182 Cheryl Buck: Cancer is a Crisis of Consciousness === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation Project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello, dear listener. Welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project Podcast. Monica: I'm your host, Monica Rogers. And today I'm with Cheryl Bach and you're going to love this episode. It is about cancer. And before you leap to think, you know what this episode is about, buckle your seatbelt because this conversation takes so many incredible twists and turns. And if you don't get emotional, I don't know what to say. Monica: This episode just really. Deeply impacted me on a heart level. Not only is it just a gorgeous testament to Cheryl's courage and her work in the world, but it's also just such a provocative conversation because so many of us, I can't think of one person whose life hasn't been touched by cancer in some way, shape, or form. Monica: So. I'm going to give you a little bit of background on Cheryl. And before I do, I want to remind you of two things. One is if you haven't yet joined the giveaway, please do follow the link in the show notes or go to join the revelation. com and sign up. We will be. Picking the first winner this coming October. Monica: And we have so many incredible gifts that have already been submitted for my listeners to win. So if you would like to have an opportunity to win the giveaway each month, you need only get. On that specific mailing list, the second announcement is that Libby and myself will be running another sisterhood circle this coming November 7th. Monica: And I'm so excited about it. We actually published an episode last week. So if you haven't had a chance yet. Go back and listen to it. It's called divesting from patriarchy and unbecoming from good girl programming. And this particular sisterhood circle will be all about that. So if you want to learn more, listen to that episode. Monica: And again, you can jump on the, the wait list to hear when we open enrollment, you want to go to signup. jointherevelation. com slash unbecoming. And I hope you will jump on that waiting list. So you'll be one of the first to know when we open enrollment later this month. Okay. Some background on Cheryl. In Cheryl Buck's early professional career as an executive assistant to the president of the Hunger Project, she participated in the worldwide movement to end chronic persistent hunger. Monica: The first decade of the Hunger Project was devoted to changing the conversation around hunger. From hunger is inevitable, and there will always be hungry people, to of course hunger can end. As you can see, Cheryl is a possible list. She believes anything is possible. She was also one of the 1. 6 million people in the U S in 2016, who heard the diagnosis, you have cancer. Monica: For the previous decade, she had actually been researching cancer and other chronic diseases from a nutritional viewpoint. She was focusing on indigenous cultures and their innate awareness of the intrinsic healing power of the body and earth. She applied this knowledge of nutritional modalities and conventional medical methods to healing her cancer. Monica: And of course she is cancer free. She continues to study indigenous cultures. And to that end, she calls herself a cancer anthropologist. She's engaged in understanding the true nature of cancer and how it is embedded, not only in our bodies. But in our cultures as well, and you'll be so pleased to know that if you are someone who has been touched by cancer or you yourself have cancer or know somebody who has cancer, she has a podcast called cancer talks. Monica: So we're going to learn more about that and about her work right now. Please join me in welcoming Cheryl Buck. Hi, Cheryl. Cheryl: Hi, Monica. So great to be with you. Monica: It's so great to have you. And I mean, where does somebody even begin this conversation? That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's a vast conversation. Monica: But what I want to start by really asking is, Maybe just a little bit of background to start with on just your own personal story, where it found you, which I want to start by saying, how interesting that you had already been studying it. Yes. So you had already been studying it. And so what I make up about that is, here cancer comes to teach you more. Monica: Yes. Right? Like, I'm just like, wow. Like, whoa. Cheryl: I know. I got a personal experience. I must have been asking for it. Monica: But not in a, it's like we talk about in the culture, like, well, she was asking for it, you know, like not in a bad way. Cheryl: Oh, yeah. Not that way. Yeah. I hear you. Monica: In a way where cancer kind of came and was like, you want to, do you want to know about me? Cheryl: Yes. Monica: Yeah. Like I've got, I've actually got some, and I will use the word wisdom to teach you. And I make that up. I don't know anything. Cheryl: Well, okay. Well, you're spot on. I, my whole life changed, and I'll just, I'll start out, I'll just talk about how, how I, how cancer first came into my life, and it was in 2007, and I had this book, which I'm showing you a picture of, Death Be Not Proud. Cheryl: by John Gunther, and it's a story of John Gunther's son, Johnny, who had a brain tumor, geoblastoma brain tumor. And I just have to say that I have no idea where this book came from. It just showed up. Somehow, like on a bookshelf, I guess, I pulled it out. It was written in 1949. It smells like 1949 when I, Monica: I know that smell, that 1949 smell. Cheryl: Yeah, exactly. The pages are all yellowed. And so anyway, I started reading it and my 14 year old son was down the hall and I thought to myself, why am I reading this book about this? teenage boy who, who has a brain tumor. But I just kept reading and it, it was absolutely fascinating and life changing for me. Cheryl: And in this book, well, I'll