Podcasts about slade roberson

  Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of BigSeance.com with this special episode of the podcast! We'll be looking back at the TOP 10 most popular episodes! Visit BigSeance.com/204 for more info!   Other Listening Options Direct Download Link   In this episode: Intro :12 It's been 10 years since Patrick's very first blog post at BigSeance.com! "In 2012, my small paranormal investigation team had been out and about for 2 years, I would soon be inspired by Sarah Estep to do my own EVP experiments at home, and I was about 3 years into my spiritual shift that you hear me talk about often. I had just taken a channeling class where I met my spirit guide, Merlin. And I was binging every book on paranormal and spiritual topics that I could get my hands on! I was also binging every episode of both The Ghost Whisperer and Ghost Hunters. I needed a place to share my thoughts on this new journey, and I had TONS of them! Blogging was all the rage, and so on February 5th 2012, I wrote my very first blog post at BigSeance.com. It was very short, but it was about spirit guides. And looking back at this post, you can tell that I had already been marinating in books about mediumship and the Other Side, referring to the Other Side as Home, and I capitalized 'Other Side' and 'Home'." :50   Patrick's first blog post on February 5th, 2012, was about Spirit Guides. 2:20 "That was 10 years ago today. In some ways, it feels like yesterday, but at the same time it kind of feels more like 30 years ago, especially when I read my thoughts from that time." The all-time top blog post at BigSeance.com is a post about Being Able to Read in Your Dreams. To this day that post is visited by someone in the world almost every single day. The popularity of the post later inspired episode 66 of the podcast. 3:28 The all-time most popular search terms that people Googled before landing at BigSeance.com have something to do with Andrea Perron or the Perron family. The real life experiences of the Perron family inspired the Conjuring films. Andrea Perron was a guest on the Big Seance Podcast in episode 98. Another popular search term that led people here is, oddly enough, Thomas Edison or his invention, the phonograph. And as you'd expect, there are several variations of, “What does it mean if I can read in my dreams?” 3:50 "After blogging almost every single day for two years, I began producing and hosting the Big Seance Podcast. Over the past 10 years I've met so many fascinating people, and even some of you, my listeners! And there's no way to measure how much I've learned and grown." 4:28 In this special episode, Patrick channels his inner Casey Kasem to unveil the top ten most popular episodes of the Big Seance Podcast! A portion of each of those ten episodes is featured. 4:50   Let's start with Number 10! Episode 161 with Angel Medium Michael Terzi. 5:30 Number 9 is episode 159 with DeAnna Simpson, who was joined by Joni Mayhan who authored the book, The Hanover Haunting: The DeAnna Simpson Story. This story takes place in a home made popular by an episode of the Travel Channel's The Dead Files. "I will never forget the story of this one terrifying experience that I asked DeAnna to share in that episode." 10:07 Number 8 is episode 164, Ouija Paranormal and Beyond Part 1. This was one of many appearances by Karen A. Dahlman. This particular one was live streamed, and in this clip, Karen was answering a listener question. 15:45 Number 7. Episode 148. Everyday Intuition with Slade Roberson. In this clip, Slade told two stories from terrifying memories of one of his childhood homes. 17:39 Number 6 is The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm with Richard Estep, Episode 150. Here's some backstory. Fox Hollow Farm is the beautiful Indiana home, complete with indoor pool, where Herb Baumeister allegedly murdered numerous men from the gay community in the 1990s. Chances are you've heard of this place, and Richard Estep knows it well. In this clip, Richard discusses a creepy video, from local TV news, that can still be found on YouTube. 26:37 Number 5 is episode 151 with Scott L. and Amber from the Ghostly Talk podcast. In this hilarious clip, Patrick, Scott L. and Amber were laughing about things that bugged them about the paranormal field. 29:16 Number 4. From episode 152, who doesn't love Michelle Belanger? 33:11 Number 3 is another great episode with Karen A. Dahlman, episode 146. "This was one of our infamous weekends together, this time staying overnight at the haunted Lemp Mansion in St. Louis. In this clip, I'll drop you right into the middle of a Ouija seance and spirit box session in the Lavender suite." 40:27 Number 2! The second most popular episode of the Big Seance Podcast is one of Patrick's favorites - Episode 147 with the late Barb Huyser, who passed only 8 months ago. She was one of the greatest story tellers. But she was also incredible at something she called, "Paranormal Social Work." This touching story had to do with putting the ghost of a little girl on a behavior plan. 48:12 So here we go… Number 1! The most popular episode of the Big Seance Podcast is Episode 149 - What the Dead are Dying to Teach Us. This was just one of the appearances by Medium Claire Broad. 55:49 Here's to another 10 years! A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 1:06:30 Outro 1:08:40     The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe and share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!  

I am so happy to share EMDR with you all after my first session with Sharon at a time when I was in dire need of support. I was truly in a state of constant panic attack when Sharon reached out to me. Grateful to Sharon for so graciously coming onto the podcast and sharing such important information for these times. Sharon has been a licensed mental health counselor for twenty years and has worked in private practice, health care and school settings. She holds a Master's Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Vermont and is licensed by the state of Vermont as a Mental Health Counselor. Sharon is solidly trained in psychotherapy and uses a strength-based approach with clients, reflecting on what works well for them and what skills they can add to and build upon. Traditional counseling is, at its most basic, a conversation between the client and therapist. Sharon lets the client lead the way, acting as a guide and teacher when needed, and offering suggestions and alternatives when they might be helpful. In addition to her formal education, Sharon has completed a year-long Energy Medicine Practitioner Training and is Level I Reiki certified. She has studied with respected intuitives Erin Pavlina and Slade Roberson and undertook a year-long shamanic apprenticeship at Indigenous Roots Institute. Find Sharon at whetstonewellness.com Sharon also creates visually healing pastel imagery, find them in her shop on Etsy at Vermont Pastel Studio Follow Sharon's artwork on Instagram @vermontpastelstudio Become a Patreon supporter and receive special gifts from guests of the podcast. Visit our website mountainhollowmedicinals.com Join the Dreamers of the Hollow Facebook group Follow us on Instagram @mountainhollowmedicinals

  Do you have a Daily Practice for Communicating with Spirit? Listeners and some of our favorite past guests contribute tips and advice for starting your very own practice! Some of the shared wisdom includes fitness, meditation, incorporating photographs of loved ones, strengthening the physical senses, aromatherapy, remembering your dreams, and prayer. Plus wisdom on getting through the current challenge the world is currently facing. Visit BigSeance.com/162 for more info.   Other Listening Options Direct Download Link   In this episode This episode of The Big Seance Podcast is sponsored by Nuwati Herbals – “Herbal Remedies from Mother Earth.” Visit NuwatiHerbals.com and use the code BIGSEANCE to receive 15% off your Nuwati Herbals order as a THANK YOU! :00 Intro :41 Thank you for your contributions to this episode! 1:24 Pouring the tea! Today Patrick is drinking “Eye of the Hawk” tea by the sponsor of today’s episode, Nuwati Herbals. 1:44 First up is psychic medium, author, paranormal investigator, and television personality, Michelle Belanger (from Travel Channel's Portals to Hell and episode 152 of the Big Seance Podcast) and her recommendation for meditation in the shower. 3:08 Next up is previous guest, Joni Mayhan, who last joined us with DeAnna Simpson in episode 159 on the Hanover Haunting. She has advice on connecting with spirit guides by staying grounded and being mindful, raising vibration, and being present. 8:01 Amber Choisella is a metaphysical and spiritual counselor and was on the show in episode 133. Her advice is for meditation and “sitting in the power” techniques. 13:46 Next up is a listener named Christine. She’s been on the show with great feedback a few times before! Today’s advice is to stay mindful. 15:49 Author and spiritual medium, Claire Broad, is a good friend of the show, and joined us most recently in episode 149. Using a photograph of your loved one in spirit to gain a closer connection. 16:54 Next up is Angel Medium, Michael Terzi, who is probably a familiar voice, because he was just with us in last week’s episode! He recommends meditation, strengthening our physical senses, and discusses intuition and the phenomenon of ringing in the ears. 18:38 Now to a listener named Gretchen, who uses a combination of recorded music, crystals, and aromatherapy oils in her spirit communication. 28:37 A beautiful message and reminder from a listener named Keli. “Just talk to spirit. Just talk. That’s all it takes.” 31:52 Here’s another voice that will be familiar to you. International bestselling author, Theresa Cheung, is another good friend of the show, and most recently she was on episode 127 with Dr. Julia Mossbridge. Theresa’s tip? Remember your dreams. 33:11 Professional intuitive, author, and host of the Shift Your Spirits Podcast, Slade Roberson is another friend of the podcast and was most recently in episode 148. Fitness, rebooting your energy, and avoiding being top-heavy and frazzled! 34:56 Astrologer Dena DeCastro has been on the show several times and is a great friend to the show. Her last appearance was in episode 134. Movement, an altar space, prayer, and tarot helps insure a great day for Dena! 40:32 The contribution that I wanted to end the show with today is from friend Ash Riley, who is an Intuitive Personal Development Mentor. Most recently, she joined Slade Roberson in episode 132. Ash’s wisdom for us today is beautiful and I think is very much needed with what the world is currently going through. “You ARE spirit.” 42:05 National Domestic Violence Hotline National Sexual Assault Hotline A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 49:17 Outro 51:10   The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance! 

  Slade Roberson, professional intuitive, author, and host of the Shift Your Spirits Podcast, returns to the parlor. In Part 1 he shares tales of living in a haunted house growing up. In Part 2 he offers intuitive counseling to a listener, a clinical counselor,  with questions about intuition and trauma. Visit BigSeance.com/148 for more.   Other Listening Options Direct Download Link   In this episode: Episode Teaser :00 Intro :49 Pouring the tea! Today I’m drinking Wind Dancer tea by the sponsor of today’s episode, Nuwati Herbals. 2:25 Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive, author, and host of the podcast Shift Your Spirits, where he talks about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. He also mentors emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. For Slade's previous episodes on the Big Seance Podcast, check out episodes 125 and 132. 3:42 The teaser for Slade’s first appearance on the Big Seance Podcast. 5:21 Tales of a Fourth Grade Haunting: A prequel to Shift Your Spirits. 6:38 This episode of The Big Seance Podcast is sponsored by Nuwati Herbals - “Herbal Remedies from Mother Earth.” Visit NuwatiHerbals.com and use the code BIGSEANCE to receive 15% off your Nuwati Herbals order as a THANK YOU! 22:23 Everyday Intuition — Christine, a listener and professional clinical counselor, stepped in for some intuitive counseling and had questions about intuition and taking on other people’s trauma. 24:16 Christine gets advice on hearing and interpreting information from spirit guides and how to improve this ability. 43:55 Final thoughts from Slade. 54:09 A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 57:32 Outro 59:26   For more on Slade Roberson: AutomaticIntuition.com ShiftYourSpirits.com Facebook: Shift Your Spirits Twitter: @SladeRoberson   The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!      

I wanted to do something special to commemorate the 100th episode of the Shift Your Spirits podcast, so for this interview, a listener has volunteered to turn the tables on me. The guest is asking the questions! Hilary Parker is a writer, editor and mom of two. In her business, Storied Creative Services, she used the power of storytelling to provide content marketing and publicity for her clients. Hilary and I talk about storytelling as well as how to tune into intuition in our everyday lives. GUEST LINKS - HILARY PARKER StoriedCreativeServices.com HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon

Susan Grace and Aubrey Mast host the Be The Evidence Podcast. They develop continual, ongoing astrological and wellness content at www.BeTheEvidence.live. They are dedicated to supporting the Collective during a time of massive, wide-sweeping change. In this Bonus Episode Susan and Aubrey Interview Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive, author, and host of the podcast Shift Your Spirits, where he tries to talk about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. He also mentors emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Themes Reconnecting to your Intuition Becoming Inspired and sparking Creativity Bringing your Gifts into the World Receiving and Allowing Money Tools to Inspire Surfing Big Emotions Links Susan Grace www.SusanGrace.org Aubrey Mast www.aubreycmast.com Slade Roberson https://sladeroberson.com/ Offers Slade's Gift's Contacting Your Spirit Guides 101 - ebook + guided meditation to meet your guides sladeroberson.com/free Automatic Intuition Professional - Attunement guided meditation you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com Member Site www.BeTheEvidence.live You are invited to join Susan and Aubrey's growing member community at www.BeTheEvidence.live where you can get real time astrology updates by text, weekly live calls, presence practices, private group support, podcasts extended to all 12 signs and more.

In this special listener feedback episode, Patrick digs into listener emails, Apple Podcast reviews, PLUS discussion on past lives and reincarnation with Simon Bown and Claire Broad, and your 2019 astrological forecast with Dena DeCastro! Visit BigSeance.com/134 for more info. Other Android OptionsListen in Spotify Listen in Stitcher Listen in iHeart Radio Direct Download Link   In this episode: Intro :00 A voicemail and a question from Meredith. “If death is an illusion, how do you explain reincarnation?” :45 Hypnotherapist and host of the Past Lives Podcast, Simon Bown shares his take on Meredith’s question. 1:55 Psychic medium and former guest Claire Broad responds to the same question as well. 3:15 An interesting email from “Girl from Minnesota”, a great storyteller. She has a question about reincarnation/past lives and spirit guides. 9:47 A message from Veronica 18:48 Sharon asks about the Patreon for Big Seance Podcast! Check out Patreon.com/BigSeance. 20:29 Lorna from Australia on astral travel 21:21 Peggy Hagan writes in. (PonderingWithPeg.blogspot.com) 23:14 Don responds to the episode with Joshua Black on grief dreams. 24:40 Connecting a listener named Patric with the Big Seance Parlor community. 30:11 A funny and spooky story about scout camp from Pat. 31:28 Christopher Kohler with feedback on the Triangle Table episode with Slade Roberson and Ash Riley. This episode is still sparking some great discussion. 33:37 Dolly has a question about the voiceover lady in early episodes of the Big Seance Podcast. 35:43 More paranerds that I’ve heard from recently, including Sam Haynes with his new album! 37:30 Apple Podcast and iTunes Reviews! 39:54 One last email from Patty, who from the future let us know how Dena DeCastro’s Astrological Forecast for 2018 turned out! 41:29 Our 2019 Astrological Forecast with Dena DeCastro! 44:19 A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 1:08:05 Outro 1:10:11   Fore more on Dena DeCastro DenaDeCastro.com Twitter: @siriusastrology Sirius Astrology Podcast Previous Big Seance Podcast episodes with Dena: 53, 61, 65, and 112.   The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!

