It’s Time To Let Your Spirit Girl Out Of The Closet – An Interview with Donna Bond

What happens when you reach the top of your game, only to realize it’s not where you’re meant to be?

Donna Bond knows firsthand what it’s like to chase success, only to realize that true fulfillment lies elsewhere. A former marketing executive at Ritz-Carlton, Donna spent decades climbing the corporate ladder before a deep inner calling led her to pivot toward something far more profound—spiritual psychology. Now a transformational coach, author, and retreat leader, she helps people break free from limiting beliefs and step into their highest potential. With a master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, Donna blends practical wisdom with deep spiritual insight to guide others through personal and professional reinvention.

In this conversation, she opens up about the power of impermanence, the courage it takes to walk away from security, and the journey of embracing our divine nature. Through her book Original Wisdom: Harness the Power of the Authentic You, her Spiritual Ambition Show, and immersive retreats in Costa Rica, Donna helps others reconnect with their soul’s purpose. Whether you’re navigating uncertainty, seeking more meaning in your work, or simply curious about spiritual growth, Donna’s story will inspire you to trust the process and take that leap toward a life of deeper alignment. To enjoy the conversation, keep reading or listen and subscribe for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or YouTube.

How do you encourage those facing life’s fragility and impermanence, especially during challenging times like the devastation from fires in Southern California?

Donna Bond: This is such a big question, David. Really, in this moment I would love if you and I could just close our eyes for 15 seconds and just send out the intention for grace to touch anyone and everyone who has been involved in any of these tragedies all across the globe, and just hold that intention for them to find the grace and the healing and the blessing in the challenge that they face.

I think it’s just so powerful for us to send that light and that intention and that frequency of loving. People receive it, whether they’re aware of it or not, and that’s the power of prayer and the power of our intention and the power of energy.

The impermanence of life—nothing is more true. Nothing is more true. And it’s interesting—I saw a poem the other day that was talking about why are we continually surprised about the impermanence of life?

It’s funny—I’m about to launch a new program in a couple of days, Mining Treasures From The Trove, and I’m a guide for the Gene Keys. The Gene Keys married multiple systems together to birth what we know as the system of the Gene Keys, and one of those systems was the I Ching. This 5,000-year-old Chinese oracle, and the word I Ching literally translates into Book of Change.

What’s so magical and mysterious about the I Ching is that it tries to organize and categorize the changes that take place in our impermanent universe. Today, in our modern time, it’s through the Gene Keys and really understanding these different energies and these different archetypal influences that are present on the planet. I think being with what is is a wonderful way to allow life to move through us, so that we’re not stopping it or trapping it or locking it into our energetic field, into our mental and emotional field.

The devastation that’s happening—there’s an incredible amount of grief, there’s an incredible amount of loss, there’s an incredible depth of emotional turmoil that is very real. Every single one of those individuals is on a journey right now, and part of that journey is… I don’t even want to say making sense of it, because I don’t know that we can make sense.

And I think sometimes this is what’s so interesting about impermanence and why we don’t like it—it’s because we want everything to make sense all of the time. We want to be able to hold on to something that feels safe and secure. And so I think it’s in our human condition, our human nature, to, you know, not really prefer impermanence. Yet if we’re honest with ourselves, nothing is more true about life.

How can we embrace impermanence as an opportunity for renewal and creation rather than loss?

Donna Bond: It’s all by design, isn’t it? Right? It’s so painful and difficult to see the impermanence in our life—with our loved ones, right? With our relationships, with our jobs, with our health—like all of these things are so fleeting and slip between our fingers.

They’re all part of our sacred soul plan, which is the way that I describe spiritual curriculum. We are all here to grow and learn and evolve, and our co-creative partner is going to ensure that we are on the program, whatever it has to do. I certainly have my own stories about how life got me on track, and not the least of which—the most recent—was moving to the rainforest jungle of Costa Rica.

We’ll talk about that when we talk about that, but the universe went to great lengths to arrange for me to be here. Believe me when I tell you—I am an indoor girl. I like high heel shoes and expensive locket books, and the universe went to great lengths to align me with something that was necessary for my continued evolution, for my continued awakening.

Can you share how your awakening to consciousness, mindfulness, and spirituality began? Did you grow up with a faith tradition?