just say that Johnny's parents, especially his mother, never stopped looking for, uh, something that would save her son, basically. And he was getting conventional treatment in New York City in 1949. And in her search, To to see what else could could be offered to Johnny, she met a doctor or heard about a doctor named Dr. Cheryl: Max Gerson. So I was introduced to Dr. Max Gerson, who then played has played and continues to play a huge role. in my life, even though he has not been alive since the 1950s. So this book takes place in the late 1940s. And Dr. Gerson was treating, he had a clinic in New York City, he was treating patients who had cancer, most of them end stage, they were not expected to live, they'd been sent home to die. Cheryl: And he had a protocol that was non toxic to begin with, and it was It was his belief that, that, well, basically, I'm just going to say, you know, what he thought about cancer, that cancer is a symptom of something, and it's not a disease, and that a person who is well cannot grow enough cancer cells in their body to have it be a problem. Cheryl: In fact, we all have cancer cells all the time, and a well body. Deals with it. Mm hmm. And so cancer doesn't make you sick. It's it's just a symptom of a body that's not functioning properly. And you can cure cancer by getting a healthy body. And that's that changed my life right there. And that's what Dr. Cheryl: Gerson was doing with these patients. In New York City, and I read a statistic, I think it might have been in this book, that of 450 people that he treated for, you know, 446 people were, quote unquote, cured of cancer. Yes. Which actually isn't the proper way to say it, but that's how we say it. Monica: That's how we say it. Monica: Yeah. And, and Cheryl, I want to get curious. I want to get curious here because it felt like you were hesitating to share that. And I want to get curious about what the hesitation is. Cheryl: To share the work of Dr. Gerson. Monica: Right, like to share what he, his theory of what cancer is. Uh huh. Can I get curious about that for a second? Cheryl: You can absolutely get curious. Uh, so I was hesitating. Well, you know. I'll go back to the story a little bit that that Johnny was being treated by conventional doctors who were a hundred percent opposed to what Gerson was doing, but they did allow, they did, they did create space for for Gerson to treat Johnny for a while. Cheryl: His tumor started to get. Enveloped and, uh, but then they, they just, they freaked out and they made the parents freak out and, and Johnny went back to the conventional therapy and, and then died when he was 16 years old. So, I think what I'm hesitant about is that most people do conventional therapy for cancer and I'm just not so sure that that's always the best thing to do. Cheryl: It's a, it's so controversial that, you know, I, I hesitate to, uh, really take a stand for this, you know, especially talking into a microphone on a podcast. Monica: Right. Yeah. Monica: But I feel. It's really, really vulnerable. Cheryl: I feel with everything, it is, it is. And I feel just so, um, confident I think, maybe it's the, maybe that's not the right word, but I just feel like whether anybody wants to try the Gerson Therapy or not, it's, It's going to be, it's worthwhile to listen and make a decision from hearing what the therapy is and who Max Gerson was. Monica: Yes. And then do what you need to do. I know people need to do what they need to do. This is what I needed to do. And so I read this book in 2007 and then, what, 8, 9 years later, 2016, I got a cancer diagnosis. And. Like probably almost everybody who gets a cancer diagnosis. I completely freaked out. I was semi hysterical. Monica: I was by myself. I really wished I had a friend there with me, but after crying and and trying to drive home. I remembered that if I knew that if I ever got cancer, I knew what I was going to do. So, and I just want to say that before. Before, during that period of time between 2007 and when I got a cancer diagnosis, I actually tried or went to underground Gerson clinic that where I had to pretend that I was a cousin or something of the people that was in a neighborhood and I tried out the Gerson therapy three times and I just, you know, I have nothing but a real acknowledgement for it. Monica: People who one, give this treatment, which isn't very many anymore, and uh, people who accept it, who try it out, um, it's quite extraordinary. Yeah. Monica: I wanna talk to this vulnerability a little bit and really invite the listeners to kind of come in closer in this moment, because one of the things that. You know, I've really come to see in our culture is that we have, we have handicapped ourselves by no longer asking questions and by ceasing to be curious. Monica: And when we do that, that's what I call the trance of unworthiness. When we stop being curious, when we stop asking questions and when we stop trusting. Monica: I've talked about this in various ways on the podcast, but I'm really continuing again to invite the listeners to just suspend judgment and to just really keep listening because I believe that we are at a pinnacle point. Where, and I say this over and over again, we can kind of jokingly call these times apocalyptic times, because this is a time of great revelation, where we are starting to wake up from a deep, deep, deep slumber, where we have basically given our agency and our power away, and we have stopped trusting. Monica: Our intuition, we have stopped trusting actually all of the feminine values that we actually speak a lot of, we actually give a lot of lip service to, but when push comes to shove, we actually like freak out and go with conventional. Methodologies because we get afraid and yes, and fear separates us and doesn't and no longer are we actually in the driver's seat of our life. Monica: Now, we're way in the back and