This show originally aired on the Big Seance Podcast - Ep 132 "Straight Dudes! Get Thyself to a Spirit Triangle!" and was produced by Patrick Keller. Where are all the straight men in the metaphysical and spiritual communities? Patrick Keller of the Big Seance podcast hosted a "triangle table" chat with Ash Riley of In My Sacred Space and Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits. We talk about ... the divine feminine, LGBTQ spirituality, coming out of the (spiritual) closet, and how to make spirituality more accessible to the elusive straight male. A fun, lively, original discussion of some rarely approached topics! GUEST LINKS - ASH RILEY InMySacredSpace.com In My Sacred Space Discussion Group on Facebook In My Sacred Space on Instagram GUEST LINKS - PATRICK KELLER BigSeance.com Big Seance Podcast HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Ash: I've decided that I am a connector. Slade: Yes. Patrick: Yes. Ash: That's what I do. I reach out to people, and I meet people and I connect them with other people, because, I don't know. I just feel like, oh! You guys should know each other because I like you and I like you. You should like each other. Slade: I feel very much the same way. I consider myself a matchmaker, and I used to do it even when I was in corporate. I would hire people and put them in certain places to work with other people. I have six marriages that resulted from that and... Ash: Holy -----! Slade: And there are at least three children that I can claim. Ash: You can start a business on that! Patrick: I remember you saying that, yeah. Slade: I don't know that I could do it if I did it intentionally with a romantic intention involved. But if I do it in the context of maybe work or, yeah, like you said, just recognizing, you guys should know each other. Like, my Automatic Intuition program has become this party that I host. And whenever I add someone to it, it becomes increasingly more difficult to screen people to become a part of that. You know what I'm saying? It gets to be more and more kind of delicate and intricate. And that's what I think about when somebody's like, I want to take your program! I'm thinking, okay, what's the seating chart here, at the dinner table? You know what I mean? Ash: I feel like when I meet people that I want to introduce to other people, it's because I feel like they're gonna vibe and it's like a certain energy that I get from them. I feel they're similar. Slade: Yeah, I mean I would love it if people would do that to me. I mean, it does happen. People do introduce me to people, but I have become, especially with all this podcasting stuff, really kind of aware of the fact that, it's interesting that you say that, because I feel like my power is in introducing people to other people, also on a scale of like, discovering someone, or finding this person and being like, why aren't thousands of people listening to this woman? Ash: Yeah, yeah! Slade: You know? And interviewing them and I'm not interested in interviewing people who are already famous, or have more followers than I do, or whatever. Even though Patrick does. Patrick: Do you know how many people I've had the opportunity to, and I just go, and I either drop the ball and don't do it, or it just doesn't feel right. And the ones that I have interviewed that have been, you know, bigger names, just like landed in my lap. Ash: I've always wanted to... I mean, I have a decent following for what I do and the amount of effort that I put into it. It's not spectacular, but I recognize that I have a much bigger platform than a lot of other people. When I do meet those people who I think, Gawd, people should know who this person is! That's why I always want to give them an opportunity to be exposed to my audience at least, because I'm like, if I meet somebody and I believe in them and what they're talking about, I think that that's really valuable for other people. Slade: Well you're also displaying your talent for recognizing that in other people. And people come to associate you with someone who has cool people on their platform. You know what I mean? I don't want people to feel like I have a bunch of canned interviews, or.. Ash: Right! Slade: I want them to think, Wow! He always finds these people that I would've never known about otherwise but I'm so glad that I do. That's the feeling that I want them to have. And I also want the people who are on the show to feel like it's a big deal for them. To feel like, either they love the show already so it's really cool for them to get to be on it, or they feel like, Wow, I went on the show and now I have so many more people listening to me. Or I've got so many new clients from that or whatever, and to be really excited about it. Because we do this stuff so much more frequently now than the average person that we might put on. There's just an energy about having someone be excited about being a part of what you're doing. And being excited about being a collaborator and it comes through. You can feel it. You know what I mean? When you listen to a show with somebody who's really excited and happy to be there, even if they're kind of nervous or something. Ash: Absolutely. Patrick: So, I'm just considering this thing started. Slade: Well why don't you tell everybody how we met, because I'd love to know what your perspective is on how we all three know each other. Patrick: I think I talked a little about it when I had each of you on the show, but I think I talked about it the most when Ash was on the show, and in my... it's not really a previous blogging life, because a podcast is just kind of an extension of what I started doing with the blog. I met Ash through her blog, and I think when I realized she was from my area, that's when we started talking. I think I had, you might remember this, Ash, I don't know exactly how... If like, I messaged you or you messaged me. Or maybe you commented on my blog or something, but we started communicating pretty regularly. I had lots of questions for her about my website. She had already been in the blogging world and I was still learning about it. I think we were talking about how I was experiencing the intense early part of my spiritual shift. We've all talked about this, where I couldn't get enough books about it. And I couldn't stop reading about it and... Ash: The information-gathering phase. Patrick: Yes! Yes. And I was overwhelmed and I think Ash was like, You know, there's this dude that I need to connect you with because he's real. That's how I got connected with your blog. I don't think I actually communicated with you until quite a bit later, Slade, but I was following you and learning from you at that time. Slade: Cool. Patrick: Then I think you reached out to me, Slade, before you started your fabulous podcast and Ash always pops up in topics, like, Ash said this, or Ash is so... Ash: SURPRISE! Here I am! Slade: From the closet. Ash: Like a jack-in-the-box. Patrick: By the way everybody, I made Ash sit in her closet because that's the greatest place for someone with a mobile laptop to record for acoustics, and it turns out her closet is basically a spiritual oasis and is beautiful. Slade: There's fashion in there too. Patrick: Yes! Ash: When I come out of the broom closet, it's like literally the spiritual broom closet here. Slade: It really is what I would expect your closet to be in the best kind of way. My closets are very suburban and not exciting at all. They are arranged by ROYGBIV and they all have the same exact hanger on every item of clothing, I will say that. Those are my two. Ash: You're not OCD either. Slade: No, not at all. I have a south node in Virgo, I've discovered, which is where I get all my perfectionism in this lifetime from. Ash: I have a south node in Sagittarius, which is where I get all of my bluntness. Slade: Oh good! I like Sagittarius energy. We can trust it. That we're getting the exact, undistilled, unvarnished... Ash: The unvarnished truth. Slade: Yes. I like that. I like that quality. Patrick: I just wanted to tell people that we were, when we decided to do this, I don't know whose idea it was first, but it just... Ash: It was me! I said we should do this. It would be like the Avengers except with a better ending than Age of Ultron. Patrick: It just makes sense that it happened, because... Slade: We end up talking about each other anyway. If any two of us are together, the other person's name gets invoked, so... Patrick: Yes. Ash: We're like the Holy Trinity. Patrick: Yes! And by way of joking, it's funny. We discussed what we were going to talk about and I don't know if you guys ended up being serious, but I was just joking and coming up with all these funny, ha ha things just to entertain people. And it ended up that we came up with the curious thing that there are more women and gay men in our spiritual, psychic, metaphysical world, and not a lot of straight men. Like, what's up with straight men? Where are the straight men? And I think Ash said something like, I think I copied and pasted it here, she said something like... Hang on... Slade: He's got receipts, Ash. Patrick: I apparently didn't copy. But you said something funny about, "Where are the straight men at, yo?" Or...Oh! I know! "When are straight men gonna get their sh*t together??" is what you said. Something like that. Ash: Yeah! Slade: Mmm... I have some theories about why it is a women-gay-men alliance predominantly. That's pretty easy to speak to. And it's so weird because when we were joking about this topic, we're kind of joking about it but then I was like, That's actually kind of a real thing that I observe all the time. It came up in conversation with so many people over the next few days. Ash: Oh, really? Slade: There were other people who commented on it as well. It came up in a really super woo-woo way when someone told me, at the teahouse I go to, the next day, she brought up the fact that a lot of women were murdered for witchcraft during the Inquisition are reincarnating at this time. And that there were a lot of gay men that were crucified along with them. That is a very common lore, or whatever. It's where the term 'faggot' literally comes from. Patrick: Ooo explain that more. How does that...? Slade: Well, they burned them along with the witches but in the context of like, Okay, we're going to have this big grand inquisition inquiry public burning to kill 1 or 2 or 3 women at a time, but then they just take a handful of queers and throw them in just as kindling, just to dispose of them. It wasn't even like, they didn't even waste a lot of energy on having a specific murder event for us, you know? So the term 'faggot' refers to kindling, sticks that you throw in the fire to help it start burning. And that's kind of one of the origins of that disparaging term, or whatever. So I was talking to this woman the day after you and I, the three of us, were kind of tossing that concept around. Where are all the straight dudes?? She just came out of nowhere with this idea that those souls are reincarnating right now. And I'm not a huge past-life, reincarnation, that's not a rabbit hole that I go down really often. But I will always engage anyone in a conversation about it that wants to talk about it. Yeah, she was like, "There's all these witches, the souls of all these women, who have chosen to reincarnate at this time." It's, you know, I'm just passing it on. Ash: You just recently did an interview with Susan Grace, which is a long-time friend of mine as well. One of the things that she talks about pretty regularly is how... I would need to go back and... I think she's mentioned it in every single reading she's done for me in the last year. Astrologically, we're coming back around through a cycle, and I can't remember which planet it is, but... Patrick: I can read your comment. Or actually it's Slade's comment. Slade said that she said something about the planetoid Regulus causing a 2,000 reign of men. That is over in 2020. Ash: So I think that might be what she's talking about, is the last time this happened was, it put us into the Dark Ages, which was the time when women were being burned at the stake for being witches. It was a suppression of the feminine. That cycle is ending in the next five years. And it's kind of coming on right now. So you're seeing a lot of that collective pain and energy from that time coming up from beneath the surface for healing. Patrick: Mmm... Slade: I like the thought of it being kind of a cultural zeitgeist, or like an ancestral DNA kind of thing where it's just in our collective psyche to deal with that again. So I don't even think it has to be as literal a story as 'those souls are reincarnating', like they're all hanging out, going, "Okay, now's the time. Let's go y'all!" Like it's a suffragette march. I like to back out of those things, you know what I mean? I like to zoom out a couple of notches when talking about those things and imagine it in more of a, I don't know, mystical, collective consciousness kind of archetypal thing. Ash: Mmhmm. Slade: Like for some reason, I'm more happy and more comfortable getting onboard with that. In the way that you described it, as being like, that, whatever it was that's been repressed, we're not standing on its throat anymore. Of course it's gonna get up and wake back up again. Or, if nothing else, it's gonna have to be processed and dealt with differently than it has been. Another way that this has come up, which isn't as specific as, 'Where are straight men?' and 'Why are women and gay men the allies in new age spiritual movements?' But in my Shift Your Spirits community, someone was posting about how Wicca and pagan-identified religion was really on the rise in the United States. And I told her in a comment, I said, I've actually been hearing that since the 1980s. It started in the 1970s actually, that identification as a witch is one of the fastest growing religious identities in the United States and has been our entire lifetimes. Like it's not just happening. It's something that's BEEN happening for awhile, so I'm down with that. Patrick: Well if I may come down to Earth for a second and let's just talk about, like Ash said, I can't even think of more than a handful of straight psychics, for example. Ash: Straight, male psychics. Patrick: Straight male psychics, thank you. What is it about... Is there something about the feminine, or, you know, there probably are a lot of gay men who want to smack me when I refer to them as feminine, but is there something about the brain of the feminine side or what makes... Is it more capable of getting into the spiritual and all of that...? Ash is raising her hand. Ash: So, just to back up, everybody has masculine and feminine energy in them. I think that we have genderized that concept and that's not necessarily the case. It's just a way to refer to an archetype. Think of it more in terms of yin and yang, where yin is the feminine aspect. It's the receptive. It's what's connected to the "Divine". So I think that the reason why we see more gay male psychics than we do straight male psychics is because they are more in tune with that energy. And that is the gateway through which we pull in psychic information, archetypally speaking. I'm a tarot nerd and I love going through tarot archetypes but the archetype of the card, of the Lovers in the Major Arcana, it shows that. The traditional depiction of it is a man looking at a woman and the woman is looking up at a god-like angelic figure. The message within that card is that it's through the feminine that we reach that sort of enlightenment. Divine energy. Slade: I also want to throw in the fact that I think that whenever you exclude people from a social order where they're not in power, by virtue of survival or being able to make things happen for themselves, they have to become more resourceful and they have to learn how to do things in ways that people who, let's say you're heteronormative, white male in this culture. Sometimes there's a lot of things that happen for you that you don't have to think about, in the same way that someone who is excluded from that, whether they're a woman, or they're a minority, ethnically, or they're a gay man, we have to go around and find windows, unlock doors and sometimes tunnel our way in if we can't go through the front door. So I have a theory that that's also one of the reasons why gay people are considered more creative. Patrick: That's interesting. Slade: Or that women have an eye for the way that energies are interacting in a space in a different kind of way. I don't think it's about the fact that we are... I do agree with everything you said about being more in touch with receptive energy. And also being released socially to experience that, you know? Women actually have it shoved down their throat. Gay men come to it by exclusion, well I might as well! But I think that there's something that happened with the programming of straight men that is a little bit more on autopilot sometimes. And one thing that I will say for the straight dudes, because we've got a couple out there, and I can name them, but I won't embarrass them, but something that I've noticed about the straight men who ARE our allies, who we do find at our party, is that they're the real deal. They're the coolest of the guys. They're the ones that we all want to marry and they're the ones that probably need to be procreating more than the rest. Ash: And unfortunately, there's like two of them and all the rest of us are flinging ourselves at them. Slade: Oh, they're already married. And we meet their wives and of course she's adorable too and we hate her. Ash: That bitch. Slade: Yeah, exactly. You know, I do know these men in my life. And I think, gosh, what special kind of guys they are that they're able to shake out of that matrix, right? They are able to see through the matrix a little bit and see past that. So they are more awake. So when you do find them, they are truly empowered and powerful guys. And they do exist. But we can't ignore the fact that there's not a lot of them. And they don't tend to be working in this field the same way that we do, right? Ash: Yeah. One guy comes to mind that I discovered very recently and I completely, totally, just bought into everything. His name is John Wineland, and he's technically a relationship coach but he basically teaches yogic sexuality, and he just radiates this sacred masculine energy and it's so palpable. And you don't, I don't come across a lot of people that have that kind of presence, and who are able to talk about spirituality in a way that comes from that very masculine perspective. I think he's fantastic. If you've never read any of his work or anything, I definitely recommend checking it out. Slade: Patrick, do you have any theories? Patrick: Like in college I can think of... and I'm not a psychic or a medium, or anything like that, so I'm not going to comment on it from that angle, but for example, after coming out, or being completely honest with some of the male friends that were straight that I had in college, I think were all these people that we're talking about. Because those are the ones I connected with. They were very accepting and cool. They're not, I'm sure, psychics or mystics or anything like that. But I guess that's what I was thinking of. I also think of the future of our world, my students, when I made the decision last year to officially kind of come out to my school community, meaning parents and students and no longer worried about that. Previously, I had only been out to my staff. When I came out to my school community, I had some of the, and I'll use boys as examples, high school boys who I'd had as students in middle school, either came up and gave me a hug or told me how proud of me they were. One of them came up to me crying. And I thought, those are the cool peeps. Slade: Mmhmm. Patrick: Those are the cool kids. And, you know, I have some students now, currently, they'll say, "Hey, Mr. Keller, how's your husband?" And I'm like, that's cool. They're not afraid to be seen as 'I'm accepting this' or whatever. So I think in that way, the future is very promising. Slade: I think that that's an amazing form of activism that gets overlooked, and it a cumulative thing and it's one of the reasons why being out is important. Because it's so hard to de-humanize people when you know an actual face and name of an individual person. It makes it a little harder for people to put messages out there that are bigoted in some way because if you're someone who says, "Wait a minute, you know, they're talking about my teacher and that's not true." Therefore their whole theory is bunk. I do believe that being the person who maybe you're the first out gay person that this straight guy has been friends with before, has an impact on how he raises his son down the road. That guy that you knew in college who's like, I never knew a gay dude before, but you're cool. You just inoculated an entire potential family from future homophobia and probably misogyny as well. Because the issue with all those things are about people who are fearful and abusing people that they believe are beneath them. And one of my friends who I work out with a lot that's a straight guy who's an ally said to me, he was like, "I'm not insecure about my masculinity." The only way that you could be a misogynist or a homophobe is if you are. Ash: You know, I think that's an interesting conversation too. I always share this article in my Facebook group. It's called 'Healing the Mother Wound', and the name of the woman who's worked this is... I'm trying to find it... Bethany Webster. She also has a really great article on how that sort of mother wound plays into toxic masculinity. I think I shared a link to it in one of my more recent blog posts. Women talk a lot about men needing to take responsibility for how women have been treated for centuries and centuries and centuries. But also, there's a very important aspect here of, women also have to take responsibility for how we've raised our boys to be a part of that culture as well, and how toxic femininity has fed into toxic masculinity. So I think, you know, in the midst of the #MeToo movement and how feminism is kind of gaining this momentum right now. We also have to, at some point, stop and also accept our role as women in what we've also helped to perpetuate in some ways by being unconscious. Just as unconscious as the unconscious masculine. Slade: You're right. This polarity that's introduced by genderifying it, genderizing it, I can't remember what term you use, but by making it about masculine and feminine instead of making it about receptive versus projective energy, or dominant versus receiving, or all those different kind of terms, there's a lot of ways to talk about that stuff where it's not gender. And this gender thing is kind of like the first basic form of social division, you know? We keep talking about how our culture's still so divided. That's like a basic division that has been going on for who knows how long, right? The idea there, for a little while, that, before the #MeToo movement, there was kind of a meme within feminism about how feminism was humanism. Like, to be a feminist was essentially to be a humanist. And I know Justin Trudeau even brought that up recently when asked in an interview if he considered himself a feminist. And he said yes and that's why. So I think that there are a lot of reasons why women would perpetuate a system that is misogynistic, because there are some women who would perceive themselves to be still elevated enough within that system that they wouldn't rock the boat. They'd rather indoctrinate their daughters in order to inhabit those positions of influence, however small they may be, as opposed to the real work of what Susan talked about. Susan Grace said everything is going to be re-built. And part of what's happening is, everything's gonna fall apart first, you know? In order to renovate stuff, you have to blow it up. And I think that, you know, my feeling politically, culturally and humanistically is that we are watching a lot of stuff unravel. And one of the things about her message that was so meaningful to me is: You want it to break apart. Because we can't put it back together in a different way until it comes apart. So... that may have been a tangent... Patrick: I would love to bring something up, and that is, I mean, it goes along with everything we've talked about. But I've had a few guests on my show discuss how this women's suffrage movement happened... I mean, it's hand-in-hand with the spiritualist movement. And that was maybe kind of the first #MeToo era. And so I would just be curious to know what we think, now that we are having this #MeToo movement and many people have referred to it as Another Year of the Woman, or The Year of the Woman. What's that mean for spiritual peeps? Like us? What's it going to do to, if it was connected with the spiritual movement before, what's that do now? Ash: I think you see them kind of rising in parallel. And I think that's because, again, it goes back to that connection with the Divine Feminine and spirituality and that's how we're rising right now. Slade: I think women also are more receptive and use the principles that we teach and speak and talk about. Women have already mainstreamed a lot of new age culture to be tools in their tool box. The average woman is much more likely, in the United States, and I don't know, I can't speak to other cultures but here it feels like even people that, 10 or 20 years ago, we would feel like would never be seen chanting or burning incense or in a yoga class or something like that. A lot of that stuff has just become a regular part of women's toolbox of self-care, right? Women don't hesitate to seek things like readings, as one of their sources of information. And they're much more likely to pass along a lot of their information to their spouses. Like, I know a lot of guys whose partners and wives are getting readings from me. But I've even had situations where the husband is on the phone, or the information is clearly intended to be for the couple, but it's kind of like, it seems to be women who are just really comfortable with dialing that in. So I feel like if women are in a position of power and are in a position to make more decisions, they're going to include those kind of tools and making it more available. And it will just be like, not as big of a deal to say, have something like that taught in a classroom, right? Do you understand what I'm trying to get at? Ash: I have a question for you guys, and this is something that I've kind of pondered from time to time. And this could go off on a tangent as well. I talk about coming out of the spiritual closet, and I think that there's a lot of similarities in being a spiritual person and sort of being discriminated against in certain ways for your personal beliefs. In that regard, I think a lot of that parallels being gay and having to hide who you are from the world too. So I'm curious, especially with you guys, you're real spiritual and homosexual, so how does that... I don't know, let's talk about that. Slade: Hmm... Well, I will say this. It's easier to be out of your closet as part of your sexual identity than it was for me as a spiritual identity. I withheld THAT for much, much longer. Even though they both were happening in parallel in my awareness, I was actually more sensitive to the idea that I could be victimized for talking about hearing voices, being intuitive, being sensitive to spirits, knowing things about people. I was MUCH more afraid somebody was going to throw my ass in a sanitarium over that stuff than I was that I might be victimized for my sexual orientation. That has been my experience is that, it actually might be harder to come out of the spiritual closet. Ash: I mean, I know for a fact, over the last 5, 6, 7 years that I've been doing this and have been administrating Facebook groups that many, many, many people are still afraid to be out about their spirituality. Because they are terrified of what friends and family are going to think, about how people are going to react, they're afraid of losing their jobs, their credibility, and I kind of agree with what you're saying. I've never experienced having to come out about my sexuality, but I know that in terms of spirituality, that's been a really... It wasn't something that I just, you know, threw the door open and said, "Here I am!", dressed like Miss Cleo. It was sort of slow bits and pieces. I kind of just pushed it out there and I think maybe people just kind of saw it as an evolution. Slade: Like first you're bisexual for men, women... Ash: Right. Slade: You're really gay and everybody knows you're on your way to gay, but maybe you test the waters with the bi. Ash: Psy-curious. Slade: Psy-curious. There's your title for this show, Patrick. Patrick: Well I joked around about how it's a triangle-table discussion instead of a round-table discussion and that works too. Triangle, gay, bi-curious. Slade: Gosh, right?? So many layers... Patrick: Well I can tell you that I don't know that I relate it to coming out or being gay as much because I have considered myself very lucky. I had a very smooth coming out process and I haven't really had a lot of, at least that my eyes are open to, a lot of discrimination thrown against me since coming out in my senior year of high school. But I can tell you that I think part of my fear, like Slade is saying, of coming out of the spiritual closet, which I do, like Slade, that's more of a fear for me. It's harder when you have a podcast about it because everybody's like, "Yeah, he's a weirdo." Ash: What about blog?? I didn't even want to put my face on my own blog for three years. Patrick: Yeah? Ash: You know? Slade: Okay, you're a weirdo. Patrick: But what I was going to say is that I really have been also running away from organized religion my whole life and growing up Southern Baptist. And so, also, part of even though I'm so done with that and have left it behind, and I'm still running far away from it, worried about what people think, I guess, if you start talking about certain subjects. And I do have people give me weird looks because I don't have a lot of people in my community that are just kind of open to, "Hey, so let's talk SPIRITUALISM!" That type of thing. I do remember being more concerned about it when I was early on in the spiritual shift, that time period we were talking about earlier, when I was obsessed with EVP for example, and talking about spirit voices and people are like, "Uh........... I'm gonna go now........." Ash: I remember having a conversation with... I had several of these conversations actually, in a short period of time. I talked to my mom about it. I talked to some friends about it. And I had people, my best friend, ask me if she needed to call me an ambulance. I had people basically tell me I was delusional. My mom just kind of laughed it off and was like, "Oh, that's great. That's funny." And changed the subject. Really quickly. I had a lot of people change the subject very quickly. Slade: What was the ambulance gonna be for? Ash: Because I'm crazy, apparently. Slade: To bring the straitjacket. They need an ambulance to deliver the straitjacket. Ash: Do you have a head injury? But what IS funny is that since those conversations, a lot of those people have actually shifted on over with me. Slade: Oh, cool! Can I say something about my observations with this? Because this is something that I get asked a lot, and I work with a lot of people who are smackdab right there on the cliff. A lot of people are emerging and putting themselves out, not only as a spiritual person, but identifying themselves as a psychic, right? Or an intuitive, or whatever the case may be. And so, I hear these questions a lot. And I will say this, who you're imagining.... First of all, if you're in that space where you're like thinking, Ohmygosh, all these people are gonna think I'm nuts. I want you to sit down and see if you can make an actual list of who those people are. Are there actual people who think that? And is there more than three? Because sometimes you feel like, Oh there's all these people, and it's like, Okay, who are they? Well, my mom and this person over there, I don't really know, but I bet they would. It kind of falls apart a little bit and you start to realize how much you're pumping a lot of that up to be maybe more than it really is. And I'm not discounting the people who do say beep to you like you're delusional. But they are a minority. So what happens when you do just say, "You know what? I'm not going to convince anyone of anything. But I'm going to put what I think out there." It's like you're running a flag up a flag pole and all the people who agree with you, there's actually more of them in the closet than you ever realize, and they start approaching you and whispering, "Hey, by the way, I love your podcast." Ash: Exactly! Slade: That happens to me at the gym! Like it's a secret. Like I'm a drug dealer or something. You know what I mean? Ash: I had the same experience though. Like I would also meet people who, you know, I would tell them about some kind of weird paranormal experience that I've had and they'd be like, "You know what? This also happened to me one time." And it seems like everybody HAS had at least one of those stories that they've always been reticent to share with someone because they don't know how that person's gonna react, and they don't know if that's a safe space. Slade: Right. Ash: Just by you being yourself and being open, you give them permission to also do that. Patrick: It's like a very therapeutic moment for them too. In those situations. I've had a few of those. They've been like, at the xerox machine. Those have been a lot of where these conversations have happened for me. Where they're like, "Oh, you know, I know you're into this stuff so I have this, the other night I had this blahblahblah..." Just them getting it out of their system is, you know, I feel like I was their therapist or something. Slade: Feeling somebody that could witness them. And just to tie up what I was trying to get at with, can you list the people who are supposedly going to think you're nuts? You might. You might get a handful. But now when you start to list all the people who've emailed you and said, "Ohmygod, I love your podcast", or who have emailed you with their stories, and I know both of you get emails from people who tell you their life story and it's so vulnerable and so personal, and they've chosen YOU to be the person to tell, right? And if we start to make a list of those people, the point that I'm trying to make for everyone out there who's feeling fearful of what the people who are gonna judge you negatively are going to think, when you start to really pool and list and add up all the people who are going to be connected to you because of it, or are gonna identify you as a safe person to talk to, or gonna agree with you or be interested in what you have to say, that population is so overwhelmingly larger, don't you think? Patrick: Yeah. It's just fear that keeps us assuming that we wouldn't be accepted. Slade: Yeah. We're afraid of what those 10 people are gonna think, that we don't even really like anyway. Meanwhile, there's a football stadium full of people who are like, "Bring it on!" And what you realize when you walk through that portal, that vortex, and go through to the other side, you go, "Ohmygod, there's tons of people here." That's the first thing that really happens, is people flock to you because you have run a flag up and said, "I'm someone you can talk to about this." That is a courageous act. Those of you who do put yourselves out there and do that are creating an opening for all those other people who can't. And creating a moment for them at this xerox machine, that they wouldn't have had otherwise. So I think that that's the way it happens. And I understand why it's scary, and also understand that once you're on the other side of it, you'll think, What the hell was I waiting on?? Ash: Yeah. Patrick: Kinda like when I came out this last year. I was like, why couldn't this have happened years ago? Because honestly when I started teaching 17 years ago, I always assumed that there would never be that moment. That I would be, I would have to wait until I was retired, to live that 100% out of the closet experience again. Why couldn't it have happened at least five years ago? I don't know about 17 years ago, but... Slade: Well, I mean, the reason why it doesn't happen is because there is a very real danger that something really bad could happen to you. You could be targetted in some way. I mean, I don't want to say that, just by being brave and doing it, that that will make all of that stuff go away. Ash: Your dad could try to give you an exorcism in a public parking lot. Patrick: Or your parents could throw you out of the house as a teenager. Slade: Yeah. Patrick: And those things happen. There are very real dangers of, well, I'm sure coming out of the spiritualist closet for some, there might be a very real danger of someone, depending on where you live, or what your family situation is... Slade: I live in the Bible belt. I know what it's like to be surrounded by fundamentalists all the time. To the point where sometimes I feel like, maybe I actually have some kind of programming that I'm numb to it now. Because when I travel to other parts of the country that are different in some way, I think, Wow! Even the average redneck on the street is liberal! It feels like I'm in Oz or something and it makes me aware of the fact that I do live in a place that is so conservative. But I will say this. The bigotry is on both sides a little bit because I have such an expectation of these people around me, who maybe identifies as Christian or whatever, being unable to process what I do or connect with it in some way. I'm often finding that I'm the one who's being narrow-minded. They do come up to me and approach me and sometimes people who are mystical people in a religious way are actually much more able to talk about mysticism period. I've found that little old ladies who identify really strongly with Jesus are MUCH more open to the idea that your grandfather visits you at night. They don't bat an eye about spirit visitation at all. Or the existence of angels, some of these things that are part of the new age... Ash: In some cases, I feel like they've just lived long enough to have those experiences. Slade: Right. And it's a matter of vocabulary. At some point you have to ask yourself, she's using the term she's using because of the time period that she grew up in, and the education and spiritual system she was indoctrinated into. That's her vocabulary and that's her words for it. I often find myself putting it on myself to do the translating. The angry, younger version of myself was like, "Nah! This is BULLsh*t!" Like, in your face about it. Now I'm much more compassionate and empathetic to the fact that, you know what, I'll do the translating. I'm not gonna force them to accept my goddess vocabulary because sometimes that shuts people down just because they can't process what it is that... You're using a word that they've never heard before and their mind shuts off at, "What? Did he just refer to God as a woman..?" or whatever. And then they don't hear everything you say afterwards. And so I have learned to do the translating myself. And even though it wears me out sometimes, and I wish everybody was a little bit more fluid with their vocabulary, sometimes I have to look through the words that they're using and look at the energy of what they're trying to communicate. And say, "Okay, I get what she's saying. She's talking about empathy. She's talking about psychic receptivity. And she's just couching it in, a more conservative way of talking about it." So it does go both ways a little bit. I'm just owning that for myself. Patrick: Word. If I try to bring us back to the initial question, keeping in mind that we know that there are straight men, for example, who are our buds and who are completely down with all of this. And they're probably the ones throwing their phone across the room right now as they're listening. Because they're like, "Why can't you see me and hear me?" And just as there might be women who are completely lost on what we're talking about, and aren't down with it. Keeping that in mind, how do we bring straight men in, or is it possible to bring straight men in? Do they have to do it themselves? Ash: Ooo good question. Patrick: Well I am a genius! Ash: There is no off position on the genius switch. Slade: For myself, I will say this. The same thing I was kind of talking about stepping out there and running a flag up the flag pole and letting people identify with you. So I think you live your example and you gather the other people along with you and you create those spaces. And you make sure that guys feel welcome when they do show up. As far as recruiting them, that seems like a different kind of situation. I don't know that we can do that. I think that we need to make sure that we're not excluding the men that want to participate. The straight guys that wander into our meditation circle or whatever it might be. And I do think that one of the things that could be different for Ash, for example, with the community she runs from mine, I do get a lot of male clients. And I get a lot of younger guys that come to me for readings, and I think that they do feel more comfortable just because there is a man present in the room, gives them a kind of permission to participate. Even though I'm very out about my sexual identity, I do feel like sometimes the guys who show up to participate with us, it helps to see a couple of dudes in the room. Ash: I totally concur with that. I was having a conversation with a friend just a couple of weeks ago about how there's not a lot of masculine voices when it comes to spirituality, particularly not straight male masculine voices. And I feel like there's a really big... Everybody wants to be able to see someone in a space that looks like them. And we always talk about how it's always a white male everywhere you go, EXCEPT where we are, you know? Straight, white male. So I think that's also a big barrier for those guys, is that they don't see a lot of people like themselves in our communities. So I think it's hard for them to be able to identify in some ways. Slade: I send a lot of men who are looking for relationships into those environments, particularly when straight guys who are in their late 20s and they come and have readings about their love life and where they can go to meet people. I do send them into those environments because I know... Patrick: You have match-making services also? Slade: Right! Just to bring that back in. The fact of the matter is, if you are one of those men and you're really a special, unique, you know, maybe minority. But listen, if you want to be like the coolest person that ever walked through the room at yoga class, go to a yoga class as a straight man, as a place of putting yourself out there and saying, I'm a different kind of man. I can't imagine that you wouldn't have lots more opportunities to meet the kind of women that you want to meet. Ash: Exactly. Slade: You know, like those environments for the right kind of mindset, like if you're the kind of guy that thinks, You know what, I'm comfortable enough with myself. I don't mind being the only guy in the room. You get a kind of attention for being the only man in the room with a bunch of women. Even when I was in college, I would take these women's studies classes (I have a Women's Studies certificate), and back then, they would give you a certificate if you took certain classes that were within other disciplines and fields and but they didn't have a major for it yet. So if you took history classes that were designated as a women's studies history class, eventually if you had enough of those credits, they would give you a certificate. So I would often take, say, for instance, a literature class or history class or politics class that was a women's studies class, because it was more interesting. The topic was more specific and granular and meaty in some way. And I would find myself in these classrooms where I was the only man. And even though I was a gay man, I still was the only MAN. And there is an attention that you get from women when you're the only dude in the room. And so I would think, that for a straight dude, that sounds like a great spot to be in. Ash: Just walk into the room, turn to the women and go, "Oh heeeeey!" Slade: So we are recommending that for your spiritual growth and edification, as well as your dating life, straight dudes, get thyself to a... Ash: Spiritual circle! Slade: Spiritual circle. Patrick: Right away. So Ashley, what do I call this episode? Ash: Mmm... I don't know... Good Times in the Spiritual Closet? Patrick: Actually, I kind of like, Get Thee to a Spiritual Circle. Ash: Or triangle? Patrick: Or triangle! Slade: Ohmygosh. Patrick: Ash. Tell us what's going on in your sacred space, besides the closet that you're sitting in now? That could look like anyone's living room or bedroom, and it's your closet. So tell us what's going on in your world. Ash: Oh... my world is quickly shifting and changing and I'm honestly not 100% certain where it's going right now. I just kind of started a re-brand over the summer, and I'm actually getting away from doing readings and being so focused on metaphysics and I'm kind of branching more into personal development and I'm on this big authenticity kick right now. A lot of my writing has shifted quite a bit over the last year. It's kind of taken more of a creative, emotional direction. I'm not selling anything, I'm not pedaling any wares, I have nothing to tell you other than if you just like to read my daily thoughts, you can follow me on Instagram and also subscribe to my blog. Patrick: I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's awesome. Just BE. Ash: Yeah. I kind of decided that I'm doing this for pure enjoyment at this point, and I think that that's the best way to approach it. Especially if you want to grow something, do it because you're passionate about it, not because you need to make it happen. It's my passion project. Patrick: So you've made this cool move that a lot of people would be very jealous of. This chance to just kind of jump out there and be brave and start something and move somewhere. How many years now have you, you're in Brooklyn, right? Ash: I'm actually Jersey City. Patrick: Oh, okay. So how long have you now been an East coast nerd? Ash: It was a year in July, so almost a year and a half December. Patrick: Wow. I had thought that it'd have been longer by now. Ash: Still pretty fresh over here! Patrick: Tell everyone... It's InMySacredSpace.com, right? Ash: Yes. Patrick: And you said your Instagram is where it's at? Ash: Yup. And InMySacredSpace.com. I'm also on Facebook too, but I seem to be gravitating more towards Instagram these days. Patrick: Slade! Just recently, I see that you kind of revisited some stranger angel stuff going on at sladeroberson.com. Slade: I did! It was my most recent episode. Just talking about the phenomenon of stranger angels, which is something that I read about and podcasted about in the past, but I had a whole different take on it while travelling, really around the concept of how you can be one of these people. Like my past experiences have been all about receiving those experiences as opposed to, this time I was travelling with someone who is very actively likes to be a stranger angel. So it activated a different awareness about what it means to move through the world and interact with people that way. Patrick: What else is going on? Slade: You know, like Ash said, it's really not, for me, about pedaling anything in particular. I also believe in authenticity and I believe that putting yourself out there and talking about things that you're interested in and hosting a space where other people can do the same is a really powerful form of marketing, and you don't have to jump up and down and sell things in order to connect with people. I really do believe in the concept of marketing yourself as being... Find a group of people that you share something in common with and go be relentlessly helpful to them. Ash: I love that. I love that! Be relentlessly helpful. Slade: I have to give credit to Tim Grahl. He's something of a business mentor to me and he comes from the independent publishing community. That's his definition and it's one I've taken and borrowed. My interpretation of that has been to create space with my platform for other people to come and... It's not only about me making this content and putting it out there. That's one part of it. The authenticity. But also using my social media platform as a big keg party basically. I don't have control over it. It's not a... The Shift Your Spirits community on Facebook has been a surprising revelation in how... you know when you are in these groups where there are tens and thousands of people and no one is talking or commenting on anything, and the moderators and admin people are trying to get a discussion going and it's just fallen flat... Ash: I feel like that's how my group has become, but only because I've neglected it. Slade: Well, you know, it was one of my biggest fears, honestly, and starting a community like that was like, Ohmygod, how do I pump these people up? I thought I needed to be some kind of cheerleader or something and that's not my personality. And what I have found... Ash: No! Slade: What I've found is that by inviting all these people and just creating a space for them to talk about all the things that they want to talk about, they all have their own paranormal experiences. They all have their own spiritual modalities that they study and so I have been very hands off with the community. I'm hosting this community and that's my role. The people who participate, the members are the ones generating the discussion. I often don't even comment on the discussions because there are so many of them, and I love just kind of drifting through, quasi-invisibly, and seeing all the things that are going on. And I have to tell you, I'm really proud to have my name on something that I didn't make but that nevertheless I feel like I invited to happen. And it's really about other people. It's not about me. And when you're an author, you're an online personality or podcast host like we are, it's very easy to come from this ego space of being a performer and being like, the one who's the centre of attention. I have found that I'm moving into that. Weirdly I've become more collaborative, less about it being about me, and more about it being about everyone else. So for me right now, the growth in Shift Your Spirits is all about the people who listen to the show and interact on Facebook and create this cool space where they talk about cooler stuff than I might even think to bring up. If you'd like to check that out, by all means, we'd love to have you. Patrick: And I'll put all of the links that we mentioned two groups and Instagram and websites. And we'll put all of those in the show notes. Great idea, Ash! Ash: Thank you! Slade: That was fun! Patrick: You are a genius. Ash: I know. I'm also humble. Patrick: And I'm, right now, just so you know, I'm gonna take a screenshot selfie of all three of us on the screen. Are you ready for the countdown? Here's my classic smile. You ready? One.. Two.. Three..... Wait, did I do it right? OH NO I didn't do it right! I did it wrong! It's Command-Shift-3. One. Two. Three. YAAAAAAAY! Thank you. Slade: Fun.

