About Our Guest- Jennifer Weigel – Trusting Our Intuition — What we can learn from near-death experiences, psychic phenomena, & more
Jenniffer Weigel is an award winning broadcast journalist. She won an Emmy for her on-camera reporting for CBS and has also worked for ABC, NBC, WGN (TV and radio) and WLS. She was a reporter and columnist (“Lessons for Life”) for the Chicago Tribune from 2010 to 2015, where she covered “Blue Sky” business innovation, the “Remarkable Woman” beat, lifestyles, travel, and food. She also helped launch the Tribune’s video department. Her popular podcast “I’m Spiritual, Dammit!” ran on WGN-plus for several years, and her most popular interviews from that podcast can be found on her youtube channel here. She was a wellness columnist, reporter and video producer for the Chicago Sun-Times and can now be heard having inspiring conversations with her weekly podcast – The Jen Weigel Show here: http://www.jenweigel.com/the-show/.
Full Podcast Transcription
Jennifer Weigel 01:31
Intuition is the muscle we’re all born with and I think we all have it and then it just overtime wears out. And over time it becomes this thing that we just doubt with our physical mind instead of trusting our body to give us the cues. The mind is incredibly powerful and we have got to give it more credit that are connecting to another soul if you will, or their spirit if you will can happen from all the senses not just from speaking to a person.
Diva Nagula 02:01
Hello everyone and welcome to a another episode of From Doctor to Patient. Today I am pleased to have Jen Wiegel with me. Jennifer is an award winning broadcast journalist. She won an Emmy for her on camera reporting for CBS and has also worked for ABC, NBC, WGN and WLS. She was a reporter and columnist for The Chicago Tribune from 2010 to 2015, where she covered Blue Sky Business Innovation, the remarkable woman lifestyles travel and food. She also helped launch tribunes video department her popular podcast, I’m Spiritual Dammit, ran on WGM plus for several years, and her most popular interviews from that podcast can be found on her YouTube channel. She was a wellness columnist reporter and video participant a Chicago Sun Times and now can be heard having inspiring conversations with their weekly podcasts, the Jen Wiegel show. She’s also known for tackling spirituality with humor through her writing and has written four books. Stay tuned. I’m spiritual, dammit, this isn’t the life I ordered. And psychics, healers and mediums a journalist a road trip invoice from the other side. She hosts a spiritual social club where she interviews authors in groups from across the country once a month. Her one woman show, I’m Spiritual Dammit, had two successful runs on the Chicago stage. She’s an experienced life coach, and is available for event hosting, keynote speeches, comedy and public speaking. Jen, thank you so much for being here. How are you?
Jennifer Weigel 03:46
I am great. Thank you so much for having me doctor. It’s great to be here with you.
Diva Nagula 03:51
So I am very curious as to how you came to this path that you’re currently in now. You were just a broadcast journalist and you went down a different investigative path. So tell us a little bit about how you got here.
Jennifer Weigel 04:06
Well, it was definitely not planned at all. You know, I was just living my life. I was Jennifer Weigel, the reporter, you know, ego driven. Let’s get as many awards as we can and get our face out there because that’s what was important, you know, just doing more and having more accomplishments, I thought that that would create happiness. And then my father who Tim Longo has his name. He was a sportscaster in Chicago, he died of a brain tumor at the age of 56. And so when he died, I went on this sort of tailspin into wondering where he was because I was a journalist and I needed my sources to be someone I could call on a landline, preferably, you know, talk to them, maybe meet them in person. I didn’t think there could be anything to this talking to the other side, barking at the sky, you know, praying for signs kind of stuff. So it was very much The third dimension, right? very physical and very just, it’s all right here. If I can’t see it, I can’t touch it and it doesn’t exist. So I went out to actually investigate these people that claim to have these, you know, paranormal gifts, just as a exercise to I thought defraud, I thought I was just gonna expose them all as frauds really to be quite honest. And I found myself scratching my head, you know, four books later, and all these audiobooks later, I’m still having conversations. And what I’ve come to learn is that what I’m most fascinated by are doctors that have transformations, which are why that’s why I’m so excited to talk to you. Because when you’re from the world of science, and then suddenly everything’s flipped upside down, and you got to open a new compartment in your brain. That’s when the excitement happens, you know?