we've got everybody else driving the frigging car. Cheryl: Yes. Almost in the trunk. Monica: We're almost in the trunk. We're just like, let me know when it's time to go to the bathroom. Yeah, let me know when we get there. Versus actually staying in the driver's seat and being with what's here now. Monica: Yes. Whether it's, and if it's your terror, be with it. Yes. What's here now? My terror, my anger, my fear, my anguish, all of the ways that I'm hating on myself right now for like, I should have eaten better. I should have this. I should have, you're shitting on, shitting on yourself, right? Whatever you're doing, being with it, being with it. Monica: Don't abandon yourself. Don't abandon yourself. And what I'm hearing that you did. As you freaked out, and then you stayed, you stayed with yourself, and you got curious. Yeah. So, great, great work, because that is some work right there. Cheryl: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I stayed with what I knew and let go of what I forgot when I heard you have cancer. Monica: Mm hmm. Cheryl: So, when I heard you have cancer, freak out. You know, which is what everybody does in their own way. And then when I remembered. That I, what I knew to be true, then I went into action and with, and I actually used, uh, took advantage, I guess, of, uh, conventional in that I had surgery, uh, so, and I did that at the, on the advice of the, the man who runs the Gerson clinic, which. Cheryl: The only one that's left, I believe, I think there might be one in Europe, but in Mexico, can't do, can't do it. It's illegal to do it in, in the United States. The Gerson Method. Monica: The Gerson Method. Yeah, it's illegal. It's food. It's food. It's food. And it's illegal. I'm, I'm kind of being, I'm, I'm being a little bit twitty. Monica: Yes. You get my meaning. Like, it's food and it's illegal to do this method. That's right. So just make note of that. Cheryl: That's right. You can't say that you know how to cure cancer or that you, you've heard something about how to cure cancer. That's not conventional. You can't say that. That's illegal. Monica: Right. Yes. Monica: You could go to jail. Cheryl: Exactly. You go to the, to a Gerson clinic and I mean, then, then you can finally talk about it. But before that. No, it makes no sense. Monica: So your hesitation is making more sense to me. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Like we're getting to see more of why people hesitate to share things is because, you know, it's not conventional and therefore you must be woo woo. Monica: And if you're woo woo or crazy, you must be one of them. And like, so there's this way again, like you get just Monica: instead of being celebrated for your courage and for trusting yourself and for staying and for getting curious, you're shunned. Yes. You're shunned and you're often, you often lose people. You lose your friends. Sometimes your family stops talking to you. It can be really painful. Yes. And lonely. Cheryl: Well, I was fortunate that my family didn't stop talking to me, however, and they, and my sister and a few of my friends came over the course of the two years of the treatment that I did to help because it's, it's a, it's a big job and they came and. Cheryl: In the background, they're thinking, Oh, I wish she would just go to the doctor and do what they tell her to do, you know, but they let me, they didn't bring that up. Yeah. Uh, after a while, you know, at first, at first they did. They said that, but. But then they, they just trusted me. They knew that I, that I trusted what I was doing and they supported me amazingly. Cheryl: I honestly wouldn't have been able to do what I did without their support. And yeah, cause it's a big, it's a big job. Monica: Well, and, and I want to talk to this. It's a big job because Monica: healing. Like reversing all of the ways that we've been taught to be with ourself and be with our body or not be with our body. Reversing all of that is a lot of work. It's like you're changing your mindset. You're changing how you talk to yourself. You're changing, you're looking at things that before you might have been suppressing. Monica: There's like, what if cancer was happening for you? Yes. So that you could actually find your way back home to yourself. Yes. Cheryl: Yeah. That is so true. Find our way back home to ourself and find our way back home to our, to our home. The earth. Yes. Yes. You know, we've. Okay. Bye. Monica: It's okay. Take your time. It's emotional. Cheryl: Um, Cheryl: um, reconnecting with nature is our most pressing imperative Cheryl: and is the source, really, of cancer. And there are people that say, That cancer, uh, Dina Metzger says this, that cancer is Cheryl: nature's last ditch effort to get us to wake up. I mean, the big message of cancer talks, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, is, Cheryl: is that cancer is... It's, it's a wake up call. Uh, we're, we're driving this planet to Cheryl: absolute destruction and we, we don't know or we don't remember that we are it. We are one with the planet, with the, you know, everything, the trees. We are one, I like, I look at it as one organism, like one organism, we're all connected. We need the planet, the planet, you know, may not need us, you know, uh, if we go too far. Cheryl: Right. Monica: It that's it. I love that you said that because that's a lot of people's like thing. They're like, Oh, you know, the planet will be fine. Let's just for a minute. Let's just say, because there, there are people out there that literally say, you know, that this is all a hoax, this whole thing about even like the, the climate crisis. Monica: Right. So let's just say that's true. Okay. We're still totally disconnected. True. We're still completely and utterly disconnected from our cycles, from our source, from how nature, everything that needs to be harmonious in nature. And