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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Reverend Barbara Azzara on You Can't SAY THAT. We gotta say what rules for you understand you.

[0:24] Barbara Azzara: What are you afraid of right now at 87? Okay, that on Monday when I'm gonna be operated on, I'm not gonna have the success that almost all the people I know have. I can't walk, I walk with a walker, I walk with a cane. It's not me. I live in a building with a swimming pool and a gym. I can't get there. So I don't want to live a limited life. Okay. And so that's what I would be afraid of. But in my 87 years, I've learned that fear doesn't change anything. Worry doesn't change anything. Well, I try to soothe myself, give myself a hug, remind myself that everything is alright.

[1:13] Tonya Pinkins: Are you gonna be awake on Twilight Sleep for this surgery?

[1:16] Barbara Azzara: No, they do an epidural, you know, on the spine, and then they give you something to put you out. And my children are coming here. If Tonya, that you called me on Friday today, Ross is coming to visit me on Sunday. I have made such loving, beautiful contacts. You know, I am so blessed that why would I worry? And the truth is, whatever happens, whatever happens, it doesn't matter because I have a very deep connection with God.

[2:03] Barbara Azzara: So if it's over, Portion Ellison, I got some tree tell us. Yes. Life in six chapters. I love that. Right. And the Dalai Lama loves it. And but I said to Ross, when I die, I want somebody to sing at my memorial. My life, this life, that song that she wrote about her life. You know, it just life is life. I teach that when I was in heaven, I used to tell my little granddaughter this. You were rolling around, you had no body, you were listening to these wonderful music and everything, and you got bored. And you said, well, there's a piece in me that could be updated. And so, and think about this, and then think of lecture 73, recreation of childhood hurt. We choose everything. Our mothers, our fathers, the beatings, the loss, everything, and we keep going through it until we realize this is not who I am. I am not the broken child, and I start loving myself. I start loving myself.

[3:30] Barbara Azzara: So I said to Samantha, why do you think you chose everything in your family? And she said, because I wanted you as my grandmother. She's a therapist. So she did get something from me. You know what I mean? And Tonya, let me tell you, Adriano died in June. Last June it's only been not even a year. 2016. Got it. Okay. Two stories out of it. I'm a storyteller. Yes. And then I say, if you heard the story, raise your hand. But if you hear it again, you're going to hear it with different ears. But my oldest granddaughter, her partner died that November of brain cancer. He was 27 years old. So there was a lesson there. I having lost my husband, I could be there for her. That's why I'm living in Boca, because she said to me, Grandma, did you ever think of moving from California now?

So everything has a reason. And opening up to death has been a great reason for me, you know. And like she said to me, she was so afraid she would never love again. I said, honey, once you know how to love, you'll fall in love with, I don't know, bizarre thing, but you will fall in love with that. And that's wonderful.

[5:10] Barbara Azzara: And then the other thing is when I was 80, we went to Europe. You know, Adriano was Italian and lived there. And we went for a long time visiting his friends, his family in France, in Italy. And I had taught in Serbia. And then I was meeting him in Rome. And I felt alone in my breast and pain. And Adriano had just found out that he had cancer. So you know what I did? This sort of enlightened person. I never told him. I never told anybody. And when he died, I went into a store and I saw somebody's hair. The owner of the store had little ringlets, red, curly, and I hadn't auntie beauty parlor there. And I said, Who does your hair? And she said, chemo. And I started to cry. And she said, Barbara, what's the matter?

I never met her before. So my life is choreography by God. I believe that. And I said, because I never told anything. And so she adopted me. And she I met her surgeon and oncologist. And the doctor said it was a miracle to live with cancer for three years and have it not. So I know I'm blessed.

[6:55] Barbara Azzara: You know, and actually, here's something for you. I sometimes I think that people have to think I'm crazy because I am so invested in the spiritual world. So my granddaughter introduced me to a man who brought the dead over. That's how my interest in death and dying really started. And he brought all my husbands back. And they talked to me. And I mean, such healing took place. I can't, I won't even go there. But at the end of the session, my first husband, who was a physician, said to me, I've got your back. Well, I thought he really had my back because my back hurt me. You know, I take things literally. So I went to the surgeon and he said to me, Barbara, you're very arrogant. And like I said to you before, I listened, you know, because what was he saying?

