Julie Hilsen: 0:00

Life of Love. Life of Love. Life of Love with Julie Hilsen. Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love, where we curiously explore our spirit, our souls and our just general curiosity of life and what we’re all here doing. And today is no exception. We have a very, very special guest, Kimberly Braun, and she has a long history of living in the mystics and being curious and saying yes, and I just can’t wait for you to hear her story and please stay around to the end. She has some wonderful offerings and, you know, share this with anyone who who needs to hear this message, because I’m really honored to bring it forward. Thank you, kimberly, for being here, so blessed.

Kimberly Braun: 0:54

Great to be with you, julie.

Exploring Mysticism and Building a Monastery

Julie Hilsen: 0:56

Yes, and I forgot to mention it’s all Saints Day today. We’re recording.

Kimberly Braun: 1:00

Oh, that’s right.

Julie Hilsen: 1:01

Oh my gosh. So you know, anybody who’s stuck in limbo we’re trying to lift up. So you know that’s. Another intention today is, you know, if you haven’t transitioned to heaven, you know, let go of that, whatever it’s holding you back, and just move on.

Kimberly Braun: 1:15

Yes, yes, yes, yes Amen.

Julie Hilsen: 1:21

Let’s segues into your background, because you had a charm childhood and you had many mystical experiences and healing from your childhood and I had the honor of listening to your audio book Miracles in the Naked Light, in which you describe part of your journey. I’m just so excited for you to share your story of becoming a Carmelite Nun and that, and although that part of your life has transitioned and you’re on to other things, it’s an honor to speak with someone who’s had that experience and you’ve had so much time to just receive and I’m just really excited for you to share your story of that kind of progression.

Kimberly Braun: 2:11

Absolutely. Oh, I’m so blessed to be here and, yes, even though my own story has some unique elements to it, because not everybody does some of the things that I’ve been called in to do, the theme is the same right discovering love, living in love, opening ourselves to embody love, experiencing the Inethible at our center and in all creation, and so I know that I’m on the same exact path as you and everyone else.

Julie Hilsen: 2:44

Well, that’s it. Not everybody has the chance to build a monastery. In fact, you’re in your 20s, you’re just a young nun and you heard a message that you were going to build a monastery in the desert and all of a sudden it happened. You got put in a place where you got a chance to, and so that’s enough. And I even googled books about building a monastery and I don’t think there is one out there. There’s books about. Everything that came up was fiction, like different mystical stories about spirits in the monastery. But I mean, your audio book is a testimony to what it takes to build something that’s going to become. It’s pretty much timeless. I mean you said you built it. In the book it was to last 500 years. So this is a legacy and just the chronicle of everything you went through to get all the money donated and all the miracles that happened, even people who weren’t Christian or Catholic. They just stood up and they said yes. So I just want to honor that contribution you made to humanity, because people aren’t building buildings that last that long, let alone spiritual centers that have been completely built by the community. So it’s just so exciting. Your story is so amazing.

Kimberly Braun: 4:17

Thank you. Thank you, it’s true, and I know that when we were working on the editing part of the book with Grace Pympe publishing, there was this bit of wrestling of how much of the actual monastic construction part do we include, because the deeper messages are all about spiritual awakening, and I talked with them and I really sat with them. It’s in the stones that the awakening happened in. It’s in the conversation of the plumbing person who brought rebar from another project to donate, it’s in all of these little details that seem insignificant that Spirit was working. And for me it’s a testimony that at every moment, when we’re washing our cup of coffee cup we use for coffee when we’re going to the grocery store, when we’re considering how to meet a challenge that’s come up in our lives, everything within our lives, it’s all sacred. It’s all there so that we can open up and experience the spirituality of the moment, and so I loved keeping those details in it. As you can tell, my memory is really sharp, even though it was like 25 years ago. I have 900 pages of details and I could have written so many more stories about who gave what and how it happened, and we, like I, had to pull the ones that would let you at least walk through the journey enough that you could feel part of the process but not be labored by the amount of detail. So that was a big challenge.