there's this way that there's such a, if then thinking versus like a sacred and which says, you know, that we can have both technology. Monica: And be deeply connected and compassionate and harmonic with how we design or be with or create new technological advances. It's as if, you know, the modern train of, uh, productivity and innovation never is looking back and is just leaving. Centuries of indigenous wisdom in the dust. Yes. None of that matters. Monica: Right. And it's like, my God, how arrogant, how arrogant we have been. Yes. And yet all the while we can continue to have children and our love for them sometimes will wake us up. To what's happening because we see that our Children are deeply anxious or we see what happens to them when they get consumed by gaming or something where we literally lose them to technology because we haven't, we haven't helped them understand what balance is or harmony is right and we don't have that harmony in our bodies and we don't have that harmony out in the world, that there are all of these lessons that are all of this wisdom that is trying to wake us up. Monica: And I want to say that wisdom is Sophia in the Bible, the feminine wisdom is trying to wake us up. We are trying to remember the feminine. The feminine is returning to our consciousness now. Finally. Yes. And with that comes chaos. Cheryl: Mm Cheryl: hmm. Absolutely. Monica: And chaos sometimes comes in the form of cancer. Yes. And so in some ways, I really invite my listeners to think about a wake up call. Monica: As deeply loving, as deeply compassionate, nobody tries to wake you up unless they deeply love you or they wouldn't fucking bother. Cheryl: Right. Monica: Exactly. So you're chosen to wake up. Are you going to answer the call? That's the question. Exactly. And are you going to turn toward yourself and start loving yourself well? Monica: Cause that's the other part of this is how we treat ourselves. So I'll step down off my soapbox for a minute. Cheryl: Okay. I'll get up on it. Okay. Now Monica: you get up on it. Okay. We'll just switch on and Monica: off. Ad: It's happening again. The Unbecoming Sisterhood Circle begins this November 7th and I hope you'll join us. This. Is a six month coaching circle for an intimate group of incredible women like you who are ready to reveal the social conditioning that keeps you stuck in limiting patterns of self sabotage or otherwise numb and unconscious to the revelation that you are, if you are an entrepreneur. 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That's signup. jointherevelation. com slash unbecoming. Monica: We can't wait to welcome you. Cheryl: Okay. I just have to say right, right. And along in the lines of what you were just talking so eloquently about that. About nine months ago, someone said to me. And I think cancer is a crisis of consciousness. Now I put that, I wrote that down, I put it on my desk and I didn't know what they meant. I didn't understand. Cheryl: I didn't have any way to hold that. And then when I was going to talk with you, I said, Oh, this is a perfect thing to talk with Monica about because it just sounds like something you would say. Okay. Okay. So. Uh, and, and again, not unlike finding the book Death, Be Not Proud, it just showed up. I looked up the word consciousness and I thought, okay, somewhere in my house and the millions of books that I have, I'm going to find some way to relate to cancer as a crisis of consciousness. Cheryl: So I walked over to the books I have out in the dining room and I just kind of went through and Boom, a book show, a book came out. Okay, and it's by Jean Houston. You must love Jean Houston. And it's called, she wrote a trilogy and it's about future humans. And this is the first book, it's called The Quest of Rose. Cheryl: And one of the things I love so much about this is that she wrote this book. As a, as a story. So there are characters there and the part that I've read is the grandmother and this, her granddaughter named Rose. And so she goes through talking about crisis of consciousness. I opened it up, looked in the index and. Cheryl: And sure enough, there's all kinds of stuff about consciousness in here. No surprise. No surprise. So she tells it in a way that, well, I want to say someone like me, which is maybe derogatory to me, but that I could understand it. And I just love to read two paragraphs here because it, and it. Yes, I'm on the do the tails of what you just said. Cheryl: So she, so grandma's talking and she says, I'd like you rose the granddaughter to first become aware of how your life includes the codings. of two eras, two creative cycles of consciousness. The old era that is still influencing our current world consciousness, where patterns of sacrifice, conquest, division, and duality became the dominant narrative for humanity. Cheryl: Now, become aware of the new era, born from a future possibility of higher orders of reality that more directly manifest the cosmic architecture of consciousness. The new era brings the possibility of new growth patterns that are based on wholeness, unity, Evolutionary diversity, collaboration, co creation. Cheryl: This makes me cry. And partnership with the universe. These future possibilities are already dormant within us, like the imaginal disks that contain the genetic codes for the butterfly body in the skin of the growing caterpillar. Cheryl: And then she goes on to say that do you realize how incredible it is to be born in this transformational time where you actually get to see these changes in what becomes possible and is made real. The old era of the caterpillar world of human consciousness has reached its stage of completion. As you know, we simply cannot continue the old growth patterns any further. Cheryl: If we do so, will trigger mass extinction events, which is a clear sign that life is saying, wise up, time to change. Monica: Wise up. Oh my goodness. Wise. Cheryl: That's good. Now I didn't get that, but yes, wise up. Exactly. Monica: Yeah. It's the Sophia century, right? Yes, and the maiden must awaken. Cheryl: Oh my gosh, Monica: I mean, it all makes so much sense. Cheryl: It's amazing. And we're, we're not in the new era, but there are a lot of us that are, you know, but we're still straddling. The old era, so Monica: Right. Charles Eisenstein calls it. We're in the space between stories. Oh, interesting. Cheryl: Yeah, I heard that. I love it. Monica: Right. Monica: And so like, she's talking about the end of the old story and the beginning of the new story, and there's this liminal space in between this imaginal place. Yes. Where we actually can create a new story by awakening to our own imagination, our own creative capacity as creative beings. Yes. And so it's actually about starting to pay attention to the stories that we're telling ourselves because the stories that we tell ourselves are the trance. Monica: Yes. And the stories have been told to us so many times out there. I call it being micro dosed over and over and over again with a negative story that actually kind of imprints and conditions us in this spell where we no longer question or get curious anymore. And so something wants to come and wake us up from it. Monica: When everything else has failed, Sophia comes, wisdom comes, and she says, you are my child. I will not let you stay asleep to this, to what is happening. You will awaken now. And she gives you an opportunity because she is forever loving. Right? Endlessly loving. Endlessly generous. Okay. Whew. Cheryl: Yeah. And we're being shown that now, I'm in California and we've been having weather like we've never seen before. Cheryl: These, what do they call them, uh, atmospheric rivers, thunder. I mean, I don't know that I've ever heard thunder in California, in where I live in the Bay Area. I thought, honestly, I woke up thinking I was being bombed. That's what it felt like. Oh my gosh. And. And it took, it wasn't until the next morning that, well, I guess I went back to sleep, but I realized, and I started reading about what was happening. Cheryl: It's just cataclysmic, more rain than we've ever had and harsh, like just beating on us. And I think this is part of, you know, what mother nature is saying, wake up, wise up. Wise up. Monica: Wise up. And I also, I want to, we're going to get into cancer talks in a minute and, and I want to dive more deeply into that. Monica: But before we do, I want to talk to you about why it's important to make peace with death. And the reason I want to have that conversation is because Similar to the story that you shared, and I love that that book showed up in your life and you're like, I don't know where that book came. It's like the mystery, right? Monica: It's like the endless mystery is like, where did that book show up? And I'll never forget. When I was still pretending not to know that my life needed to change, right, that's always what I say, like, I'm pretending not to know, like, I was totally like the wounded maiden who is pretending not to know that the trajectory that she was on was not going to serve anymore, and I'll never forget being in a Barnes and Noble, walking up and down the aisles, and then I turned around because there was a noise, and suddenly this book literally falls on my head. Monica: Oh, and it right coming from like a higher shelf, right? And so I, I pick up the book and it's Mary Oliver's poems and I opened the page, the journey. Cheryl: Oh my gosh. I love that. So much. No, you can't make it. And Monica: I was like, Oh, and I'm just. I literally crumbled and thank God nobody was in that bookstore that day. Monica: I literally crumbled and I was like weeping as I'm like reading it, you know, and I'm like, because what else? Falls away when we're no longer curious and we no longer ask questions, is we stop trusting the unknown. Mm-hmm. , we stop trusting the mystery. We stop believing that there is one. We become exactly cynical and we become resigned. Cheryl: Yes, absolutely. Monica: In that place, there is no room. for the mystery. And to go back to the analogy of the butterfly, it's like, what makes the butterfly fly? And then we pin it and we lose the magic of the butterfly, right? Cheryl: Yes. Monica: Yes. Sometimes why is not the question. Yeah. Or how? Or why? Right? Exactly. Sometimes it's the experience that makes you realize that you don't need to question. Monica: Exactly. So we go through something in order to know, or have gnosis, which is also all about Sophia. Gnosis is all about. The wisdom of Sophia and knowing, because we go, we cleave through the darkness like the owl. We fly through the darkness in order to come back with a higher perspective, but the dark, we need the darkness in order to come back to life and then share what we've learned. Monica: And those of us that are here to share what we've learned, nobody wants to hear it yet. Cheryl: But we don't take it personally, right? Monica: So we find each other and we don't forget to laugh. Because otherwise, you know, we can take it really personally and we can get really sad. Cheryl: That's right. Exactly. What does gnosis mean? Monica: So gnosis is actually... I'm just learning about it myself, but I did this incredible episode with Miguel Conner, and I've been listening to his episode now for a long time, and I've come to realize that it was, uh, before Christianity was co opted, there were, there was a, uh, a whole, a lot of people call it a religion, but it was actually a way of being. Monica: It was a way of being in the world. And so they call them the Gnostics or the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts that were found and contained the gospel of Mary Magdalene. And so we come to learn that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. This was only