What if the ground you’re searching for has been under your feet the whole time?
We sit down with meditation teacher and founder Lynne Goldberg to trace a raw, candid path through profound loss—twins, a marriage, a home, a career—and two bouts of cancer that cracked open a deeper truth. Calm helped her survive the storm. Discovering the self beneath identity changed everything.
Across this conversation, we bridge meditation and faith as two doorways back to the same room: presence. Lynne shares the origins of the Breethe app and what millions have learned from a simple return to breath, while we offer the parallel of prayer and surrender.
Together we unpack the trap of chasing joy like a destination and point to where it actually lives—in small, ordinary moments that become holy when we’re fully here. From holding a mother’s hand at the beach to the quiet of hospital rooms, these scenes show why attention is the most generous form of love.
We dig into practical tools you can use right away: how to notice mental noise without getting swept away, how to build “attention strength” through short returns to breath or mantra, and how to spot the instant you step out of love so you can come back.
Listen for a grounded blend of story and practice, wisdom and warmth. If the idea of being limitless sounds abstract, Lynne makes it tangible, showing how essence—and the love at its core—stays untouched no matter what we lose. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs steady ground, and leave a review to tell us: where did you last feel fully present?
To connect or work with Lynne visit her website at: https://lynnegoldbergmeditation.com/
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, better then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey light bringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Doutre Reveal Purpose. And today is Lynn Goldberg. She has lost quite a bit in her life, and she has an amazing story of transformation, losing twin girls, and then uh divorce and losing her mother, Berna. I mean, she’s gone through it all. And it sounds like she has so much wisdom to share with us. So without further ado, Len, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. It is my pleasure and my honor to have you on. I know you have an amazing story of transformation. So I really want to dive deep, take us into that, those shifts in your life and and how they’ve shaped you into what the purpose you’re currently living.
So I’ve been uh completely blessed, in my opinion, because I’ve had two opportunities to really redirect and refocus where my life trajectory was supposed to go. You know, I think we all get on these linear paths and we have the assumption that, you know, it’s going to take us from here to there and we’re going to live happily ever after. And of course, life never quite works out that way, does it? So I’ve had a couple of bumps in the road, and each time it’s an opportunity to sort of recalibrate and understand where it is that we’re meant to go next. When I was in my 40s, I had lost twin girls, and my marriage fell apart, and I lost my job, and my mom passed away. And that was the first time in my life that I was like, whoa, what’s going on here? Um, and I recognized at that point in my life I had started meditating, and that had been my, you know, my life jacket in the storm, so to speak. It was where I found that I could find peace and calm, and it was helpful for me. And I, you know, that’s when I really decided that this was so important and impactful for me. I wanted other people to have the same peace that I was enjoying as well. And so we founded the Breathe App, and we’ve been able to teach 20 million people how to find their own peace, and that’s been very, very helpful. And then 20 years go by, and I’m living my best life, and again I have you know another life quake, if you will. And that was the amazing opportunity to again redefine, because I I believe we get these gifts every once in a while where we really have to really decide what our purpose is meant to be. And for me, um rather than that calm, which has been so helpful for me, it was actually deciding that calm was a surface thing, but the the person beneath that, what I’m calling self, and what you know, depending on what type of uh religion you belong to or what you what you some people call the soul, the Atman, the Bodhi, depending on what you you language you’re using, uh that essence of who we are surpasses any identity that might be taken away. And so what happened in my case this time was again, you know, here I was uh in my career, I I got cancer twice because I’m an overachiever and I like to have you know shakeups that really and for me that was a very, very important time because I saw that that sense of I I want to call it a brush with mortality, but in fact it’s more than that. Because when you understand that who you are is actually timeless, then there that feeling of not being um held to any one thing became the most empowering, most freeing liberation, if you will. And and that for me was a very, very powerful time. And and I saw that again I had lost identities, again, the things that I had outsourced as safety references, like my home, which I lost, and my uh my career, which has taken a U-turn, and my marriage, which had been, you know, a 20-year stable relationship, also ended. And I thought, wow, you know, I keep getting these reminders about who we think we are, is never those identities. And that has been um my new, if you will, my new message that I’m very excited to share with people, which is when you recognize that who you are is far greater than any identity that you might hold, you’re limitless. And no one can take that away from you.