Diva Nagula 05:45
Yeah. And it’s interesting, because it’s curious as to how that part is blown wide open. You know, for me, it’s been a journey to get to where I am, and I haven’t even gotten to my destination yet. I guess this is just the way life is used continuously go on a journey. And for me, it’s been interesting, because I’ve been diving into the world of psychedelics over the last two and a half years. And I think that definitely opened things up for me. So yeah, I definitely have some, some cool things that have happened to me some new skill sets that has been either opened up or given to me through my connection with spirits. I’m curious to hear more stories about the people that you’ve had conversations with that. Were Western practitioners like myself?
Jennifer Weigel 06:33
Yes. So I would say the person who totally changed for me It changed everything because she’s a physician. She’s a surgeon and orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mary Neal, and EA L. She wrote the best selling book to have an in back. She was dead. No oxygen, 30 minutes. I mean, her husband, also a surgeon was there as a witness. So it’s not like she was just like, Oh, I was dead for a couple of minutes. You know, I, I interviewed a wonderful woman who had died for 37 seconds. I mean, still, no oxygen, flatlining, that means something’s happening. But for Dr. Mary Neal, she says, Look, I am a pragmatist. I’m a scientist. I am not a fanciful thinker. And I like to know what I know. And she says, I should be a vegetable, and she is walking, talking. She’s a living miracle. When she was dead, she was in the light. She was in a kayaking accident in Chile and her kayak, you know, she went over this treacherous part and got lodged under a rock and she was basically drowned. And they found her body like 30 minutes later, just floating and she was totally bloated from the water and all this stuff. And next thing, you know, there’s an ambulance just in the middle of the jungle, which never happens. You know, she said, all these quote, coincidences happened, that got her to the treatment that could save her life. And, of course, they administered CPR right away, which saved her life, which that in and of itself is a miracle. And she was given all these messages and downloads and she was kicked out of heaven. She was like, This place is great. I’m not going anywhere. And then he said, Sorry, lady, you got to go back and tell your story to anyone who will listen. And I told her, I said, Look, I’ve got some abandonment issues from my childhood. I don’t know if there are enough therapists in the world that could help me with getting kicked out of heaven. That would just be too much. So that day, and I remember I was a columnist at the Chicago Tribune when this happened. She came down to the Tribune, because she was speaking at Evanston hospital, she was going around the country speaking to hospitals, about her experience. She said, Sometimes one doctor would show up, and sometimes 15 would show up, and sometimes 50 would show up. But even if there was just one, she knew she was supposed to tell that story. And that is one of the things she came down and she said, I was terrified to come down here. But I wake up every day and I say, okay, in God, we trust you think to the penny, and God We Trust and she just moves forward. And she got the call, go to the tribune do an interview. And the real annoying part was that as a columnist for Chicago Tribune, they would not publish her story. They said it was too woowoo religion. Yeah, we had a religion columnist that’s allowed to write about the Vatican and the Pope and you know, the cardinal and all that, but we couldn’t write about this. And her book went on to be a bestseller. She was on Anderson Cooper and CBS and Fox and you know, she would ended up being on every single channel and we could have had the first story on her and they said, no, so that is the kind of resistance that I’ve been finding in mainstream media to some of this content. Thankfully, things like, the new show on Netflix, Surviving Death, has maybe opened the door and blown the door open. And Dr. Mary Neal is featured in Episode One of that show, which was very validating again, it’s like, wow, I interviewed her back when before her book was even published by a mainstream publisher. She had self published at first, and then it became a bestseller. So Dr. Mary Neal, I would say was the one who could she she’d said this to me, she said, Now I want you to test the universe. If you will test it. And every time something happens where you go, that’s weird. Like you think about someone and then they call you or you ask for a sign and you get a sign or she says, If you acknowledge it, and you look up and you say, “thank you got it”, that will actually create more and more momentum so that the law of averages could not possibly explain how often it takes place because you’re basically sending a flare up to God or the universe that you are tuned in and you’re ready for more. That day is when I started seeing heart shapes in everything. I’m not kidding, from like dog vomit to grass cloth. And I’m and I started taking pictures and posting them on my Instagram. And it just, it’s amazing to me the other day, my turkey burger was heart shaped, and I just laughed out loud. I’m like, you guys are good. You know, that’s hard work. So I think that was Dr. Mary Neal. That really changed it for me because as a woman of science, and as you know, this, you know, when a doctor tells you, hey, I was dead for 30 minutes, I’m living miracle you just kind of listen, when somebody died and live to talk about it, then you take notice.
