In today’s GRACED podcast episode, I’ll be discussing the reasons behind my podcast hiatus and sharing updates on my journey during this break. Topics include activating my Light Language, the Healing Herbology deck I kickstarted, my past life regression experience, the concept of unconditional love, and much more.
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00:00 Introduction
01:48 The Reason Why I Took a Break
06:05 Activating My Light Language
08:41 The Healing Herbology Deck
09:30 Finding the Path to the Omega Institute
15:36 My Past Life Regression Experience with My Mother
24:15 My Past Life Regression Experience with My Father
30:18 Giving Yourself Unconditional Love
34:07 End of episode – make sure to leave a podcast review!
Full Transcript
💖 Introduction
She puts a bag over my head and slits my throat. I’m just seeing blood dripping into the bathwater. Her crying immediately after she slits my throat, but immediately begins to steal my things and leave as if nothing had ever happened.
Welcome to The GRACED Podcast, a space for everyday magic for your everyday life. We do this through rituals, aligning yourself to your soul’s purpose, and creating alchemy to heal our mind, body and spirits, so that you can bring in more love and joy, manifest your desires and believe in your dreams. Listen and watch over at graceduong.com/podcast and on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, and all the places you can find me on social media. Now let’s dive in to today’s episode.
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✨Changes to the Podcast Schedule
Hey everyone! So, I was on a podcast break, but now I’m back! But first, let’s go over some housekeeping, because there are some changes with the podcast schedule, and I just wanted to let you know. Podcast episodes will be coming out again weekly on Mondays, and instead of Weekly Mysticscopes, I’m going to release Monthly Mysticscopes. Which will be posted on the Mystic Mondays YouTube channel and here on this podcast to make the podcasting a bit more sustainable for me, and podcast episodes for The GRACED Podcast will be posted on the Grace Duong YouTube channel, where it was always posted, and you can also listen to it on any podcast platform like Apple Podcast and Spotify. Alright, let’s get into it.
✨ The Reason Why I Took a Break
Today, I’m going to be talking about why I took a podcast break and what’s just been going on with me during this podcast break. If you’ve been listening to the podcast in some previous episodes, I kind of gave some hints about what was going on. So personally, I have Jupiter, my North Node, and Uranus transiting through my 12th House. Which just led to some really profound experiences. So everyone’s experiencing a Jupiter transit right now, and I’d really encourage you to look at your own natal chart to see where Jupiter currently is in your chart, just to see how that transit is affecting you. But mine happens to be traveling through my 12th House of karma and hidden secrets, and I feel like during this time there was a lot of cleansing, clearing, a lot of hidden gifts that appeared to me, and also a lot of traumatic experiences that just bubbled up and made itself aware to me to heal from.
And the 12th House is known as the house of retreat. So taking time for solitude, taking time to connect with spirituality, your relationship to spirit. So for me, it was definitely a time of retreating back into my inner world. And discovering my innate truths while shedding the old, which is a whole process, right? It’s never ending, but it felt especially intense during this time. And still, because Jupiter hasn’t fully entered my 1st House yet, so in some ways I’m still working through the residual effects of this transit.
So instead of trying to fight the cosmos and attempting to do all the million things I was doing, including this podcast, I just decided to do what was best for me to take a break. It just seemed like the cosmos, the universe, whatever you want to call it, wanted me to take a step back to reassess and to get my head straight and also to deal with perhaps things I’ve been avoiding for a while now.
Also, I think a lot of this speaks to divine timing and I think that’s also a really fascinating thing about astrology and tarot and using metaphysics to help you navigate your life. There are certain patterns that appear in your life, in certain transits, you know, that you can then look back on and see how that’s affecting you and how that has propelled you forward, held you back. I think we all go through these life moments where things seemed to be going really well, and then there are life moments where we needed to take a step back and reassess, and that was where I was.
However, I also realized that the timing is never perfect. That nothing will ever be perfect, and that this lesson for me is about showing up as imperfect as everything is, because that’s where the beauty is, ultimately. When you’re able to be vulnerable, share yourself, even when you may not feel the best, or you’re going through something.
