Zibby welcomes life coach, inspirational speaker, and host of the mega-hit podcast Abundant Ever After, Cathy Heller, to discuss her powerful and transformative new book, ABUNDANT EVER AFTER: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease. Cathy shares her spiritual journey—from facing antisemitism in college to exploring spirituality in Israel and integrating mindfulness and Jewish mysticism into her life. Then, she outlines actionable steps for building a life of joy, connection, fulfillment, and inner peace. Want to meet Cathy in real life? Get your weekend pass to the ZIBBY Retreat: Santa Barbara, Feb 21-23, 2025!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Kathy. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Abundant Ever After Tools For Creating A Life Of Prosperity And Ease.

Congrats. 

Cathy: I'm so honored to be here. You are so lovable, but you're also so smart. And that's a really cool combination. And I told my husband, I was like, cause it's 7 30 morning time. I was like, this is the interview I want. I care about this more than anything because you live your life with so much integrity and you bring just so much good to the world.

So yay. I'm so happy to be here. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Thank you. And I'm sorry. It's early there. 

Cathy: We're up. I'm just saying it's like morning time. I'm like, none of this.

Zibby: You know, it's so funny because I was like pouring over every word of this book. And I was thinking to myself, I think I do some of these things, but I've never articulated that I do them. Sort of like putting out the positive vibes and manifesting and the thinking about it. And I don't know, there's so much in here that I was like, wait, I don't know.

Is this something and how has Kathy been able to articulate that these are all the things when like some of this is almost like from the subconscious in a way? Well, anyway, let me back up and why don't you tell listeners a little more about the book? 

Cathy: First of all, I cannot believe that you read any of it because you get so many books that that's like, Dayenu, like I'm, I'm done.

We're good. So here's the thing about Manifestation is that I was never into that. Like that didn't speak to me. My parents got divorced and I had like just a lot of unpleasant things going on in high school. So I grew up in Florida. I went to Florida State and I went as a theater major initially and then I was like, I really need to know more about why we're in the world.

Like, this doesn't speak to me. And it's interesting because I was not connected to my Judaism at all. Like, all I knew about Judaism was Mel Brooks and lox and bagels, which is not bad. I mean, those are two cool things. Although I didn't like lox and bagels then, but you know, and there was an antisemitic incident actually that happened to me my freshman year of college.

I came home to my dorm room and there was a swastika on my door. And I had brought this like cabbage patch kid of like, as like a token of my childhood that was like on my dorm room bed. And they put numbers on its arm and they put a swastika on its head and like hung it from the ceiling fan and then wrote on my mirror, like, dirty Jew or something like that.

It was so right out of school ties. I don't even know if that movie had been made yet. Maybe it was made. Anyway, it's such a good movie. I couldn't believe they knew I was Jewish because I didn't know that, I didn't know much about being Jewish. And I went to the, you know, the RA on the floor and he was helpful except nothing happened to those two boys.

We found out who did it. But that actually propelled me to want to know more about 

Zibby: Judaism. I can't believe how sick that is, by the way. Can we just pause? It's like, I would have had a heart attack if I walked into my dorm room and saw that. That's ridiculous. 

Cathy: It's not good. Yeah, it was very scary. And, um, I went to school in Tallahassee, Florida, where funny enough, even though it's a school in Florida, you'd think there's not a ton of Jews on campus.

And I had wanted to go to BU and because of my parents divorce, I couldn't pay for private school, but it wound up being a blessing because I said, forget it. I'm going to just study who the heck am I and why are we all on the planet? So I actually became a religion major. And when I graduated college, I wrote this paper comparing Moses and the Buddha, and they both grew up in a palace.

And then they, and eventually they left sort of the materialism world and they went into the wilderness and then they found their way to what they both created, you know, the Rambam Maimonides says that Judaism is a middle path and the Buddha calls it a middle path. In any case, I was so inspired by that, but I knew enough to know.

I knew nothing. I had read, like, Abraham Joshua Heschel in college, and I applied to rabbinical school at JTS. And a friend of mine said, why don't you like defer it for a little while and go to Israel? And it's so funny that I thought about going to rabbinical school. I really at that point, I was so into it.