Donna Bond: Well, I grew up Roman Catholic. We lived across the street from St. Dunstan’s Church, and because it was right there at the bottom of the driveway, we went. I’m Italian on both sides, so I have a lot of Roman Catholic history in my lineage.

From a very young age, I was mystified by the world, by nature. I had some very important experiences as a young child where I felt like I was touched by the hand of the divine, by the hand of grace.

I have a very specific story. I think I was probably five years old. I was somewhere out in the backyard where I shouldn’t have been by myself, and I was by a stream—and there were no streams in our backyard, David. But I was definitely by a stream and can remember sort of having this communion with the water in the stream and the way the sunlight was dancing on it.  I remember this as clear as day—I’m going to be 57 here any minute—and something more was happening then. Something was awake, awakening, alive within me.

So, even though I was raised Catholic, I always had all the other things and stuff on the side. And I had it in the closet, I’d like to say, for a long time, because we weren’t very religious. Although I had that influence, it really wasn’t a predominant teaching in our household. I think my mother also really gravitated towards spiritual ideas and spiritual concepts.

But maybe it wasn’t okay to talk about those things then, because I can remember being about 16 and discovering that she, like, wasn’t really buying into the Catholic Church—and I was so excited about that.

How did you find out about this? 

Donna Bond: I’ll never forget—we were sitting on my bed in my bedroom, which was in the downstairs basement. It was one of those honest moments that I was having with my mother. I think maybe she spotted something I was reading and then expressed interest in it from there, and the conversation unfolded and she shared with me. Like, you know, yeah, I just go to make everybody happy, but I really believe in all of these other things.

This has always been—like spirituality, metaphysics, the occult—like all of my curiosities and interests, and really the things that lit me up were in those categories. And I’ll tell you, at 17, I knew exactly who I was. I knew at 17 that I was here to be a high priestess. But then I went to sleep. I went to corporate land, I climbed the corporate ladder, I fell asleep, and many, many years went by until I really woke up.

I was at the top of my game. I had just turned 45. And it was a very significant age because that’s how old my father was when he died. All of a sudden, I was in a really big rush to figure out—who am I, what is my life about, what am I doing here—because it can’t be all of this.

I went crying to a psychic, which I had done many times before. And she said, Donna, your guides are spelling it out for me—spiritual psychology. And I said, what in the hell is spiritual psychology? One thing led to another. I went home, I consulted the other oracle. I Googled it, found my way to the University of Santa Monica.

After working through—I don’t know—a hundred objections on behalf of my ego, on really moving myself through all of that resistance, even though there was so much resistance, there was something else that kept—I call it spiritual ambition—that kept my feet walking in that direction. And this wonderful woman.

What did your voice of resistance say to you? What were the exact words?

Donna Bond: You’re nuts, you’re crazy. What the hell are you doing? You don’t know anything about spiritual psychology. You’re a 45-year-old woman. You’ve built this huge career. You make all kinds of money. You’re going to jeopardize your status, your reputation. What do you think you’re doing?

I love that you’re asking me this question because I know that there are—I don’t even know how many—millions of people out there that are like in this exact same place, David. And that’s the truth.

It’s so interesting because I’m like—I’m at that point again in my journey where I’m being asked to step outside in an even greater way, in an even bigger way, like letting my weird flag fly even brighter, and it’s still uncomfortable, and there’s still resistance.

I would share with you that I have developed a certain level of mastery now over, well, how do we, and how do we move through it?

This is very much in alignment with the journey that I help other women through when they are trying to break free of the program. It’s a program. It’s all of the things that we have been taught by our parents and our teachers and our government, our education systems, the media—all of these influences bearing down on us, telling us who to be, what to be, why to be.

We are at an auspicious time on the planet, as I know that you know, where really we are being called to a greater level of sovereignty, a greater level of our own inner wisdom, our own original wisdom, and being able to call on that and live our life through that guidance and that direction and that inner knowingness.

I interrupted you—please continue your story. After the psychic mentioned spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica, what happened next? How did you navigate your high-powered job alongside this inner calling?

Donna Bond: Veronica Alweiss. We give her a deep bow wherever she is. Maybe she will hear this one day.