discovered in 1945. She was actually one of Jesus's apostles, if not exactly. Monica: Jesus's counterpart, and together they were symbolizing the sacred marriage. And so whether or not you believe the story of Jesus was an allegory or not, the story from the Gnostics perspective is very, very different. That story is very, very different. And in that story, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. Monica: Yes. But the interesting thing is that even before then, if you go back to Sumerian culture and the, you know, the journey of Inanna, the great descent, which is what we're talking about, by the way, the second you found out that you had cancer, you went into Inanna's descent. You went into the underworld, right? Monica: To remember. yourself. And when we go into the underworld and the Gnostics knew this, the Gnostics knew that our way into true life was by dying, which is what you did. You had an ego death so that you could rise again. Do you recognize the story of Jesus Christ into eternal life? Wow. Because soon. We have to die. Monica: The reason that we don't want to go and do our shadow work, that we run from it our whole life is we have to face death, which brings me full circle to my question, which is why do we need to face death? We need to face death because when we do it, we realize. What do we realize? Cheryl: Transformation. Yeah. For sure. Monica: That there's a transformation that actually, like, to face our fears about death is to embrace What is wanting to die so that something else can live, a truer version of ourselves can live. Cheryl: Yes, exactly. That's beautiful. Monica: And it's like, ah, that's why I love these conversations so much. It's like, they're so illuminating to me. Monica: This I always say that, like, the trance is this constant forgetting and remembering. And like, we don't stop being human because to be human is to forget. To be human is to be messy. To be human is to, like, just bless our hearts, like, bless our hearts. Cheryl: We have no idea what we're doing. Monica: Right. But we're also divine. Monica: And so we remember. And in the remembering, we are in alignment. And when we align, we are divine. So there's like this forgetting and remembering and forgetting and remembering. And I don't know, but I bet you it was the Gnostics that said. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Cheryl: I love that. Monica: And isn't it so true? Like, we go into the dream world at night, we forget our dreams, we come back to reality, right? It's just like, it's just like, amazing. Cheryl: It is. I love how you say, The word remember, you know, you pause, and I heard the word differently than I've ever heard it before, like, putting our sort of putting ourselves back together again, you know, the right, yes, three. Cheryl: Yeah. Well, it's kind of, I've kind of lost it now, but you know, Monica: it's like we are fractured until we remember Cheryl: Exactly. We put, put ourselves back together again. Yes. Yes. Yes. Monica: And in our wholeness. Yeah. In our wholeness, we remember. Cheryl: Exactly. Monica: In our sufficiency, we remember to use Lynn Twist words. Yes. Cheryl: Right, right, right, right. Cheryl: Yes. So the word that I asked you what it was, that's the word that starts with G. Mm hmm. No sense. I didn't know. I, I finally put that together. Yeah. But thank you for that. That's amazing. Monica: Yeah. And so actually the whole study of. Philosophy is really philosophy. pH, sophia, oh my gosh. Cheryl: Mm-hmm. Monica: Gnostics and Sophia. It's really, wow. They had the gnosis or the knowledge of Sophia, the great goddess. Wow. Yes. Who is the other face? of God, right? We forget about the feminine face of the divine. She is even suppressed, even, even she is cloaked in the Bible. She's mentioned 222 times. She is spoken of as wisdom. Monica: But never do they really Cheryl: elaborate or, right. Monica: Yes, she is in plain sight, so to speak. Yes. And this is why I think it's so interesting that we're starting to excavate. So the Nag Hammadi, the, the scrolls, the Dead Sea scrolls that they found that contained all this information when they tried to wipe out all of the goddess culture. Monica: Is then they co opted all of these stories and they just created a new story to really enslave humanity in the trance. Yes. And, and especially women, to keep us from knowing, to keep us from our gnosis. Because when a woman knows, she fucking knows. Cheryl: That's right. That's what I was going to say. Monica: And look out world. Cheryl: Exactly. Monica: So it's really important that we keep women from knowing. What they know, so we could, you know, go off on that all day long. So, so more on cancer talks. Cheryl: Oh, what? Oh, I know. Monica: I know. Well, I want to know like what, what lights you up about these conversations? Cause you have these podcast episodes where you really kind of explore. Monica: You're like the great explorer out there. Who's like, you know, having these really dynamic. Interesting, compassionate, tender conversations about cancer and their cancer talks. So tell us more. Cheryl: Yeah. By, um, talks with people who've been touched by cancer. So not just have had. Cancer experience, but a close friend or loved one, you know, so that's basically everybody in the world have been touched by cancer. Monica: Yes. Cheryl: Amazing. Um, what was your question, Monica? Monica: What you love about it, like what, what like lights you up about it and keeps you, keeps you at it. Cheryl: I think what I love about it is. That I see it now differently than I did, you know, 10 years ago or in my early life. I, you know, I was as afraid of cancer as anybody. Cheryl: And when I was growing up, I remember the woman down the street, Ruth, who had breast cancer and, but nobody talked about it. So, and if we did, we whispered, you know, Ruth has cancer, and it's