I’ve been getting similar messages. Um I’m a woman of faith, as you know. Uh, you probably have read, and I mine were uh a near-death shift, if you will, that occurred in 2012. It was one of many that would come afterwards, but that was the spiritual awakening where I just my relationship with God took off from there, and it was in its infancy stages before then, but the concepts of surrender and higher concepts came later. And um, I was actually conversing about this with the interview prior to yours. All these women that I’ve interviewed this morning have had a similar theme in that identities are there to teach us about this journey that we’re on. It’s not a journey to anything, it’s a journey that is continuous. And when we set ourselves up for that trap of, oh, I’m gonna get to joy, and then it’s gonna be over, it’s gonna be like this forevermore. I think we are selling, we’re gonna fall into a bigger trap after that. And it was the message that came to me from God Himself was you’re already there, Henry. The joy is already within you. You you have had it this whole time, you’ve missed it entirely. And you learn this in the first go-round in the first edition of my book was he was showing me it’s not joy to journey, it’s joy in the journey. The journey has always had these moments of joy, don’t miss them. These are gifts I give you every single day, but you’re missing them because you’re too busy doing instead of being in joy, being in presence, being in purpose.
You know, what when you speak, it makes me my eyes are welling up because it’s just so powerful and so true. And I think that when you have that understanding that life is happening all around you all the time in every single moment. You know, when my mom was dying, I kept I there was this feeling, this was you know, many, many, many years ago. I would say when I was at my infancy at this at the beginning of this journey, there was this sense that you know she had to get better in order for me to appreciate being with her. And when she became terminal and we recognized that she wasn’t gonna get better, there was the feeling of, oh, well, every single moment is precious. And once we understood that, you know, that meal or that conversation might be the last, well, it took away any sense of one day. It was what now? What’s happening in this moment? Can you find that joy in uh an just holding your hand? And and I think that that hopeful looking towards the future as something else is gonna happen that’s gonna somehow make it better. You’re a hundred percent right. You miss everything that’s happening around you. Yeah, such a powerful lesson. Yeah.
Last weekend I was with my mother. Um my father passed away last year. And I I say he graduated into heaven. And I said it when he passed away, and my husband’s like, that’s really confusing the people. And I said, Well, that’s the way I see it. You know, when everybody was was in line in procession when his body was being taken out of my our parents’ home, um, I was looking up to heaven and I was having a conversation with my father there. So I knew his soul has like, it went straight to heaven. His body was there, but his soul was gone. And I knew it the moment that it left his body. I sensed it immediately. Um and so last weekend it was my mother’s 85th birthday party, and she wanted to throw him herself this big party. And I don’t blame her because she’s never been one to really showcase herself. She was always showcasing everybody else, including our father. She was always about serving him and loving him completely. And that’s a different podcast interview. But um, so we went to the to the Rio Grande Valley. We drove six and a half hours from Austin, Texas to South Texas, my husband, my daughter, and I. And um, on that Saturday of that weekend, we took our daughter to the beach. And it was a beautiful day. It was bright blue sky, very few clouds, and we were on the like listening to the ocean and the seagulls. She was playing with the seagulls, and my husband was with her, and my mom and I sat in chairs that we found on the beach. And I remember just holding her hand and feeling the sand on my feet and closing my eyes and just smelling the ocean and hearing it, and just thanking God for that one moment because it’s so precious. It it was something I told my husband later. I said, those are the moments that I live for. Small moments, they’re not big, they’re not big moments, they’re very, very small, but they’re gifts. And the message that I want to share with people is I spent so many years, just like you, Lynn, doing and achieving until we went through so much to learn this one lesson. And it’s the the most powerful lesson of our journeys is that our joy, our presence, our being is more important than our doing. Those achievements don’t come with us when we transition into a different realm. Um, our soul and our our ego is always going to be pulling us to do and to be more. And that’s not who God sees us to be. God sees us to be his children, his heir. We already have that. We already have the worthiness that we’re seeking in these things, these items that we’re, you know, accumulating over time. But they’re not the gist of what we’re here to do. What we’re here to do is to love people the way we receive love every single day. We are to meet them exactly where they’re at and not judge them in their journeys, because their journeys are going to be totally different from ours. Because we have different purposes to fulfill on this earth, you know. So today, as you were sitting there and I was talking, I was like, I kept seeing that vision of holding my mother’s hand, and they’re the most precious moments. And I I learned it through my own journey of I didn’t see them as losses either. Later, I think as we go through them, we see it as losses because that’s the lens we’re seeing life through. And until we go through our pain and and learn from our pain and heal from from those initial wounds that happened to us at the beginning of our life, we tend to see life so differently. And we want to share that peace with the world. And for you, it’s been through meditation. For me, it’s been through my faith and my relationship with God. And that’s how I’ve been called to show up and and to share that. So share with us more about that calling that you have felt you have you’ve been given to share with the world.