Julie Hilsen: 6:01

Well, I know it hit me on the head. It hit me on the head like halfway through listening. I was like, oh, she’s doing this. This is a big metaphor, right, like all these challenges you had were things that everybody goes through. But you could look at it through the process of planning and building a monastery and getting your life is like this structure and there’s gonna be people who let you down, but that’s just because there’s another gift waiting for you. I mean the woman on the board who are criticizing your choices if you would have just stuck with them to be the fundraisers and you hadn’t just reached out with your joy and your flow to get what you needed, you wouldn’t have gotten all the gifts that you received, like your ability to go out in the community and connect with so much greater than a committee could have done. And if they hadn’t sort of done those things behind your back to make you say this isn’t working anymore, then things would have never turned out as beautifully. And there are pictures of the monastery. If anyone’s curious, you can go to Kimberly’s website and she has a video. It’s a YouTube video that she’s doing a TED talk and she shows pictures and so it’s really cool. And, yeah, so I did wanna talk about that the stone, because that was big. The limestone went. It was. You found a spot that was the highest on the ground that was donated by the professional football players family. This is so cool, I know, right, yeah, 460 acres. He and his wife donated. And you found a high point which happened to be a bedrock of limestone. I mean, how much more affirmation do you need? Right? And you could go into the aquifer and never have to worry about water. And then the granite that came in and you’re talking about the history through the stones and I wanted to give you a chance to just talk about how we’re here and sometimes we’re just sort of flailing around trying to figure out how we’re gonna make ends meet. But can you share how Mother Gaia helps us and supports us and you represent it in the book. But I wanted you to just speak more on our connection to the earth and how integral is to each person in their divine calling.

Kimberly Braun: 8:22

Right, it’s such a great question and one I haven’t ever been asked, and as somebody that is much more fiery and much more of like a flying through in the big picture sense, while I’m very grounded, I would say that my relationship to the earth wasn’t my entry point in my awakening process, but it awoke within my entry point, which was much more subtle, energy oriented, and some of the things that I discovered as I was building the monastery, because each piece in the monastery for me became really symbolic. And when we were donated that land in the high point and we chose, we had an engineering team do soil tests, which is normal because we didn’t even have underground I mean, we didn’t have a septic field or underground for electricity or plumbing. We were gonna do all of that from scratch. So we needed to know what was underground and as they drill down they discovered that we would be tapping into a solid bed seven feet down. So you had the variance of the stone. That allowed flexibility and we could work with that, which I think our lives are about. That right, we work with things changing all the time. We’re you know, it’s a soil here and a little rock there, and but we anchored down to the solid bedrock and it pulled me down, as we discovered because we put 36 pillars down to that solid bedrock to anchor the monastery that when we anchor down into the very center of our being which is possible for any of us and all of us, because it’s always there and it’s always beckoning us, it’s not ever gone, it’s not ever hidden, it’s not ever far away, but it’s always there that the more we anchor into that part of ourselves, the more we live from the unchanging part of ourselves and the more than we meet our changing circumstances with things that are unchanging, such as clarity, peace, insight, trust, surrender, joy, we discover the wealth of resources that are there for us. So that’s what that, that underground, started even drawing me even more deeply into that it wasn’t just about the subtle energy aspects that I had always experienced, but the very ground we’re walking on is doing that for us energetically.

Julie Hilsen: 11:18

It’s beautiful. It does come through in your book. And then you described how metal that you wore on your body actually alchemized to gold while you were working on this project, because you were so in, I don’t.

Discovering the Power Within

My interpretation was that you were so dedicated to your divine mission, to just being. You said yes, and you open to the flow and you’re living from your heart and you’re building these beautiful connections and that, to me, that’s alchemy, that’s gold. But you saw it. That wasn’t metaphorical, was it? Did you have to give up the things that turned to gold while you were at the monastery, or while you were a nun or a carmelite, or do you still have those items?

