Rebecca: This mystical experience happened without me knowing it was going to happen, and it really changed me energetically. I connected in with this energy, which effectively, I saw the path all of us travel as we take our first breath and exhale our last. And it was the sweetest, most sensual experience of my life.
Nancy: Welcome to the Nancy Levin Show. I’m Nancy Levin, founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, best-selling author, master coach, and your host. I help overachieving people-pleasers set boundaries that stick and own self-worth, anchored in empowered action, so you can feel free. Plus, if you’re an aspiring or current coach, you are in the right place.
Join me each week for coaching and compelling conversations designed to support you in the spotlight as you take center stage of your own life.
Let’s dive in.
Welcome back to another episode of the Nancy Levin Show. I am so thrilled to be here today with my guest, Rebecca Campbell. Rebecca is a bestselling author. She’s a mystic, a channel, and a teacher. Her books, oracles, and creations inspire us to connect with the wisdom within so that we can really live our soul’s wildest dream.
Her brand new book that is out right now is an extraordinary treat. It’s called Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It: How to Be Held by Life When It Feels Like Everything Is Falling Apart. I can’t think of a better book to have by my side at this time in our lives. It is really my great honor to welcome my dear friend, Rebecca. Hi, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Oh, hi, Nance. Oh my gosh, what a blessing to be here together. God, what a time.
Nancy: What a time. A time. I mean, through all of it, you know, if we look at it on the global stage, the personal stage, there isn’t a soul with whom I have spent time who isn’t really experiencing a great, as you would say, I suppose, a great initiation. There’s just a lot to manage externally and internally right now. I want to read what’s on the back of the book because it struck such a chord for me and the way that you have written this book, which is such a beautiful expression of your own journey, sharing your journey with us so that we can find ourselves in your journey and find our own journey.
Your writing is so beautiful, your prose, your poetry—it’s really all poetry. The back of the book says:
“This is a book about rebirth, which means it’s also about death. For rebirth isn’t possible without it. This is a book about healing, which means it’s also about feeling, for healing isn’t possible without it. This is a book about finding yourself, which means it’s also about losing yourself, for finding yourself isn’t possible without it. This is a book about new beginnings, which also means it’s about endings, for new beginnings aren’t possible without them.”
I read this, and for me, this is so encapsulating of the human experience, which is really what you’re writing about from the place of having an otherworldly touchstone. I would love for you to share, as we open up into the conversation, a bit about your journey to writing this book, which I know is a long journey. What had this book be able to come out of you at this time?
Rebecca: The book begins with this mystical experience I had in my Kirtan teacher training. Kirtan is a form of bhakti yoga, which is essentially devotional chanting. This mystical experience happened without me knowing it was going to happen. It really changed me energetically. I connected in with this energy, which effectively I saw the path that souls, all of us, travel as we take our first breath and exhale our last. I saw the ancestral lines. I saw within myself the grief, rage, love, and ecstasy—all of that—that really comes with the human experience. It was the sweetest, most sensual experience of my life. It literally took seven years to stabilize that energy. I had that connection point.
All my other books I have written looking back, so I know what the book’s about. They’re all poetic, but they’re a little bit more of a journey or a guide. Whereas this one, I was commissioned to write it, but it was a different book. Yeah. Oh my God. It was written in a period of great change as well. After that, I moved to Glastonbury, COVID happened, a huge, much-needed racial reckoning, the whole world was on fire with wildfires everywhere. I became a mother for the first time in that period. Having a baby for me,I’m not a woman who was always certain that I wanted to be a mother.
I saw it in my future, but it was quite a big thing. I could feel that because of who I am, there was a lot that was going to come up in the initiation of motherhood for me, and I’m sure everyone’s path is initiatory in their own way. I could feel how huge it was going to be for me, becoming a mom in those extreme times.
I’ve just been through my midlife transits, which is Pluto has a lot to do with it. It’s like that classic midlife crisis that we all go through. When growing up, I remember hearing about the midlife crisis, and it’s so different from what I expected. It was really in this perfect storm of all of those things, which were incredible and difficult all at once, that the book was written.
I had that experience with the mystical experience where I saw birth, death, and everything in between. Then I started, through literally having a baby in my body, experiencing soul being knitted into form, soul arriving in physical matter. You know me, I totally geek out over that.
