Madonna Opens Up About Her ‘Spiritual Life’ to Jay Shetty (Exclusive)

Madonna is lifting the curtain on her spirituality.

On Monday, the Queen of Pop, 67, is set to make her first-ever podcast interview on a revealing new episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, PEOPLE confirms exclusively.

During the conversation, the superstar and podcast host Jay Shetty have an “open conversation” about Madonna’s decades-long spiritual journey — which began shortly before the birth of her first child, Lourdes Leon — while reflecting on topics including forgiveness, success and how studying spirituality has shaped her life.

“You need to be spiritual to be successful. Success is having a spiritual life, period. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have one,” Madonna, who first discovered Kabbalah in 1996, tells Shetty on the episode.

The seven-time Grammy winner has long been embraced by fans for pushing boundaries and using her voice to advocate for human rights — something the star says has been a guiding light for her.

“What have I done for others? That’s really the only way you can be successful in life,” she tells Shetty. “It’s like the greatest amount of light is where there’s darkness and you can reveal the most amount of light. When you’re in a dark room, you turn on the light. When you’re in a room that’s already light, what do you, there’s no, um, effort made. So should we look for darkness?

“My soul’s purpose is to reveal light in the world through whatever I do,” she continues, later adding, “I want it all, but I want it for the sake of sharing, not to keep it for myself.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Madonna — who is later joined by her Kabbalah teacher Eitan Yardeni (they recently launched a new course titled The Mystical Studies of the Zohar) — acknowledges that she was once “a slave or victim of other people’s opinions of me.”

But over the years, she’s accepted that “I don’t fit in, and not fitting in is what saves you.”

Through her ups and downs, the star insists it’s her spirituality that has carried her through. “Spiritual wisdom is not helpful when everything’s going your way. It’s helpful when you’re challenged and when you’re happy,” she says.

“It’s helpful to remember that at any given time, in any moment, it could be gone. So don’t take it for granted. Have humility,” she continues. “Radical acceptance is just accepting that what is happening to you is meant to happen to you — and that you’re going to be okay.”