Veronica Alweiss was the very patient admissions counselor at the University of Santa Monica, and she said, “Donna,”—after really like handling 101,000 of my objections—”Donna, why don’t you just come for one weekend and see what happens?”

I didn’t know that I was enrolling myself in a modern-day mystery school. I didn’t know that I was about to have the biggest awakening of my life, with an altered state of consciousness that really gave me a visceral understanding of the higher levels of our beingness in a truly tangible way.

Once you visit there, like, there’s no coming back the same. And it was through the process of unfolding in this program, which was a gorgeous orchestration of the undoing of the framework of my personality—and that might sound a little scary on the surface, I don’t want to make anybody nervous—but that really is what it was.

It was the loosening of my own rigidity and the relaxing of my own limiting confines that were ready and ripe to blossom and bloom into something much greater. So I initially enrolled for the two-year program, which then turned into a three-year program, which then turned into a five-year program. And I kept adding extensions onto what is a legitimate master’s degree in spiritual psychology, with an emphasis in consciousness, health, and healing.

It was so rich, it was so beautiful, it was so heart-opening and life-altering in every possible way as I got to discover the truth of myself and the truth of everyone around me, the truth of every single being on this planet—that we are so much more than anything that we can even possibly wrap our heads around. And I am now on a mission to help everybody recognize that within themselves.

How did you reconcile your experiences in spiritual psychology with your career at Ritz-Carlton? When did you decide to, as you say in your book, let the spirit girl out of the closet?

Donna Bond: Another divine orchestration unfolded, and it’s a long and involved and winding story. But let me summarize it to say: when we are clear with our intention, when we really hold a true dream in our heart, the universe is conspiring on our behalf to support us in alignment with whatever that is.

A series of events occurred in my role at the Ritz-Carlton where I had to go out on a medical leave of absence because I had a frozen shoulder at the time. This was in my first year of my program. A frozen shoulder was really such a gorgeous metaphor for where I was—because I was frozen.

I knew that life was calling me to something more and something different, but I wasn’t really taking any action to make anything happen. And even the enrollment in the master’s program—my framework at the time was like, oh, this is like a little thing I’m doing on the side, right? This isn’t like the whole big thing. This isn’t all the thing. It was like a little thing I was doing on the side.

When I went out on this leave of absence to have shoulder surgery, I started getting honest with myself about what I knew to be true deep inside that I was unwilling to look at before then. There’s an experience where I’m on an airplane—I’m going to the Ritz-Carlton Global Leadership Conference—and on the plane, I had what I can only describe as divine intervention.

I was reading in a book called Finding Your Element, a series of quotes that woke me up in the way in which I was realizing how tightly I was holding onto my old life.

The first quote was:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the things that you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

And the next quote was by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Then the third poem, which many people have heard—we misattribute it to Anaïs Nin, but it’s actually by an artist called Elizabeth Appell. And the poem is:
“And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

And in that moment, when I had that frozen shoulder before the surgery, I felt like I was that bud—like my frozen shoulder was that bud. And in an instant, I had the elevation of seeing my whole life and how, if I didn’t get out of where I was, I was going to die. And part of that actually was very true, David, for a lot of reasons.

But my soul was crying to be set free with the truth. My soul wanted so badly to express in a bigger, in a different way—in a way that was never gonna happen while I was still on the conveyor belt, on autopilot, with my tight little life.

Did you return after your medical leave, or was that the end of your career there? What were the moments leading up to your decision to formally communicate that you weren’t coming back?

Donna Bond: That was the end. I never went back. I got off that airplane, and I had crystal clarity inside of me that I was done. Like, I knew it. And I went through this conference, and I was very different than I had been in the past.

Because usually, I’m in the front row, taking copious notes of all the things I’m going to implement when I get back to the office. That’s not happening. I suddenly was really in the place of the observer, witnessing this beautiful career that I had enjoyed, that I had worked so hard for. I call myself a middle-class ladder climber, and I did pretty well for a middle-class ladder climber. And I knew after that experience on the plane that I was complete.

So, it’s the very last night, and I was called to the stage. I was the recipient of the Western Regional Marketing Achievement Award for the third year in a row. And as I’m walking back to my seat with this award in my hand, I know even more clearly—I’m done here. This life is coming to a close. And oh, isn’t it nice to go out on top.