Kimberly Braun: 12:17

I have the profession crucifix but I don’t have the rosary. And you’re right, I agree. And that too right is to me and you a testament that, energetically, that we are embodying spirit, and the more we embody, the more we allow the fullness of who we are to come forward. All the elements get to vibrate on that frequency. And you’re right, and it was. I was in a little bit of disbelief at first, I was like, oh, hmm, right, maybe it was a desert effect or something Right right, right, right. I had all these. But then I was like, oh, though, and the crucifix was obvious. But the rosary hit it home because, the way you know, I was using the rosary to pray and be connected to Mary and in Mary, that the way the movement would be, it would have tarnished, it wouldn’t have gone to gold, it would have tarnished from the oils on my fingers and it didn’t do the opposite.

Julie Hilsen: 13:33

And you needed that uplifting because, from what I gathered, you’re feeling sort of isolated in being put in charge of a project as a young person without any authority, Like at any time your rug could be ripped out from under you. Or you had to deal with Sister Gemma, who then, you know, you encouraged her to change her name, which I was cheering for her. I was like maybe she’s going to find more joy and not be so mean sometimes once she changes her name. You know, and you did all those nice things for her, even though she was like a ticking time bomb and you had to tiptoe around her. And here you’re working to build a monastery and you’re taking other sisters to the hospital to deal with the fibrosis and I’m like how does she have time to take care of her? Because you’re the general contractor, I mean it’s just crazy. And you’re taking people for doctor’s appointments. I’m like how is this happening?

Kimberly Braun: 14:34

And that is such a great example of when we say yes and we really step into the unknown of ourselves. We quicken, our mind quickens, our heart quickens, our body quickens, and without effort we do so much more in a way that seems timeless. And what was really cool for me, julie, which was consoling, was I could feel that that was happening. I could feel that I was operating in a timeless realm because it was rare, there were moments of human stress around one or another thing, but predominantly it was effortless. Now, that’s incredible. That’s really a work of spirit, for sure. And you are right that I did need affirmation, I did need some assurance here and there and did notice and comment in the end of the book that it would have been so wonderful to, every once in a while, hear a really kind, supportive word within my community. Now, sister Catherine and Sister Elizabeth, whose names are changed, they were effusive, I mean, they saw it and they were part of it and that. But the community is so hierarchical that it’s inevitable that you’re going to feel the effect of hierarchy. You’re going to feel that we’re human beings, we’re going to feel that when those above us see us or don’t see us and that would have been really, really lovely. But then I always reminded myself you know what? The very fact that I’ve been given permission to be doing what’s happening is, in a roundabout way, a form of affirmation Because you’re right. At any moment anybody could have stepped in and said you know what, we’ll just take it from here. I had no authority, but who was really in charge? The one I was leaning into?

Julie Hilsen: 16:46

Like you said, it was Luke 1, verse 37, with the God, all things are possible or nothing is impossible without God. And so that’s it’s a huge. It’s a huge inspiration, and I love how you bring it back to the self, to you know, the importance of our, of us, to being on the earth, is to live in our divine purpose and to feel our individuality. And there’s nothing lost in living life to the fullest, and you repeated that several times in the book. There’s nothing lost in living life to the fullest. So you just give what you can to what, what you are, and and the whole idea that you’re not basing your worth or your joy on what you’ve done. You base it on who you are inside and you keep coming back to that knowingness that you deserve flow, that you deserve divinity and everyone is sacred. And it’s hard if you’re in part of a hierarchical system and you’re feeling that that’s not seen and you can see it so clearly and maybe that was something you were supposed to stir up in the system and I’m sure there are many conversations about what you are doing, and just the whole idea that you had sought out cheaper supplies in iron work and going over across the border to Mexico and you and Michael are trying to bring back so much extra because there was such abundance and you had to rely on the state trooper or the police officer to help you get the loot because you blew out two tires. I mean, it’s just so and that’s what happens. We take on so much and we need someone to help. We need to help someone. Someone needs to help us lift the load. And it’s just such a such a great, great metaphor. There’s so much wisdom and depth to it.