I was writing the book through all of that. I also had a late miscarriage as well. I also wrote it through literally having one minute life inside my body and the next minute death. You know? So it was a very, very deep time. Postpartum as well is one of the greatest changes that a woman goes through hormonally, as well as pregnancy. Then there’s obviously menopause and perimenopause as well. I was writing it through periods of change using poetry and connecting to my guides as “please guide me, please lead me, please show me the way.” I kept really seeing how it really was a book about change and embracing that in-between, those seasons that we’re taught in the West to push away—autumn and winter.
It also kind of echoes in, I guess, stages of being a woman, which is the wild woman and the elder, or the crone, which, you know, is where our power lies. It’s these archetypes that are so needed now. I know from your incredible shadow journal you’re touching on all of these bits and the descent, which is what I call it. You go to what has always been there beneath the surface in the bones, in the flesh, in the cells—it was always there. I’ve learned this through your work too, Nancy, that it’s actually the only place that proper safety is, when we look at it. Because I remember how Wayne Dyer used to do that thing with the orange, where you get someone to squeeze it, and what would come out is what’s inside.
I think, for me, there were the earliest stages of awakening, which were more of an upward expansion, opening of the mind, cracking open of the heart. The mystics have all talked about it as a time of exciting, inspiring visions and upward motion. Then comes the descent into the body, into the cells, into your ancestry, back to humanity, back to the earth. I think that collectively, so many of us are going through that now and feeling like we’re going freaking crazy because we’re processing so much. I don’t know if that’s because many of us in the West have a level of safety in order to do that, or if something else is happening collectively.
Nancy: Thank you for sharing all of that. There’s a few points. One is that you said your other books were written from a different vantage point, like looking back. I can really feel that in reading this book. I feel like everything just feels really close in, and there is a way in which you’re sharing about what you call the “dark nights of the soul” which I so appreciate instead of the sort of typical “dark night of the soul.”
Rebecca: As if it’ll be over tomorrow. Just go to sleep.
Nancy: Right. First of all, as if it’s one night, as if it’s one and done…
Rebecca: Anyone could do that!
Nancy: Right. Not only that each descent, if you will, will last several nights, but that we will also have several descents. Right?
Rebecca: Yeah. You think you’re out. Nope!
Nancy: Yeah. The sort of strengthening of our ability to strengthen that muscle of being able to be with the discomfort in the descent—to not push it away, to not ignore it, to not avoid it—and to know that in that descent is really fertile ground for what will become.
Rebecca: Totally. I think the reason why—because it’s interesting, when I was working on it with Hay House, we were trying to work out how much of the birth stuff to include. I didn’t want to make it not resonate with people for whom that’s not part of their path for whatever reason. I felt really passionate that it was important that it was in there because we are all born. We all came through the body of a mother. We put so much on mother because we’re so disconnected from the mother. I think that was part of why I was afraid of becoming a mother—because of all the stuff that comes with that.
Also, I had learned for so many years, decades, about transformation and rebirth. We all experienced it physically coming into this world, and I’m always blown away by how nature is constantly teaching us every single second of every day. It’s us feeling like we’re separate from it or it’s something for us to conquer, which separates us from that wisdom and from those wisdom teachings.
I think that’s why, for me, having the physicality, the physical experience of birth—which to me is very different from being a mother. Having a child, in just the physicality of what my body was doing, taught me so much on the cellular level of all these concepts that I’d read about.
Then I’m like, oh my God, all of the mystics that I’ve read about pretty much were all men. They weren’t women. That was the bit for me in this book that I didn’t want it to be a book about birth, but it needs to be in there.
Nancy: Yeah, and here’s the thing I’ll share as a woman who has not given birth: It speaks to me so deeply. You made mention of a very short piece, a line in the book that I must have underlined 20 times, this piece of like feeling matter being knitted within you as you were pregnant. We’ve all heard people saying you can be pregnant with ideas or pregnant with a project or pregnant with a book or pregnant with whatever. It really ultimately is creating something out of nothing, which to me is what speaks to me in terms of the elements that you’re talking about, about birth.
I know that it’s very literally about creating a human, but there are other ways that those of us who don’t relate to giving birth can relate to giving birth, and we can all relate to rebirth. Because I think that’s what we are all being called to do for ourselves in this time, because we can’t rely on something outside of us the way we may have thought we could at one time or another.
Rebecca: It’s so true, and I was having this great conversation with our mutual friend, Dr. Mindy. I loved how we were talking about the spiritual side of fasting on her podcast. We were talking about the difference between patriarchy and matriarchy, and I loved her refocus on matriarchy, which I know is based on research and all that. The way she said it, where she said matriarchy isn’t necessarily one woman leading over everyone. It’s about power within. That’s the feminine.