just, it's, you know, everybody's horrified. And Ruth survived. So she lived to be into well into her 80s, maybe even 90s, but it was. Cheryl: It's just that's how it was then. And so for whatever reason, I love to shine a light on things that people don't want to talk about. Um, Monica: You mean you're a revealer? Oh yeah, I am. Oh, this is perfect. Monica: Okay. Monica: I fell in love with Cheryl the first time I saw her, by the way, I just want to confess on this. I was like, okay, I'm like going right there. Cheryl: It was mutual. Believe me. Okay. Good. Good. I loved our conversation at breakfast when we really got to talk to each other. Monica: Yes. Yes. Me too. Cheryl: Gosh, that was a while ago. Monica: It was. Let's see. What was your question again? Well, so here's where I want to lead us next is in the, you have this great word, you call it entelechy. Yes. Tell us about that. Cheryl: I love that word. Okay. Well, first of all, I didn't even know, I'd never heard that word until a friend of mine And it was just really in the last nine months again, I think I must have woken up nine months ago because I made reference to that. Cheryl: So good. And she, she asked me if I knew what the word entelechy meant. And one of the things that I do is look at what is the Cancer Talks is doing? What are we missing? What's the future? You know what? Why? Why are we doing this? And so then she, this friend of mine, Julia, she said, have you heard of the word IntelliKey? Cheryl: And I said, no. And she said, gave me an example. Well, first of all, she said that this is a word that Aristotle, which was hundreds of years ago. I don't know how many came up with and. The example that he used, which is how best I can describe it, is an acorn's entelechy is to become an oak tree. Mm. So then you can say, Cheryl, what is your entelechy? Monica: Yeah, like your innate intelligence to become. Cheryl: Yes, exactly. I love that. Yeah. Monica, what's, yeah, what's your IntelliKey? What Cancer Talks? It can be anything. What is Cancer Talks, IntelliKey? Monica: I love that it also rhymes with destiny, IntelliKey and destiny. Cheryl: I didn't think of that. Yeah, that's good. Monica: Yeah. I love that because it's kind of like there's this inner intelligence that is trustworthy, this inner essence that's trustworthy, like we can trust it. Cheryl: Decipher it or not, it's more than likely going to happen. You know, I look at Cancer Talks and I think, you know, what is Cancer Talks IntelliKey? What is it meant to become? And, you know, I look at what we're doing now, and we're doing podcasts, and we have, you know, a group of people that follow us, and And some that, you know, attend workshops that we do. Cheryl: And I know it's only been a couple of years, so I'm impatient. I want to be the oak tree. I want Cancer Talks to be the oak tree now. I know that's not going to happen. So I'm, I'm enjoying the ride. Monica: If it helps, I'm impatient, too. Cheryl: Okay, good. That's a sign of the times, I think, for a lot of us. Monica: Yeah, I think so, too. Cheryl: So, one of the things that we did actually put words to is we talked about embodying a world without cancer. Cheryl: And, and I actually think that It's completely possible to live in a world without cancer. And when I say it, there will always be a little bit, because it's part, it's inherent in our bodies to produce these cancer cells. And when we treat ourselves, In a way that is respectful to our bodies, the cancer cells are not going to overtake us. Cheryl: Yeah. And, and it's not just our bodies, but it's the whole environment, the world that we live in. So, I just see that, call me crazy, but I see that that is entirely possible to live in a world without cancer. And I think that's, I think that's Cancer Talk's Entelechy. Monica: I love that. I love that. Cheryl: Yeah, me too. Monica: It's making me think of like, what is the Revelation Project's Entelechy? Mmm. Cheryl: Well, it's about, I'll say one thing, about waking people up. Mmm. I mean, you know, the, just the podcast that I've listened to, I was listening to Akilah about unschooling. Yes. Oh my God. Monica: I'm just about to do another one at, like, I have one in the library that I'm about to, uh, finish editing and my husband's going to put it up. Monica: But the second one was even more, gosh, wasn't that one fabulous? I was like, talk about mind blowing. Yes. Exactly. Mind blowing. And I highly recommend her book because I think when I first interviewed her, her book wasn't out. Uh huh. Whoa. And Bayo Okumalafe does the foreword. Uh huh. I love how he describes Akilah in the foreword because he says, Akilah is rude. Monica: Like because, because she's impatient. She wants people to wake up so she doesn't mince words is what he meant. She just tells you, like, she's just like, look, I can't. Like, I can't. If you're fragile, then don't read it. You know, she's basically like, I'm not going to apologize. I'm just going to say what there is to say. Monica: Yes, exactly. Cheryl: Wow. And you were, you were on the call with Lynn, referring to Lynn again. Lynne Twist with Marianne Williamson. Monica: I wasn't on that one. I wish I had been. Oh, you weren't. No, I wasn't able to make it. Cheryl: Well, you have to listen to it. Oh, I will. Yeah, she said that women, you know, we need, if something is going on in our house with one of our children, say, then women say, not in this house. Cheryl: You will not behave like that. You will not do X, Y, or Z in this house. And she said, We need to take that out into the world, just like Akilah's doing. You know? Yes. Not in my house. Not yet. Enough. That's enough. That's enough. Not here. Not now. Yeah. And maybe we're just too nice. So we need more Achilles and more Monicas. Monica: And we're taught to be pretty pleasing and polite. I mean, that is the whole social conditioning. And so, you