Kimberly Braun: 19:00

It’s a testament to your death. So it’s a reflection of how it’s so true, you’re right. Right, and even though I’m not Catholic anymore and I know you’re not, there are some worthy concepts that come to us from that tradition, and one of them is the word sacrament. And the notion in the experience of Christ is that, because in that experience of Christ that is experienced in form, it points to the reality in my mind, but potential or actual that every moment, every ounce of creation, every event, every human being, that everything has a sacramental tone, that we’re here as part of a cosmic setup to experience that we’re a living sacrament. We, just by being alive, have come into form as holy and what we’re discovering is what it means and the journey of that, and it gave me the opportunity to coming and having given my whole self, into a system. There were so many things that I evolved with and learned, but one of them was coming, through the structure itself, to a new experience of autonomy in connection with the divinity of my center, my being that is somehow mysteriously individual and ineffable at the same time that I still bring in it my limited ways of learning, and yet, at the same time, there is agency happening that’s so, so, all consuming and has no boundaries. Happening right as me, in me, and there was a way that the systems allowed me, through giving my all, to begin to experience those subtle distinctions. That’s massive. I mean, that’s such a huge gift and I know you’ll get that.

Julie Hilsen: 21:24

It is, I get it, and it’s to be celebrated, it’s to be glorified. So that’s one of the when I was doing my research and learning more about you to prepare for this episode. I really I’m so glad you said that because I wanted to emphasize that every person is sacred and to own that, own your sacredness and realize that you know, like you said, we’re all a living sacrament and it’s special. Would that we could know that right. Would that we could know that Mm-hmm With that, we could know that.

Kimberly Braun: 22:06

May it be so If you’re listening, may it be so. Yes.

Julie Hilsen: 22:16

Own it and it can change everything With that. I wanted to encourage people to look at your perspective of saying yes and I wanted you to expand on what saying yes means to you. I know it’s a major you wrote a whole book about love and and I’m sorry, can’t remember the name of it, but I even wrote it in my notes but the whole, that whole. If you could expand on what saying yes means to you and how, how that opens up to the quietness and the flow, I would love for you to share that message because I think it’s so powerful.

Travel, Awakening, and Following Divine Guidance

Kimberly Braun: 23:00

Yes, my first book, love Calls, answers a question. I’ve gotten a lot in my service in the world because I travel now a lot for the past 22 years now since I’ve left the monastery hoping to be a friend to others in their own awakening process, and I I always encourage everybody to wrestle with what their truths are about these things, not just to say, oh, it must be so and just swallow it. But I share what’s true for me, so that you or others can tap in. Is that resonant? And what I’ve always experienced from a young age is that there is this beloved magnet which is source to me, which is God to me, is that is somehow at my very center and is that in which I live and move and have my being. But it’s not something that’s a stagnant, distant energetic force. It’s something that’s actually, in a mysterious way, calling me. It’s calling me. It’s, it’s giving invitations into each moment. It’s caring for the hairs on my head, it’s, it’s actively involved in the me that’s living this life and it doesn’t need to even be framed as like a personal God. That’s outside and what I’ve discovered is in that experience. Over and again, there is this way. It comes forward and emerges as an invitation to an ascent and to an. It could be an insight. It could be an understanding, it could be a surrender into the unknown. It takes many different shapes and forms in our lives and when I say yes to it and don’t try to control it, don’t try to say yes but or don’t say well, I need to understand it more before I say yes, but really meet myself where I’m at and even bring my doubts with me. What happens in that yes is it imparts an internal wisdom and experience of love. That’s very healing. When we meet the fears within us for what they are, not like a distant judge, not like some of it’s analyzing them, but when we come into the presence, bring the presence of whom, what we are, to come right where we are, and that could be our potential and our beauty as well we discover that we’re being called into the unknown again and again and that yes, then, is the vehicle by which we live a life of fullness, and that fullness, yes.

Julie Hilsen: 26:06

And that’s bringing in the beloved.

Kimberly Braun: 26:09

So that’s what I mean. And even with that it was interesting I was talking with somebody else the other day even within that our nose come easier, because when our yes is grounded in that, we find we’re not actually meant to say yes to everything, but we have the courage to say no, which is really hard for a lot of us to say no.