And he was saying that I was contemptuous of medicine outside of New York City. Good reason. Yeah. And I and I said, my husband was head of his department at one of the biggest hospitals in the United States. We had the best doctors available to us. And now, excuse me, I'm in the asshole of a little town in California. And the doctor said, Well, you really are contemptuous. And I said, I know, but I can't help it. Or I don't want to help it. I'm scared to, I'm scared. I was worried then. And he said to me, and Dr. Boyle, because I want to give him credit for teaching me something. He said to me, Well, what hospital? I said, It's on the East Coast. You wouldn't possibly know about it. And he said, I'm asking you what hospital.

And I said, Mount Sinai. And he said, and what was your husband's name? And I said, Dr. Gladman. And he said, Barbara, he was my mentor. So I don't doubt spirit anymore. I believe, except when I don't, that my life is in God's name.

[9:22] Tonya Pinkins: Have you decided how you want to die?

[9:25] Barbara Azzara: Yes. Tell us.

[9:26] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. You want to do it with me? No, I'm kidding.

[9:29] Barbara Azzara: Well, I do. I have made a contract with a friend to midwife her when she dies. Now I don't know that I'm I think she wants to die at 110. She's got a 110 and ascend plan. And I don't know that I want to be here for 120 and ascend for her. Well, this is what. But we have practice practice dying together because her desire is to consciously take the final breath. So I wondered if you have a plan.

[9:57] Tonya Pinkins: So how do you gonna how are you gonna do it? Tell me, tell me.

[10:00] Barbara Azzara: Well, I am a breath teacher. Okay, and you did the breath work with what's the guy who does the breath that can take you into psychedelic places? You worked with him too.

[10:08] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, he was my teacher's teacher.

[10:10] Barbara Azzara: Okay, Stan Groff.

[10:14] Tonya Pinkins: Stan Groff, right?

[10:15] Barbara Azzara: So there was I was at the beginning of every dynamic healing thing. There is nothing new except you have to do it. So you know you've lived through the process of here, take LSD, take acid, take this, do this, do that. And now you've come to the place of like we all have this personal responsibility for our own self-development. That's all it is, you know, and make choices. Going to Brazil, everybody's doing ayahuasca. I don't know if you know about ayahuasca. I've just came back from doing ayahuasca in Peru. I was in my ninth time doing aya, so I do aya. Okay. Block it. I don't want anybody to know.

[10:58] Barbara Azzara: I did it with the shaman. I learned something. My intent was to find out why I am afraid, you know, on the deepest level. And what I went through was the concentration camp. The Buddhists immolating themselves. The Roman barbarians, you know, at times in Roman history. And oh, the American Indians. I never knew anything about the March of Tears. And then when it was all over, it was so beautiful. But the next two days, oh my god, did it hurt me? My body was, you know, I just like I was letting go. And so after that, I would never do it again. Really? Yeah, it's not for me. I can tell you, I could sit in this gorgeous apartment in sunny Florida where I never thought I would be, listen to the bet to the bet and bold, and just empty. You know, my meditations are now empty. You know, it's just empty. Now let me ask you this. You did Aya one time?

[12:17] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[12:18] Barbara Azzara: Okay, so let me just share my aya experience. I've done aya nine times. Okay. My first aya experience, I said I just wanted to experience the love of the great mother.

[12:29] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, beautiful.

[12:30] Barbara Azzara: I had two cups. Um, the medicine didn't even come on for me until everybody else was finished with ceremony, and I just had a blissful night. Okay. My second Aya ceremony, my intention was to know what was blocking me from reaching my highest potential.

[12:50] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[12:50] Barbara Azzara: And I had the kind of experience you had. I experienced being gang raped. I went through all of the most horrible things that people all over the world have experienced. I lived it. And we had live music playing, and every note of every instrument was like a dagger. It was like I was being stabbed. And that was my whole night.