Diva Nagula 11:02
How many encounters do you think you’ve experienced in terms of when you started going down this path to do this investigative journalism? You know, in this field, I mean, there’s just so many you watch all these YouTube videos and, and you hear of these mean, but you’re talking to these people and having conversations and there’s just been a lot of people and it’s just mind blowing to talk to these people one on one.
Jennifer Weigel 11:24
Yeah, but then you start experiencing it yourself. You’re like, wait, what I mean, I remember just even going back to my first book, Stay Tuned. I went to this town Lily Dale, New York – this is where spiritualists that spiritualist movement was founded in the mid 1800s and it really got traction around the time of Abraham Lincoln. Then they opened their doors from let’s see Memorial Day to Labor Day and it’s all spiritualists and psychics, mediums, healers, whatever, and it’s just a really interesting community. And so I go there looking to hopefully connect to my dad and my mother in law at the time, I’m divorced, but at the time, my mother in law, who was a card carrying Catholic who told me, I was basically going to hell for even interviewing these people. She showed up at every single session I had. And I finally looked at, like the fourth medium, and I said, No offense to my mother in law, but could you please step aside? Because I’d really like to talk to my dad. She didn’t believe in any of this stuff. Can we get her out of the room, please. And she literally every single one had, and they were inside jokes that only she and I knew that you can’t Google anywhere that I never wrote about anywhere. You know, that’s the stuff when you can’t Google something. Now I remember sitting down with one person and he said, were you just on a tour of a school yesterday? And you’re like, how could you be tapping into the movie of my mind the day before, I didn’t post anything about it, I was on a tour of a possible new school for my son the day before. And I had literally the skeptic in me that I thought this person had been following me. I mean, how would they know this? But there’s something scientific about it and there’s something spiritual about it and there’s something to energy and how it, you know, broadcasts out there, you know, there are mentalists that I’ve interviewed, that literally read my mind in that moment. So are some of these people reading your mind? And maybe, but that just again, that’s even a cool party trick. I’ll take it!
Diva Nagula 13:15
Interesting. You know, you kind of talked about neuroscientists, you know, you value science. And this is also a spiritual experience, too. So can you define this from both perspectives?
Jennifer Weigel 13:27
Well, so I’m not a scientist, I interview scientists, I was, you know, very much into any scientist who’s experienced this, but I feel like now, look at this. We used to think it was okay to smoke. Okay. Doctors used to be on TV, asking what cigarettes you smoke, lighting up candles. So we
basically do what we know at the time with the information that we’ve gathered. Okay. So what I would like to see happen is more data being shared about the power of intuition and something like spirituality, something bigger happening to soul, if you will, Dr. Eben Alexander is another wonderful example of a guy who was in a coma from his kind of meningitis. And, you know, he, he’s like, I would never have believed in this in a million years. And then one of these quote, you know, angels that was with him was this woman, and he didn’t know who this was.
And it turns out, it was his sister that he didn’t know he had, or you know what I’m saying? It’s like all of these, there’s no way that anyone could do the research on this stuff ahead of time. So you just have to go, I don’t know everything. Maybe I’m using 9% of my brain and a good day. So what’s the other 91% doing? You know, we have to, we have to give some space. To learn more. We thought the world was flat until we knew science and that wasn’t the case. So we do what we know at the time. And so I encourage people to keep asking questions, keep digging, keep looking under the hood, and and then you can judge for yourself. You can decide for yourself, you know, my stroke of insight is a wonderful book, Jill Bolte Taylor, she’s a doctor and she was a specialist. In the brain, and she had a stroke. And her she saw her brain was shutting down. She knew what was happening. I don’t know if you’ve read that book. But it’s so incredible because she could feel the doctors feelings, you know, she could literally, she knew what they were thinking, but she couldn’t speak. So the mind is incredibly powerful. And we have got to give it more credit, that our connecting to another soul, if you will, or their spirit, if you will, can happen from all the senses, not just from speaking to a person, you know.