Where are the straight men in the metaphysical and spiritual communities? Previous guests, Ash Riley of InMySacredSpace.com and Slade Roberson of the Shift Your Spirits Podcast, join Patrick in a roundtable (ahem - triangle table) discussion of a rarely approached topic! Visit BigSeance.com/132 for more info! Other Android OptionsListen in Spotify Listen in Stitcher Listen in iHeart Radio Direct Download Link   In this episode: Episode Teaser :00 Intro 1:00 Some improvements, thanks to Patreon Support! 1:33 Some background on how this episode and conversation came about. 2:16 How are Patrick and both of our return guests connected? Ash is a connector. Slade is a matchmaker. 3:43 Patrick met Ash online during the “information gathering phase” of his “spiritual shift.” Ash then introduced Patrick to Slade and his work. 8:31 Ash brought the team together for this “triangle table.” The topic started out as a joke in a planning discussion, but ended up being something everyone decided to roll with. What’s up with the lack of straight men in the spiritual/metaphysical community? 11:51 Slade’s take on the initial question. Reincarnation, witch trials, and where the term “faggot” came from. 13:25 The suppression of the feminine: Susan Grace and the 2,000-year reign of men that ends in 2020. 15:58 The feminine archetype 19:23 Those who are excluded from a social order have to become more resourceful. 21:28 Straight men who are allies of the feminine and the spiritual are the real deal! Unfortunately, they’re all married. Ha! 23:15 Patrick’s take. Being “out” is important! 25:29 Healing the Mother Wound and toxic masculinity/femininity 28:52 Unraveling and falling apart 30:26 The Spiritualist Movement, Women’s Suffrage, and the Me Too Movement 32:44 Being “psy-curious”: The similarities of coming out of the spiritual closet and coming out as gay 35:40 When the response to you coming out is not good 40:35 Fear of acceptance, conversations at the Xerox machine (or the water cooler), and making others comfortable enough to share their stories 43:23 The dangers of coming out 47:03 Bigotry sometimes goes both ways 48:34 Making straight men feel welcome 51:20 “Everybody wants to be able to see someone in a space that looks like them.” 53:39 Are you a straight, psy-curious man who is looking for love? “Get thyself to a spirit circle!” 54:28 Catching up with Ash and what’s going on in her world 57:27 A whole different take on Stranger Angels over at SladeRoberson.com. Plus, “Be relentlessly helpful.” 59:54 A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 1:05:50 Outro 1:07:23 #Paranerd Hashtag 1:09:00   For more on Ash Riley and Slade Roberson: Ash Riley's previous appearance on The Big Seance Podcast (Episode 94) Slade Roberson's previous appearance on The Big Seance Podcast (Episode 125) InMySacredSpace.com SladeRoberson.com and ShiftYourSpirits.com In My Sacred Space on Facebook @InMySacredSpace on Twitter @InMySacredSpace on Instagram Shift Your Spirits on Facebook @SladeRoberson on Twitter   The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to get a medical intuitive reading? If so, this episode is for you! Patrick shares the audio of his mother's reading by previous guest and medical intuitive, Terry Andersen. Visit BigSeance.com/131 for more info. Other Android OptionsListen in Spotify Listen in Stitcher Listen in iHeart Radio Direct Download Link   In this episode:  Intro :00 Terry Andersen is a psychic medium and medical intuitive who I sat down with in episode 129. After that interview, Terry offered to give my mom Linda a reading, and both her and my mom were open to recording the reading for your listening pleasure! For my full interview with Terry, visit BigSeance.com/129 :42 Pouring the tea 2:10 The reading 2:24 A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 30:55 Stay tuned for an upcoming episode with friends and previous guests, Ash Riley and Slade Roberson! 32:38 Outro 33:05   For more on Terry Andersen: TerryAndersen.com  Terry Andersen’s Facebook Group   The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!

Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive counselor, author, and producer & host of the Shift Your Spirits Podcast. He joins Patrick in the parlor to discuss his origin story, reconnecting with spirituality, the fantastic titles from his archives, his thoughts on spirit guides, and the 2-part Stranger Angels podcast episodes that you MUST check out! Visit BigSeance.com for more info.    Other Android OptionsListen in Spotify Listen in Stitcher Listen in iHeart Radio Direct Download Link   In this episode:  Episode Teaser :00 Intro :55 Please welcome Slade Roberson to the parlor! 1:29 Pouring the green tea. 3:39 An explanation of Slade’s tagline, “83% fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather.” 4:15 Curating the imagery for Shift Your Spirits. 10:07 Reconnecting with his spirituality, and Slade’s origin story, which he calls “the switch.” 12:22 Were some of the details in Slade’s “switch” written in the stars for him? 19:15 Looking back at the 12 years of archives from Shift Your Spirits. Hummingbird Screen was one of the first posts that Patrick remembers reading and loving. 22:48 Some of the fantastic (and HILARIOUS) titles of Slade’s blog posts and podcast episodes! Where do they come from? 30:02 Being that kid who kind of got a nose ring. Shootout to #paranerd and previous guest, Ash Riley! 37:05 Discussion of two amazing episodes of Shift Your Spirits that listeners MUST check out! Stranger Angels Part 1 and Part 2. 39:48 Is it better to find out who your spirit guides are on your own, or is it equally valid to ask someone about who your spirit guides are? 44:45 A listener Question: "I’ve used a pendulum which confirmed who two of my guides were. I've had several reasons recently to suspect who they were. But in trying multiple guided meditations multiple times to connect with them I get nothing. Got any suggestions? What might I be doing wrong or why might this happen?” 54:10 Where to find Slade and information about available courses! 58:55 A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 59:50 Apple Podcast/iTunes Reviews! 1:00:45 Outro 1:02:50 #Paranerd Hashtag 1:04:27 Outtake 1:04:48   For more on Slade Roberson and Shift Your Spirits: ShiftYourSpirits.com Facebook: Shift Your Spirits Twitter: @SladeRoberson   Record your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! Call the show at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. Visit BigSéance.com for more information. Please help The Big Séance Podcast by subscribing to the show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and iHeart Radio.  

Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive, author, and host of the podcast Shift Your Spirits, where he does a great job speaking about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. We sat down to talk about how he works as a clairaudient and claircognizant intuitive and mentor. Slade and I talk about how difficult it can be to narrow down your craft - and how critical it is to do so. "Do one thing really well," Slade says. "Like, if you could only make a grilled cheese sandwich, then make it really good!" We talk more deeply about how to figure out what work is yours to do and what is simply not your grilled cheese to make. Slade tells us about his professional mentorship program for emerging intuitives, called Automatic Intuition. He offers a free way to start the program for free, which you can find with the links below. Slade and I talk about how our different health crisis lead to finding our true calling in the world, and how mundane things like good nutrition, Crossfit and sleep keep this intuitive healthy. Learn more about Slade at: http://sladeroberson.com Start his Automatic Intuition program at: https://automaticintuition.com/ Listen to his podcast Shift Your Spirits: http://sladeroberson.com/blog Contact your Spirit Guides 101: https://sladeroberson.com/free/ Support this podcast on Patreon: www.patreon.com/sensitivityuncensored Book a reading with me: www.sensitivityuncensored.com/work-together Join The Refuge for Sacred Rebellion: www.sensitivityuncensored.com/refuge-sacred-rebellion FREE Sacred Pampering Event 9/1: www.sensitivityuncensored.com/sacred-pampering-event

Clairaudience is the inner voice that speaks to you, sometimes loud, sometimes softly. Learn to recognize the signs and how to develop clairaudience. On today's Intuitive Journal podcast we are talking about Clairaudience. Have you ever heard a loud booming voice in your head? Do you have trouble discerning your own thoughts from messages from Spirit? On today’s podcast we are talking about clairaudience, which means clear hearing. We are going to talk about how to recognize and develop clairaudience, and how to better tune in and hear the voice of Spirit. RELATED BLOG POSTS FOR FURTHER READING What is Clairaudience? What is Claircognizance? What is Clairvoyance? What is Clairsentience? What is Automatic Writing? Practice Automatic Writing SUBSCRIBE Subscribe via iTunes | Subscribe via Stitcher (Android) | Subscribe via Google Play | Show feed New to Podcasts? Find out How To Subscribe to my Podcast. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW clairaudience, metaphysical senses, how to recognize clairaudience, how to develop clairaudience, automatic writing, intuition, intuitive abilities HOST LINKS Intuitive Journal Intuitive Readings Free E-Book on Repeating Numbers and Sequences Free Numerology Reading Do you often see the numbers 11:11, 12:12 or even 12:34 appearing everywhere you go? This is no coincidence. The Universe is about to tell you something. Discover the meaning of those numbers when you request a personalized Numerology reading based on your name and birth date. Get a free numerology reading by clicking here! Podcast 8 Transcript - How To Develop Clairaudience Thank you for listening in to today’s Intuitive Journal podcast. I am your host, Laurra Warnke and the author of the blog, IntuitiveJournal.com. I just want to say I appreciate all of you who keep listening to my very new podcast. I am having a great time producing it and I hope some of what I talk about hits home for you. This is the third podcast on how to recognize and develop your metaphysical senses, so if you missed the other two from a few weeks ago on clairvoyance and claircognizance you might want to go back and have a listen. Clairaudience (which means clear hearing) is one of the four metaphysical senses, the others being clairvoyant (clear seeing), clairsentient (clear sensing), and claircognizant (clear knowing). It is one of your four metaphysical senses in addition to your five physical senses. What is Clairaudience (Clear Hearing)? Clairaudience in short means clear hearing, either by mental or physical means. It is likened to having a mental inner ear. It is the ability to receive messages from your Spirit Guides either in thought form or through hearing actual voices in your head. Clairaudience is that inner voice that speaks to you. It can come through as a quiet thought or literally an actual voice that you hear inside your head. It is like somebody got inside your head and you have got an echo chamber going or even a steady stream of thoughts. As an interesting aside, if the Angels are thinking that the message is particularly important and something that will affect your life, they will come through with a very loud message that is booming and unmistakable. It’s not usually something that happens very often, but they definitely want to get your attention and I will talk about that more in just a minute. A Mental Inner Ear So, clairaudience is really thought of as mind-speak. It means clear hearing, either by a mental sense or a physical sense. Think of it as having a mental inner ear. It is the ability to receive messages from your spirit guides in thought form. So, clairaudience is about the voices in your head. This sense is very near and dear to my heart because clairaudience is something that is one of my main intuitive modalities, actually both clairaudience and clairsentience with clairaudience really being the strongest for me. Two Types of Clairaudience So, one of the things I think is confusing for some of you is that there are at least two different types of Clairaudience. One type of Clairaudience is the most recognizable but most of you probably have not experienced it that often; that being a loud booming voice that might literally rattle your mind inside your head. The thing is, most people don’t actually experience that type of clairaudience that often. I have actually only had this happen to me a few times in my life and it can be jarring to say the least. That Loud Booming Voice So, let me try to explain that loud booming voice a bit more. The way I would describe that Clairaudient voice is like a thunderous loud booming voice that is definitely not my own nor like anyone I have ever heard. I would say it actually was a God-like sounding voice, like you might have heard in some movies. Each time the message was short and sweet. There were no frills and no extra words. Just a clear, distinct, and very direct message. My Message From Spirit I do believe that Spirit came through directly in a few situations in my life because I must have been getting off track and heading down a path that would not have been in my best interests. The first time I remember hearing and experiencing that voice was when I was about 16 or 17. I was upstairs in my room musing and wondering about who I would marry in the future and what his name would be, things teenage girls might do. I was sort of daydreaming and not really all that serious about the answer, when out of the blue a deep and very loud booming voice entered my mind and told me this: “His name will be Steve.” Now, that voice came from inside me, not outside, but it did sound like an external voice of some sort. I did not hear it from across the room or anything. It filled my head completely for about 5 seconds and was one of the most profound psychic experiences I have had. What Ended Up Happening So, to fill all of you in on the rest of the story at the time when I was 16 or 17 I was dating someone for over a year whose name was most definitely not Steve and once I heard that I really didn’t know what to do. I basically filed it away in the memory banks. Fast forward a few years and I was ready to go to college. My boyfriend at the time kept asking me to marry him and although he sounded convincing, I turned him down. I always kept going back to what I had heard Clairaudiently in my mind a few years earlier. I went to college and within a year met someone whose name was indeed Steve, and we have been married for twenty-five years now. So, what I want you to understand about this type of Clairaudience, the loud booming message that comes up in your mind is this: You may only hear these types of messages a few times during your lifetime. You may hear them when you are in great danger and need to act quickly to save yourself from a bad situation. This can be a warning from your Guides to get away from danger. You may hear them when you have gotten off track with your life or you have the potential to make a life-changing decision that will set you back from your path in this lifetime. Soft and Subtle Messages Now let’s talk about the other type of Clairaudience that is much more common and what most of you are used to experiencing. This is receiving bits and pieces of information through your thoughts. It is soft and subtle and will sound like your own thoughts. You can think of it as a gentle whisper in your ear. It can also be a ringing in your ears as though a tone or bell has been rung when your Guides want to highlight a particular message. How to Recognize Clairaudience So there are a variety of ways to recognize how clairaudience shows up. The first one is understanding how intuitive messages from Spirit come through and the difference between intuitive information vs. the standard ego and mental mind chatter we all experience each day. Clear and Concise Messages Most of the time during the day my ego tries to run the show with thoughts like I am not good enough, people think I am weird, no one likes me, and other self defeating thoughts. Those thoughts are not coming from spirit, they are coming from ego. In order to hear your true voice, you need to learn to quiet your mind. Easier said than done sometimes, right? I am primarily clairaudient in that I will hear answers to my questions in my head. So, here is what I have found: It is like a calm, clear voice that always speaks with complete logic. When clairaudient information comes in from Spirit, there is usually not any slang or inappropriate words used unless it is perhaps to the title of a song of show. Your Guides can be quite humorous however! The messages are clear and concise, never wishy-washy or unsure. Ego and Mind Chatter Those types of unclear answers almost always come from the ego. So, the more clear and concise the response is the more you can discern it is coming from Spirit or your Guides and is not just your ego or mind chatter. Also, their messages tend to be brief, not long and drawn out responses. Also, your Guides generally don’t generally give you input on what you are going to make for dinner, unless there is something health related you need to know or perhaps if you have set a specific intention to eat healthier. They don’t go into the minutiae of your life unless it would have bearing on something bigger or unless you specifically ask for Guidance. The type of information will almost always be something for your highest good and in many cases deal with bigger questions. Spotlighted Words and Phrases Another way to recognize Clairaudience is through spotlighted words and phrases. So, say you are talking to somebody and they are telling you about a situation in which they are considering moving or taking a new job. When you are listening and in the middle of the conversation, you might receive an intuitive hit in the form of a spotlighted word or phrase. Usually once you recognize the word it will keep repeating over and over until you have a chance to share the information. Of course this is where tact and discernment come in with choosing to share the piece of information you received. Sometimes it is better to ask permission before sharing your intuitive hits. Just say, “Hey, something came to mind while you were talking. Would you mind if I shared my thoughts with you?” Example So, here is an example of what I mean by a spotlighted word or phrase: My friend was telling me about some relationship issues which had turned a bit rocky. As she was explaining a recent situation and wondering what to do, all I could hear in my mind was “War of the Roses”. I also received images of roses being thrown all over the place. That message made complete sense to me as I watched a movie back in the late 1980’s called “The War of the Roses”. If you are not familiar with it the movie is about a seemingly perfect married couple who try everything to get each other to leave the house and it ends in a vicious divorce battle. Now, the thing is she was not familiar with the movie, but when I summarized it for her it explained the dynamics of the relationship she was in very well. We then talked about those dynamics and she was able to understand what move she needed to take next in order to move forward. Often Spirit shares those spotlighted words or phrases as a way for you to relate to something familiar. Repetitious Thoughts Another way to recognize clairaudience is in the form of repetitious thoughts. These are the type of thoughts that keep popping into your head, even when you were not consciously thinking about them. This is slightly different than the spotlighted words and phrases I just talked about because in those cases you are usually engaged with someone else in conversation. You can have similar experiences on your own, and it usually happens when you are in a calm state relaxing, doing a repetitive task like ironing or washing dishes, or other times when you are daydreaming. For example, my guides keep gently suggesting I take up Yoga. A thought about yoga will just pop into my head when I am thinking about something completely different. What they are trying to get across is that by taking up a regular practice of yoga, it will help me in other areas of my life that I am asking and thinking about. I know this right, but I still haven’t actually started yoga yet. So my Guides keep reminding me until I actually will go do that. So they are kind of pesky that way. About Those Songs In Your Head... Clairaudience can also come to you in the form of repetitious thoughts and tones. These are the type of thoughts that keep popping into your head, even when you are not consciously thinking about them. Do you hear songs that keep playing in your head over and over again? If that happens, take a few minutes to do a web search for the lyrics to the song you have been hearing. You will be amazed how relevant the lyrics can be to a problem you have been thinking about and giving energy to in your life. Answers from spirit may not come in the form you expect. I also get much of my information from songs that are constantly running through my head. It could be just for a short while, or the same song can run through my head for days. Right now, as I type this, the song “Forgiveness” by Bryan Adams is playing loud and clear in my head and has been for the past two days. The reason the songs work is because it is running in the background, you are kind of daydreaming, and you are hearing the song lyrics go through your head, a certain melody, and it’s really about connecting with the first thing that came to your mind when you started realizing that you had the song going through your head. What To Do With The Information Does it remind you of somebody? Well, perhaps you should call them. If they have passed, it can be a message from them that they are around you and they are letting you know that they are with you. It can also be thinking about doing business with somebody and maybe a certain song comes up. It may very well be able to give you an indication of yes, I should be doing business with this person or no, I should not be doing business with this person. Again, the songs running through your head…that’s where I get a lot of my information. Sometimes it’s interesting because it can be for a very brief period of time and it seems like once I have gotten the message, then the song stops. Sometimes that same tune will run through my head for days. I guess it just takes some time to figure out what place that message has in your life. Ringing in Ears Another way to recognize Clairaudience is when you experience a ringing in your ears. It might be a low or high pitch and sound like a bell or a high pitched buzz. It is loud enough to notice. So, when you hear that take note of the conversation or your thoughts at the time. Is there something you need to hear at that moment? Often that is a quick and easy way for Spirit to point out something to you that you might miss. It is another form of a receiving a message from Spirit. Someone Calls Your Name But No One Is Around Another way to recognize Clairvoyance is hearing your name being called but there is no one around you. You hear someone say your name but there is no one in the house at the time. You might check your phone or other devices and confirm that. So, at that point, especially the first time, you might be a bit frightened. If you are ready, go ahead and start a conversation. If you receive a response you may want to verify if whom you are communicating with is above board. You can ask this question - Do you follow Divine Love, Light, and Truth? Ask it three times. You should receive a Yes answer all three times either through your thoughts or sounds. If you do not receive three yes answers, discontinue the conversation. Sensitivity to Loud Sounds and Noises People who resonate with clairaudience can be sensitive to loud sounds and noises, especially sudden noises, like a heavy box being dropped or a door slamming closed. You might literally cringe and feel a shock through your body. This is because your hearing and awareness level is amplified to a degree and it makes everything sound closer and louder to you than to someone else. So, if you have every been made fun of because you jumped out of your skin when someone snuck up behind you, at the time you were more than likely using your Clairaudient skills to a higher degree. You Hear People Before You See Them Another form of Clairaudience is identifying someone by their voice first before you recognize them by their face. You might have an instant connection with their voice before you actually remember their name. You might think to yourself, “I would know that voice anywhere!” Telepathy and Energetic Pinging Another way that you can experience clairaudience is through telepathic communications. This is when you actually tune into another person’s thoughts and energetically ping them. This can be done in the presence of another person, or remotely, provided both parties are willing and open. Particularly with a spouse, if you are very close to them, you can sit there and go back and forth mentally and read each other’s thoughts. Now one thing I want to say here is you do need to have consent to do this. If you tune into someone without their knowledge people can feel it. They just KNOW and you will probably get called out on it, or at least given a dirty look. It is not okay to just go around energetically pinging people here and there. If you have ever had it done to you then you know it is just an icky invasive feeling. So, be professional and only do this technique with someone willing and open and that has given their permission. Oh, and if you ever notice someone using this technique on you, do say something to them. If you cannot talk to them directly, you can also put up an energetic shield of mirrors around you to stop this from happening. How To Develop Clairaudience Okay, so now we have talked quite a bit about how to recognize Clairaudience. Now I want to switch gears and talk about how to develop Clairaudience and strengthen your skills of clear hearing. Deep Listening So, in order to hear you have to listen, right. You remember that old saying that “you have two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately”, right? So, for me one of the most effective ways I have found to expand Clairaudience is to listen deeply in a conversation. What I mean by deeply is that you are listening to a few other things besides the actual words. This is something that is used in various degrees to determine if someone is telling the truth. So, what can you listen for? You can listen for spotlighted or shining words and phrases. You can listen to the tone of voice. You can listen to what is not being said. You can combine it with Clairsentience and feel into the tone of the conversation or the lilt or accent in someone’s voice. You can pick up hidden anger behind the actual words. You can also pick out when someone is saying something that is untrue or that they might not really believe in. This is often what is done in intuitive coaching sessions in order to pick up on a belief or a block that is holding you back. Automatic Writing Another way to develop clairaudience is to practice automatic writing. Automatic writing is a wonderful way to get the messages you receive down on paper or typed into the computer and it is a fairly easy process to learn. I will include some links to pages about how to begin automatic writing in the show notes for those of you who want to know more about automatic writing. And here is a tip for you if you are writing anything, either in your journal, an essay for school, or even a book. This tip is from one of my mentors, Slade Roberson and I find it very helpful. When you begin writing, ask Spirit or your Guides to “make me a vessel”. The phrase “make me a vessel” opens up the lines of communication between you and your subconscious and makes it easier to receive messages from Spirit. Tuning In and Awareness Through Meditation Meditation is another way to be able to get through to that small, still voice that is your true self. When you are able to get through to that voice, you will be amazed by the insightful answers given to your pressing questions. With all of the distractions of daily life it can be an odd sensation to have everything quiet for a few minutes, but that is when you can hear Spirit the best. When you have that heightened awareness through meditation or even just a few quiet moments to yourself, you might also hear faint noises, such as soft music playing and it seems to come from another room, but when you enter the room it is quiet. Use your awareness and tune into sounds around the house that are usually nothing more than white noise. What can you hear? Try tuning into just one specific sound and really hearing how it resonates through the house. Can you hear the washer? Tune in deeper to the rhythm of the wash cycle. You can look into guided meditations, music only meditations, or ones that use binaural beats to help you gain that focus. There are links in the show notes to some that I recommend. Conclusion So, I hope this has helped you recognize the sign posts of Clairaudience and given you some clarity on identifying your intuitive abilities. I think we are going to wrap things up for the day. On the next podcast I will be talking about Clairsentience, so please subscribe to my podcast if you haven’t already. That way you’ll get notified when the next episode is ready for you. I would love it if you would leave a comment on this blog post on my website and share your experiences and any questions you have or have had about how to develop clairaudience. I would love it also if you found this helpful or interesting to leave me an honest review in ITunes. So, I look forward to speaking with you soon. Bye for now!