[13:16] Tonya Pinkins: Oh God.

[13:17] Barbara Azzara: And then, and I didn't, and I didn't purge either of those two nights. My third night, I wanted to experience love. And or something about love. I don't remember exactly, but the third night was the night that I purged and I pissed myself, and I experienced myself as a naked, wet baby, just crying and crying and crying for my mommy for someone to come and help me. Uh what I find about Aya is that I feel like it is like intensive psychotherapy. You go straight to your shit and you get the opportunity to face it.

[14:00] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[14:01] Barbara Azzara: That's your intent though.

[14:03] Tonya Pinkins: Well, it is my intent. I go there to do that. I go there to work it out. I mean, I feel like the last, the ninth session of Aya that I did in Peru, I feel like I moved a demon off my ancestral line.

[14:16] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[14:16] Barbara Azzara: I'm ancestral. Off the ancestral line. I did a demon that had come down the line. I was doing battle with it. I was like, you are not continuing down my line. And after the session, something was like, Well, you know, your children have to do their own battles. I'm like, they will have to do their battles, but I've done this part of the battle with this demon.

[14:37] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I'm going to tell you, I mean, that's profound.

[14:42] Barbara Azzara: At the end of my session, we talked about the music. There was a violin. I can't tell you. I felt the string of the violin between my fingers. And then the person that was helping us, she came over to me and bent over to me, over me. And her hair, I never saw anything so beautiful. So I was very fortunate, but I really think for me, the breath work is what brought me home.

[15:19] Tonya Pinkins: So let's talk about the breath work.

[15:23] Barbara Azzara: No, I want to go back to about dying.

[15:28] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[15:28] Barbara Azzara: You but you said you were gonna breathe your way through dying. So you're how's it? What's your plan? So how's it gonna be? Have you picked an age? Like you're 87. How long do you want to be here?

[15:37] Tonya Pinkins: I tell people I don't want to live past 92.

[15:40] Barbara Azzara: Why?

[15:41] Tonya Pinkins: I don't want to.

[15:42] Barbara Azzara: Okay, that's fine. I just didn't want to know if there was a reason. You just picked 92.

[15:46] Tonya Pinkins: That's the number.

[15:48] Barbara Azzara: It's because my dad died at 92.

[15:53] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[15:54] Barbara Azzara: And I respect the way he lived. And also, what is it? 87 to 92. I still count on my fingers. I am so ashamed.

[16:07] Tonya Pinkins: But you got five years.

[16:09] Barbara Azzara: What I want to do is really get all my work into like a 12-step program.

[16:17] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[16:18] Barbara Azzara: You know, and that was a good question. It's just like I'm reading all these books. Um about dying. You know, Ram Das and what's her name?

[16:37] Tonya Pinkins: Tibetan Book of the Dead.

[16:39] Barbara Azzara: What Tibetan Book of the Dead. Say that again.

[16:43] Tonya Pinkins: The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

[16:44] Barbara Azzara: Oh, that I read a long time ago. But the idea is I'm not afraid to die. And many of the people I love are dead. Pat is dead. I can't wait to get to meet her. And um it just seems right. I don't know.

[17:03] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, so how's it gonna be? Who's gonna be there? How's it gonna be?

[17:06] Barbara Azzara: Okay, uh, it's not so much that yet. I haven't gotten to there yet. Okay, but I really want to do it. I want to close my eyes, put on beautiful music, make I guess my children would be there.

[17:23] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, you know, I this because I think more God is gonna be there, and Adriano's gonna be there, and Bill is gonna be there, and Shelley's gonna be there. Pat's gonna be there. I'm going to be surrounded by love, no matter how it is in Biden. You know, and it's very funny because every night before I go to bed, I hang up my clothes and I put my dishes away because if I die, I don't want coming somebody to come and say, Well, pink she was. You know, so I'm very human. I think that's the answer.