What I didn’t share with you was, before I left on this trip, I was playing a manifestation game with the universe, and I was asking the universe to bring me an apple. I sat back down at my dinner seat, where they had just served dessert, and before me is the most full and elaborate apple dessert that you’ve ever seen. And I would have missed it had it not been for the menu card. But the card was spelling out apple confit and green apple sorbet and apple this and apple that. 

I just sat there, and I wept. I wept at the connection that we have with the universe and, again, how magnificent we all are in ways that we have no idea about. And that was really the universe giving me a resounding yes—that what happened to you on the plane, where you had this crystal clarity—that was real. That was true. And now you’ve got to take action.

So, I go out on the surgery, kind of knowing, right? Like, things are changing here. And the surgery was a door opening in a really auspicious way. It wasn’t difficult for me to write that resignation letter at that time because I had such clarity inside of me. During the recovery, I was conjuring up ideas of how I was going to support myself financially. And I had so many years in the industry, I thought, well, I’ll become a consultant. And this is literally what I did.

I pitched the Ritz-Carlton on hiring me as their consultant to train my predecessor, and it all worked out that way. The universe, again, was helping me. Like, every step of the way, the universe had my hand. I think the important thing—and the important thing for our listeners who maybe want to embark on a journey like this—we get overwhelmed by thinking, oh my God, how do I leave my job and get myself someplace safe in the future?

There’s a thousand steps between here and there. When we can stay focused on what’s the next step—like, what’s the next step right now, from where I’m at, with what I have? What can I do? Where can I go? And that then informs the next step that will come after that.

But in our linear thinking and in our human control patterns, we want to have all the steps laid out. We want to have the security measures in place. We want to know—how long is it going to take? What’s the return on the investment? All the things.

But we opened our conversation talking about impermanence and talking about how everything changes. And that really is what we can count on—the fact that everything changes. So, when we can hold our intention and move one step at a time, every step we take, the whole landscape changes. The options that are available to me three steps down the road are going to be completely different than if I had tried to plan them out in advance.

So, we can be courageous enough to trust—to trust in ourselves and our choices, to trust in the divine orchestration of this thing called life that is unfolding around us all of the time, and to trust that we are going to be safe.

We’re going to be even better than we were when we started. Then we can take those small steps and feel ourselves being caught along the way.

Thank you for sharing that. The story that you just told, you tell in even more elaborate detail. It’s just absolutely beautiful. In your book, which is called Original Wisdom: Harness the Power of the Authentic You, you include what you call sacred truth activations. And the very first one that you share is:

“I am a magnificent, unique, individualized expression of the divine. I am an infinite, limitless, multidimensional being. The energy that I am comprised of is the same energy of all that is. The purpose of my life and spiritual journey is to awaken my inner knowingness and to recognize who I really am, which is the energy of pure divine love. Walking the spiritual path is a sacred act of remembering that I am a divine being having a human adventure.”

Oh, I’m ready to take on the world now. I’m fired up. Yes, this feels so good. I think I just answered my own question.

If somebody embraces this truth, how will their life be different?

Donna Bond: I want you to answer the question, David. I want you to answer the question because you just, like, had an experience with this, which is my intention—to give people an experience with this. So, what just happened for you? Because I can feel it.

I could read that 10 more times and pull in different components. It speaks to self-worth. I feel emotion rising up in me because this is the power right here. We long for the impermanence which actually could be a soul longing to recognize that there is something that is permanent within us, which is the timeless recognition of who we are as an expression of the divine. That is, in a sense, permanent, right, and so we’re longing for that and we hold on to the things around us in order to try to. It’s a mirage of trying to develop permanence, but in reality is, if we embrace what you just described. That is permanent, that feels grounding, that feels safe. 

How do you see the relationship between impermanence and our deeper longing for something permanent within us?

Donna Bond: Everything is energy. Our words are energy, our thoughts are energy, our bodies are energy. They’re all just at different frequencies. What we think about expands. What we invest our life force into is going to grow. And this is where we go wrong. I can remember Monday morning quarterbacking in the corporate world, like let’s look behind us at all the shit that went wrong. And then what do we do? We replay all the shit that went wrong, because that’s where we’re focusing, that’s where our attention is.