This 2-part conversation with Master Channel, Frank W. Butterfield is one of the most profound I've had. In the first part of our conversation, I ask questions that came up when listening to Frank tell Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits how he became a channel. Frank and I start off discussing the 1987 Shirley MacLaine miniseries which had a significant impact on Frank's awareness. As Frank discusses experiences he later recognized as channeling in his corporate life, it may even leave you wondering if you have channeled yourself. By the end of this episode, we begin to take a deep dive into some mind-blowing content that challenges the basic things we are taught in school about how to succeed. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS ​The 1987 Shirley MacLaine miniseries that caught Frank's attention Could you be channeling without knowing it? How burning your bridges and spending all your money can be the best thing ever Why there's no such thing as getting ready ABOUT FRANK W. BUTTERFIELD ​Frank W. Butterfield is a Master Channel who has been working with individuals and groups since 2009 to help his clients remember who they are, in truth. First learning to channel in 1990, Frank has worked both in and out of the corporate world. He has discovered that the best way to live his own life is to allow the Universe to sort things out for him but always remembers that your mileage may vary. Having traveled extensively most of his life, he currently resides in Daytona Beach and has no interest in racing cars or riding motorcycles, but does love the beach. GUEST LINKS https://communionoflight.com http://frankwbutterfield.com Facebook BACKGROUND LISTENING Shift Your Spirits: Ep35- About Channeling with Frank Butterfield ​This is Shift Your Spirits podcast episode that introduced me to Frank and his work. If you are unfamiliar with channeling, it's a great introduction. It covers what channeling is, and how to do it. What it means to be a channel, and what to do if you think you might be one. BOOKS/MEDIA Out on a Limb (book) Out on a Limb (miniseries) The Law of Attraction Opening to Channel The Nature of Personal Reality OTHER RESOURCES Kevin Ryerson Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. Institute The Seth material Orin and DaBen material ​ LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE RATE OR REVIEW THIS PODCAST EPISODE ON LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE

In 2002, Slade Roberson had a stroke. Four years later, he started the wildly successful blog Shift Your Spirits. We talk about the hole in Slade's resumé and how he came to Frankenstein a job out of doing what he loves. Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive counselor, author and podcaster of Shift Your Spirits, where he tries to write and speak about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. He also mentors emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. I came across Slade's Shift Your Spirits blog about 7 years ago, drawn in by his paranormal memoirs which were released weekly, like much-awaited episodes in the golden age of radio. I sank into them like one would reading a good book on an overstuffed chair by the fire. Slade has a no nonsense approach to storytelling, yet there's a richness in his language, like weaving together the strands of a beautiful tapestry. You really feel like you are in the room with him and experiencing whatever he is real-time. He has a rare ability to capture the mystery and power of the invisible world and making it unfold into a practical and grounded reality. So, you can imagine my delight when I discovered he was starting the Shift Your Spirits podcast and would be telling those stories I loved and more in a new format. He describes the podcast as sharing his brand of spiritual edification, paranormal experiences, personal development, and interviews with others who write and teach about these subjects. I was honored to be one of those "others" who were first interviewed. Slade's interview with me: Spirituality, Leadership and Adventure with Lori Ference ​Slade is incredibly prolific. Even though he only started the podcast in March this year, he has already completed three seasons. I especially enjoy tuning into those which feature his personal stories and reflections, much like how I connected with his work in the first place. A couple weeks ago, I was headed out the door for a run and looked on my podcast playlist to choose something to listen to for the duration I was out. I chose Slade's 5 Self-help Books I don't Hate. As I listened, I had an a ha moment and reached out to Slade to request an interview. The backstory to the a ha moment and reaching out to Slade: Questioning Burnout, Part 2 We talk about a lot of things in the show that those who've followed Slade for awhile might be wondering. And, if you are new to Slade's work, this show provides an excellent introduction. How exactly does one come to be a professional intuitive counselor, author and podcaster??! As Slade notes, I am pretty good at getting people to talk about things they may not have talked about in other interviews. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS The hole in Slade's resumé Origins of Shift Your Spirits - through darkness into a whole new universe Figuring out your personal cosmology - how journaling helps Self-Help books Slade doesn't hate (plus one more) and his Circle of Mentors The Frankenstein approach to career creation How the most successful product Slade ever created came out of the financial collapse of 2008 SHIFT YOUR SPIRITS EPISODES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW 08 - Stranger Angels: Part 1 ​09 - Stranger Angels: Part 2 - Jesse 36 - A Channeled Message about Life Purpose 35 - About Channeling with Frank Butterfield 31 - The 5 Self-Help Books I Don't Hate SELF-HELP BOOKS SLADE DOESN'T HATE Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking The War of Art by Steven Pressfield The Money Shift by Slade Roberson LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE RATE OR REVIEW THIS PODCAST EPISODE ON LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE

In Part 2 of of my conversation with Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits, we go deeper into the impact having a stroke had on Slade. As he struggled to regain his speech and rehabilitate his body, his livelihood, his way of interacting with the world and the person he knew himself to be changed dramatically. Ultimately, it's up to us to alchemize the darkness that accompanies life-altering challenges and use them for our own positive transformation. During the conversation, Slade comes to realize that with the stroke experience, he cracked a part of himself that ultimately allowed him to become the prolific creator he is today. That and, of course, the discipline he honed learning to code during his recovery. From talking about the power of will, self-control and focus, the conversation leads to an a ha moment we both had when listening to Frank Butterfield (the entity Paul) during Slade's Shift Your Spirits episode: About Channeling with Frank Butterfield ​ EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Scheduling, creativity and cat people Cracking willpower - is it really like binary code? How life changing events and confronting mortality can simplify choices to a very basic level University degrees may not be as valuable as we think We grasp less and less as we get older Pondering the a ha moment in "About Channeling with Frank Butterfield" STOP trying to control everything "The totality of your influence isn't just one piece. It's an accumulation over a great deal of time​." - Slade Roberson ABOUT SLADE ROBERSON Slade Roberson is a professional intuitive counselor, author and podcaster of Shift Your Spirits, where he tries to write and speak about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. He also mentors emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Listen to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: “My Stroke of Insight” from Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations in Podcasts My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor Shift Your Spirits Episode 11: Spirituality, Leadership and Adventure with Lori Ference ( My answer when Slade asks me about the one thing that is misunderstood in spiritual circles.) LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE RATE OR REVIEW THIS PODCAST EPISODE ON LEADERS' CALL TO ADVENTURE