So that recognition of what you’re describing and what I’m describing, and we have a different language for it, but it’s the same. We’re talking about our essence and what you’re saying as being is just that that well of love, I’m gonna call it, that’s inside every one of us. And I think we get sidetracked. I think we think love is something that’s out there and something has to, you know, somebody has to give it to us. But it’s our true essence is is that love. And when you can access it, then you have that well within you that is boundless. And just a simple example of what that looked like on a personal note when my um husband of 20 years left. I remember getting into bed and just feeling bereft. It was this feeling of grief and loss and sadness. And I put my hand on my heart and I really felt love for myself, this really you know, tender moment of compassion for myself of how this is so, so painful. And then I stayed with that without trying to change the feeling. I I really had love for myself, but also uh really acknowledging how painful it was. And when I went into that feeling, that love filled up my whole body, and I felt complete love that was from within myself. It wasn’t something that was needed from an external source, it was who I was in my essence, and it was all of me, and I felt surrounded. I I you know, I I call it a blanket of love. It’s almost as if I was being held. You you might call it God, I I’m gonna call it essence, but it’s the same feeling, it’s that feeling of just complete okayness, and that is within every single one of us, and that is something any one of us can access at any time, and that’s what I would love people to really realize because that no one can take away from you.
Yeah, nobody that it’s so beautiful what you said, because as you were talking, I was imagining that blanket of love, and you’re right, we do use different languages because we our journeys have taken us in different paths, right? And we’ve encountered different uh visions and and views along the way, and for me, it is I felt that love in the ICU room in 2012. I was being wrapped up in God’s arms, basically saying, I heard your prayers and you have your second chance. I’ve granted you.
I’m crying, but it’s exactly the same sensation. It’s just incredible.
It’s beautiful, and it’s a love that is not of this world, it is so not of this world. I couldn’t even put them. I I I try to do it justice. The best way I knew how, and it was like I was being carried like a child, and a peace washed over me, and then knowing that I was okay, and I didn’t need um doctors to confirm it. I the radiance that showed on my face, the nurses that saw um my face afterwards, after that encounter in the ICU, because we were we were praying the Lord’s Prayer, we were praying for a miracle. The night before, my my parents had received the news that I had an 80% chance of dying, um, and that I was not expected to live. It was Easter weekend of 2012. So for the Christians, Easter weekend is the most important weekend. Um, I find it so interesting that God chose that timing for me, in that when he’s being crucified and resurrecting, it’s the concept of letting go of an old life and stepping into a new life, a new creation in him, and where the doing falls off and the being takes over. And uh, but the love is it’s really I’ve read it in different books, and I’ve and we’re all talking about the same thing. Yes, and the essence is that soul, that identity that is so much bigger than ourselves, than the physical bodies that we inhabit, because the physical bodies that we inhabit are they have limits to it. There’s only so much that body can do, and it starts to shut down. And I know you probably saw this with your mother. I saw it with my dad. My dad uh ended up with a brain tumor um that never quite went away. He had surgery on it multiple times, radiation, all of it, gamma. And that it was very aggressive, and it was uh because it was caused by agent orange and his service in Vietnam, and he was a doctor himself, so that’s why they wanted him in um uh in Vietnam. And um I I saw the limitations, but I also saw how how intelligent the physical body is. It shows you when the time is coming near. It starts to shut down on its own. It’s it’s really interesting. I I remember seeing it in my father and and telling my mother every stage has its beautiful moments. As heartbreaking as they are, as you see them lose their battle slowly. Uh a couple of nights ago I couldn’t sleep, Lynn, and um I was up and I was watching these movies, and I’m just like, why do I do this myself? But so I was watching Heaven is Israel, and I had a moment where God showed me a vision and I started crying because I started to see my father’s last days. And I I, like you, gave myself permission to feel the pain, to not run away from it, to honor it, because our pain needs to be honored, because our journeys um will carry pain with it. We we were not we were told we’re gonna have trials and tribulations, but there’s gonna be lots of joy in in there sprinkled in as well. So pay attention. And um, and I just allowed, I allowed myself to feel it, and I and I told myself very pinely, um, you did go through a lot of pain. It’s okay to cry. And so I’m with you in that bed, you know. My my mind went to you, and and I, as a you’re a complete stranger to me, and yet I feel this connection that I almost want to reach across the screen and just give you a hug and just embrace you and say, Yes, it’s okay to feel this way, and it’s okay. We have this love that is so big to give, and this is it’s this abundant well of love, and yet we don’t tap into it because we get caught up with the noise. I find. I don’t know if you have found that to be true in your practice that you see people struggling with that noise. How do you guide them out of that noise and into this presence that you’re talking about?