I think showing up actually helps propel you forward, because then you’re creating movement. Of course there’s a fine balance to it all, right? Listen to what works best for you. I feel like I did my retreating, and so this episode is very much my comeback episode.
So this transit also brought a lot of gifts and also some painful experiences. There were weeks where I just all of a sudden felt depressed, like out of nowhere, to the point where it was debilitating. And it shocked me because I’m a very productive person, I feel like I’m always working, I like my work, and I think that to me was just showing me That I had a lot of feelings that I was perhaps avoiding through working.
And I do think a lot of this was repressed emotions that just really needed to be cleared and released, so it did feel like the 12th House transits that are happening right now. I do feel like Jupiter is a huge part of why I’m experiencing this, but again, Uranus and North Node are also transiting my 12th House, so there’s a lot going on there. But I do feel like a lot of this is clearing before Jupiter enters my 1st House, which is coming up in May for me, but also for all of you. So definitely take a note where Jupiter will be transiting in your chart.
✨ Activating My Light Language
And then there were some really amazing things that happened, like activating my Light Language, which if you’ve been to some of my workshops last year, I actually shared Light Language with the group. And if you don’t know what light language is, it’s basically a multi dimensional language that you can speak, write, and use movement, like with your hands. It sounds like an alien language, if I’m gonna be honest with you. And sometimes when it comes through, it can actually feel easier than speaking English or whatever language that you were brought up knowing and have learned. Because it can feel like a familiar language. It’s really the vibration of sounds that is sending the message, so even if you don’t understand the words and what it means, you can feel the vibration of what it means. It can feel really healing to hear and receive Light Language. From what I’ve experienced so far with Light Language, it’s going to sound really unique to how you share it and speak it because you all carry your own multi dimensional experiences that are unique to you, your memories, your lineages, and so forth. Another thing I did during this break was a sound healing training. I’ve always wanted to do this. And I also took some voice lessons to activate my throat chakra. Here’s a short clip of me playing the sound bowls along with using my voice.
✨ The Healing Herbology Deck
I also started working on my fifth deck, the Healing Herbology deck, which I released as a Kickstarter. Part of this was inspired by the experiences I had during my Ayahuasca retreats and how plants have the power to heal mind, body, and soul. Although this deck doesn’t specifically speak to Ayahuasca experiences, it’s more general in terms of how herbs have healing capacity and healing modalities. It’s related to the elements fire, earth, water, air, and how we can use that to balance our bodies, our energetic system.
I also did my first solo public speaking gig where I talk about the past life memories that came up during my past life regression training, which I also did. So I guess I’ve been doing a lot during this break.
✨ Finding the Path to the Omega Institute
And the bulk of this episode is going to be about that past life experience that I’m going to share with you today. And one of the most impactful things that happened last year in 2023 because right now it’s February 2024. And what I’d like to primarily discuss in today’s episode is the past life regression training that I took with Brian Weiss who wrote the New York Times best selling book, Many Lives, Many Masters, which happened to be one of my favorite books about past lives. I actually booked this training in 2020, and it was supposed to happen in 2020, but of course the world shut down due to the global pandemic. So when registration opened back up again in 2023, I jumped at the chance, and I’m glad that I did because it immediately filled up.
I mean, there was a three year period between that last training date in 2020 to 2023, so people were eager. to get on that list. So this training took place in, I would say, July of last year, and from where I am in Philadelphia, it was supposed to be a three and a half hour drive to the Omega Institute in New York and I stop at a little town outside of New York to meet up with a friend, Laura Chung, who happened to be on the GRACED Podcast before, to grab lunch before heading over there. Definitely check out Laura’s episode for some manifestation tips.
And then all of a sudden, it starts hailing. There were major road blockages and I couldn’t move and get anywhere because of these blockages. I must have been on that same road for about two to three hours, just trying to get to the retreat center. And it’s just so funny about the timing because at that time I was thinking about the Chariot episode because if you’ve been listening to this podcast, we have central themes around certain episodes surrounding the tarot cards.
And so I was thinking about the Chariot episode and whether it should be a solo episode because it happens to be my chariot year and everyone has a personal tarot card of the year, so definitely look that up on the Mystic Mondays App because we have a calculator on the app as well.