Julie Hilsen: 26:28

Well, yeah, that’s what I was going to talk about, because you built this whole monastery, you made these beautiful, everyone had their individual little homes where you could go and practice being silent and being contemplative, and you’re not even there. You said no because it wasn’t resonating with you anymore. Whatever, I haven’t read the third book to know exactly, but it was all laid out that you had a choice point and you had to. Eventually you had to say no because you’re not there anymore. And here you did this whole labor of love and it’s this dynasty and I’m sure they just enjoy it. I mean, I went on Google Maps and found it. I was like this is so cool.

Kimberly Braun: 27:14

Thank you, right, right, yeah, I can’t really give away the third book, and it’s not probably you can’t read it, because it’s really important to take the journey. And you’re right At that point where the second book ends, I had no idea I was going to leave. I mean, I had no idea my commitment to the divine, in the form of my vows as a Carmelite, was everything to me. I mean, it was literally everything. It is the place where my surrender happened, that gave me the courage in the very many challenges that happened, and so I had no idea that the very thing that was my, my anchor, was actually going to be something that I’m going to, I was going to actively move away from. I mean, it was completely illogical. I nobody could have just said that to me like would you think about that? I’m like there is no thinking about it. You know, this is my light, this is my energy, this is my signature, this is my joy.

Julie Hilsen: 28:17

Right. I mean if your mom and her husband were going to come and serve and it was a family thing at that point, like you’re all in. Yes, yes, and that’s right. It’s that constant like ability to pivot, to listen, to be quiet and really know what the next step is. And the only way to know the next step is to create that space in yourself to get the creativity, to get the answers.

Kimberly Braun: 28:49

So good.

Julie Hilsen: 28:52

So good, and I did. I mean, I don’t want to forget to ask you this because I know our time’s getting, but when you were in 1988, when you heard that Benedictine priest speak, you’re going on a trip with your friend and he came up to you and said I believe he said pray for me. He, he literally picked you out of a crowd and was that really the priest that came back around? Did you were able to figure that out? If he was, the same.

Kimberly Braun: 29:20

You know, I think it was because of how I pieced it together, but I never had the opportunity to keep that phone number so that when I left I could maybe check it out. But there was something really powerful. I think there’s probably like a 85% chance it was him, because somebody that would have been of that order, deeply contemplative, right in that area of the country, well known as a spiritual director, like the chances of that and the name rang similar in my mind and heart. Yeah, so if you haven’t read the book, I have a dramatic experience when I’m let’s see, I’m 20. I entered the monastery when I was 24. And I had five years of really dramatic mystical experiences with a lot of phenomena and visions and miracles. And and I was healing and changing on the inside, and a good friend of mine we lived in Santa Cruz decided to take a hike together and she took me for the very first time ever to a liturgy at a Carmelite monastery, and at that point my best friends were already Teresa Vavala, teresa, monsieur, john of the Cross and all these Carmelites. So for me I was in heaven. We walked into the monastery and both she and I went right up to the front of the church and knelt down and I was I. What happened for me a lot in those days was that, and I didn’t know anything about chakras at the time, but what happened is my crown chakra would open during the liturgy and then this white, beautiful, powerful love gush would rush through my body and then I would be taken into this state where I would feel myself in the in love with God, in God in love with me. It was very reciprocal. So I was in that state as we’re kneeling there, and then what would happen during the liturgy is that I didn’t assume anybody else noticed, but what would happen is anybody involved in the liturgy God or Christ would use them. That presence would use them to speak to me, and everything that priest was saying during the liturgy was God speaking right into my soul. So I was so focused into that priest because but I didn’t assume the priest was having the experience, I just knew I was. So I’m receiving all of these divine messages. And then she and I stayed in the church and we were there probably for a half hour in meditation. Afterwards, when we went to leave, the church had been packed because it was a Saturday, which was really popular in Carmel and the place was fricking packed, I mean, and everyone’s like. It was like this big party we walked out into and she and I are trying to kind of make our way through and just find our own way to the car so we can go hike. And that priest had an experience as well that I didn’t know and he pushed. He literally was pushing people out of the way to get to us. And I talked to my friend three months ago because I wanted to use her name in the book, because her name is really Janet, and we revisited that moment because I didn’t even know if she remembered that moment and I thought, well, maybe it was only my experience. She remembered everything. And she’s like I was standing five feet from you and my mouth just dropped as he like rushed right to you and he got very close and he looked me right with all his heart and he put his hands together and he said please pray for me. And he said it in a way that I heard it when you’re a carmelite, remember me, because we prayed all day, and that’s how I heard it. Isn’t that phenomenal? And then I’m pretty sure then it was what? 15 years later? No, no, 12 years later, about when he circled back around and that that woman who visited us was from that area of California and that happened to be her spiritual director, and I feel pretty certain that it was the same person. Yeah.