Frank W. Butterfield is a Master Channel who has been working with individuals and groups since 2009 to help his clients remember who they are, in truth. First learning to channel in 1990, Frank has worked both in and out of the corporate world. He has discovered that the best way to live his own life is to allow the Universe to sort things out for him but always remembers that your mileage may vary. Having traveled extensively most of his life, he currently resides in Daytona Beach and has no interest in racing cars or riding motorcycles, but does love the beach. WE TALK ABOUT: …channeling, Communion of Light, Paul, chakras, the difference between mediumship and channeling, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, Seth, Ester Hicks, Abraham, the distinction between channeling and deep trance channeling, intuitive development, psychic readings, the difference between willingness and ability... BOOKS MENTIONED: Opening to Channel by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer Out on a Limb by Shirley MacLaine Seth Books by Jane Roberts Oversoul Series by Jane Roberts A Course in Miracles by Dr. Helen Schucman Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks This Morning, Over Here: A Memoir That Never Happened by Frank Butterfield GUEST LINKS - Frank Butterfield FrankWButterfield.com Communion of Light HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT INTRO Thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today I have an interview with Frank Butterfield about channeling. What channeling is, how to do it. What it means to be a channel, and what to do if you think you might be one. I love all my interview guests and all their segments are special for different reasons. But I must say, I did personally really dig the middle of this interview with Frank. I guess I should say he brought through a message that really resonated for me in that moment. I felt like he was channeling for me. I asked the question I sometimes ask guests, about what message he thinks is missing from the New Age conversation, and he went off about giving up what you're trying to get. I can’t even paraphrase it or repeat it... It’s a real twist on the concept of “surrender”— it's bad ass and down to earth and yet conceptually elevated. Be sure and listen for it. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. BEFORE I FORGET I'd like to say a quick thank you to Angela Brophy and Tina Whisnant, my newest supporters on Patreon. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. Listeners who support the show on Patreon can access bonus Q&A episodes, where you guys send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. There’s also a level of support with a free guided meditation "Messages from Your Spirit Guides." To find out how you can become a patron, support my time in producing this show, and access the extra bonus content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits This week’s interview with Master Channel Frank Butterfield is a nice length, so I am going to cut my personal intro here. Let’s listen to Frank: INTERVIEW SEGMENT Frank: Well, my name is Frank Butterfield and I am a Channel, first and foremost. I've been doing that since 1990, although I've done a lot of other things. And I also am an author. I've published 19 novels and 3 non-fiction books that are based on my channeling work. I live in Daytona Beach Florida, right at the end of the road and go to the beach as often as I can. And have a pretty wonderful life. It's pretty quiet and I'm really enjoying where I'm at. And I'm also really glad to be here. Slade: Thank you for being here. So what is channeling, for somebody who's never heard of that before. What is it and how do you do it? Frank: Well, the way I do it, and it's a good question because there's a lot of different ways that people define channeling. But the way that I do it is I basically sit. I allow an energy, what I call a broader, non-physical perspective, to come through and sit in me. And then it speaks through me. And so communion of light is sort of the name that's used to describe what's going on and then the energy, the voice that talks through me, has a name called Paul. That theoretically is supposedly connected to Saint Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus, but I don't really put a lot of stock into that. But in any event, it is very distinct. It speaks in a very different voice than I do, although our voices are now more similar than ever before. But now that I'm much more used to it and have been doing it for a long time, but the way in which they talk and I do speak of them as plural, with other people, it's very different than the way I do. They get away with a lot of shit that I wouldn't dare let myself do. But essentially, channeling is, for me, is just literally sitting inside of myself, not reaching up or out, but sitting inside myself and opening up something that then comes down into me and then moves through me. If you want to talk about chakras, what I'm doing is sitting in my heart chakra and then letting my throat chakra be open. And that's all that it is. It's really simple. It's very simple now. Of course it wasn't simple at the beginning. But that's what it is. What it isn't is mediumship. I can do mediumship. I don't like it, but basically what mediumship is for me is there's an energy that sits on my right and sort of whispers in my ear and then I relay what they're saying to whoever the mediumship experience is for. I haven't done it in a long time and I don't really have any desire to do it. There's lots of really great mediums out there. But mediumship and channeling are not the same thing. Mediumship I like to consider to be sort of on the 6th chakra level. So it's more of a psychic experience that involves personality to personality interaction. Channeling the way that I do it is more of a 7th chakra perspective, where it's about a broader perspective, narrowing itself down through me. Whereas mediumship is very peer-to-peer, and channeling the way that I do it is a little bit different than that. Slade: Okay, so how did you discover that you had the ability to do this? Frank: Well, I don't know that... that's a really good question. The way I found out how to do it was that I was working at a metaphysical bookstore that is sadly closed, called Fields Books, on, that was on Polk Street in San Francisco. And they had a book there that they were selling called Opening the Channel by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer which is still available and I highly recommend it. And I bought it, took it home and basically over the course of one afternoon, I don't recommend this, I sat down and kind of went through all the processes as fast as I could. And by that evening, something was talking through me. It was really difficult but it happened and it's... you know what's interesting is, it's not so much an ability as it is an interest. and I believe that's true about anything at all. No one really has innate abilities but people cultivate ideas because they're interested in them. And then they just get better and better at them through practice or through repetition or whatever it may be. Slade: Okay. So when you were saying that you were aware that something was speaking through you, so were you in a trance when this happened or were you consciously aware of it? Explain the distinction there in your awareness. Frank: Well my exposure to channeling prior to that was through reading the words of Jane Roberts and seeing the made-for-TV movie Out on a Limb that was a Shirley MacLaine project based on the novel or the non-fiction book she wrote, and they filmed two different channels and those two different channels actually sort of represent the distinction that I was talking about a little earlier. One of the channels was more of a medium, and one of the channels was more of a sort-of broader perspective sort of person. But in any event, one of them obviously went into a very deep trance and the other one sort of went into a lighter trance. Jane Roberts went into a very deep trance apparently from the way it was described in the writings. As did Edgar Cayce. Who's another Channel who predates Jane Roberts. But I, when I first was doing this, I was in - it was like I was in a hypnotic state. I was aware of what was going on, but I had nothing to do. And my job was to be open, which at the beginning was difficult but became easier and easier. Now I can move back and forth very easily between the two states. I've never really been a deep trance Channel and I don't have the personality for it. I just kind of refuse to do anything where I'm absent from the process. But I can also say that when I am channeling, there are plenty of times when I have no idea, I know that specific words like 'the', 'brown', 'dog', I know that 'the' and 'brown' and 'dog' were said, but I don't understand why they were said, I don't know what that meant, and I've learned not to care. That took awhile. But it's not a deep trance. There's some people who can do that and they're very good at it and they just kind of get knocked out. Sanaya Roman talks about that in her experience that she, her first experience channeling was she turned on a tape recorder, she fell asleep and then she woke up 30 minutes later and it was 30 minutes of words that she didn't remember. She just thought she was asleep the entire time. I've never had that experience, but I do sort of fade away and then come back. And time moves in a very different way than when I'm doing something like this, where I'm very aware of the passage of time. A long period of time will go by and I'll think it's only been 10 or 15 minutes. Slade: How long was it from the time that you first tried this in San Francisco, sort of as an experiment How long was it from the time that that happened until you met Paul, or the Communion of the Light sort of revealed itself? Frank: So there's kind of three stages. So from 1990 to the winter of 1991, into '92, I was channeling this voice that called itself Raji. Which is an Indian first name. And it said very clearly, I'm here to help you get started and then when we're done I'll be gone and I'll move on. And the winter of '91, '92 I lived in Provincetown, on the end of Cape Cod, and I was with a group that was reading A Course in Miracles, and one night, we were playing a round with the Ouija board, and the Ouija board said, Tell Frank to channel. So I opened up and this very different thing happened. A very different voice and Raji was gone and has never been back. So from that, I guess it was actually like January of '92 until June of 2007, I was channeling this sort of indeterminate, just very broad, non-personality driven energy. Which I now recognize was the Communion of Light. That's who they were. But that was where I was in my ability, in my interest in allowing them. I was kind of going around saying, I'm kind of a Channel, I should be a Channel, I should be doing this but I'm not really doing it. And then in that interim time, in those 15 years, I went from being a person who kind of bopped around the country, to getting a real job and becoming really successful really quickly. And then all of a sudden remembering that I didn't have to do that anymore. And so I had a real job for about 10 years, and then I just quit. And I walked around for about a year, year and a half, saying, There's something I know how to do that I probably should be doing, but I don't know what it is. And it was channeling. And I remember having lunch with a friend of mine, saying, I know there's something that I do that I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm going to come back to you at some point and say, You know what that thing was? And that was right. It was a, like a Thursday night, and a friend of mine, my roommate and I had gone to see a movie, we came back to the apartment, we sat down and I just said, I think I'm supposed to channel for you. It just all of a sudden occurred to me. And so when I opened my mouth, this more focused version of what I had been doing over the previous 15 years appeared. And kind of gave itself a definition in a way that it didn't have before. And I had a more, not really a personality, but a more clear notion of what it was. And it began to speak and then in that first night, it, or they, introduced themselves. They were like, Frank should do this and this and this, none of which I did. And then they, when it was kind of over with, when they helped my friend with a question about his career, and which apparently was very useful, because he actually did what they suggested and then they said, Okay well now we're going to show you how to be a medium. And I was like, Okay, whatever. And they brought his mother in, who I'd never met, and then gave, you know, very, like all good mediums, they gave three points of identifying information that I had no idea about but that gave my friend the clue that there was something going on. And we even had what the Spiritualists would call a demonstration. There was an aroma of roses went through this room that was completely sealed off and just had air conditioning on. And it was pretty amazing. And I did that, like I said, I did that for a little while and then I was like, That's not really me. And I now realize what they were doing was saying, Okay here's a little bag of tricks that you think you're supposed to have. Why don't you go play with them and see if you like them. I didn't like any of them. So I just became a Channel. And that was, I'm sure this is on your list of things to ask me, but that was about two months before I talked to you. Slade: Oh! Okay, yeah. I mean one of the things that I'm enjoying about this conversation, for the record for those who are listening, I have known you and observed from outside the experience, but I was curious about, I've heard these stories too, so I'm sitting here putting it all together as a timeline. So you're saying this is where I came in to knowing you. Frank: Yeah. That's exactly right. Slade: Okay, so keep going. This is fascinating. Frank: So I did that for a couple months. I was just kind of trying to figure out what to do with my life and then I kind of came to a crisis where I was trying to understand what it meant to be a Channel. Did it mean I was going to have to give up myself, which is what I had always believed. I think that's why I always dabbled with it. That I was going to have to give up my personality, my sense of self. And I had had a project at the time where I was interviewing people and I can't even remember what the topic was, but you were one of the people that I interviewed. For some, like it was a podcast or, I don't know what I was doing. But somehow that's how I got in touch with you. And then about a week after we talked, I called, I texted, I don't know how I got in touch with you, but I just was like, I need help, I'm having a nervous breakdown. And you kind of walked me through, No, there's - I don't remember what you said, but what i got out of it was, there's you as the Channel, and then there's you as Frank. And you're, it's just like a job. You're going to put on this hat, and when you're done with the hat, with the job, you take off the hat. And I was like, Oh, yeah, of course! And so, what's interesting is, what has actually happened is that through the channeling and through what I've been doing since then, I have become more of myself, not less. And I have become more at peace with different idiosyncratic aspects of myself and different parts of my personality and everything is sort of folded in together, instead of being these wildly disparate parts that I was really scared of. And now everything is more integrated. So it's exactly the opposite of what I was afraid of. So that's how we met. And then the next significant thing that happened was that I, about a month after we talked, at this point I was living in Dallas, which is itself a weird story because I had lived in Austin and nobody goes from Austin to Dallas. Everybody goes from Dallas to Austin. Because they're like, I'm tired of living this big city life. I'm going to go some place where everybody's cool. So I did the opposite. But in doing so, I met a group of people in Fort Worth, of all places, who were Abraham devotees. And Abraham, I'd always been like, I'd seen the books, I'd never picked one up, and I thought, Oh Abraham, Sarah, Esther... I get it. Bible, bible, bible. This is just more of that old new-thought crap where everything has to be biblically based. Of course I didn't read anything. I didn't know what they were talking about. But it just - I was like, Eh, whatever. So I go to this group in Fort Worth and then there's going to be an Abraham workshop down in San Antonio. So there I'll just, as Abraham people do, completely, completely over the moon about this opportunity. And they're like, You have to go with us! And so I did. Even though I really didn't have the money. Somebody actually paid for me to go, which was really sweet. So we get there and of course, being this group, we got there as soon as the doors opened. And so we then sat in chairs for an hour and a half waiting for the thing to start. Because everybody wanted to be right up front. And we get in there and I'm just like, Okay, then suddenly, the room's filling up and it's time to start. And I suddenly became aware of the presence of Abraham as an energy. And it was just really obvious. And then as soon as, the way I imagine is the way I saw it, was that up at the top of the room, there was like people waiting, like people waiting for the warehouse to open or the factory to open to start their shift. And they were all standing around smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze. And then all of a sudden, the shift started and it all coalesced as a single energy right at the centre of the room. I wasn't imagining this. It was literally what I saw. That's how i interpreted it. And then as soon as that coalescing happened, Esther and Jerry, Esther Hicks and her husband Jerry, walked in the door. And Esther's the woman who channels Abraham. They walked in the door and we started. The first part of the workshop was amazing. There were one after another after another of people asking questions and it was really, really amazing to sit there and watch Esther do her thing. Because I could see what she was doing. As a Channel, I knew enough about what I was doing already to see how she was handling the energy. What was fascinating was a guy comes up. The last question of the first segment. So before the first break. And he's missing an arm, missing his right arm and missing his right leg. And he walks up and he sits down in the chair and he says, I want my arm and my leg back. Just like that. That's literally his opening question. And I saw Esther kind of pop out and look around at the room, be like, How the hell am I going to do this? Which I very much recognized. And then she popped back in. And then Abraham began to do something that I'm now very familiar with, and was kind of like, helping him begin to open up to possibilities instead of seeing a big leap from a missing limbs to i want to have the limbs back, began to walk him through the ideas of what could possibly happen. And a lot of it was about being willing to be like the coolest guinea pig who tests out new prosthetics, which I thought was amazing. But it was just this really great conversation. When that was over with, because I didn't know myself like I know myself now, I didn't do this, but I immediately wanted to get up and drive back to Dallas. I did not want to stay for the rest of the workshop. But because I was there with this group of people and this person had paid for me to be there, I stayed. What a friend of mine who was in that group said to me later was that, she said I thought you just looked so angry after that first break. And I said, Well, I wasn't angry. I just was very uncomfortable. And what I ended up doing was I ended up getting all the way to the back of the room. I wanted to be there because I felt like I was doing homework. Or studying something. And I wanted to be in the room but I didn't want to be in the room. And I went all the way, way, way, way into the back. And that's the only Abraham workshop I've ever been to and I would never go to one again. I might change my mind and it's not because the work isn't amazing. It's just because it's not me. And it's not for me. But the next thing that happened after that was about six months later after I was still kind of dabbling a little bit and hadn't really said, Okay I'm a Channel and this is what I do. I end up back in Austin and the way Communion of Light describes this is, the way Paul describes this is, that they sent me to Abraham school, which, that's really the best way to put it. I just suddenly had an idea one day and I realized there was this law of attraction group in Austin that was kind of sitting there with nobody running it. And I had been part of that before I moved to Dallas. And I was coming back to Austin so I thought, Oh great, I'll just take over this group. It was one of those meet-up groups. We'll just study Ask and It Is Given, which is the big Abraham book. And so I did, I don't know why it came to me, but I just set up this little agenda, something I would never even normally do. And like we're going to do chapters 1, 2, 3, first week and then 4, 5, 6, and then 7, 8, 9. And I stood up at the front. I explained, we went through that book. And then we went through another book. And then we did the first book again. And then I set up the second group. And then both of the groups ended at the same time the study of whatever books we were looking at, after about six months. And then I was done. And by then, I knew it felt better to just leave. And that's when I started kind of my practice that I do now and the work that I do now. And that's when clients began to come to me and began to show up. And I started being able to make a living doing what I do now. And that was - what was also fascinating about that is that at the beginning, the first year or two I got lots of people who were saying - well there were two groups. One group would say, I've gotten everything from Abraham I can get. And so now I've found you and now I feel like all of my questions are being answered. Because that is the difference between Paul and Abraham's. Paul directly answers the questions that people ask whereas Abraham will take the questions and use them as examples for teaching. And Paul will say very clearly we don't teach. We remind. And that's a big part of what they talk about. And they're always kind of reminding people that that's what they're doing. So that was one group. But then there was another group much smaller. Who would kind of show up, they would sort of pop their head up somewhere and say, You're just copying Esther. I'm like, you need to come and see that this is very different. But it took me awhile to be able to realize that I was right when I said that. Because I would, every time someone would show up to say that, I would sort of think, well maybe they're right. Maybe I'm just mimicking. And then I would ask people who'd been to every single Abraham workshop since 1993 and say, Is this the same? And they would say, No, it's absolutely different. The words are enough the same to where I don't get lost. And that's when I begin to realize, Oh, that's why I went to Abraham school. Was so that I would learn that language. So that happened for the next couple of years and then by about 2010, I was in my element and I was rocking and rolling and that's what's been going on ever since. Getting better and better, but you know, pretty much... Slade: Yeah, so currently, because I've been to live events like what you describe. The trance channeling event that I went to was a much smaller, like a circle, kind of thing. 20 people. It wasn't a full-on conference hall kind of experience. But channeling is obviously different than what most people expect from a psychic reading and so... Frank: Yes. Slade: Just kind of describe for people how do you do your work? How do your followers or clients experience these messages? How do you put them out there? Frank: Well, the way people - I don't know how people find me. Because I don't advertise. They just show up. And that's perfect. That's exactly right. But in terms of how I interact with people or how they interact with Paul, I do have, well, I guess I have three different types of experiences that people can get into. First there's a thing that's been going on since 2010 called the Village, which is just a series of weekly calls that happen twice a week now, used to be three times but now twice, and you just, it's open. You bring whatever question you have and there are people from all over the world who come into those calls. The other thing that I do, and I don't do it every week but almost every week is, I have a Saturday through Friday series of conversations that happen at the same time every day. 10am Eastern Time. And people come in with - there's a little, it's on a specific topic and there'll be a 10 - 15 minute initial sort of conversation about it and then time for people to ask questions about it after that. And so that's - they can, that's one way of sort of coming in a little bit closer because those conversations are much more intimate and they're very specific. So people come in with specific questions on a specific topic, like it might be, their self-image, body, creativity, their work, money. Any... It can be, or just general metaphysics, sometimes. So there's that. And I also do private sessions where people can talk one on one. One of the strategies, for lack of a better way of putting it, that I've developed is, I kind of keep the private sessions over to the side. Because there was a period of time when I had what I like to call “looky-loos", who came in and would do one private session and they would not read any of the things I had written about what a session is like, and they would come in and be like, Tell me about my Aunt Esther. And I'm like, ... did you... and Paul would basically read them the Riot Act and say, This is not fortune telling. This is not that. This is not mediumship. There are other people. Go to them. But if you want to find out about you in relationship to your Aunt Esther, whether she's alive or dead, we can talk about that. But we can't tell you about her because we're not talking to her we're talking to you. And that, I began to realize... So now, in terms of pricing, if somebody comes to the website, you can book a private session, but it's going to cost a whole lot of money. And I do that specifically because I don't want people just coming in off the street doing that. I'd rather them go in through, either the Village or through actually the morning series calls. Because there it's a really good way to get exposed to the material. I also have tons of samples. I don't even know how many hours now. But lots and lots of them. So there's lots of opportunities to sort of hear what it's like and then decide if it's right. Because it isn't right for everybody. And I would not suggest that anyone who generally considers themselves to be a psychic or to be interested in intuitive development, a lot of the people you work with, that that's not going to be enough. You're going to want to have something a little bit more because I don't like to say that this is advanced material, because it isn't, but we talk a lot about things that, as far as I know, are not being discussed anywhere else. But then again, I don't really know because I don't pay attention to what anyone else is doing. But I do know that Paul is very direct with people and is very clear and that's not for everybody. Because some people, and I do hold you responsible for this by the way, Slade. Slade: Why? Frank: Because you're - that thing that you say. Where 83% less flowers or something. Slade: Oh, okay! Frank: It comes from that. It literally comes from that. Because there was something that, there was like the first time I ever saw your website and I saw that, it was like a bell went off. And I thought, Of course! That's actually what makes what I'm doing very different. Because there's no soft pedaling. It's not hard information. It's not scary information. It's just very direct. It's like, You are doing this and you can do something different. Which is very different than saying, Well, you know, some people do it in this way and then you could maybe think about doing it in that way. It's very direct. Gets right to the heart of the matter of whatever the person is bringing to the table. Which I very much love. Because, to me, that's the most useful thing you can do. But it's not what everybody wants. And I wouldn't pretend to think that that would be right for any particular specific person. Only the other person is going to know. I would never know. So that's why I like to kind of give people the ability to sort of float in and float out and see what they like and what they don't. And then if they want to go deeper, there's lots of other opportunities to do that. Slade: You'd be the perfect person to ask the question about what kind of message do you feel like perhaps it's something that comes through when you're doing these sessions with Paul and the Communion of Light. A message that you feel like is missing from a lot of other new age channels and I don't mean channel in the literal sense. I just mean any kind of platform that produces these types of conversations. This type of subject matter. Is there something that you sort of want to put out there that you don't feel gets said enough? Frank: Well, if you want to hear, yes. There is one very specific thing. But it's kind of an assholey thing for me to say. Slade: That's alright. Frank: Okay. So it's that, it's basically - how much can I curse? Slade: You can curse all you want to. I'll put a little red E on the episode. Frank: Okay. Stop. Fucking. Manipulating. The. Universe. Stop trying to manipulate the Universe to give you what you want. It doesn't work. And I know you agree with me on this. Well, actually I don't know that. I suspect you do. What I hear a lot of new age people saying is, Here's how you're going to convince the Universe to be on your side. And that's not the way it works. The Universe is absolutely positively on your side. In a way that you can't even begin to comprehend because there's no person who is on your side the way the Universe is. Because every person has an ax to grind. And that makes them distinct from you. That's part of the set up of physical reality is that there's a distinction between you and someone else. And the distinction is not the body but rather the intention that causes the body to happen. So the thing that really - it doesn't bother me. It's just like, there's a lot of, How can I massage the Universe, how can I convince the Universe to do what I want it to do? You can't. You can't control it. But you can direct it. But directing and controlling are two very very different things. You can direct and say, this is the intention that I have. And then you have to stand back and let it happen. And you can't control it. And there's sort of an idea in the new age new thought arena where if I can figure out how to control my mind, control my body, control my events, control my circumstances, control my situations, control my relationships, then I'll get all the things that I want. But that's impossible. You literally can't control any of those things. Slade: Yeah... Frank: Because control is the illusion that we generate because we believe, and this is getting right to the heart of stuff Paul talks about, because we believe we live in a chaotic universe and we are supposed to be controlling things. It's not just something that people do who have a pathology. It's what you're supposed to do because otherwise you are going to get in a shitload of trouble. Slade: So what can we do instead? How should we orient ourselves away from that in another direction? Frank: Well my favorite thing that Paul says is, Give up now. Give up early. Give up often. Give up immediately. Give up constantly. Always give up. Always give up. And that's another one of those new age things where people will come around and be like, Never give up! Hold on to your dreams. No. Actually, give up your dreams. Not because you're now giving them away and you're never going to have them again. But because the Universe actually... it's not like the Universe ever forgot that you had a dream. And it's not your job to work on it. So the practical, most practical thing, in my opinion, is, and it's to be willing to let go of whatever it is that you're trying to get. Slade: Mmm... Frank: But the key there is willing. It's amazing how many people will be like, will say, I don't want to give up what I'm working on. Well, you don't have to give up on it. Just be willing to give up on it. And the way Paul puts that is, still, somebody will say, Well, I'm intending to create this experience. And they'll say, Okay... First and foremost, are you willing to not have it? And of course, you know, even people who've been asked that question many times will say, No, I'm not. I really, really... I need it. I want it. I've got to have it. I've got to get it. And then I say, Well, you're going to have a very hard time getting to it because as long as you NEED it, you're always going to be in a state of needing it. And means that it will be over there, not over here. You don't accomplish NEEDING something by getting to it or making it happen. Even the people you think are doing that, even when you think you've done that in the past, that's not how it happened. It happened because you let go of it long enough for it to come to you. Because that's the way this is designed. Everything comes to you. Nothing is supposed - you're not supposed to be reaching out for anything. You can, and it's okay if you do, but let it come to you because everything is designed to come to you but not in the sort of Shirley Temple Good Ship Lollipop sort of way that most people think that means. Like, well then everything will be exactly perfect. No! Shit is still going to happen. But you need shit to happen. Because that's part of the physical experience. That's how you define the difference between one thing and another. Is by noticing, This is something I don't want. And so that gives you the opportunity to decide, well this is something I do want. But not want as in need, but want as in have a preference for or have an affinity for. Slade: Mmm... Frank: And as I've begun to kind of, for myself, really take a lot of this in and try to walk as much of the talk that comes out of my mouth as I can, what I've noticed is, my desire for stuff has diminished. Greatly. Slade: Mmm... Frank: Whereas I thought, I was always afraid for a long time that all of this talk how manifestation works in creating your own reality, I would end up being very greedy. But actually the exact opposite has happened And I find myself more delighted to be in the midst of what I'm beginning to realize other people are probably judging me for, which I don't really give a shit about, and I don't give a shit about it. They're like, You should be - and I say this very jokingly - you're as good as Esther. Why don't you have three houses and 15 gazillion clients and selling 19,000 best-selling books because you're not working, you're not doing what you're supposed to do? No, I'm doing exactly what I want to do. And I don't want any of that. I thought I wanted it. Because it seemed like this very Good Ship Lollipop kind of thing that would be really great to have and then I would be in the middle of all of this whatever it is that she has and, I don't want what she has. I mean, I love that she has it. I think that it's fabulous. But I don't want it. This sounds much loftier and much more exalted than I mean it. It's just, being willing to give up what it is that I thought I wanted has allowed me to discover what it is that I truly, truly, truly love. Which I feel like I've just barely scraped the surface of. Slade: That was awesome. I love all of that. I'm just taking it in. I'm glad I asked you that question. It was a last minute add. Alright, let's switch gears just a little bit. There's somebody out there listening right, who feels like they might be emerging as a Channel. They're going through that experience that you were going through 10 years ago. So what do you recommend that they do first? Frank: Well... Oh that's a really good question. It would depend. And so I'll give a couple of scenarios. The part... So the story that I've told about my own process is stretched out because I'm really stubborn. But I also had to kind of learn who I was. And that didn't happen 'til I turned 40. Really, truly. And that was 10 years ago. So all that summer of 2007 stuff was right after I turned 40. And that's kind of when I became a real person, in my opinion. Because everything else I'd been doing was, I was trying to satisfy other people's desires, and that's - if you're willing to become a Channel, you're going to discover all of the shit that you've been trying to pull on yourself your entire life. You can't get away from it. And that's not for everybody. But the simple most practical thing I would do is I would either get a coach, a mentor, someone else who's done it, or really go to the basics, which is that book. There's never been a better book written on this topic than Opening the Channel. It is - and if you do what they say in the way that they say it, and you do it in the order and in the amount of time it takes, not one day, but over a series of weeks into months, it will work. You'll also discover what it is that you're really wanting. When, back in that summer of 2007, there was a guy that I knew in Dallas who I went and had lunch with one day. And I was telling him about, it was after I'd been to San Antonio, and I was telling him about what I'd seen and what had happened and all that. And he, because his way of teaching is to be an asshole, so what he did was, he said, This is all about your ego. And I was like, Well, yes but except for the part where I'd done this long enough to know that it isn't about my ego. I would be willing to walk away from it. I'm not trying to do this to become famous or become like, although I probably didn't say that at the time, but I was pretty aware of it at the time. But what he was pointing out was, you're going to get to sit in all of your stuff and that's, it's not for the faint of heart. And I'm not saying it's hard. It's actually, this is actually a very simple thing to do. It's just that it requires you to move into a place psychologically, mentally, energetically, where you're willing to let go of what you think is supposed to happen. And for me, that's what channeling - for me it's a daily practice. That's what channeling is. Is it allows me to sit and let something much bigger than me happen. Through me. And to be willing to not have to figure out what I'm going to say next or how I'm going to do it or how I'm going to show up. Just to be able to recognize the right people, right place, right time, right way, is what's going on. Always. So the willingness to fall back into that and to be open to it is first and foremost. And when I say willingness, I don't mean ability to do that. It's WILLINGNESS. Because everybody has the ability to do that already. Organically. As a part of their nature. The willingness is where the rub is. If you're willing to let it happen, it will happen. But you don't - and it's not 100% willingness, it's just a little bit, in my experience. So again, the practical thing is: a. Get help. Don't do it by yourself. Even if that means just a book. Or.. because they also did a set of recordings, Sanaya and Duane did, on this, for that book. But get someone else to help you. And be aware of the fact that not mediumship, which is a very different thing, but channeling as in, just letting this energy come through you, is about being willing to let something bigger than how you perceive yourself happen. And it sounds really exalted and, Ohmygod, that's of course exactly what everyone and all people should be doing. But it's scary as shit. Because when the rubber meets the road, you've still got your identity of yourself and how you are holding yourself together and what you're supposed to be doing to make things happen. And channeling will challenge that. It's not difficult and it's not really as scary as I'm making it sound. It's just that it's like a very fast course of psychotherapy. Slade: Well it sounds like if you are listening to this and you feel like that is your path, the easiest thing for you to do as a human being, period, is to simply move in to it. And move through it. Right? Frank: Yeah. And it's not going to feel simple. But it is the simplest thing. Slade: I don't want to run out of time, and I could talk to you all day and we could just go and go and actually people could just go to you and listen to more of you. But I want to give you an opportunity to talk about - you have a new book that just came out today called, This Morning, Over Here: A Memoir That Never Happened. Tell us about that. Frank: Well, briefly. It's a little novella that I wrote about a month ago as just something that came to me and it's a story about me moving over into what Paul likes to call a Parallel Reality. And I just wake up one morning and I have everything that I've ever wanted. But I don't have everything that I know. And it's sort of like, 24-hour period of walking through this reality trying to figure out who I am now, and it's - I wrote it, it's kind of in the tradition of Jane Roberts The Over Soul Seven series of books and taking some of these ideas and putting them into practice. But hilariously, yesterday, because I knew I was going to release this today, I asked Paul, Okay, could this actually happen? Because I knew they were involved in this. In fact, they're quoted in the book to a certain extent. And they were like, No, you can't. You literally can't do that. And they explained why, in a lot of detail, much longer than we have here. But they said thinking about it is really helpful thing because being aware of the fact that every idea manifests, every idea manifests. It just may not manifest with you. Is a very powerful thought. And there's a lot you can do with that. So I really enjoyed the process of writing the book. I really love the story for a variety of reasons. And it was one of those experiences where I, exactly what they said yesterday is exactly what I discovered. Which was, as I wrote the book, I could see the ME that moved over into this other reality started kicking ass a little bit more than I normally do. And I was kind of like, Oh, I like that! I like what's going on over here. And it wasn't the stuff. It was what happened in my personality, how I adapted to it. So it was fun to write. And it's a really quick read. It's only 24,000 words so it's maybe a couple of hours at the most. And I just had a lot of fun with it. And it's up on Amazon, so... Slade: Links in the show notes. I'll put a link in there for sure. So, Frank, it's been really wonderful just to kind of hear your story laid out in chronological fashion like that. Tell everyone where they can go online to find you. Frank: So it's really easy. Just go to CommunionofLight.com and there's a bunch of things there. You can contact me through there. You can listen to hundreds or samples of things that I've done over the last 10 years, or last 7 years, really. Or you can jump in and enjoy some of the things we're doing. And get in touch! let me know you heard this conversation. I'd love to talk to anyone about the topic of channeling or whatever it is that comes up for you. And so, thats where you can find me. That's where I'm at. Slade: Well I feel really honoured to get to capture some of your time and wisdom today. It was really terrific. Thank you for coming on. Frank: Well thank you! It was a real pleasure and what a lot of fun as always talking with you. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Do it or don’t do it. When it comes to purpose, at some point it’s about action and it’s a choice; it’s a decision you make. But just keep in mind, if you’ve been given something really wonderful to share with the world, it’s not selfish for you to do so. It’s the exact opposite. It’s terrible for you to withhold your gift. Let us have it. And I’ll talk to you later.