And my friends that were into law went to law school, but I didn't know anything yet. I was like, I've never been to maybe I should go. So I go on this trip. I thought I was gonna go for three weeks and then go to school. I go and the last day of the trip, I walk into this class and it's like a rabbi who is like a jubu and a psychologist.

Also, he passed away. His name was rabbi David Zeller and he was wearing like, cute sandals, Birkenstocks and like, scruffy beard. And I liked him. And he taught me my first piece of Torah and he said, the very first time a word is used in the Torah, we know what it means. And he says, does anyone know the first time the word Shabbat is used?

And I'm like, no, like I'm like clean slate pretty much. And he said, it's when Abraham is meditating and it says, and Abraham sat at the foot of the tent and God appeared. And he said, but it doesn't say sat the way we would say that. Like. You're sitting down. It's using the word for meditation. So Shabbat is a 24 hour meditation.

And when we sit in that place of stillness, God appears. Well, that like completely blew my mind, right? That that divine connection is always available when we arrive at our own door. And then I was like really intrigued. And I stayed in Israel and I wound up meeting Rabbi Aaron and I wound up learning with him and living in the old city, which was beautiful.

It was an unbelievable experience. Uh, it was also during the Antifada 2001, 2002, 2003, which was for a little girl from Boca Raton, Florida, that really widened my perspective on the world and gave me a lot of depth, which was. In the end, like it served to help me become who I am, but one day, Rabbi Aaron said, have you heard about the law of attraction because everyone's talking about it?

And I want to give you my my thoughts on that. And I'm like, yeah, I think people are like, the secret was like a big deal, but I had not seen that yet. And he said, you know, in Judaism, we would say the law of attraction is really the law of reception. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, well, the word Kabbalah.

Comes from the word the cabal, which means to receive and he said, if you had a radio and you put it on a desk next to you and you turned it on, what would happen? I'm like, you'd hear something music static, you know, radio station talk show and he said, yeah, but before you turned on the radio, where was the music and I had never asked that question.

I thought that was like such an incredible question. And he said, the answer is it's hidden in plain sight. It's already there. It's hidden in plain sight. Yeah. So what needs to happen is you, you have a receiver that can actually tune to the frequency of something that you couldn't perceive because you weren't yet capable of tuning.

And you didn't have the frequency to hear that. But he said, but when you go further, you get to decide what song you're hearing, because you could listen to 97. 3 Y 100, you know, Z 100 in Florida was Y 100. And he goes, and they're all on the same dial and they're completely different. So he said, our job is to find the love song on the radio because it's in escrow, because the only song God gives the world is a love song.

And if you haven't landed on it yet, you haven't opened your reception wide enough to get that signal and get the best reception. And then I realized we can live in fight or flight, or we can live in our heart. And perceive the fullness of our experience all the time and then we're already manifesting because we're, you know, I say to people and I say this in the book, like, what do you want to create in your life?

And they're like, you know, a better relationship, more money, a nice house. And I say, all of that is awesome. It is. But you have way bigger dreams than that. What you really want is like deep inner peace. You want to be in flow state. You want to have like creativity, like, bursting through you. You want to feel connected to everything that is.

You want a mystical experience. And they're like, Yeah, I'll have some of that, right? That is immediate. Like that feeling is always available. And when we know that we tune to that, then it is truly uncanny how things happen in our like 3D experience, like the opportunity, or you meet a cool person, or you've got a good, you know, job opportunity and the money and all of that comes because wholeness is Is already yours.

You're not coming into your life from a place of lack. And so long story short, I'll just end with this. I left Israel and I moved to Los Angeles and I started studying mindfulness at UCLA because they had created this whole program to really understand the brain and body. And at first meditation was extremely difficult.

And then I started to understand how we can witness what's happening for us and witness our mind rather than trying to turn it off. And when I put all of that together, I did wind up quote unquote manifesting just the most incredible moments strung together, which became my life. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I love the frequency analogy.

I love your toaster, how your husband got you a complicated toaster and it doesn't work till you plug it in. It's the same thing. It's like all the tools are there, even the most advanced tools. You just have to like figure out how to hook it up. 

Cathy: Yeah. And we've been given this incredible technology inside us.