Diva Nagula 15:31
And you’ve come across a lot of people who are psychics, mediums. So what is the difference between the two?
Jennifer Weigel 15:40
Well, a psychic is somebody who’s intuitive and wants to tell you about the future, right? And a medium is a person that wants to tell you about the other side and says they’re talking to your dead relatives. And some do both and some don’t. Right? I think that actually all mediums are psychic. In a sense, they’re getting some sort of intuitive hits. But I think we’re all intuitive. I prefer the word intuitive, because psychic to me, you know, gives people the idea of like a crystal ball and dead chicken around your neck and all that stuff. So intuitive. Intuition is the muscle we’re all born with. And I think we all have it and then it just overtime wears out and over time, it becomes this thing that we just doubt with our physical mind instead of trusting our body to give us the cues. You know, another doctor that changed my life was Dr. Judith Orloff, who is an MD and she’s the head of Psychiatry at UCLA, like she’s a big deal. And she’s also had a couple of near death experiences and as an empath, she says, and, and empaths are people whose antennas are super sensitive. They don’t like crowds, they get anxious, you know, there, there can be different levels of empathy. And, you know, I was definitely an empath, as a kid,
Diva Nagula 16:45
That’s me!
Jennifer Weigel 16:46
You know, right. You don’t you get stomach aches, and you don’t know why around certain people, they make you uneasy, you’re kind of picking up on other people’s sludge. And and that’s an empath, and she really gave credence to that label. She’s got a great quiz on her website, you can go and take it, and see how many of them you score. And then you can say, Oh, that makes sense. I’m an empath. And there’s tools to being an empath, you got to be kind to yourself, you got to break away from the crowd put up energetic protection, you know, she talks about a golden ball of light around you a double sided mirror so you don’t you know, the energy vampires that suck the life out of us, we all have them in our family in our work. So again, another MD talking about these kinds of tools and things will make it more mainstream. And that is my big hope.
Diva Nagula 18:41
And it’s interesting I am actually I’m an empath and I only discovered that recently because I started to feel over the last two years, maybe even slightly longer, just a lot of anxiousness and nervousness and just energy that I was not familiar with. And I thought it was something that was wrong with me. And honestly is as I was diving into this field of spirituality and psychedelics, I started to learn that the people that I’m around I’m that in 10, I’m tapping into their emotions. And so every time I get this hit of a wave of anxiety, I’m looking around to who that person is. And it’s actually quite cool because as a healer, I can go to that person and see what’s wrong and try to help with them because I can feel what they’re going through.
Jennifer Weigel 19:28
And that’s a lot of the healers that I’ve interviewed would say or even some of the mediums they’ll say who died of a head problem head trauma, I’m feeling a headache, intense pain in my head. So they’ll get the symptom of say, my dad died of a brain channeling Oh, you know, they’re channeling that that physical symptom and so that’s what’s happening. It sounds like with you and unfortunately I feel there are a lot of if there’s any parents out there listening and their kids complain of pain and aches and stomach aches and whatever the gut biome is huge
and it’s our antenna and it’s one of our major chakra sources. I think there’s more gut issues now than ever before, Because kids are how to work with this energy that they’re picking up on. I had a very similar situation, what you’re talking about where I was at my desk once I remember I was writing a story at the Tribune. And all of a sudden, I felt complete panic and sadness. And I was like, What the? And then I asked Is this mine or someone else’s, and I got this strong feeling it was someone else’s. So I stood up, and I looked over the median, and there was a woman, she was packing up her stuff, she’d just been told she was being let go. And I didn’t see her through the partition. But I felt her, you know, her energy came splattering in my direction. And because I was just sitting there in neutral, I absorbed it. And so I try to tell people, it’s hard not to be a neutral, because you want to just be relaxed, right? Just like, I don’t want to think about protection. And I don’t want to think about putting up this boundary of an energetic wall, a double sided. But when you’re in busy places, and you’re an empath, you have to think about that. Because otherwise you’re gonna feel it, and it’s gonna really kind of wreak havoc with your day.
