you? How did you feel? Who was it? Who was it? Did you know them? Did you turn around and confront them? Where did you go when you ran from them? There’s so many details that unravel the true meaning for [00:20:00] you.

Bracha Goetz: Beautiful.

Yeah. I love this. Thank you. Yes.

Megan Mary: And you mentioned that, you’re obviously very, very intrigued in them and they’re part of your culture. Have you had experiences where in your journey, where your dreams helped you or. Tipped you off or let you see something you didn’t know was there.

Bracha Goetz: When I was back in college, I was in some type of seminar where you had to keep a dream journal for a week.

And I, I don’t usually remember my dreams. So, I was up to the sixth day and I had nothing in my journal. I didn’t remember any of the dreams. So that night I went to sleep and I said, please come up with something. I’ve got to hand in something. Well, I sat there and I wrote for like an hour. I [00:21:00] remembered this whole series of dreams that night.

It was so fascinating. I guess I just really forced myself to have a consciousness to remember it. And I don’t remember much about what I wrote. I just remember one aspect that still stays with me. It was my mother. That she was like not happy, but when she’d greet people at the door, she had a big smile and I just I felt the phoniness of it and it bothered me so much.

I was so upset by her being two different faces. That’s all I remember. From that whole complicated dream that I had, but that’s the part that stayed with

Megan Mary: me. It’s interesting the part that stays with you. Yes. And I find that story fascinating. I love that you didn’t remember them, which is a situation for so many people.

So many. Yeah. And I didn’t realize this going into it because I do. And I, wow. But [00:22:00] I didn’t realize that so many people were interested, but didn’t know how and didn’t. And it really is. That’s where affirmations like what you did make a huge difference. If you go to sleep and when you’re going to sleep, say, I will remember my dream tonight.

I will remember my dream. That is one of the ways you can actually induce that recall. And it is a trained skill, like anything else, like typing on a keyboard or, you know, anything else that you, once you start doing it, the more you do it, the more you remember. So I think it’s great that you finally.

figured out how to will that because that is really what so many people would need to do to kickstart this process and to be able to harness that power. You have to be able to remember

Bracha Goetz: them first. Yeah. It was funny. I was like desperate. I got to hand in something, please. I was amazed. That it worked,

Megan Mary: Yes. [00:23:00] And that same, that same application is one of the methods and one of the techniques for lucid dreaming. I don’t know if you’ve had one of those, but those can be really, really healing, really. transformative because you realize that you’re dreaming and you can actually influence the course of the dream.

And one of the techniques for inducing lucid dreaming is the affirmations before you go to sleep that Just translate the put the insert the word lucid. I will have a lucid dream tonight. Well, over and over and there’s many other techniques, but that is one of them where you’re basically telling yourself, OK, this is I can influence my reality.

This is what’s going to happen. And amazing,

Bracha Goetz: amazing. Although I don’t remember my dreams. Usually what does happen to me is that I wake up in the morning. Where like a whole book is written, I mean, and I didn’t know how to write it before I went to sleep, I [00:24:00] get up, I have a pad by my bed, and I’m scribbling furiously in the dark, you know, so I don’t wake my husband up and I want to write it all down as it’s coming.

It’s amazing to me that almost always it happens. Early, early in the morning before it’s even light before dawn, all the books come together the words I was missing everything, everything that I need. It just comes.

Megan Mary: Yes. And as an, as an author with so many books, which is very impressive. I love hearing that, because I, Think that the, that’s part of the reason I created the dream journey called the treasure box, which works both with lucid dreaming, but it also works in just tapping dreams for your creativity because that’s, our brain is still working while we’re sleeping and it’s really working on things for us.

And it gives us that clarity and access to [00:25:00] that creativity that the busy waking mind cannot, cannot access. And I, have been inspired by my dreams and my writing. And I know I’ve, of course, there’s so many great authors who have as well. So I, I love, I love that hearing about

Bracha Goetz: that. Yeah, it’s fascinating to me.