But anyway, I had a lot of car stuff happen last year. My car got broken into twice, and my laptop got stolen twice. And it was pretty insane. And I was just thinking about how the chariot can relate to in modern times, to cars, to automobiles, to traveling, and how sometimes you want to get from point A to point B, but sometimes you’re taken off road or in another direction, and you have to navigate, or maybe there’s another lesson for you on another destination.
My point being that sometimes getting from point A to point B is not always linear, and that was definitely happening to me in real time. At this time, I had just activated My Light Language not too long ago, and it was super strong, I was using it every day. And I used it in the car when I was stuck on that road, unable to move as it was hailing all around me. Cars lined up, there was like a tree that had knocked down, so we were all blocked. And after I had finished my Light Language, someone turned their car around, rolled down their window, and just let me know. And others know that there was no way this was moving forward because it was unclear if the line was gonna move or not, so I think we were just all waiting for a sign.
And so that was my sign to just turn back and go back to that little town that I was in, which was about an hour away. And I had already turned back like two or three times and my GPS kept taking me back to this same road. But when I got back to that little town, I was able to redirect my GPS and reset the settings, and it took me down another road, a clearer road. And from that point forward, it was a completely clear hour-ish drive.
It was just so weird because I was experiencing so many issues on that other road that it seemed like a lot of locals took as well because it was more scenic, it was closer to the other towns. This other road, it was just like a major highway and I thought that would be like a nightmare as well but it was actually super clear. Anyways, it did get me thinking about the symbolism behind this off roading experience sometimes we’re just taken in another direction, sometimes things take slower, sometimes it’s just unexpected and you have to roll with it.
So finally I get there, I get to the Omega Institute in New York, there’s about 200 other people who are also attending this training. It’s summer, it’s beautiful, there’s greenery everywhere, and we eventually kick it off with a group past life regression experience. Now, I have done my own past life regressions before, before I even knew what past life regression was. When I was around 8 or 9, I remember taking myself down a tunnel. And I was just curious what was on the other side of this tunnel.
And on the other side of that tunnel, I was an African girl wearing a yellow dress. It basically took me down another lifetime. And I think I actually saw like three lives when I did that, but that was the one that was the most clear that I remember. And I was so freaked out, I actually didn’t do it again.
And then, as an adult, doing my healing and spiritual work, I’ve taken myself down past life regressions through meditation. And actually, Brian Weiss has a really great past life regression meditation on YouTube that he recorded at the Omega Institute years ago. Look out for the ones without ads. Because that’s the one that you want to listen to.
And I’ve actually booked a session with a past life regression therapist where we had a session and I was able to see two lives during that session. The experiences were very similar to what Brian Weiss mentions in his book, Many Lives, Many Masters, where you can see the memories and when you’re done, you float away from that life back into the ether.
✨ My Past Life Regression Experience with My Mother
So anyway, taking you back into this first past life regression with the group, it was the clearest past life regression I ever experienced. I could make out faces, details, the environment. It was visceral. Now, in the past life regression, let’s call it a meditation, we were taken to childhood first, and I saw myself as a child. I was born in New York, so I saw myself out with my mother running errands, like getting groceries in supermarkets, out on the streets in Brooklyn, New York, which is where we lived at the time. I also remember being really scared and not knowing why. And then we’re led down the womb during the meditation and prompted to feel any feelings or any memories that you feel while you’re in your mother’s womb.
And then we are presented with a door. And a divine being who would help guide us before we open that door. And at this time, a divine being did show up for me. Metatron appeared. He revealed himself to be Metatron in a masculine form. He took his hand, he had orange light hovering over my heart center. It was almost like reassurance that everything was gonna be okay before I went through that door.
So I approach the door, I remember seeing an ancient symbol on that door, and as I step over to the other side of the door, I am transported to an old castle. I look out and I see mountains, I see greenery, and I see fog. And I’m looking down at my feet, I’m wearing like silk kind of slippers, I’m also wearing silky red robes, and I am an Asian woman in this lifetime.