Diva Nagula 20:03
For sure. Yeah, for sure. And that’s, that’s kind of what happens to me. And again, you were talking about this, you know, energetic field that we need to place on ourselves to protect ourselves from either absorbing or taking on other people’s energies. So I’ve been learning to do that. And, yeah, it’s essential, especially when you’re in crowds of people on a regular basis. I mean, unfortunately, it’s not happening now. I mean, you could, but because of our restrictions due to COVID, we, you know, I’m not in crowds as often as I was. So there is an advantage there, but still having that protection in place and knowing how to use it is very essential.
Jennifer Weigel 21:36
Totally. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it’s a tool. I’m still tweaking every single day, you know, and I wish it were a class in schools, I wish how to develop your intuition work class in schools. You know, it was it was couched in the 50s and 60s with like the power of positive thinking by
Norman Vincent Peale. And, you know, Conrad Hilton talked about the hilty hunch, which is intuition, but it made him a very successful and rich businessman, you know, the men in business talk about that gut feeling, I just went with my gut. That’s intuition. So if we could just celebrate that teach that as a major skill, have exercises I tell I tell my son all the time was a teenager, and I tell my friends, and I tell my, my zooms, I do these, like weekly, I call them spiritual social clubs, because I can’t be in person right now due to the pandemic. So we do these virtual gatherings. And I say, always, always work that muscle, always. So if the phone vibrates, and you know, you’re expecting a text, just pause for a second and think, who you think it might be before you look, feel. And see. And maybe you’ll get a vision of the person’s face, or you’ll see their name typed, or whatever it is, but start working that muscle, because just like going to the gym, the more you do it, the stronger it will get, you know, you can’t run a marathon by walking a mile a day, you have to train for it. So I hope that people will listen to this and start training that intuitive muscle.
Diva Nagula 22:58
That’s a really good idea. I never thought about that. Because you know, I’m on my phone, and I’m getting text messages through all these different platforms and emails. And it’s like, you know, you’re devoid of that physical contact with all this technology that’s going on?
Jennifer Weigel 23:10
Yeah
Diva Nagula 23:10
I guess having that visual of preaching, that person can have that mental connection, and you can visualize it and, and that exactly, translate muscles. That’s really brilliant. Thank you for showing that.
Jennifer Weigel 23:20
Hey, no problem. Thank you.
Diva Nagula 23:23
And in terms of psychics, so do you feel the psychics are when this stuff comes to them? Is it because they’re already have a connection with spirituality? Or is it just kind of random?
Jennifer Weigel 23:37
You know what I think it’s interesting because I have a real hard time sometimes with the whole psychic idea because people just want to know their future. And freewill is a bitch. And at any moment, we can take a sharp left turn or a sharp right turn and get on a plane and go to Jamaica and just blow the whole thing out of the water. So I tell people that a psychic might be telling you what they’re seeing. And if everything moves forward in that same trajectory, then maybe it will come true. But, we cannot control someone else’s freewill. I just had a conversation with a person the other day, who was asking me can I ask for signs on whether this relationship will work out – there’s two players there. You can only control your freewill. You cannot control the other person’s freewill. So if the other person wants to tangle with you, that’s their choice. So you can ask for signs all you want. Will it work out with Joe? Or am I going to be with Dan? But guess what Joe and Dan are on their trajectory and every day they have a choice of whether they’re going to call you or not. And so, it’s really hard to predict other people’s behaviors. Now, I do think because of Dr. Mary Neal, and when she died, she told me she saw that we have these destiny points that we’re supposed to hit in our lifetimes of people we’re supposed to meet things we’re supposed to accomplish. And if we decide to get off track, then eventually we’ll be guided back on to the path. So it’s like you know when you make a wrong turn And your GPS is like recalculating route, you know, you’ll get there, it’ll just take you a little longer. And you have to take a few more turns. But if there are, quote, destiny points you’re supposed to hit that you’re guided to follow through with you will be taken there. So that stuff I think that you can’t be messed with. And there are some people I feel that can tap into those. But the timing is always screwy with psychics, and people get so mad, “You told me I’d meet a guy in October, and it’s been four October, and I haven’t met anybody.” Well, guess what, maybe it’ll be the 11th October, because sometimes these people are just seeing the month, October. And then their ego mind puts this October you’ll meet a guy, you know. So it’s one of those really tricky things on the timing piece, you know? So I feel like it’s tough to call and but I just try to encourage people to tap into their own intuition and not to bank on
whether they should go to the store because a psychic told them so.