[18:02] Barbara Azzara: I really had the experience of knowing, which is what a manual teaches, and I'm so grateful. I am of angel consciousness, I have a soul that is eternal, and I'm living a very human life, and it is perfectly imperfect, and that man, what's his name? Stuart Emery from Australia, told me that in 1978, and it's taking me over 40 years, and that's why I say understanding is the booby prize, you've got to do it.

[18:45] Barbara Azzara: So I practice going to bed, I say my mantra and whatever, and then I breathe God in, and I breathe there out, I do that for a while, and then I read God in, and I breathe God out, and then I breathe love in. I keep love out, and I don't breathe in again.

[19:09] Tonya Pinkins: And that's how you're gonna go.

[19:11] Barbara Azzara: That's I am praying. I don't know anybody that's done that. I mean, because most people get cancer, or they get this, or they're in a plane crash, or whatever. So that's what I'm doing. And I wrote a prayer recently, and it's in my love letter.

[19:31] Tonya Pinkins: I don't think you get my letter of love letters, do you?

[19:33] Barbara Azzara: Um, I get an email from you.

[19:35] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not certain if it's your love letters, but I do get an e-blast from you.

[19:38] Barbara Azzara: Okay. This is a love letter that I write every month about my life.

[19:44] Tonya Pinkins: You're gonna read a love letter to us right now.

[19:47] Barbara Azzara: Oh, I would.

[19:49] Barbara Azzara: Oh, I uh what I was gonna do is I was gonna read you the prayer.

[19:53] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, read us the prayer.

[19:55] Barbara Azzara: And I think the prayer encapsulates what we're talking about. Okay.

[20:00] Barbara Azzara: So I breathe, quiet myself. See, I also when I only work with people on Skype because they're all over. And I begin every session with prayer.

[20:20] Barbara Azzara: So I'm gonna do this one, it's a fairly lower. Okay. To the God in all of us. I offer myself this moment of silence so that I may enter into the deepest awareness. I breathe, and each breath I take moves me into a new spaciousness. Beyond my history, beyond my wounding, beyond my backstory, beyond my fear of separation, and beyond the human condition. As I enter this space of creative emptiness, I breathe deeply and freely. I invite my guides and my angels in so I may explore and embrace new understanding and dimensions of thought and feeling. In this emptiness, I wait. I breathe. I listen for the still point. When I am still, I can hear something new. It is the impulse of life. In great gratitude, I wait, letting it become open, breathing into every space in my body.

[22:06] Barbara Azzara: Dear God, help me to empty myself so that I may be filled with you, so that I may bring awareness to my consciousness, that I may ask, that this moment of life is filled with gratitude and love. I ask to fill myself with breath so I am aware of the in and out breath and what each one holds. Dear God, so that I may be aware of the God within me and the God without, breathing in awareness, breathing out gratitude for this life. Thank you, God.

[22:56] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you, Barbara.

[22:58] Barbara Azzara: Well, thank you. You know, I mean, maybe I wrote this just for you.

[23:02] Tonya Pinkins: Maybe.

[23:03] Barbara Azzara: Or maybe you wrote it for everyone who's gonna listen. And that's the whole thing. Somebody has this. I do not have a lot of people that listen. I do not fill an auditorium with a thousand people like some of these people do. Or people do not wait online. I laugh. There's one woman, Ama. All she does, they wait online and she gives them a hug. I've done, I've gone to AMA. Okay. I mean, you know, nothing, nothing outside of you will change you. But what I have found is that the people that are changing. I mean, I really even shouldn't say this, but you know, one of the men that I'm working with is now writing his own songs based on our experience. You know, this life is powerful, but you have to be the essence of this life.

So between Eva Pierakis and the pathwork, there's one lecture, I forget the number. It's called the pulse of life. I want to be alive. I want to live. And if it doesn't work out, the next year something else will happen. Yeah, it all came to pass. All of this moving, moving. This joy will be sadness. The sadness will be joy. It will all keep moving. Look, yeah, I know you. I mean, you know me. I look around, and these people that want instant love, you know, and constant love. It's not like that. It's like I live in Florida now, and it's really funny. It'll rain, it'll pour, it's terrible, and then 10 minutes later, it's absolutely gorgeous. And that's what I try to remind people no matter what the weather, sun is always in the sky.