So clearly I’m an Asian woman in this lifetime, so it’s something that I’m familiar with and can immediately relate to. I am realizing as I’m walking through this life that I am of nobility of some sort. As I have my own room and a really awesome bathtub, I’m seeing myself take a luxurious bath, and I definitely felt an air of privilege in that lifetime. And eventually I’m being shown a scene where there’s a ton of people eating, like at a banquet hall in a castle, and I notice a woman, and even though her features are different, I immediately recognize her as my mother, and even though that woman was not my mother in that lifetime, I knew that she was my mother in this lifetime.
Her facial features were different, but her body shape was about the same, and she seemed a bit angry and even jealous in this scenario. Anyway, so this is a trigger warning because something violent is about to happen.
Flash forward, I’m taking a bath and she comes in as my servant. She’s the main servant, by the way, so she’s like running things behind the scenes. And in this scene, she puts a bag over my head and slits my throat. In this past life regression memory, I’m just seeing like snapshots blood dripping into the bathwater. Her crying immediately after she slits my throat, but immediately begins to steal my things and leave the castle as if nothing had ever happened.
What I understood from what was happening was that she was very poor in that lifetime and so she did what she thought was best for her own family. So she stole things like jewelry and other belongings that she could possibly sell. I wasn’t really shown what happened next. Since I was in a group setting I only could go so far as the group could go, meaning that the meditation was coming to an end, which meant the experience was also coming to an end, but I had experienced everything that I needed to know in that moment.
So when we came back, I understood that my mother in this lifetime had killed me as a servant in a previous life. And she did it because she was poor and wanted to support her family at that time. When we came back, there were tears streaming down my face. I mean, all of this information was so overwhelming.
The man next to me asked me if I was okay. I wasn’t. I was just shown a traumatic past life experience. One where my mother, in this lifetime, had murdered me in a previous lifetime, where she wasn’t my mother, but she had access to me and trust, and so obviously that trust felt betrayed, and I think remnants of that had been carried into this lifetime with our relationship.
As I was digesting all of this, it was devastating, but it made sense. I didn’t have an easy relationship growing up with my mother. And even though our relationship is much better now that I’m an adult, there are just a whole lot of things that started to make sense about the whole experience in our general dynamic.
It’s obviously complicated. I love my mom, but it wasn’t always easy. Relationships are complicated, and I recently attended this conference where one of the breakout sessions talked about how tension is often more present in relationships than ease. Mind you, this breakout session was all about building teams and operations and stuff like that but I find this to be true in general about relationships. Which makes sense, right? Relationships are often how we learn the most. Learning about ourselves, our boundaries, our compromises, our truths.
It also reminds me of the movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Especially because the relationship between Michelle Yao and Stephanie Su is a mother daughter relationship. They’re trying to kill each other, they love each other, they’re trying to work out their mother daughter dynamic and relationship. I’m definitely oversimplifying here. But it was really fascinating to watch that movie and the parallels that were present in that movie and how that applied to my actual reality of what I was experiencing.
And if you have not seen that movie, I highly recommend it. It’s really cool, very visual, really entertaining. I feel like it speaks really well to the Asian American experience. Also happens to be award winning. And I feel like it really is a cool way to depict multiverses, different timelines, parallel timelines, all of the different versions of ourselves that are living simultaneously.
And also the people that we choose to reincarnate with again and again and again and again. Because you do get a choice who you reincarnate with, and often the people that you reincarnate with have lessons for your soul to learn. So even though my mom, in this previous life, was not my mom, but my servant, and even though that past life seemed ages ago, like ancient times, It felt like ancient China.
I chose to reincarnate with her again. And perhaps instead of repeating the same cycle, this is an opportunity to break ancient patterns. I mean, when all this was revealed to me, it was really overwhelming. So I definitely had to take time to myself to integrate this information, decipher it, and figure out what it means and why now.
Like, why is this information being shared with me in this moment? And obviously when the training was over, the past life regression training, and I went back home, and went back to my normal life, it almost felt like a different reality. And it was difficult not to be different around my mother, now that I had this seemingly new information.