Nancy: It’s the power within instead of the power over of the patriarchy.
Rebecca: Which I think is interesting with the concept of mother as well, because we kind of push it, because we don’t believe in the West generally that we are part of one and kind of held by earth as mother.
We really look towards a figure, which is often just one person, rather than many, like it is if you grow up in a proper community. There is something about that which is really huge, and especially when we twist it, turn it around to mothering self, you know, which I think that your work really empowers people to do—like take responsibility and individuate.
Nancy: I appreciate that. One of the things that always draws me back to you and your work is, for me, you are such a miraculous blend of extreme woo and extreme groundedness. Even when you are sharing about mystical experiences or you’re sharing about things that I have not experienced or that I may not even be able to imagine, there’s a way in which I can hold it because of the way you teach from such a grounded place. Like for me, you’re not like up in the ethers. You’re very much feet on the ground. I think that that also obviously is so intertwined with your relationship to nature and the way that Glastonbury is such an important physical place for you.
Rebecca: Definitely. I’ve had really great teachers who always brought me back. I’ve always seen creativity and the unseen world of spirit, intuition, as the same thing. I was a creative before I went into this work. On both sides, I’ve had great mentors who were like, “All of that is pointless unless you act on it, embody it. What’s the point? It’ll just drive you crazy having all these ideas or having all these visions—you’ve got to embody it.”
I think also, my upbringing—I grew up in a non-spiritual family. Mom and Dad are super grounded and practical. Growing up in Australia on the beach, it was just very physical, very, very normal.
Nancy: Hi, it’s Nancy interrupting my own show. I’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up in 2024, including a brand new book. Plus, a group coaching opportunity, unlike anything else I have ever offered before. To make sure you are in the know, pop on over to my website now and sign up for my free weekly newsletter at nancylevin.com/newsletter so you don’t miss a thing. Okay, back to the show.
Nancy: How do you define … you’ll call yourself a mystic or we’ll refer to you as a mystic. How do you define that? What does that mean?
Rebecca: Yeah. So, oh God, I’m forever trying to find the words to describe the thing, and it’s the one that resonates the most with me now. For me, a mystic is someone who wants to go direct. They want to go direct to whatever that is for you—the sacred, God, Goddess—and merge with it. When we chant, we’re merging with, we’re invoking the divine. For example, when we dance, we can let that move us as well. A mystic, as well, I think, is that they’re kind of one in themselves. It doesn’t mean they’re separate, but they let themselves be moved by the sacred, by the divine.
They endeavor to see the sacred that’s all around them, not just some other place that they long to go to. I see the mystic, as well, as being someone who is all about physically experiencing the sacred. Like my friend, who you know as well, Meggan Watterson.
Nancy: Yes. And it’s so funny that you say that because as I’m reading your book, I keep feeling her… What was it called? The Red Book. What’s it called?
Rebecca: Mary Magdalene Revealed.
Nancy: Yes, that’s the one. I keep feeling myself back to that.
Rebecca: It’s really interesting. Megg’s was writing her book that’s coming out next year at the same time as mine. We were literally in the bathtub as we were complaining. We were very connected as we were doing this. Anyway, so we have another friend, Kyle, who is a man, and we adore him. He’s always said to me, “Rebecca, have you ever asked your guides to make it less physical when you have your experiences?” I’m like, yes, Kyle, I have. Anyway, I told Meggan that, and she was like, “Oh my God, he said the same thing to me,” and we realized that it really is the feminine way through the body. I think it is the mystic way as well, because it is about this palpable, sensual, direct experience—not praying to some other being separate from us. It doesn’t mean that you don’t believe in Gods and Goddesses and all of that, but it means that they’re just an aspect that you can have an intimate experience with.
Nancy: Absolutely true. I love this. Throughout the book, you give—I kind of think they’re like little offerings of soul inquiry—to invite us.
Rebecca: Yeah. That’s the practical bit. There it is. It’s all pointless without the action. You’re big on that too.
Nancy: Well, you know me as a coach.
Rebecca: Come on. Do your work.
Nancy: You know. It’s the way that you bring us in because this really is part—it really is a teaching memoir, essentially. You’re teaching us through your experience and your story, and you’re inviting us to find our own experience and to own and integrate our own experience. That has to begin with that soul—with these pieces of soul inquiry. So, yes, of course, I love that. I do.