I can get the title of the entire book because it’s a picture book. So I can get the whole thing just like that. And also then I remember things. In the morning that happened during the day, but no way was I going to remember it and there it is right there for me to remember I love how that works. What is going on in the mind all the processing fascinating integrating integrating it’s.

Yeah, it’s amazing. We spend so much of our lives dreaming. And yet we don’t even not aware of [00:26:00] what’s going on

Megan Mary: there. Yes, absolutely. That’s what I find so captivating about it is that it’s not just this invented thing or invented system where we’re going to say okay and apply it to our lives. It’s happening.

Whether you pay attention to it or not, it’s happening, and everyone is doing it whether they think they are or not. Even if they say, Oh, I don’t dream. I’ve never dreamed. I don’t remember you are still dreaming. You just haven’t, you know, transformation is about how much we’re willing to see. And you have to be willing to thin that veil and to have that curiosity and to have that bravery, even sometimes to uncover those.

parts of yourself. It really is a personal growth journey.

Bracha Goetz: Yes. Yes. Beautiful. And I guess there’s a lot of [00:27:00] childlike parts to it too. I imagine because it’s that playful side, it’s the imaginative side of you. It’s the, it’s a flowing part of you that, is awesome to be able to capture glimpses of.

Megan Mary: Yes. And I assume that talk, tell us how it led you to what you’re doing now, because you’ve written over 40 children’s books. And so how did your, from your memoir, I know your, what your memoir after, but from your memoir to the children’s books and that trajectory, how did you arrive at that point where you decided that’s what you were going to do?

Bracha Goetz: Yeah, well, my goal is to write the books that I wanted to have as a child books that explain from the beginning of life that we’re spiritual [00:28:00] beings that need nourishment every day, just like our bodies need nourishment. So some of my books are about. Healing the body to a books about the prevention of abuse books about disabilities, how to include Children with disabilities, books about swimming safely, eating in a healthy way, exercising all these things.

Teaching children about how amazing our fruits and vegetables are like the awesomeness, but other books are just spiritual like the invisible book. There’s so many things that we believe in that are invisible like time, like gravity, like our feelings, our thoughts. So, It becomes less far fetched then as we realize that to believe that we too are invisible spiritual [00:29:00] beings.

When you see the effects in the world of all these forces, you know they exist the same thing with our souls. So I’m, I’m loving teaching this to children in a concrete way and also teaching gratitude skills. So. So they can learn these happiness skills throughout the rest of their lives when you were when you teach these habits early on, then the road becomes easier to.

to to keep those habits going once they’re implanted in children.

Megan Mary: Yeah. That’s wonderful. Yes. When we’re younger, we do have closer access. I feel to that and we lose it as we get older, partly because we feel like we need to lose it. We need to set it aside and we completely lose touch with that perspective that we might’ve had is as a child and that acceptance of the [00:30:00] unseen.

And I, I love what you said about that because I feel like we always, like you said, there’s things that like wifi, for example, and you know, that we take for granted that we say, well, yes, of course, this is how it works. And that’s normal and part of life and everything. Well, that’s energy. And so are we, and when you walk into a room and you, and you walk into a group of people, you can feel their energy and they can feel yours before you say anything.

That’s part of how we communicate with animals and everything else. And to pretend that that doesn’t exist and that that doesn’t have a place in our wellness and in our purpose is missing a whole part of our existence.

Bracha Goetz: Yes. And we’re, we’re to recognize that we’re all connected to the same [00:31:00] source energy and to each other.

It’s, it’s, it’s just such a joyful feeling. And all of that is what made me begin to trust again in life. Trust in myself. Recognize that there’s a good purpose to everything. Eventual good purpose to everything. So that’s, how I began to trust again in the world and not need to be having the binges constantly because I wasn’t so fearful of this world anymore, afraid of

Megan Mary: it, and not feeling so separate as

Bracha Goetz: yes, exactly, because an addictions, they add to that separation, you feel estrangement, it closes you into a prison that gets narrower and narrower, and [00:32:00] the prison is made of our thoughts.