Laurra Warnke is a professional intuitive and author of the blog Intuitive Journal. She also works with the Akashic records to help you get clear on your soul level gifts and heal past life issues. She offers private individual readings and spiritual business mentoring. Our conversation focuses on stepping out of the psychic closet, choosing a spiritual path, and what those repeating number sequences mean. WE TALK ABOUT: ...Akashic Records readings, dark night of the soul, stepping out of the psychic closet, intuition, meditation, seeing repeating numbers, spiritual entrepreneurship, technology is spiritual, confidence, self worth, numerology, Chaldean numerology, repeating numbers, spiritual awakening... GUEST LINKS - Laurra Warnke IntuitiveJournal.com HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today I have an interview with Laurra Warnke about spiritual awakening, stepping out of the psychic closet, and the meaning of repeating number sequences. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. I’m going to keep the intro short this week because I have a tiny cut on the very tip of my tongue which is making every word I say a little millisecond of torture. I’m also heading to Atlanta to see Tori Amos in concert. So, let’s just dive in and listen to my conversation with Laurra. Laurra: I’m a professional intuitive and I wasn't always that. I've worked into that over the course of the years here and really through a lot of my own self healing and my own spiritual awakening. And right now I do akashic record readings and those have changed over the years where they're not quite as, let's just follow this one process. It's a little bit more of using pure intution, using numerology, astrology, along with akashic records. And so they've kind of changed as I've grown, and I guess a little bit of the journey, getting started, back in about 2008, I went through what I would consider kind of a dark night of the soul. And it was kind of a rough year. It was a very rough year. And there was some points along the way where I just felt very, very empty inside and like, I had really lost my connection to spirit, connection to source, and well, where do you go now? How do you get through this? And so it kind of began a process of self-healing, and working on a lot of issues of confidence self worth. Part of that was kind of having an inutitive awakening, a spiritual awakening, and I was starting to see repeating numbers at that point in time, and you know, what are those and where do they fit into the process? And at one point, really just coming to the realization, Wow, what I was doing for work in the past isn't anywhere where I need to be and at the time, I was working as an office manager for a financial advisor, and you know, that's a lot of numbers, a lot of paperwork, and a lot of desk work, and there was just this feeling of such emptiness and I know a lot of people, you know, you go through periods where it's, you're just, you feel you're not in the right job so you start going down that process. Well I need a different job and well, you know, as it came to be seen, for me, that job didn't exist in the traditional corporate world and that was kind of beginning of building, starting to build my own business and I started my intuitive journal website in the end of 2009 and by 2010, I was going through your course and a few others and started doing readings professionally and just wanting to help people overcome that feeling of emptiness and... there is more and you can connect with more. So I guess that's a little bit about part of my journey. Slade: Do you remember what it was like when you were on the other side of that decision and of course we hear the terminology, "stepping out of the psychic closet", right? Do you remember what it was like to still be in the closet? And sort of on the other side of making that leap? Laurra: It was utter and sheer terror when I actually had the realization like, Ohmygosh, is this really what I'm supposed to be doing right now? And when I tried to go back into that, it was unawareness. Just like... And that's I think that's part of that dark night of the soul that you go through is the breaking through of unawareness to awareness of, Okay I'm supposed to be over here not where I am, and there was a lot of sadness with it as well. And just a feeling of what I'm doing right now to fill myself up isn't what I need anymore. And so it was a very scary time but yet when you keep waking up every morning thinking about it and, you know, it becomes very compelling. It's like you need to follow that thread. You need to pick up that thread and keep following it. And I think one of the biggest maybe turning points was before I'd even started my blog, I set down on the recliner, I had a digital recorder because that's what you recorded with back then, and I just started talking. And I recorded myself talking for maybe 45 minutes and all of what I had in my head I finally got out. And it was so, just refreshing and relieving to actually put it into words. And I think a lot of people kind of sit in that, you know, where it's a very mental state and a lot going on but to actually start saying it out loud, and I mean I was saying it to myself. There was nobody else in the room when I did that. And after that, when I did that, it's like, Okay, I need to keep going with this. I need to go forward and that's when I started my blog and when I started Intuitive Journal, it was really just like, more along the thought lines of, If I'm experiencing this, others are too. And for me, I felt very alone. Like there was nobody to talk to. I didn't have any friends in the spiritual community at that point in time and anybody that I knew in real life was definitely not on that same page at all and, you know, it makes you feel very, very alone at first. Slade: Let me ask you this when you're talking about the recording that you did. Was that more of a kind of venting the pain so to speak, or was it more like a declaration of your intentions of how you wanted to move forward? Do you recall the content of that? Laurra: It was maybe a little bit of both, but it was getting out where I really stood on things. And so part of it was that venting, where well, No, I don't believe this anymore. I no longer buy into this and, you know, at that point I didn't have it all put together. Slade: So it was like a manifesto, in a way. Laurra: Yeah! Slade: Like you were just channeling this manifesto live in the room by yourself. Laurra: Yeah! Slade: Okay, that's cool. Well how did that end up - did that kind of conversation that you were having with yourself, did it then become sort of what you were blogging about in the intuitive journal? Laurra: Yeah, it actually, when I started to break it down, when I went and listened to it, it really became a lot of the different categories that I started writing about. And anything from intuition or using meditation or the repeating numbers and it was like, my brain dump, I guess, for starting a website. And, yeah, it was kind of interesting just - it started flowing! Slade: So there's somebody listening to us right now in the moment and from the future who is probably in that same state of mind. And we all have this version of our story, right? This sad dark night of the soul turning point story... Laurra: Right. Slade: We really do. We really do. And it's the very first episode of this podcast if anybody wants to hear mine. But, there's somebody listening right now who is nodding along, they're connecting with you, you're really mirroring who they are and where they are right now. What advice would you give her? Laurra: It is a choice to step further down this path, down the spiritual path, doing intuitive work in any form and just to know that there are so many people out there cheering for you and supporting you and that, yes, keep going. Just doing what you can every day. More people need to hear it. More and more and more, I mean, not that you necessarily want to talk about all the events of the world of the day but more people need that message. More people need the connection because I think so many people have forgotten their connection to spirit and we see some of these results when you hear it on the news, and it's needed. Your voice is needed, in whatever form. Whether that's a blog or video or just speaking to, you know, friends and family. One of the things I would say to somebody getting started: the whole stepping out of the psychic closet thing. You don't have to step out 100% out of that closet tomorrow. It can be a very gradual process. And for me, that was my process where there were points along the way where, Ohmygosh I can't step that far. I can't go that far. And so, it was maybe a little bit of a battle with what's in your comfort zone versus what isn't. But just know that each time you publish a blog post or you say something or you do something, each one of those is one of those little steps. And you know, you don't necessarily have to have, it doesn't have to be this big BOOM drop the bomb, you know, to all of your friends and family because usually when you're starting out, your confidence level isn't there to be able to support it. And so telling one person that you really can confide in. Maybe you tell two people. And maybe a year later, you tell more people. So I think part of it is just keeping taking those steps forward where you are comfortable but always pushing yourself just a little bit to come out a little more and a little more and a little more. So I don't know, I hope that helps somebody out there. Slade: Well, and if I can add to that, I would like to say that your friends and family are not necessarily your clients or your audience. Laurra: Exactly. Yup. Slade: And I kind of had the realization that I was keeping myself from doing it or putting myself out there because I had these 3 or 4 imaginary people that I thought would disapprove of it or something. And they weren't even really my family. My family's pretty supportive, but I know that we all have this cluster of people that we think are going to judge us or you know, like give us the side-eye or whatever. And that really hangs in our minds eye or whatever. But once I started doing it, I realized real quickly the crowd of people who wanted to hear what I had to say and were excited about it so completely outnumbered whatever that imaginary group of people is that I thought I was worried about, that it obliterated it. It was like, I'm not working for those people. Are you going to open your mouth and speak your truth because of these three people over here that have got their arms crossed, or for this crowd of 8000 people that's like, cheering you on, you know? It's really kind of, like you said, it is a choice and it becomes an easy decision in hindsight. So I don't want to belittle it for anybody who is trying to make that choice, but I want you to know that there's more people on the other side of it than this list of people that you think will disapprove. By tenfold, you know? Laurra: Tenfold. Slade: And another thing too about the isolation. I've kind of come to believe that maybe we're dispersed through the population for a reason. Like if we all lived in the same town, it would be the coolest place ever, but the rest of the world would just be a nightmare. And I do kind of feel like maybe we're strung throughout the globe like nodes on a network and, in order for that network to be activated and to sort of wrap and enfold everyone, you are actually contributing your part. It's like you're lighting your little candle in the crowd. And that's really the choice that you're making. Like you said, it's not - I wish that we could be like overnight hugely famous and everybody in the world would know what we're doing, but it's much quieter than that, isn't it? Laurra: Yes, definitely much quieter. Slade: What are some of the things you support - one of the things you do in your business is you support spiritual entrepreneurs, people who are trying to build their business and fulfill their calling and do this professionally. So what are some of the things that you notice people bringing you, that they seem to be the most hung up on? Laurra: Um... anything from publishing the first blog post to doing a video... I mean everybody has their points of, you know, we're almost panic attack: Ohmygosh I just can't go there, I can't do that. And yet maybe they're getting their word out in a different way. Some of the more current clients that I've worked with, it has been about adding an additional piece. Like they're doing the work, or they're starting to do the work and, for some people it is, it's about, Let's get your first clients, let's get your practice clients. There could be some hang-up right there and others are a little further along and maybe they're connecting in person and they want to bring in and do a website presence. So that's a lot of the mentoring that I do. Is kind of like adding pieces in and for others, maybe they have the website but they have not built a newsletter and the thought of writing, you know, writing newsletters, publishing that... So it varies from person to person. It's just like, it's all one more step. One more step forward. Slade: So you sort of just support people wherever they are in whatever they're missing from the mosaic, you help them kind of identify that and just do one thing at a time, add one more element. Laurra: That seems to be right now how it is working very well. And so, otherwise I think it can be very overwhelming starting out, and I do think that when you get... Building a website, to me, is kind of like a birthing process. You're birthing your baby and it's like, here's this creation of yours and sometimes getting involved a little too early in that process, sometimes you need to have thought through what am I going to be writing about, what am I going to do, and you've gotten a few pieces in place and okay, and then well, let's bring one more piece in. Let's bring one more piece in. Slade: I think a lot of people get distracted and I think some of the tools of business and communication and technology - all this stuff is amazing, right? Laurra: Oh yeah. Slade: It allows us to be everywhere in the English-speaking world at this moment and it's really pretty cool. And I believe that it's very spiritual. I think technology has a very spiritual element to it for that reason. It's a democratizing force over the long period of time that it will be with humanity. We're going through some birthing pains with that for sure, but one of the things I think people come to me and they have a little bit of everything, or they've studied a lot of different modalities and techniques and tools and maybe done different certifications. One of my ways of approaching mentoring people is just to kind of treat it like, We all have this cool bag of stuff that we bring with us: life experience and wisdom, the practical things that we've learned how to do and the books we've read and, so to me it's about everyone's focused on all those little pieces, right? Like, I gotta have a YouTube and I gotta have a blog. Laurra: Right. Slade: And they're kind of overly focused on the little bits and pieces, whereas to me, the thing that makes your practice YOUR practice or your Purpose is it's kind of like the glue that holds all those things together. You're sort of the grout in the mosaic. You know what I mean? So my goal is to always show someone how to connect all those things, and even in some cases, to disclude some of the things that they're doing. Like you don't need to do that. Somebody told you to do that but it's really not serving a purpose. So one of my best pieces of advce for someone who is trying to do this is to actually follow where the clients take you. Like, you don't really go off in a vacuum and create all this stuff and then come back and be like, TADA! Here's what I got to hit you over the head with. It's much more practical to put yourself out there, see who you attract in your practice and then look at the issues that are being brought to you. Look at the ways that you're mirroring the clients. Is there a pattern to who's showing up for you? It's almost like the clues to your Purpose are within the people that you attract in a way. They're sort of showing you who you are and what you're meant to do for them. And so if you approach it as a, Here's this person, this is what they're presenting me with. What do I have to address that for them? What do I have to support them in their intention or to fix their problem, whatever it might be. And if you just keep doing that, it actually defines a lot of what you do, right? I mean, you write blog posts that answer the questions that people bring you. You create videos and podcasts for the same reason. I mean a lot of what we're doing is we're answering questions that our collective audience brings us over and over again and that's how we decide what we talk about. So I'm interested because I've known you since you started out doing this and that's a really cool perspective to get to see. What has evolved about your practice since the beginning? What's different about who you are now as an intuitive? Laurra: Um, you know, I would say, just confidence. And just seeing a lot of the patterns through many different clients. The same, a lot of the same issues coming through, just finding the thread and the patterns and as far as the modalities and toolkit, the big bag of tools, just keeping expanding on them. Mainly it's because I love it. I love learning a new tool. Is integrating all of those tools and rather than just hanging onto only one tool but to, you know, that does kind of start to become, Okay this is your practice. This is how you are doing healing work. This is how you're identifying problem situations. So it has definitely matured, I guess would be the word I'd use. Matured over the years, where when you learn one thing at first, its like, Oh I have to hang on to that for.. and keep doing that. And okay, now take a breath, you can bring in this one and you can use this tool. And just even a deeper understanding of the tools. Sometimes when you learn a modality, it's very cut and dry. Do it this way, x, y, z. This is step 1, 2, 3. But yet you don't necessarily maybe all the time get where did that come from? How did that develop? And that's where I kind of am at now, going just deeper into some of the history of some of these pieces, like how does it all connect? And I guess I sit at home and contemplate how does this connect with this? How does astrology and numerology and akashic records and all of these other pieces and your intuition and these other different divine energy streams... how do they all connect? How do they all overlap? And you know, it's kind of... I don't know there's a lot of different pieces to it but I just feel that there's this very large common thread. Slade: There's this one piece that you mention that I really wanted to be sure and talk to you about and that was the divine numbers, the repeating number sequences and this is one of my favorite personal topics and I actually always had intentions of blogging about it or writing about it a lot more because I have this one post that I did about the meaning of 222 and the meaning of 11:11 and both of those posts to this day get so much search traffic in Google that you would think my site was entirely devoted to that or something. And I do have a numerology page that I'll link to in the show notes, but you've made this more of a focus topic in your practice than I have. So how did you become interested in repeating number sequences? Laurra: Well for me it was just seeing them myself and becoming very curious about them because like many, many others that are tuning in, you see them much more frequently than would be normal. When you're seeing one number or different combinations of numbers and you're seeing them 6, 7, 10, 15 times a day and yeah, it's there to get you to notice. That you're seeing them. So it's like, Alright, now what? So it's, I guess the way I would look at it is, it's taking you down a path. And just walking your spiritual path. So it's a very easy way for angels to connect with you. Just on your every day choices that you make. And aligning you with a higher vibration. So for me, thinking of each of the numbers as an energetic vibration, I think is helpful. Where the vibrational energy of 222 is slightly different than 777 or something else that you might see. And really it's learning - where most people I think get stuck is, you see them, and it's really cool, Oh that's neat, and then you stop. And you go back to your regular life. No! Hang on - they're there for a reason. Yeah, you are supposed to be doing something. It IS a message from Spirit, from the Divine, and so, one of the things that I can say that helps, because it's different for everybody and that's, there's just not 100% one cut and dry answer for every one, is to really start thinking about, Okay, if you can go back in the last three to five minutes, or even the last hour, maybe even the last day, what were you thinking about that would've been something that would've been raising your vibration? And a lot of times, when I've noticed this happening, is when you're sitting there and you're just kind of daydreaming, like, Oh gosh, it'd be so great if I had a job that was closer to home, that I didn't have to commute, that would be just so awesome. Or maybe you want to take a, maybe it's vacation. So, you know, those are some of the more real life things that... I see it kind of as two different levels. I mean it's spiritual communication but it's also help for you to take some next steps in your day to day life, and for me, one of the biggest times that I saw repeating numbers, it was when I was getting ready to leave my job. And so I was working full time before, and in June of 2011, I left my job in order to be doing this work full-time. In the two week period, maybe even probably a month, before I got up enough courage to give my notice, like the day before the day of, I saw any and all repeating number patterns like, about 40 times in a row. And it was like, Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you for the validation. I can do this! I can go turn in my resignation, and I did. Slade: Mmm... Laurra: So that's just one piece of it. But it is really a, it's there for you to hear it and, Okay, if you're thinking thoughts of starting your own business, of leaving one job for another job, the connection with the energetic vibration, it's like, Okay, maybe there's a better vibration at this new job, maybe you don't have to deal with as much stuff. And it's like, Okay so there's something that's a higher level of connection for you. And just taking that time to really think through it. Slade: Yeah, I think there's kind - and this is my approach, you don't have to necessarily agree with it. I'm interested in seeing where your purpose, where your perspective, sort of adds to my understanding of this. But one of the first things that I tell people, because it seems to me that the first question that I get is, What does it mean? Again, like overly focused on the detail of that individual number, whereas I feel like seeing the numbers at all is kind of a, it's like a flag, right? It's like somebody is - Laurra: Yup. Slade: either flashing a light or setting off an alarm or ringing some bells or showing you these numbers, and it's meant to get your attention, first and foremost. And then I also do the same thing that you said, which is I think, Okay wait a minute, what was I just thinking about? Because you're right. You're usually in a semi-conscious state when you see these things. It pulls you out of a moment of daydreaming while you drive or something like that. And you see it on the dashboard or you see it on the, you know, car in front of you or whatever it might be. And it sort of takes you out of it. So the first thing I try to do is capture what was just being flagged for me? It's like the Universe is observing the security footage of my thoughts and they have time-stamped that moment for some reason, right? Laurra: Yes. Slade: Right there. And so the first thing I ask is, Okay, what am I thinking about when these, this phenomenon keeps occurring, because that's being flagged for me. That's telling me your own thoughts or your own wisdom right there. Pay attention to that dude. It's already there. It's coming through. And then - but there is this other fun element right? Of interpreting them as this kind of Morse code from the beyond or whatever it might be. So what - you have a free report with repeating number sequences and you define triple numbers from 0s to 999, and all the things in between. So - well tell us about that report, first of all. What's all in that? Laurra: Well it is a little bit of a just kind of history of kind of like we've talked of here, of how kind of it came to be for me, but just a little bit more expansion on each of the numbers and it's the, What do they mean for me? What am I supposed to do next? And so, it is validation. Yeah, you are supposed to do something next. And maybe it's going to that workshop that you - What happens is, we shut down so many good things and I think of the repeating numbers are there to, Hey wait a minute! Stop. That was important! Slade: Yeah. Laurra: Like you said, it kind of gets bookmarked. Like, let's go back to that. For example, you saw an advertisement for some type of a workshop. Oh, that would be really cool to attend. That'd be great. And then all of a sudden, reality, the I can't afford that, I can't get away from home, I couldn't take off of work, and you shut it down right away. And I think sometimes it's like, Wait a minute! Stop! That was the path right here. Go to the workshop. Follow that path. So that's part of it. But just to kind of also, validation that they're pointing you in a direction. They're pointing you in a better direction. A good direction. And just, it's like, Okay, time to wake up here. Slade: Do you have meanings for individual numbers in there? Like if somebody is seeing 444 and they want to know what that means, do you have sort of like a dictionary of meanings for those numbers? Laurra: Yes, I do. I have a short summary on each of the main numbers. I don't go into too much very specific number patterns, but for 111, 222, 333, all the way through 000, I have all of those and 11:11. So each has a nice little summary paragraph so that you can just kind of get acquainted with the energetic vibration of each number and like, Okay what area is this really connecting with? Alright, this is guidance and reassurance. Or this is just a big YES energy. So that you can kind of use that and apply it to what you were thinking about shortly before you saw them. Slade: How did you go about discovering the meanings for those numbers? Is it something that you researched and compiled, is it channeled information? Where did you get the meanings? Laurra: A lot of it was just either my own intuition or my own channeling that I did. To just get some of the basics down and if I were to go and do them over, which I think I probably need to, I think just having this many years of understanding, I think would just kind of add a little deeper perspective to what I've already come up with. Slade: Interesting. Well that's cool because then that means your resource is an additional set of wisdom. It's not just, you know, some - regurgitating something somebody else has already said about it. I mean, I know some of the big ones will probably have very similar meanings for whatever, but I like the fact that you're offering an additional YOUR version, your take on these, so that it's something if you're interested in this phenomenon, you can add that resource to all the stuff that you're collecting and bookmarking. Because I know I have a page of notes linking to different things that talk about this and discuss it. And I think one of the things that's kept me from building more resources around it is because I really would have to go in and reveal those meanings for myself. There's two different ways you can approach that project. You could research and compile something, just like someone might do around color psychology. Or there is this other approach where you can actually add something to the canon, so to speak. And that sounds a little daunting to me. And I'm kind of a procrastinator about things that are daunting. But anyway, I'm very fascinated with this subject and I definitely wanted to hear what you had to share about it. I'm interested in something else and I know people are going to notice this about you when they see your name in the title of the blog post, and on the podcast episode. You spell Laurra with two Rs, and that was a conscious decision. You actually changed the spelling of your name for an energetic numerological kind of reason, correct? Laurra: Yes, that is correct. Slade: Tell me about that. Laurra: When I was studying numerology and astrology, you're talking about some numbers are fortunate, some numbers are not fortunate. I had a name reading done, and it really wasn't coming up to a fortunate number and so this was one of the recommended numbers or vibrations here adding this extra letter in. There's different ways you can do it, but this was like, Okay. So it was really trying it out. Because for anybody who's kind of thought, either they don't like their name or they just want it to resonate to a higher vibration or more fortunate vibration, like, Oh... and I'm sure if you've been anywhere around any, you know, there's a lot of people that have done this, and I guess I will say, even after this long, I'm, it's still difficult to step in to it. When you are looking at changing the spelling of your name, there's different levels of it. One would be changing it on your Facebook page, changing it on your website. And then there's another level which would be changing it on your bills, your chequing accounts, the way you sign things. And then another level of it would be actually going so far as to change birth certificate information. And to be fully stepping into that number and for me, I've only gotten to a certain point of being able to do that and it's interesting. So am I going to say it's like, Oh this is perfect! Everybody should go do this! No. I think it's something to be really thought through as to whether or not you want to go that path. I think it's perfect for some people. And some people can embrace it immediately and then there's others probably more like me that's like, Hmm, got a few reservations. Not so sure. What am I missing? Am I not seeing this the way I should... Maybe I should be seeing this on a bigger picture? So I don't know if that helps anybody down the way. Take your time with it. If you're thinking about doing it, take your time with it. And one piece I will add in: if you're looking at traditional Western numerology, there's Chaldean numerology as well. When I was doing this, it was using Chaldean numerology and I'll let you look that up. There are differences in how things are calculated. So I think if you're considering doing it, that you are very sure of which avenue you are going down and why. And that's one of the things that can just help you step in to it if you do decide to change the spelling of your name. Slade: I think you could also think of this as your sort of pen name. Right? Like, there are a lot of people who use a different author name. There are people who use a different name for their spiritual practice than maybe what they do in their everyday lives. And there's lots of different reasons around that. Laurra: Yup. Slade: And something people ask me about a lot is, Well is that inauthentic in some way? Is that, kill the energy, for you to "use" a different name. And I actually think what you're talking about doing could be combined with the idea of choosing a name for yourself that represents this new path, or that represents this side of you, you know? Because I have a lot of other sides. I don't walk around all day long living and breathing intuition. It's partly my career and I'd like to think it's part of my Purpose to be doing this. But there are lots of other parts of my personality where I'm not necessarily that person all the time. Laurra: Yup. Slade: And I was even thinking as you were talking about how you were using it for yourself personally, I was thinking, Well it sort of represents you in this mode, right? Laurra: Right. Slade: Like it could still be something - it's like a special costume that you wear, or a piece of jewelry that brings you power, or I think that maybe that would be an in-between way of approaching it. Maybe you don't change your legal name but maybe it becomes part of the decision around who am I going to be in this new aspect of my life, and what do I want to present? I know people who've entirely changed their name as a part of a sort of willful change of their persona and who they are and how they see themselves. Laurra: Yup. Slade: So I think that could be an empowering part of it. And you could also get a name reading done if you're in that process and see where is it fallen out and maybe that will help you make a decision about a name that you're considering using. Laurra: Yeah. I have seen quite a few that maybe they've even dropped their last name and used a different last name as, like you said, a pen name in essence. But yeah, it becomes the persona. This is part of me in the business, and this is what I'm portraying. I remember listening to a video of somebody who used a pair of glasses, special pair of glasses, and when they put the glasses on, that was their persona. And you know, they took on that role that they had developed of, Okay, when I put these glasses on, it represents me in this business mode. It was very interesting. Slade: Oh, I love that. I have a friend who wears a tiara while she does her make up. Laurra: Oh I love that! Slade: It's kind of a similar concept. But yeah, like putting on this special aspect of yourself. Yeah, I like those kind of spells. I think that's very powerful personal magic to dabble in. So what's next for you? Do you have any special projects that you'd like to do? Laurra: Well, I guess if I say it out loud, it must mean it's real! I am looking into - I'm getting just the very basics of getting started doing a podcast and so I'm just, like I said, in the beginning stages of that. But you know, now that I've publicly announced that, I guess I've made it real. And I guess I will be continuing on ahead with that. Slade: Well that explains why I was compelled to invite you then! Laurra: Exactly. Slade: You were drafted by the Universe. I guess my email must've been, had a lot more weight to it than I realized. When I sent you that you were probably thinking, Oh no, they know about the podcast! Laurra: It really was. Slade: They're gonna make me do it now! Listen, Laurra, it's been such a pleasure catching up with you and I would love to talk to you again and do more podcasting with you in the future. But tell everyone where they can go to find you online. Laurra: Okay so my website is intuitivejournal.com and yeah, if you head on over there, I have a free report on Repeating Numbers. And just kind of get you going, get you on the path and you can read a little bit more about me and the journey and everything. That would be the best place to start. Slade: That's terrific, Laurra. Thank you for coming on the show. Laurra: You are welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome connecting with you again, Slade. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Give up. Anger jealousy what people think. Just stop trying to control the universe. It’s like trying to grab a fish under water. Surrender detach. It’s nice - calm powerful serene - not to care in that desperate grasping way. It doesn’t mean you can’t do all the things you want to do - but let them come to you. You cannot miss what is yours, what is truly meant for you will find you. And I’ll talk to you later.