Diva Nagula 25:59
Yeah, no, that’s good point in speaking of, you know, being told what to do in so many people are, it seems more and more are open to this. And maybe they’re open to this in their own mind, but not sharing it with the public. And I think that there’s this sort of like, not necessarily, it’s kind of frowned upon, you know, and and it’s looked down upon. And I wonder, you know, is this because there’s so many frauds that are out there that are taking advantage of people, or people just scared of this type of psychic ability? Or clairvoyance?
Jennifer Weigel 26:31
Well, I think a lot of it is because of what religion has put on it, right? So people can sit there and think, “Oh, this is this is happening. Jesus rose from the dead.” And that’s like, no problem. They’ll believe that. But then you say, Oh, the psychic, I went to talk to my dead dad, people go, Oh, we really? I mean, so how is it that it’s completely acceptable that nobody had any cameras or physical evidence that that these religious people did what they did, we’re just taking someone’s word for it, and then it’s written down and chiseled and templates, and, and then put into pieces of paper and texts that we some people really believe is law, their spiritual law. But what we see and touch and feel right here, and now is weird. And so I just feel like every single job, right, whether it’s a doctor or a mechanic, you’re gonna find frauds, you’re going to find bad ones, you’re going to have a bad plumber, you know, you might have a bad handyman. And so does that ruin every handyman when you have a bad one? So unfortunately, there are frauds, unfortunately, there are people with ill intent, and I’ve met many of them, they use their “abilities” for the wrong reasons, which is horrible, but it happens. And so I feel like that that’s going to happen in any where USA, you know, your accountant might rip you off. That makes sense.
Diva Nagula 27:54
Exactly.
Jennifer Weigel 27:54
So again, the more people in mainstream jobs, such as doctors, journalists that talk about this and say, Yeah, I went to this person. And, to me, I’m really fascinated by the ones that don’t want to be famous and don’t want a TV show and don’t care about writing a book, they just want to help you heal from your wounds.
Diva Nagula 28:14
Right?
Jennifer Weigel 28:14
And that is the kind of person I’m ready to spend time with. And I want to have in my social club, to help people to heal because grief is paralyzing. And it stops you from moving forward. If anybody genuinely can help them get on with their day, I’m all for it.
Diva Nagula 28:32
And initially, when you went down this path, your initial mindset was to expose frauds. Do you have any, any stories that you can share with us about any frauds that you’ve come across?
Jennifer Weigel 28:43
Well, I just, like I said, I’ve met some really talented people. So they have the gift, and there’s no doubt and so they use that gift to hook you in with the evidence, right? But then they manipulate a situation or, you know, they’ll overcharge for their time later. And so I feel like
they get you hooked in with their ability. And then they take you to the cleaners if you and I have I’ve seen friends you know, it always breaks my heart to see when somebody emails me that oh, this guy charged me $1,000 to come and clean my space. I’m like, What? Yeah, that’s
that’s insanity. And so if anybody out there is being told they have to go buy a $5,000 candle to take the hex off of their office or their home or, or they’re ring or whatever the heck it is. People believe anything when they’re grieving. And if these people these, you know, I call them
like the gypsies of the zone, they’re good. gypsies. I’m not saying that all gypsies are bad, but sometimes they have this kind of carnival sort of energy, where they take advantage and I prefer the faith based mediums which are the ones that are you know, not wielding a gigantic
cross, but there are big believers in God and faith and you know, one lady I met who is a healer, Pat Longo. She’s fantastic. She discovered Teresa, the Long Island medium Teresa Kudo. And Pat was 45 when she became a hands on healer and her hands turned on, and she
didn’t know what the heck was happening. And she had five kids and 17 grandkids and was like, What the heck is happening here. So now she’s 70. And she helps people develop their skills, because she’s like, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.