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s the practice of meditation. It’s noticing when you hear the voices or the noise or the distractions and coming back to the breath. Or whatever mantra you happen to be using, if it’s the Lord’s prayer, it’s the Lord’s Prayer. It’s having a focus of your attention and then noticing when your mind jumps somewhere else. And it looks like, you know, three breaths sometimes, and then it’s like my to-do list, or three breaths and what’s for dinner. And it as long as you catch yourself and come back to whatever is happening in that moment, then you tend not to miss those important moments because you’re constantly bringing yourself back home. And that’s the essence. That’s how you find it over and over and over again. And you know, I I call that strength training. It’s the idea that every time you catch yourself with a distraction and come back to your your object of your attention, you’re strengthening that muscle, that attention muscle. And that’s the practice.
It is. It is like um I was telling somebody the other day, God has me in training.
Yeah.
With some of these things. Like I’m being trained over and over and over again. He as a light warrior, I’m going to need to put up my full armor of God constantly, all day, every day. It is a practice. It is not something that you just kind of do once in a while. No, no, no. This is like every day. And it’s focusing my mind on what I’m here to do. And no matter what happens in my day, it’s come back to your what’s your center? And you see it in everything, right?
Like even in dance. Where did I get out of love? How did I detour? You know, if I find myself doing something that isn’t, you know, coming from a place of love, oh well then is that really who I am in my essence? And and once you catch yourself in those moments, because they happen all the time, someone cuts you off in traffic or whatever it might be, and usually it’s when I’m rushing somewhere. You know, it’s usually that feeling of, ah, what I’m doing is more important. And that is the trick. That’s the that’s the trick. So it’s catching yourself. And and and love, love is your ground at the end of the day. You know, it’s my ground. It’s why we’re having life why I feel so connected to you from never having met you before, because I feel it across, you know, it’s the screen.
Like the screen is we don’t have barriers with each other, Lynn. Right, right. Our in this existence, people don’t realize that these really are not barriers at all. But our minds condition us to see it as a barrier because that’s how the outside world sees it. And that’s why the noise, you have to be very aware of how that noise impacts you, and always in your training, say, No, no, no, I’ve got to come back to my center. And that center for you is breath work, and for me, it’s prayer and focusing on him and on the purpose. Because as long as I do that, no matter what’s happening around me, and my world could be truly falling apart. And last year it was, there was so much happening, and it felt like you know, those plates like they spin, spin, spin, spin. That’s what it felt like for a while. But then in that midst of that chaos and that tornado, I felt peace just like you. Yeah, and I never understood the concept faith sustains me until my father died. Yeah, I had no idea the blessing and the peace I felt even the day he died. I was so calm. I cried, yes, I was in pain, but it did not, I thought it was going to take me down, and it did not. And it was because a year before, like as I as I heard of his terminal diagnosis, I was talking to, like I said, the lady that I was talking to prior, we were talking about surrender. Surrender. Well, we learned surrender in a near-death shift, both she and I, right? But now the concept of surrender is every day. And how do you do that every day? And my father’s terminal diagnosis taught me that lesson. Surrender doesn’t come just on when things are falling apart, surrender comes every day. We surrender our anxieties to our higher source of power because these are things we can’t control. We cannot control what’s going to happen. We can’t control other people, what they’re gonna say to us, how they’re gonna treat us. All we can do is find our center and emanate from that center. And even on the weekend, this past weekend, I was playing a pickleball tournament, and this lady was really rude to me. I mean, really ugly to me. Yeah, and my initial thought was of like getting back at her. I was still mad at her. And when I got back home, it felt in disalignment to the person I’m becoming. I am truly at my core, my essence. That’s not who I am. And so I immediately apologized to God. I said, I’m sorry, I dishonored you, just by even thinking that way about this woman. Just having those thoughts. We’re in total disalignment. I am so sorry. Please, please forgive me for that. And he was like, Of course, baby girl, I’m you know, I mean, you’re you’re you’re human. You’re human, of course. This can happen. It’s not like you’re never gonna sin again. You know, of course you are, and I’m right here to tell you it’s okay. I got I got you. I got you. As long as you come back to your center, you’re good.