Julie Hilsen: 33:42

That’s another affirmation that you’re doing the right thing. Yeah, and the healings that you were able to witness, and that just segues to the power of prayer and you mentioned in the book about. You know, it’s not just that you were praying or that their prayers offered, it’s that the person’s ready to receive and what that person wants, like, for example, the woman with cancer I was her name, francesca, or I can’t remember she was healed. But the next one you mentioned, she was ready to transition. So you’re not just praying for healing, you’re praying for the best possible outcome or that, or what that person, what that person desires, because it’s not so much your prayer, it’s that person being open to receiving, and I loved that.

Kimberly Braun: 34:37

Yes, it was a learning for me too. I grew up in a family that had a very active, healing prayer life, so I wasn’t new to surrendering to what was really for the highest good. But to live it out in a place where people were turning to us for prayer and to be free enough to be present for what was, was a true learning. It was a beautiful gift to me because then I got to witness these women. I mean they were so powerful and strong and courageous. You know, the first woman, hispanic woman who opened so much that she was ready for that dramatic healing of this cancer she was in the final stages was so dramatic. And then to see this other woman who had to learn herself because she didn’t know what she was praying for at first she didn’t know that and she was only in her 50s, she was young and you helped her discern what her goal was. Yeah, and to honor that what was really coming up for her was a desire for deep healing for her family. That’s what was coming up for her, and that she had the courage to stay with that and come to death’s door. That’s remarkable, right.

Julie Hilsen: 36:02

Deep Connection and Resonance

Right, and that cycle of death and rebirth. We’re all dying in certain ways and being rebirthed and letting go of things that don’t serve us, or having something cycle around in a different way that we didn’t let die for whatever reason we held on to. And so if you’re holding on to something that’s not serving you my audience, I’m encouraging you to let that go. Death isn’t always bad. When you let something go, there’s something else, there’s space for something.

Kimberly Braun: 36:36

And it can be scary to want the emptiness right. You know, when we really long for something in life that is natural and human, to let go of something that’s not meant for us or not meant for us anymore, can feel really uncomfortable to be in the emptiness of the gap. But if we trust that that emptiness is leading us to, a greater fullness. Therein we discover ourselves.

Julie Hilsen: 37:07

I love it and I’m really excited to direct people to your website and all the work that you’ve done. I mean I’m really, I’m really happy to have this connection and to give people the resources that you have. You have meditation offerings. You you’ll help lead seminars. I mean it’s just you could be busy for a whole year just following things that Kimberly offers. So please go to Kimberly Braun dot com. B r eight un. Yeah, and I’ll put the link on the show notes. Yeah, was there anything else? I don’t want to respect your time. I could talk to you for weeks.

Kimberly Braun: 37:45

I’m loving the conversation as well. No, I feel really complete. You brought out so many deep, key, relatable human points that are entry points to the experience of the divine, and so I’m really grateful for your own gifts in being able to do that and touch in on what’s alive for you. I think that what is alive for you is what’s alive for all of us. So I feel complete, other than saying, if you are listening to this and you do want to connect, follow that, because I’m here to connect where there’s resonance and there are so many ways that we can be in relationship together and I here am here to serve that divinity within you and an eager to be a friend on the journey. So, kimberly Braun dot com, there is a lot there.

Julie Hilsen: 38:40

Thank you, dear sister.

Kimberly Braun: 38:42

Thank you.