So, if for nothing else, you know what you shared and I felt your emotion and I felt the aliveness that was infused in those words coming from me, through you, back to me like, oh, I feel the sacred geometry symbols enlivening here before us. We place our attention and our life force and our focus and our energy on what it is we do want to experience and to create, and where we go wrong is our habitual, perpetual, insistence on investing ourselves in what we don’t want. And I’ve heard, oh yeah, those intentions don’t work or affirmations don’t work. They work if you work them.

We are programmed with all of the things that we’ve been programmed with from all of the external influences that we’ve already talked about, and we can update those programs. We can upgrade those programs and give ourselves a fighting chance to stay on track and to feel uplifted. The way that I experience the higher levels, it’s literally like a different floor in the building. You know it’s a different floor in the building. You know it’s a different floor in the building.

And when we are looking at a problem and we’re on the ground floor with that problem, we’re looking at it right in the eye. We don’t really have a lot of perspective, we don’t really see anything else, we’re just looking at that problem. And so what most of us do is we keep looking at the problem and that’s not going to produce a solution. But when we can elevate ourselves and be able to relate to that opportunity or that challenge from a higher perspective, a different place, then all of a sudden it looks different and we all of a sudden have the potential and the capability and the possibility of relating to it in a completely different way, because what we send out is what we get back and we have to be the origin point of our own lives.

So, if somebody were to work with that sacred truth activation every day for the next 33 days, for example, I will go out on a limb here and guarantee that they’re going to experience some radical upliftment in their own consciousness, some massive opening in their heart space, some deepening compassion, understanding for this crazy world that we all share, because they’re tapping into their essence that taps you into your essence.

What is the healing modality called Higher Human Integration, and how can it help someone?

Donna Bond: Higher Human Integration is the fancy name of my process, to be honest with you. That is guiding an individual through the undoing, the loosening of the tight framework that they have been operating under. And the important thing about it, and what makes it this healing modality, is that it includes all four levels of our consciousness. I take you through mindset, heart set, skill set, and soul set.

Our mindset is our thinking and the mental realm, and really thinking about our thinking, examining what we are thinking about and recognizing that so much of our thinking is patterned and habitual. And as we think the same thoughts, we’re going to have the same feelings, and we’re going to have the same behaviors. So, this is how we begin to loosen that or soften that in a way in which we can then really have more heart, more compassion, and I talk about these heart sets. These are beautiful inherent qualities in each individual that really want to be shared. They want to come forward. These qualities are why we came, right? So that we could experience these qualities, express these qualities, share these qualities.

And if we’re hidden behind all of the patterning and all of the framework, they get lost. But for us to undo the framework, it’s going to require us to open our hearts. It’s going to require us to open our hearts, soften, get curious, and have a little humility, letting go of our pridefulness, which naturally opens our heart. As the heart opens, these qualities naturally begin to emanate.

The soul sets are the shared qualities of humanity that we all have. The qualities of universal love and light, joy, peace, aliveness, creativity—these are the universal qualities that also make themselves more present and known through our consciousness as we begin to unravel the tight hold and the grip that we’re imprisoned with by our upbringings, societal influences, and cultures.

As these things begin to shift in our consciousness, we begin to make different choices in our life. This is where we get into some of the skill sets, which are directly connected to the actions we take and the behaviors we exhibit. They are different from perhaps a choice we would have made if we’re looking only through the lens of our ego self and not through the open heart of our soul self.

So, higher human integration is the full embodiment of all of our aspects, both our higher self and our human self. As we catch glimpses of our higher self, our human self begins to catch on, like, “Oh wow, if I want to experience more peace and more stillness in my life, then here are some actions that would really benefit me in having that experience.” So, I’m going to make the choice to start a meditation practice, for example, or take a yoga class—whatever it is that’s going to make that a non-negotiable in my life.

Who are the people you most often work with, and what challenges do they typically bring?

Donna Bond: I definitely work with a large group of people who know there’s something more for them and they feel stuck or trapped in their current life, with their whatever it is their current work situation or their current relationship or a health challenge that they have. People I support are really recognizing there is a different way to do life, and I actually coach a number of therapists and I had a therapist say to me once, if you really want to heal, you got to go spiritual, you got to go spiritual.