Right.
You’re gonna say something, I know you were.
No, that idea of of surrender, I think, is the most, you know, it it’s for me that idea of recognizing that I might choose how I want to react to something, but I have no choice over the events that come into my life. So there could be input and then I get to choose how I want to respond. And that’s that’s the surrender. The surrender is recognizing things can come your way, and it’s like just accept that whatever’s happening is there for whatever you’re meant to be learning in that moment, and it is not you know, you you don’t have control anyway. So you don’t so what’s the point? You can pretend it’s like getting onto a roller coaster, and you know, they give you those little steering wheels, and I get onto the roller coaster, and it’s like thinking you’re gonna drive. It’s like, no, lady, you are a passenger in this car, just relax.
Just lean into it because here comes the light, and you better just lean into it because it’s you’re gonna get tumbled. If you resist it, it’s gonna be it’s kind of like you’re down. Uh I remember when I learned how to ski. Yeah, I was doing alpine skiing in in Canada and I hit a patch of ice. It’s kind of like hitting a patch of ice. Resisting falling is you could kill yourself actually doing that. So, what did I do? I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say, lean into the fall, girl, you’re about to really tumble. So just lean into it. And I did, I leaned into it and I fell, but I didn’t kill myself because I could have easily done that. And it’s the same concept of life. It’s like here comes the wave, you might as well just enjoy it.
Well, we learn it over and over and over again in so many different ways, right? And even the wave analogy, which to me is perfect because you’ve been in a wave, and the moment you stiffen, what happens? You get taken down. But if you just go under the wave and just allow you just kind of go with it, it passes over you, and then you’re you’re okay.
You’re okay, and that’s and that’s the flow of life. Yeah, that’s where joy, joy has been there the whole time. Yeah, you know, and just it’s like just feel the motion of it and feel the the joy and the love with it, and and the trial will pass as quickly as it started.
Yeah.
Um, how many last words of empowerment that you want to leave the listeners?
That power that we were talking about is within every single one of us. And so the moment you recognize that each one of us has the tools necessary to really uncover. I’m gonna say uncover because it’s there all the time. So once you recognize that it’s always within all of us, you don’t have to go searching elsewhere. It’s it’s there. And then you are the most empowered person out there by not um resisting what’s happening and by allowing what is, and by uh having faith in yourself and in what I’m calling self with a capital S, uh, that is that’s that’s the ticket. That’s what’s gonna help us all of us rise. And and I and one more thing, speaking about all of us rising, it’s that collective because what you’re describing and what I’m describing, and we might use different language and we might have different experiences, but we’re all describing the same thing. And so each one of us is really having uh similar experiences at the at the core of what we’re all describing, you know, and that and that’s really the most important thing. When we’re in it together, we’re much stronger than when we’re by ourselves.
Well, that’s the interconnectedness of all of us. Right. And and the our purpose impacts people at complete strangers, and sometimes we won’t we won’t know who they are until we meet them again, you know. And and I always say I I’ll meet people I I’ve impacted in heaven, I’m sure of it. I’ll be introduced to them and they’ll say, Your life really impacted me, and this is how even negatively or positively, but still it was an impact. And so our choices are our own, um, conscious choices, and and I do believe that as well. So thank you so much for joining us. If I wanted to work with you and learn how to breathe, where do I find you?
Um, you can go to my website, Lynn Goldberg Meditation.com.
Yeah, and that’s I can connect with you either than anything you’ve written, anything on there, I can do that. Okay, it’s all there. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, for the listeners of release that reveal purposes, it’s certainly been a treat because even your words, so masterfully chosen, have really created an impact. Um, in very simple terms. And I think when when people hear it, hear this message, they will hear beyond what was actually said. And and I I do know that I felt it as you were speaking, and so I know this is meant for multiple people on the other side of this interview. So for the listeners of release outreve purpose, remember Matthew 5.14 to always be the light, be your beautiful bright light, because this world needs you more than you’ll ever ever know, especially during this time. And um have faith and have confidence in in your essence and in that love that exists inside all of you. Have a wonderful and blessed day. Love you. Bye now.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review back on iTunes. We’ll win a chance the grand prize drawing back to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.