Something pivotal for me after I had time to integrate and whatnot and I went through my sound healing training, was I actually performed a sound healing on both my parents, my mom and my dad. Now my dad at the time, he was having trouble walking, had pain in his leg. So the sound healing really helped with that pain he was experiencing.
And then with my mother, I intentionally spent extra time working on her, especially her heart chakra area and especially the back of the heart. And I remember saying, setting the intention of releasing any past karma between the two of us. And I knew something was working because the very next day, she said she felt very tired from that experience. So that, to me, is always a sign that the healing is working, and that the body is integrating this healing, so it needs time to rest, to receive.
✨ My Past Life Regression Experience with My Father
And by the way, the past life regression training was five days, so there were other past lives that came up. Including a couple with my dad, and the one that I will talk about today was relatively chill, and I experienced it the day after the one I experienced with my mother, so maybe spirit was like, let’s just give her a chill experience now.
But basically, my dad was still my dad in that past life. We lived in a fishing village, and we were both fishermen. We had a fishing business. It seemed like a family business. My dad died of old age. I was a man in that lifetime, so I was his dutiful son carrying on this fishing business legacy. And that was that!
He was my dad in that lifetime, and he is my dad in this lifetime. And generally speaking, I do feel a bit more ease and understanding with my dad. Of course, it’s not always easy, and there are challenges. I feel like with every relationship, but I feel like between us, there’s always been like this unspoken understanding.
And then another interesting thing about this experience was when I’ve taken myself down past life regressions or had that session with a past life therapist, I had seen different lives where I was a different ethnicity, but for whatever reason, all the past lives that came up during that week, during those five days, I was Asian in each of those lifetimes. And so that to me was telling me that there was some sort of ancestral healing that was happening that week that was taking place within me to heal my relationship to my culture and my upbringing. Especially as a first generation Asian American.
So why am I sharing this today in today’s episode? Well, partly I just wanted to let you know what was going on. It’s not like the whole reason why I took a podcast break, but it was part of the reason why I took a podcast break. And what happened afterwards? It’s so strange nowadays because I actually feel closer to my mom now more so than I ever did before.
I think that she did the best she could with what she had. She is uneducated, a refugee, and she has a lot of her own trauma that she went through that was unprocessed. Along with my father, they were both refugees. And I think one of the messages that kept coming through from the universe was the universe doesn’t show you what you can’t handle.
Because I remember going into this whole spiral of like, why now? Why this? Why are you showing me this? What am I going to do with this information? And that was what kept coming through. Like, you’re ready to see this now. You’re ready to integrate this now. It’s not all la la la and butterflies, you know what I mean?
If you’re doing this spiritual work, you’re also going to face your shadows. In all of the parallel universes and lifetimes that we’ve lived, your soul chooses the full breadth of the human experience. Which means there is light and shadow, duality is present, contrast is present, it’s present in the tarot cards with upright and reversed meanings.
In one lifetime, you could be a criminal, and in another lifetime, you could be a saint. You are experiencing both sides of the coin. And of course, there’s so many shades of gray in between the black and white. And I can see the patterns I have carried over from those past lives with my mom and my dad. I think also one of the biggest things was for me to remember that we have a choice when we come back to Earth.
You have a choice to reincarnate with the same souls, to go back to Earth school, and to learn lessons. Obviously nothing is perfect and everything is a work in progress. So I’m not saying I’m not still integrating this, I’m not still learning new things about myself. I’ve learned that it’s never ending and that the road is a constant road of self discovery.
I feel like this was just a really pivotal moment in me understanding my relationship to my mother, things I couldn’t quite vocalize and explain, and how I relate to her now, and how much of our relationship has shifted since having this past life memory come up. It’s easy to feel like I’m the victim here, but I’m not.
And I feel like that’s actually a really empowering way to think about it. Because then you’re not placing your power in someone else’s hands, and you’re taking the power back yourself. And growing up I feel like I really struggled to love myself. I always felt like the black sheep growing up, like it didn’t belong, I felt different.
I felt like I wasn’t from this planet, and I still feel like that. It’s very easy to feel alone. And then having to work for love through achievement was a huge thing. And so, the biggest takeaway from having this past life experience and memory come up for me, it just made me realize that I had to give myself the unconditional love that I never received, or at least wasn’t given to me in the way that I needed.