Diva Nagula 30:26
Wow!
Jennifer Weigel 30:26
And so those are the kinds of people that I love finding and celebrating, unfortunately, you got to get through a few of the shysters to get to the good ones. And so people will email me and say, Jen, I need a good psychic, I’m like, really? Or do you need a therapist, because some people who are too dependent on needing their future toll because they just can’t live with the day to day really need a coping mechanism for their anxiety, or perhaps they’re empathic or, you know, everyone loves a little good news and something to look forward to, to help them get
through the tough times. But after a while, we can become too dependent on their gifts and abilities. And that’s when we have to start becoming our own inner voice.
Diva Nagula 31:05
Exactly, exactly. I’m very curious about you, specifically, in terms of your path. So what was your spiritual belief prior to going down this path and this investigative path that you’re on now? And how has it changed over time?
Jennifer Weigel 31:21
I was a convenient Christian, I guess you would say, I was baptized, Lutheran, my grandpa, I guess, was a Lutheran minister, I have my great grandpa, I never met him. So we were Lutheran to start and then became an Episcopalian with my my dad’s second wife. And that’s how I was confirmed. And then I stopped going to church when I hit high school, because I was like, I want to sleep it on Sundays, thank you very much. And then later on, it was sort of congregational. I feel like you can find God if you want to find God – in your living room, if you’re loading the dishwasher, if you’re in the garden, like you don’t have to be in the building, but there’s something lovely about being in a place where they’re singing and song, and you know, so that was always something I enjoyed doing. But I never, I never felt like that guilt of, oh, gosh, I didn’t go to church, I’m not going to be able to find grace. I had some friends who were like that, and it was just this awful cycle of guilt, and, shame and you’re gonna go to hell. And it’s like, okay, I’ll save you a room, because you’re going to be there with me. If that’s up, it’s gonna be. So now I know there’s something bigger. I believe there isn’t a you know, hell for people who aren’t baptized and there isn’t judgment, because you are this person or that person. I think there’s like a life review from all the people I’ve interviewed who died and come back to tell me about it. You have this review, where you basically see and feel everything that you put out. So if you were a real jerk, you’re going to feel all those moments. So that could be hell, right? That could be your version of hell, if you killed people, hell. If you were loving and spread love, then that can be heavenly. So I just try to live now by the golden rule of treating others the way you’d like to be treated. But knowing that I’m human, I also think you have to put up boundaries to toxic people, you know, for the empath rulebook, right? And sometimes that’s really hard for people because they don’t understand a boundary. What do you mean? Oh, you’re always there for me, I need to vent. It’s like, no, you’re basically throwing up on me energetically, and I’m not going to take it today find another punching bag. So we all have to live our truth. And sometimes that can be hard for others. But yeah, I think at this point, my my spiritual belief is that I go through phases of having a different maybe Archangel that I am
fascinated by and do research on like Michael or Raphael. And lately, I’ve been dipping into the history of Mother Mary, you know, the Blessed Mother and reading up on Mary Magdalene. When I when I get a chance, I’m fascinated by history that can be documented. And so that kind of stuff always, really, really, I absorb it very quickly. So there’s no hardcore rule. Except for that I’m open to learning as much as I can.
Diva Nagula 34:07
Yeah, this is great. Well, Jen, I appreciate your time on the show. And and for people who want to find more information about you what’s the best way?
Jennifer Weigel 34:17
I’d say JenWeigel.com is the best way and on that you can find my podcast, my social clubs, we’ve got a bunch coming up in the next month or so. And we usually have at least one a week. So like I say, it’s a great way to connect with community. We make them very small, so that
everybody can ask questions and feel like they’re, you know, it’s not like 1000 people or something. We have, like 15 people, 20 people, they’re very intimate zooms. So I always encourage people to email me the audio books are also all there as well. For old fashioned reading the paper book, they’re on there as well. So I’d say JenWeigel.com is the best way to find me.
Diva Nagula 34:55
Awesome. Well, Jen, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Jennifer Weigel 34:58
Thank you, and I I really look forward to having a conversation with you on my podcast so stay tuned as they say.
Diva Nagula 35:05
I look forward to that.
Jennifer Weigel 35:06
Great