And I think there’s so much truth in that, because when we begin to view our life through the lens of the higher self, things look different. We have a whole different perspective through which we are relating to life. So, I work with a lot of people who know like there’s something else for me. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I can feel it and it’s rising up inside of me and I need to get through all of these layers and these pieces to be able to align myself with whatever that is.

And I support a lot of very high achievers, very high achieving women who are. They’ve amassed all the things, all the toys, all the stuff. They might be married, they maybe have a couple of kids, they’re the CEO or the President and they, too, are feeling this pulse right, the spiritual ambition I know we’re going to talk about it in a minute, if we can this inner propeller that is calling them to something higher, to something more.

And I love working with women who have a big ripple effect because they take these learnings and these teachings back to their organization and then they are leading in a completely different way. Heart-centered leadership and employing qualities like compassion and understanding and empathy and like really connecting and seeing other people for their unique individualized gifts. So, I love working with women who are then sending the ripple back out.

What is spiritual ambition? 

Donna Bond: My definition of spiritual ambition is humanity’s quest to experience its divine nature, and I just want to reflect to you. I want to say, like you may have experienced it when you read that, sacred truth activation. You had a little taste of that, because you were like, wow, there was like this inner explosion that happened. These two words landed in my consciousness together spiritual ambition, and it’s like such a juxtaposition, like they don’t really belong together.

They don’t really go together, and you can even sort of conjure up your own definition for it, which isn’t what it’s really about. It really is about our entelechy. Our entelechy is this fullest realized expression of who we have come here to be in this life, and the spiritual ambition is the inner propeller that is keeping you on track to realize your entelechy.

The entelechy of an acorn is an oak tree. The entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly. You have an entelechy. I have an entelechy, and every single human soul has an entelechy. The entelechy is the fullest realized expression of who we have come here to be in this life. Spiritual ambition is the inner driver that keeps us on track to be able to realize that entelechy. 

You’re making this into a show as well? 

Donna Bond: Yes, well, I’m making it into a show so that when I publish the book, somebody will actually buy it. The Spiritual Ambition Show is where women will awaken to their divine nature. I have some fun things planned. The first thing we’re going to do is called a Soul Tripp, and this is really the crux of the show. My intention, David, is to create a sacred space. I’m going to be the full high priestess out of the closet. Spirit girl is graduating, and we’re going to create a sacred space. We’re going to go within, do some inner exploration, and have some inner experiences. Soul Tripp, T-R-I-P-P, stands for teaching, ritual, intention, practice, or process. The main part of the show will be this Soul Tripp that we will take together.

I also am going to be doing something called the Celebration of Love’s Alchemy. This is going to be another segment on the show where we’ll give our celebration and deep gratitude for things that we might be overlooking, things that we might be taking for granted, or things we would never consider saying thank you for or having gratitude for. The whole idea behind this is love’s alchemy. Love is an agent for change. Love is the elixir for transformation. Love is the elixir for the great awakening that is taking place on the planet today. It’s where we’re all going

How can people connect with you and receive support through your individual coaching, monthly memberships, or retreats?

Donna Bond: Thank you. You can visit donnabond.com, and all of the information is there. Connect to Your Essential Nature is my Costa Rican women’s retreat. It’s taking place April 6th through 11th this year, and there are still a few seats available for that. So, I offer complimentary discovery calls where I sit with people heart to heart and soul to soul, and we go through a process of activation and a process of awakening. You know that soul liberation—like what wants to be freed within you—and that’s a great place to start. You can find your way to my calendar on my website, again on donnabond.com, and check out all of the different ways that I can support you.

Donna, thank you so much for sharing your story, your wisdom, your vision for the world. I just admire how you have made this massive transition and awakening in your life and admire and appreciate all that you’re bringing to our world. It’s making a huge difference.

Donna Bond: Thank you, David. Thank you for Awakened Magazine. It’s really a blessing what you’re doing and being able to share all of these extraordinary practitioners and healers and leaders of transformational change. So, it’s my honor to be on the planet with you at this time. Thanks so much for having me on the show.