I also love it because, for me, it can be really easy to feel separate from the mystical, to feel separate from these kinds of experiences that, as you said, happen sort of in the unseen world. It’s really been a practice for me to feel connected in that way to those parts of myself, those parts of my life. What I’m actually noticing is that the closer in I feel my parents’ mortality—because they’re 85 and 88—yes, they could live some more years for sure, but we don’t live in this body forever. I notice that my connection to the mystical or the unseen is really coming online now as I connect to my feelings about their mortality.
Rebecca: That makes so much sense.
Nancy: If we look at the death, rebirth, all of it—the cycle of it—it feels like it makes sense to me.
Rebecca: Totally. We’re all going to lose people at some point. I think that when that happens, we experience the gates of life. I know that when my friend Blair passed away—it’s who I dedicated my first book to—I flew back to Australia when I heard he was in a coma, and he died on my way back. I felt it when he passed. When I landed, I knew, and then I went the next day to see his body.
I could teach about why I think the soul lives on and that the soul isn’t there when it leaves. It was a belief of mine, a deep, deep belief of mine already. But again, coming back to the physical—seeing his body once his soul had left—my mind was so blown by how what made him him was literally not there. He was not there. He was not there. Soul had gone.
I just find that absolutely life-changing, mind-blowing. It gives me hope. Obviously, there is grief in there as well, but to know that the essence that was them—it just goes. And where does it go? I mean, this is the mystery that has fascinated me since I was a girl. We’ll all experience that in some capacity. I think that the way that many of us are raised is to avoid grief, for example. Of course, we want to, because it hurts. At the same time, when I’ve experienced deep, deep grief, particularly in someone passing, there’s also this other side to it, which feels comforting. It’s because our grief is evidence of how much we loved or love.
This is also what the physical birth taught me because I realized that literally in studying how to physically give birth, the more you expand and then you contract—expand, and then you contract—expand, and then you contract, and it’s about saying yes, opening to life.
If you let yourself open physically, then life comes. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. It’s all in there. Through our heart being broken or ripped open in whatever way it comes for us—it’s always different—if we can find a way to soften through it, it doesn’t mean the pain goes away. Not at all. But if we keep our hearts open, then it will be open to that amount of joy as well.
Whereas if we close it off and shut it down, the other side—the ecstasy, the sensual bliss of being human, the joy, the love—all of that on the other side of it will be ours too. This is the fucking hard thing about being human. Wow, what a way. This is what it means to be alive as well.
Nancy: Absolutely. I love the way that you shared about this because it’s so visceral, you know, that in order to expand farther, we do go into a contraction to then be able to expand and then contract and expand. The way that we all think of birth as a portal, and death also as a portal.
What you said strikes me so resonantly and so personally in the way in which I can look back at times in my life where I really closed myself down to not want to feel the agony. And when we close ourselves down to the agony, we do close ourselves down to the ecstasy as well.
I do think it’s true: part of being human is being able to open ourselves up to all of it and not shy away from things that we may not want to feel, because in the things we may not want to feel, we’re going to find something we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
I have to ask you about the title of this book, because it’s really so striking. Even in what you were saying, you know, so the title again, for everyone listening, Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It. What you were just saying about your friend—that the soul was gone. The soul was gone from the body when he passed, and that the soul is sort of, I don’t know, flitting about, right? The soul is out there, up there, somewhere, dreaming us into being. Can you say more about your feelings, thoughts, and experiences around this?
Rebecca: This book has had so many different titles, to be honest. Right at the end, I said to my publisher, “Can we call it The Descent? What about Great Mother Awakening? What about The End is Also the Beginning?” There were so many—Returning was another one, The Initiation was another one”. And this title is a title I’ve had for many years. It was Hay House that just kept on coming back to it. “No, it’s this. No, it’s this.” And I was like, I don’t quite get how it’s being woven together. Then it was right at the end, and I’m like, oh, it’s about experiencing it all.
To truly live is to truly come into matter, into form, to return to each other, to the earth, and truly live. Truly living is not just being in spring and summer and everything’s great, look at me, woo hoo, life is great. That’s not truly living. You’re not truly living if you’re just staying in this comfortable little bubble—that’s not truly living. To me, that’s what it means.