You know, I do this podcast, just like you have your beautiful podcast. It's been such an extraordinary gateway for me to learn so much, you know, it's just such a humbling, cool experience. And Dan Buechner has become a friend of mine and, you know, he created this sort of look at the blue zones. That was really helpful for all of us.

And these folks, like they now know that. What's letting them live so long and live so well, they have less cortisol going on in their body. Cortisol creates inflammation. Cortisol, inflammation is responsible for every kind of disease. And why that is, is because they've tapped into the technology, which is, How we can work with our nervous system to really find equanimity and like, that is such a mic drop to understand, like, the toaster with the plug.

It's inside of you, but when we spend our time in the blizzard of our mind, the toaster stays unplugged. 

Zibby: So you have this ability to distill like what is going on with everybody right away, which before we even started recording in one sentence, you like made me feel better. I get a flipping comment. Like you do this with your coaching.

You do this with on your podcast. You do this like all the time and can help anybody sort of see through the mess they can't see through themselves, which is a gift really. And in addition to all the other things, like the conversation and ability to make money and like all these things that you do, like when did that piece of things tap into you?

It's one thing to be aware of our own thoughts and sit there and say, Oh look, I can see my thoughts passing and now I get meditation, this and that. But it's another to be like, okay, here are the questions I need to ask you. Right now. So you understand. 

Cathy: That's really unbelievably generous. It's really trying to fully receive how kind that is.

You know, I heard someone once say that the work we do in this world, we ultimately we do it for our mothers. Which I thought was really fascinating. Like who we become on some level is what we give back or what we've learned or what's the sort of what comes out of that fertilizer. And my mom has a lot of magic to her.

And also, uh, struggles with really intense depression and actually tried to commit suicide twice when I was growing up. And that was like, I remember that evening and like ambulances and, and then there was always like a low grade just intensity and she, that song, Vincent, you know, I could have told you this world wasn't made for someone as beautiful as you and mom is like that.

Oh, she's really, really awake to empathy and she's really creative and her mind, she has ADHD. Her mind doesn't stop and she lives inside this like prison of her mind. And it's debilitating, and awful, and lonely, and isolating. And so since I was born, I've been her cheerleading section. And it, it's literally why I was hell bent on finding purpose.

My parents had a horrible marriage. They both have tremendous, like, issues. My dad has passed away. But, I mean, there was just so much, uh, volatility and going on in my home. So, I think I was being, sort of, my life experience was like a dojo, you know, and finding Judaism and Jewish mysticism and mindfulness and then finding out that all these incredible mindfulness teachers that I love, like Jon Kabat Zinn, they're also all Jews, which is just so uncanny.

Like Ram Dass is Jewish. Like I, I feel there's something in the DNA that, I mean, how do you explain that? Like it's, it's, It's all there are all Jewish people in this mindful Jewish, there's an overlap there, which is really interesting. So it's sort of a life assignment, I feel like, but my point is, it didn't start when I started, like, reading books on, like, You know, Wayne Dyer or whatever in college, it literally started in my living room, really observing deep unhappiness and deep unworthiness.

And I think it all comes back to, you know, what I learned in Israel was that we are someone because we're some of the one, that we're each a masterpiece because we're a piece of the master. Rabbi Aaron said, if God was the sun, we need to be a ray of that light. There is only oneness. That's the mic drop of Abraham.

People say it, you know, Abraham believed in one God. Go further. He believed God is one. Sha means hashem is one. God is oneness. It's all part of the oneness, which is why Jews don't try to convert people because you're intrinsically connected to the oneness that is so radically progressive and it's so expansive that we don't even have a lived familiarity with anything like that.

Zibby: Mm-hmm . 

Cathy: But what it means is like every wave in the ocean is connected to itself. So why I say all this is because. My mom's struggle or any time we, any of us struggle, it's this little, I am this little self because whenever we close our eyes. I often say we see further with our eyes closed because we have an insight and immediately we sense that there's something essential to us.

That's like, who we really are. That's bigger than our name, our body. We're nobody nowhere. No time. It's like this essence of us, which is why people love to meditate. They sat down with somebody suit and we immediately feel this like. endless capacity to feel love and also to receive love. There's like a humility because all that other stuff is ego.

And so that once I started learning how to perceive that, that's the exit to suffering. That's it. 