Like I said, both of my parents are refugees, there was a war, they were both living in Vietnam, they’re ethnically Chinese. So, growing up emotions weren’t talked about. They were stifled. They were repressed. With them, it’s all about survival mode. Getting your basic needs met, like, are you hungry, is a common question instead of how are you? Did you eat yet? The basic needs that needed to be covered were are you fed and do you have shelter? That’s really it. That’s what was important growing up. The other things like emotions just felt like luxuries. Love doesn’t necessarily feel like a necessity when you’re in those type of situations where it is life or death. And, if you’re not facing these emotions, integrating them, releasing them, the trauma passes down the lineage. Until someone is ready to face them, and I suppose that’s me.
✨ Giving Yourself Unconditional Love
So anyway, I realized that I needed to give myself that unconditional love that I never received, and I did this through meditation, affirmation, and eating healing foods for my chakras. And me being me, I created a whole program around it to heal my inner child, my inner teenager, my adult self, and my higher self. Now I’m not ready to share this program with anyone, I really did just create it for me, for my own healing. It’s basically 28 days of rituals. Designed to enhance your self love, unconditional love, unblock chakras, and it comes with meditations, planner sheets, and more.
And because I was doing it for me, I was doing it myself, I noticed a huge shift in how I feel, how I feel about myself, increasing my self confidence, and overall just feeling better in my day to day life. If you’re constantly looking for love outside of yourself, you’re always going to be hungry. If you’re giving yourself the love that you need, you will find the sustenance and nourishment of being able to give yourself love instead of looking for a replacement, whether it be food, drugs, work, whatever your vice is.
And like I said, I will share the program with you when it is ready, but for now, if you want to get a sneak peek, I am giving away access to the unconditional love meditation that I wrote and created. All you have to do is leave an Apple Podcast review, take a screenshot of your review, and send it to graced@mysticmondays.com. So that’s G-R-A-C-E-D @mysticmondays.com. Once you do that, We’ll send you a link to the meditation.
When I created this meditation, the intention was to give myself unconditional love, to heal the divine feminine and masculine aspects within me that is present in everyone no matter what gender you are and identify with, to unblock the chakras, and to connect with yourself more deeply.
Because of that, there’s a lot packed into this meditation. And I recommend that you listen to it on a daily basis for at least 7 days, as this meditation can very easily become a part of your daily rituals. Which is really what inspired me to create this podcast in the first place. Everyday magic for your everyday life.
And when you do this, just take a note of how you feel before you started doing and listening to these meditations, to how you feel by the end of those seven days. For me, after doing this unconditional love meditation for about a month, I noticed a huge shift in my energy, what I was attracting and what I was attracted to, because I was filling myself up intentionally with unconditional love.
Legit, this actually happened. I was walking my dog, and this car driving down the road did a U turn just to compliment me. And tell me how nice I looked, which hasn’t happened in a really long time, so it was surprising, but I knew it was because I was giving myself unconditional love. And by the way, I was not attracting that type of energy or attention when I was feeling bad about myself and my situation, when I was in the thick of my healing.
Whether it was feeling shame or depression, or just going through those murky feelings that we all go through. But when you give yourself unconditional love and when you start giving it to yourself on a daily basis, you are consciously shifting your energetic frequency and your vibration. And then you start to depend less on the outer world to meet your needs because you are able to meet your needs on your own.
Leave a Podcast Review 💖
Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s GRACED podcast episode! What were some of your biggest takeaways? I want to hear what you think! Leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or a YouTube comment. I read them all! Thank you 💖
✨ End of episode – make sure to leave a podcast review!
Okay, friends, this is it. This is the end of the episode. I just want to thank you so much for listening, for being here, and for being patient as I took my podcast break. But I am excited to be back and I am excited to roll out even more GRACED Podcast episodes.
If you liked this episode, It would mean so much for you to show support by liking, commenting, and subscribing. It really does support the podcast and the other channels. Thanks for being here. As always, sending you so much grace today and every day.