The mystical experience I had, as I said, it was like I saw the soul’s journey here on earth. I saw how, from my experience, we all chose to be here in this body, in our ancestral lines, at this time. It is a full-on time that we chose to be here. I also saw what it means for the soul to come in, to be knitted into form, the soul comes with, I believe, memories itself, imprints itself. And when it comes into physical matter, into having ancestral memory—which is gifts, trauma, and all of that collectively as well—we essentially inherit all of that.
I used to think earlier on my journey—I really believe in past lives. I believe in samskara, which is the soul imprints, the soul memories that it comes in with. I do believe in that. But earlier in my journey, I can see how I actually over-spiritualized some of the ancestral memory within my cells.
For example, I’m predominantly of European descent. The indigenous traditions of my ancestry involve, obviously, the Druids, the Celts, the witches, and the burning times, which has hundreds of years of persecution, of genocide, literally. That is felt in the cells, you know? While yes, I believe I probably had past lives in other times, which I have memory of, but how much of it is actually the cellular memory too? I think this is part of what’s bubbling up to the surface now as our consciousness has expanded, as we’re calling our soul more fully into the body rather than, you know, disassociating so much.
As we’re bombarded every single day with really important concepts that we’re needing to get our head around, process, and understand and find our place in at all. It is a lot.
Nancy: It is a lot. For me, I feel like it’s what all of this that you’re sharing is also what makes being alive so interesting and intriguing and inviting. The other piece of it is it’s really powerful how science has really proven what you’re saying—that we do absorb when we are in utero. We are absorbing what is happening for the mother. The beginning of who we are—the egg that made us—was already in form when our mother was inside of her mother.
Rebecca: We each spent five months at a cellular level within our grandmother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother—all the way back. That’s how we return to each other. This is why healing the mother line and mother work is so important. We realize that it’s not actually about our mother.
Nancy: Exactly. It’s not about our mother. This is why we come in with these cellular memories. This is why we come in with a visceral knowing of something that we presumably couldn’t possibly have known.
For anyone who’s listening who is kind of like, okay, I’m intrigued, but this is out there. How might you—I mean, again, I encourage everyone to buy Rebecca’s brand new book, Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It. For anyone listening right now who’s sort of intrigued but is kind of like, this is out there, what is sort of just a way to ease into this way of being in the world?
Rebecca: I think ultimately the book is about change. The one thing that we know that we’re always doing is changing, just like nature changes seasons. For some of us, it’s more extreme based on where we live, but everything in life changes.
All this book really is doing is holding your hand or sitting by your side so you can check in and say, “How am I changing? Who was I? And who am I becoming?” It gives you courage because you’ve got that information, you’ve done that reflection to realize, “Oh, this is the next step.” I think what stops so many of us is we resist the change because we’re afraid of it. We avoid it. Then we feel like, “Maybe I can see where I’m going, but I have no freaking idea how to get there.”
So there is heaps of poetry, which will make you feel less like alone in your change, which we all are changing. Then the soul inquiries as well—they’re really practical. For instance, “How are you changing today?” or “What is just beneath that?” They’ll guide you through that process.
I encourage people to come up to me at signings—maybe they do for you too, Nancy—and they apologize to me if the book has fallen in the bath or it’s dog-eared and stuff. I’m like, YES, that is the best compliment. I remember each of my books, I’ve said this, and in the edit process, they’re like, “Oh no, you can’t say that.” I say, “Just write all over the book, dog-ear it.” So I encourage you to write right through the pages.
There’s a little QR code at the front where you can download a printable workbook, which has all the soul inquiry. So you can do it separately if you want to keep your book nice and tidy.
Nancy: Mine’s very underlined. Heavily underlined.
Rebecca: No, I love it.
Nancy: I do too. Rebecca, I could speak with you forever. I love spending time with you. You really are such a bright light, and I appreciate you so much.
Rebecca: Yeah, me too. I hope we get to see each other again soon.
Nancy: I hope we do too. For everyone listening, where do you want to send them? What’s the best way to be in connection with you?
Rebecca: The book is called Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It. You can find it wherever you buy books. I’m sure Nancy will include my website. I’m Rebecca Campbell. Just Google me.
Nancy: “I’m Rebecca Campbell. Just Google me.” There you go. I love it. I love it. I love it, and I love you. Thank you for being here.
Rebecca: I love you too, Nancy.
Nancy: Thanks so much for joining me today. I invite you to head on over to nancylevin.com to check out all the goodies I have there for you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating, and a review. I’ll meet you back here next week.