Zibby: I love how you connect this all at the end with this conversation with your daughter when she says her Roblox avatar is actually like, life and the soul and how her name, like, you know, me, Zibby, right? That's my avatar, but my soul is something different.

And like, I can change anything about the outside, but what's lasting and the most important thing is, I mean, it's a, it's a much better way to say it's what's on the inside that counts, right? But that's really it. Like, who are we really? What energy and what are we bringing to the world? And I just loved that visual of like her on Roblox, you know, making her own character.

Cathy: It's like so uncanny that she's shared that Deepak Chopra said to me, he goes, say, I am Kathy Heller. So I say, he goes, say it again. Okay. He goes, now just say, I am Kathy. So I say it, he goes, did that feel different? I go, it does. It's like, A story, right? And he says, just say, I am. He goes, does that feel different?

And I started to cry. He goes, there you are. That's it. That's it. And the wholeness we're thinking we're going to find in more followers. Or more approval or more money, it so pales in comparison to the fulfillment of like sitting, arriving at your own door, like finding that part of you. And that part of you is, uh, it's got this wisdom.

It's got this access to wellbeing. It's like the 80 year old version of you, you know, it's fascinating because. If you went outside of like the solar system, I mean, even if you go before that, like I say to people, I'm like a day on earth is 24 hours, like, how long is a day on Jupiter? They're like, I don't know.

I'm like 9 hours, 58 minutes. Why? Because of the relationship to the rotation of the sun, what happens when you leave the solar system time evaporates completely. So, the real reality of it all is, like, the reality of the universe is beyond time. It's timeless. Doesn't have time. So why I love that is because God is beyond time, which means that the past, present, and future for God are all happening now, which means you can find that part of you.

The 80 year old wisdom inside of you can call that in now. The five year old who you were, you could feel her. You can call her in now. And in that place of like the real now, that's where like you get all your like, Real wisdom, right? So when you meditate, you know, for me, it's like, I'm trying to strip away this meat suit and find the part of me that's like, has the drone view of my experience.

And I say to people, listen, I know meditation can be intimidating. I say, why don't you try 90 seconds? The same way that you select what you want to wear, select how you want to feel every day, and then close your eyes and say, like, What would ease feel like? Feel it in your body. What would joy feel like?

And all of a sudden you realize, why would you wait for something good to happen to make you feel that way when you could feel that way right now? And then you start to memorize, like, how do you get to just live feeling what you choose to feel? Where do you focus your attention? And that's when you literally start manifesting everything.

Zibby: I'm curious in the universe without time and all of that and being so tapped into that. How, what is your thought? What are your thoughts about death and what happens after our bodies die? 

Cathy: You know, it's so interesting because Judaism, a hundred percent, a hundred percent believes that there is so much more that happens after, but it doesn't focus on it a lot because we say L'chaim, we're so into this world.

It's really interesting. We're so into this world. So many other practices. Are about trying to get rid of this, you know, get out and you know, the whole idea of Buddhism is like you get out of the continuation of coming back here. So you can be free of this world. We actually believe our job is to find the sparks of God in everything that is in this world.

So that's really, I just want to say interesting, but I do know, like, from our tradition that we definitely believe That, you know, obviously first, the 12, first 12 months, there's like a hash one on that fish. The soul is like really looking at itself and we don't have quote unquote, how we believe that just having a really look at yourself and a hash phone, when you get a check at the end of dinner in Israel, it's called the hash phone.

It's an accounting. So it's really looking at your life. Right, which is interesting that it's been saying that in the Talmud for thousands of years, because now when people talk about near death experience, they say they have like a, they watch the movie of their life. That's like in Torah, right? And we believe that's either really, like, lovely to watch or it's painful to watch because we see what we would have chosen instead.

So we don't need hell because it's a recognition. It's sobering to just look back at ourselves and what was already an escrow for us. That we didn't allow ourselves to receive because we chose from resistance or from fear rather than from what's really expansive, the most expansive possibility and then after that 12 months, I believe the soul kind of, you know, has whatever Aliyah, whatever like elevation it has based on the life that it lives and we believe like in messianic times, like literally people will be back in their bodies and we don't say more than that. Like that's all it says. Like for as many tractates have been written about like where to stand when you light a Hanukkiah, there's like five words said about that because that's how focused we are on this world. 