And no matter what you're going through, it's going to pass. Good or bad, it's going to pass. Can't hold on to anything. Enjoy it as it's passing on to the next thing. What more can you do? The only thing I really teach people because of the path work and John P. Arakas and bioenergetics, that when I'm having an emotional reaction because of something that you said or you did, I now have to train myself to stop, whether it's Byron Cady or somebody else. Is this true? Like if you said to me, I can make it simple. I don't like your red hair. Look, I don't have red hair, you know. I don't get crazy, but if you said to me, Oh, I think you're putting on weight, that could be a button push up. So fear is about your interfaction, you know, and defending it, you know.

And I know what I went through and that's why I do respect the path work because that lecture recreation of childhood herbs I came into this world I'm not gonna say it to heal people but I came into this world to learn how to love people and I know my mother lost a child and she was terrified of having another baby who was not going to be perfect and that was my intention but there's no such thing as perfection and there's no such thing as being able to make another person happy yeah and most of us excuse me many women have given ourselves away think we can get our happiness if we make you happy yeah and your fear and your why did your mother beat you that had nothing to do with you poor good old girl it had only to do with your mother yeah no I I'm fine with that I mean I didn't hold any hatred or anything for her I just we certainly didn't love her like a mother and she's gone and you know that's really the best gift she gave me was that she didn't stay around for a long time and linger and have me have to spend another section of my life taking care of her because I really had to be a parent to her as a child.

[26:25] Barbara Azzara: Yeah, yeah. So I think this is like such a big conversation, and maybe inappropriate to bring it up now, but so many men who are, um, I can't think of a what so many men who were beaten as young boys and had no mother to protect them are the people that violate women today. You know, and I think we're gonna go into a whole new somebody wrote a great book, and I can't think of the name of it. It's called something about passion that we haven't even begun to explore our sexuality. Sexuality. You know, and people laugh at me. Here I'm this little old lady walking around saying, you know. My 80-year-old friends are telling me they're having better sex than I'm having. Well, they're lucky. But I don't think they're lucky.

I think it's because they know who they are, and that's what I'm finding out. All the people that I live with in Florida, I think they're dead. Their husbands died, and that's the end. It's not. Right. And I'm I'm red now, if you could see me. You might get married again. You got five years left. You might marry another younger man. Now that's one of my disappointments. My second husband was 10 years younger than me. Adriana was six years younger than me. I didn't think consciously that's why I chose them, but I certainly was disappointed that I have lived them. Let me tell you, you know. So there's so much, you know. I mean, and and uh there I want to I want to teach simply how we can transcend the level of consciousness that we inherited, you know.

I'm not the victim, I love my way, and what I do with all my students is every day have them write one thing I'm grateful for, whatever it is, a good cup of coffee, it doesn't matter, or and this is hard. The one time every day I felt my choice of action was based on my habit and addiction to fear, and I didn't do it, I didn't do it, and then the other one is did I choose to be loving today? That's all I'm interested in. You know, we had a big luncheon for my first women's group, and they're all down here in Florida, and they're all in their 80s, and one of my friends was picking me up. I don't drive anymore, and she was picking up another one. That woman didn't show up, she had forgotten, and the driver had gone out of her way, and she was very angry, and I said, just breathe. Don't you know that this woman has begun her descent? That's all we can have is compassion, but Tonya, if you don't have it for yourself, you can't give it to anybody else, it's an act.

[31:43] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I am grateful for you. And I want to thank you for taking this time to be with me today. I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you are listening to You Can't SAY THAT with my guest, Barbara Azzara.

[32:02] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show where you can. I'm Tonya Pinkins, and You Can't SAY THAT is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales. Edited by Derek Gunther, with music by Kat Dale. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast highly wherever you stream. Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Tonya Pinkins. And to learn more, visit BPN dot F M forward slash Y C S T. Stay safe.