And the thing is like that we have the key and part of the key, I think that you’re offering. It is within our subconscious, in our dreams, unconscious, and I found in ancient mystical wisdom too, that key to how to get out of the prison and reconnect, form those connections again.

Megan Mary: Absolutely. So what are three takeaways that you hope listeners learn from this

Bracha Goetz: interview?

Okay, so I did want to share. I don’t know if there’s time for me to share about the pleasure ladder, but that really affected my life. Okay. The lowest physical, there’s five levels to the pleasure ladder, which I think correspond to our by fingers, we can bring pleasure into our lives at any moment. And [00:33:00] these five levels correspond to the five levels of the human soul.

So the lowest level, this is not for me. This is again, ancient mystical wisdom. So the lowest level of the soul is the part that’s connected to our body. This is the part that when we Enjoy these natural, physical, sensual pleasures. They have the potential to nourish our bodies as well as our souls. When we experience them with gratitude, that’s the key.

So when we experience them without gratitude, it doesn’t uplift our soul in the same way. And love is the next level up. How can that be totally empowering? You’d think it’s dependent on someone else, love. But it’s really focusing on the virtues of another. Even in prison, a person could focus on a grandmother that did a kindness and be uplifted with [00:34:00] a warm emotional feeling of love.

That inspires them so we can bring love into our lives at any moment by focusing on the virtues of another. So first it’s a physical thing, then another being, and then meaning, doing something good and meaningful in the world, something positive. We are, we are giving back with gratitude that we can give.

I was on a show where a person said he was, he ate two slices of pizza and he was about to plow through the rest of the box because he was just sitting there lonely. A knock on the door and his neighbor wants his help with something for two minutes. He comes back after. He doesn’t want the pizza anymore.

He filled up. He just filled up his soul with gratitude, giving back to someone. He could put the rest in the [00:35:00] fridge for the next day. So that’s, we can all relate to that. Higher than that creativity. When we’re in a state of being creative, we don’t notice time is passing. We don’t feel like eating or sleeping.

We’re in a whole nother zone of pleasure. And the highest level is transcendence. That’s when we transcend our own limitations. We make a tiny crack in a bad habit. We, we do something new we haven’t done before. Something positive. It’s also what we feel under a starry, starry sky when we know we’re a part of a greater universe.

 It’s that feeling that it transcends the barriers between us. So each level up brings more connection. And this is how we can break out of our addictions, break out of our [00:36:00] habits, bring the sense of abundance into our lives and overcome that. Sense of scarcity, and people could put this on their fridge on their on their, you know, cabinets to remind them that there’s an abundance of ways.

Bracha Goetz: So, yeah, and this is downloadable from my website, where it’s in more much more details about how each level. Is helpful. So that’s something that I love to share with people. Yeah.

Megan Mary: Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s extremely powerful and I’m so glad that I will put a link in the show notes so that everyone can download that chart as well.

I think having that handy is a great reminder of all the different ways that we can do this and that I love the transcendence piece, of course, that’s The road to enlightenment. Once [00:37:00] you get out of your own way, set yourself aside, realize that it’s bigger than you. And then you’re not so separate anymore.

Also, then you’re part of a bigger thing that, that supports you. It’s not just, it’s not giving yourself over to it and kind of losing your identity, but it’s actually supporting your Existence.

Bracha Goetz: Beautiful, beautiful. It’s that feeling of aloneness that gets people to feel that scarcity of pleasure. It’s recognizing the connection that we’re always connected that it changes everything.

Yes,

Megan Mary: it does.

Well, thank you so much for being here today, Bracha.

I had a wonderful time chatting with you about so many different things and I, I know our listeners will love hearing all about your wisdom as well.

Bracha Goetz: Thank you so much. A great pleasure to be with you, [00:38:00] Megan. Thank you.