Zibby: Well, in your book and you have like so much to say, I could take this in like a thousand directions, but you do offer through many of the people that you've interviewed.

And by the way, I was like, Oh, I should like. Do something like this where I include wisdom from everybody I interviewed. I should like, this is so smart. I was thinking like I should do a quote book or whatever, but like you wove it all in and I'm like, oh my God. 

Cathy: I feel like you just did that in a different way by like taking this beautiful wisdom from each individual and putting it all together in a book.

Zibby: Well, I don't know. 

Cathy: You did it. You're like, did I just do that? , you can also do it through your own 

Zibby: narrative. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's a little, a little different, but you do give readers some specifics on like how to help themselves, like a roadmap. And it's in the book with all the exercises, but it's also obviously from listening to you and getting involved in everything you have to offer.

When you think of people getting out of their own way, which is sort of something that you're, you're trying to get people to do, right? To plug in, to do all these things. If there's something they can take away from this conversation to make like This afternoon better, or tonight, or something, how can they plug in today to make today a little better?

I feel 

Cathy: like what comes up, I mean, at this point I'm sure you have this too, like I can't even, I probably approximately have talked to thousands of people because I've been doing the show for so long and, and what have you through events and emails. And there's like two lines that everyone's telling themselves.

I can see them. And the two lies are either I'm not enough. That's a big one. Or this thing I want is not possible. So, the first thing to know is that your mind lies to you all the time. And we get to choose, right, what we think. And so, the only fake news there is, is inside your head. And then I want to just address the I'm not enough one because when I first met Rabbi Aaron, I was telling him something and he told me how much he loved me.

And I didn't understand that because I wasn't what I thought would make his approval. Like, I wasn't super religious and wearing long skirts and whatever it was. And I said that to him. I'm like but don't you deep down really hope like that. I'm going to do this and that and, you know, live this life like you do.

And he said, no. And he said, this is really an important point. He said, love is not earned. Love is a gift and the creator of the universe doesn't need you to do anything to be loved. You are loved because he's like, if, if, if God was a tree and you're a branch of that tree, how do you not love that tree?

So, to really deeply understand that in your household, as much as your parents did their best and they all do the best that they can, there might have been some way in which if you got straight A's, you were loved. If you were skinny, you got loved. Like, there's a way in which we start to perceive that.

And when I hear so many people not feeling enough, I'm like, wow, you really need like more experiences of like unconditional love. Love is by definition for no reason. And so we need to learn to like, be our best friend. And so I often say, like, get a picture of your 5 year old self, put it near you and look at how easy it is to love her and she's had enough.

She had enough of being criticized, and she had so much joy in her, but I think the other piece of this is Julia Cameron. She wrote this book called The Artist's Way, and I've become friendly with her, and she said a lot of people don't allow themselves to live their life on their terms because what if they don't make it perfect, whatever the thing they want to attempt, you look at a nursery school classroom.

Every kid is playing because they're willing to be messy. So, I would say, like, what would bring you joy, even if it doesn't have an ROI, like, could you do 1 thing in your day just because it feels like it brings you back into a state of playfulness. And then good news is the data shows when you do that, you're more productive than anything else.

But there's so many things I could say, but those are just two little things. 

Zibby: That's perfect. Somehow our time is already up. Obviously, we can keep this going. I hope I get to like hang out with you in person in LA or whatever. We should get together. 

Cathy: When are you, are you ever in LA? Sometimes. 

Zibby: Yeah, I'm there a lot.

I mean, you know, so I'll, we'll, we'll take this offline. 

Cathy: And I'm going to have you on my show. I feel like you're setting that up. 

Zibby: Thank you. Oh, I didn't know. That would be lovely. Sure. 

Cathy: I'm in. Thank you for having the courage to be you, especially now. 

Zibby: Aw, thank you. 

Cathy: You don't know all the people behind you that feel so represented and seen by your love and integrity.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you. And thank you for the book. I loved it. 

Cathy: I can't believe it. 

Zibby: Okay. Yeah. It was great. Really helpful. 

Cathy: To be continued. 

Zibby: Okay. To be continued. Thank you, Kathy. 

Okay. Bye.