know, like that really challenges us as women, but, you know, there's a story and my listeners have heard me tell it before and it's actually another story through Lynn. But when she took a group into the indigenous rainforest, the shaman took the women aside. Monica: He took all of the American women aside, and I bet you've heard this story, but maybe you haven't. And he said, in the indigenous forest, the women know their role. When they send the men out to kill food for the tribe, the women know when to say, That's enough now. We have enough food now. That's enough. Monica: When it comes to building shelter and cutting down trees, it's the women that say, That's enough now. Wow. He said, you have forgotten that it's your role to say. It's enough. So please go back to the modern world and tell the men that's enough now. Cheryl: I love that. Oh my gosh. I have not heard that. Monica: That's enough now. Monica: And the indigenous people say that's our role as women is to know our own enoughness and to say enough. Cheryl: Exactly. It's like, whoa. Monica: Mind blowing. Cheryl: Okay. Let me at it. Let me open the gates. Monica: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh my gosh. So I've been so enjoyed this conversation, Cheryl, and I always just love, love, love being with you. Monica: This has been a total treat. And for our listeners, I want to make sure that they know where to go and listen to cancer talks and anything else that you want to tell us or invite us or invite them to, to know or to do. Please feel free to give yourself and your site a plug here. Yeah. Cheryl: Uh, yes. Well, it's, our website is cancer talks. Cheryl: com and we really are, I think, uh, use the word sanctuary for anyone who's been touched by cancer and would like to be in the company of others who've been touched by cancer, whether it's a loved one or yourself or, you know. You don't have to have had or have cancer in order to join us. It's, this is really something for everybody and, you know, we've been doing a podcast almost two years now. Cheryl: So we, we should, we've got quite a few amazing and, you know, there's something for everybody in there. And, uh, we do workshops. Uh, the first workshop we did, uh, was, um, on intuition there, uh, for workshops. A month per topic and we do them every other month and the next one, I don't know a lot about it, but it's about water and the, um, really the mystery of water. Cheryl: I think. Monica: Oh my gosh. I just did a podcast on that. You did? Cheryl: Yes. Yes. Monica: Oh my gosh. I love that you're doing that. It's like water really is, I mean, there's so much to know. Talk about wisdom. Cheryl: Exactly. Whoa. Exactly. Monica: And then, of course, the bio waters of the body, I mean, we're so, we're so, again, disconnected from like how it is that we even stay healthy. Cheryl: Exactly. And how the planet stays healthy, and I was just listening to somebody talk yesterday about what we did when we put up all these rivers and dam, I mean, sorry, dams, and we re... Monica: Routed. Yes. Yes. Cheryl: Especially in California is what they were talking about. And we are now seeing the effects of that. And you know, it's like, who are we to, to, to not respect what nature, Monica: Who are we finding out who we are? Monica: We're finding out. Yeah. In a big way. We're finding out that we could use some wisdom. We could use some Sophia. Cheryl: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So we welcome anyone who's been touched by cancer, and we have just a fantastic group of people and the people that are on the quote unquote staff, just women. We're all women. Cheryl: Oh, no, there's one guy. He does tech stuff for us. He's fantastic. Yes, he's fantastic. And, you know, all age ranges, you know, a lot of millennials, which is great because they're fantastic and they have a different way of looking at things than I do, which I love, I love. So anyway, cancer talks dot com and there's all, you know, interesting stuff on there. Monica: And Cheryl, when you say touched by cancer, really it's anybody who's either had, I mean, anybody really who's had a relationship, I would be welcome. My father had prostate cancer, right? He died of prostate cancer. I would be welcome. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah. No, I mean, I think, yeah, it was part of the entelechy of his life, you know, I think is he had a legacy and, and the thing is I had a very short time with my father, but in that short time. Monica: He would kind of dispense what I call these nuggets of wisdom. And like, I feel like I have them just all literally in my heart and in my head, like exactly the way he used to say them and exactly that with his Boston accent and everything. I was Monica, not Monica, you know? Monica. Yes. Monica. Monica. So funny. Monica: But anyway. Yeah. And, and yeah. Thank you. He, he passed, uh, about 30 years ago. So it was, I was just 20. Oh yeah. Yeah. 21, 20. I can't remember. But yeah, you know, it's, it, it's touched all of our lives, you know, it has. And I just, I love that you're, you're holding this conversation with such open hands, you know, and just welcoming, you know, the more, and that you're such a sister revealer. Monica: So thank you again, you know, for everything. Cheryl: This has been fun and enlightening. I've learned so much from. What you've said. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. Not an interview. It was a conversation. Monica: It was. It was. It was such a, that I'll keep near and dear to my heart. So for my listeners, I'll be sure to put all of the wonderful Cheryl Buggs links in the show notes and the books and the resources she's mentioned. Monica: And until next time more to be revealed. Monica: We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us at jointherevelation. com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.