Erin Pavlina is a professional intuitive, blogger and author who has written more than 800 articles on the topic of spiritual, psychic and personal development. We talk about intuitive counseling, past life readings, astral projection, and what happens on the Other Side. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: ...past lives, past life readings, astral projection, the Other Side, the veil, paranormal investigation, spirit guides... GUEST LINKS - ERIN PAVLINA erinpavlina.com The Astral Projection Guidebook by Erin Pavlina HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today I have an interview with Erin Pavlina about past life readings, astral projection, and the Other Side. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. BEFORE I FORGET I'd like to say a quick thank you to Heather Becker, my newest supporter on Patreon. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. Listeners who support the show on Patreon can access bonus Q&A episodes, where you guys send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. To find out how you can become a patron, support my time in producing this show, and access the extra bonus content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Today’s guest, Erin Pavlina is a professional intuitive, blogger and author who has written more than 800 articles on the topics of spiritual, psychic and personal development. Just before the recording started, I took a moment to tell Erin about the impact she’s had on my own career as an intuitive and author. Way back in 2006, I had no intentions of becoming a professional intuitive, but my guides were really pushing me to write and publish about my experiences with the paranormal. And at the time I was writing the first articles for Shift Your Spirits, I discovered Erin's blog which she had just launched. It was a huge synchronicity for me. Erin set a real, tangible example for me to emulate — just as a blogger, not to mention as an intuitive. I had no idea what it would lead to… Back in the day, I wrote her emails asking for advice, and she was always encouraging, inspiring, and she treated me like a peer. I am forever grateful for that. She gave me a print interview on Shift Your Spirits 10 years ago. So, for me, sharing this conversation is a full circle moment. Whether she knew it or not before today, I consider Erin one of my mentors. INTERVIEW SEGMENT Erin: That's really cool. Yeah, I've heard that from some other people. And that, I think is the part that's most gratifying, is creating and inspiring people who also create the drops in the ocean and send the ripples out. Slade: Yeah. Erin: Because the more people we have doing this, the better. Slade: Right. It's kind of like nodes in a network and you raise a tower and a bunch of other people can connect to those as well. Erin: Exactly. Slade: Well for those listeners who may be discovering you for the first time, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Erin: Okay. So I'm an intuitive counsellor. So what I do is I connect to my clients' spirit guides and get information that will help them on their path, whether that's career, relationships, finance, health, spirituality, whatever they want to ask about, their guides will answer. So I consider myself a conduit. Just a relay. And I've honed my abilities to the point where I am able to clearly receive information from people's spirit guides and then I just pass it on and they kind of go from there. Slade: Awesome. So you've written about a turning point in your life and I was referring back to 2006 and you've called it a kind of Emergence. So how did you become an intuitive? Where was the story, the origin, for you? Erin: So I was intuitive my whole life. You know, when I was four years old, I started to notice things. I would have premonitions. I would have dreams about deceased people coming to me and giving me information that turned out to be correct, and I kind of went through my life just having intuition for myself, and I never considered that I could do this for other people. And one day I was watching a reality show, Beauty and the Geek, and my second cousin who I hadn't seen since he was a little kid, was on the show and I noticed that every time he came on the screen, I would hear a voice telling me things. Like, tell Josh I'm sorry, tell Josh it's not his fault. I'm like, Who is talking to me? And I really didn't understand what was happening because I certainly wasn't expecting it. But I started writing down everything I was hearing. And then when the show was over a couple of months later, I got in contact with him and I said, I don't know if you're into this stuff, but I gotta tell you what this voice is telling me. And I told him everything that this female voice was giving me. And there was silence on the other end of the line. I'm like, Josh, are you still there? And he said, I'm shaking right now. I said, Why? He said, Because I know exactly what you're talking about. I know exactly who you're talking to. My finacee had a suicide six months ago and everything you're telling me is stuff that I found in her suicide note, which I didn't share with any other person in the world. And so we were both kind of sitting there going, Well... well... well... what is this?? And it occurred to me that I had been speaking to a deceased person. Then I thought to myself, If I did that once, maybe I can do it again. So I started trying consciously to tune in to other people's deceased relatives. And I also discovered at the same time other guides that would come to me and that I could tell were not deceased people. They were spirit guides. And I just very boldly and courageously and with no other intent other than to help people, started passing along messages to people from their guides. And that's really how it started. Then I decided to start writing about some spiritual topics. Again, with no intention of it really turning into anything. And as I was talking about this thing with my audience, my growing audience, people started asking me to give them a reading. I'm like, Well I don't know how to give a reading, per say. I don't know how that functions. But again, I thought, I might as well try. So I tuned in to my guides and I asked them for help doing this work and they taught me how to do it and I started doing this professionally in 2006. And here we are. Slade: Wow. It's so similar to kind of how it happened for me too. I thought, Oh, I'm just going to write about these experiences that I have and then all the people reading kind of drafted me and said - Erin: Exactly! Slade: ... Can you connect for me? Yeah, so I was like, months behind you, but also observing you to some degree, you know, having it happen as well. And I think that's one of the reasons I attach to your experience so strongly. So I'm wondering though, since it has been, what, it's like almost 12 years for you? Erin: Yeah. Slade: That you've been doing readings... How have your readings evolved over time, like, are they different now then back when we first discovered you? Erin: I would say that the mechanism of how I receive information is exactly the same. But I've gotten faster and better and more clear at getting the information. So I used to do like, a 30-minute phone reading or 1-hour phone reading, but I'm very to the point. You know? I'm not all out there and I don't meander around. I get right to the point and I discovered that I could answer a lot of questions for people in just 15 - 20 minutes. And so, gradually, I have honed my reading skills to the point where I can do a 15-minute reading for somebody and still cover all the areas of their life that they want to cover. And then I also was able to start doing readings by email, which I remember trying that long time ago, but people have follow-up questions, and then it turned into this back-and-forth email exchange. But later, probably around in year seven or eight, I decided to give it a try again because after speaking with my guides about it, they told me how to do it so that a person would get a full reading by email. So I had people send me their questions by email and I sit in my meditation, connect with their guides, and I can answer their questions just as well over email as I could over the phone and I have found that very, very, very few people need any kind of follow-up because the reading is still very thorough. So I would say that I've gotten better and faster, and even more clarity than we had before. Slade: Okay well I'm very impressed with all that. Not only for myself, but I know that there are a lot of other intuitives who are listening right now who, one of the questions I get a lot of times about doing email readings is how do you handle the back-and-forth, so I'm very curious that that just isn't an issue. Erin: Actually one of the things I think happens is, when they send me a question, I don't just answer the question. I use that as a launching point to talk to their guides about their entire situation. So if somebody says, you know, should I move to L.A. and take the job, or keep the one I have in New York, it's not just a yes or no question for me. I talk to the guides about their career path and they show me all the different trajectories that the person could be on and which ones will likely lead to the best outcomes for them. And I also talk to their guides about what the person most wants to experience in their lives. So when I send back the reading, I don't just say, Yeah, move to L.A. Slade: Right. Erin: You know? I'll talk to them about what they truly wanted when they incarnated, what their current trajectory is taking them, and also what they want to experience. And so I look through all of their possibilities, pick the one or two that the guides are very much in favour of, and when I send back the reading, I not only tell her why she should go to L.A., but also why she should go and what she's going to experience there, what challenges she might face and how to overcome them. So it's very complete. Slade: That's very cool. I'm curious, Is there a particular type of reading that you tend to attract in your practice? Have you noticed any patterns? Erin: Yeah, I mean, the types of questions people ask, after doing thousands and thousands of readings, there are a few questions that are sort of at the top. The top one is definitely how can I transition to a career I'll enjoy? Which I find interesting and I guess a lot of people go through that, you know? You get out of college or high school, you pick a career path and somewhere down the line, five or ten years later, you are not happy. You've had a shift and your career has not shifted with you. So a lot of people want to know what they can do to be happier in their careers. So that's a big one. Slade: Yeah. I notice that you also do past-life readings, correct? Erin: Yes. I've just started doing that. Slade: How did you - Well, that's cool because I was wondering how you discovered that you were receiving past life information. Was it prompted by a question someone had about it or how did that emerge? Erin: For the most part, during the last 11 - 12 years, most people did not ask me about past-life stuff. So past-life information would only emerge in the reading when the guides felt it was necessary for the person to know what had occurred in previous lives. Usually there were some kind of trauma that was carried over. So I never really gave it a whole lot of thought because my personal opinion was that getting a past-life reading doesn't help them a whole lot this life unless there is some kind of carry-over. But one day when I was in meditation with my guides, they gave me the idea to just do it. And I don't really question them after this many years. They said, Do some past-life readings. You're going to see some really interesting patterns. You're going to see some really interesting things, and it is going to be very helpful to people. So I thought, Alright. So really, on a whim, but with great delight and joy and curiosity, I offered the past-life readings. And I ended up getting like, 300 people signed up in the first week and it was a little overwhelming, because it takes a long time to do those, but as I got going with them, I realized how valuable they are, how important they are, and what would happen is when I would tune in to their past life, the guides would show me their entire life, like a video, and I could fast-forward or rewind or pause at various points and what I did, because obviously a life is very long, I would grab the key salient significant experiences of their life and express those to them. Otherwise, obviously it would take many, many, many pages to go over a past life. And so what we discovered together, me and my clients, is that knowing how you were in a previous life often informs what you're doing in this life, whether it's a reacting to something bad that happened and you say, I'm never doing that again, or it's an opportunity to replay and redo things that happen in your previous life where you didn't like the outcome. It's like re-doing a dream in a way. You get to change the outcome. It was really cool. Slade: Well, one of the main reasons that I wanted to talk to you at this time was because one of my listeners requested a show topic covering the Veil of Forgetfulness or The Veil, as some people call it. And when I heard that, I immediately thought of you because I remember the tagline that you had years ago about remembering where you came from. And I thought you would be the perfect person to ask about this topic. So what is the Veil? How would you explain it? Erin: To me, I guess the Veil is like a blanket covering your memories so that you cannot remember who you really are and where you really came from. And I think a lot of intuitives have pondered, Why bother with a veil? Why can't we remember that we come from love? Why can't we remember who we are, who we were and everything like that? And I don't know that I have the definitive answer, but the way that I view incarnations is kind of like playing a video game where you create a character, you give him or her certain attributes, certain strengths, certain weaknesses, and then you hit Play. And so, if your character knew everything, if your character knew everything that he was going to have to do and everything he was going to have to be, he would probably, you know, fall on his sword and say, Forget this, I'm not doing it. So part of it is to have, part of the Veil is to have the experience, to have it be clean, to have it not be informed by who we've been and who we are and not remember where we come from. But I think it's very important and very helpful if you can remember where you came from, and you know, where you're going to return to, because I have to imagine that if we were all living in a world where we remembered that we're connected, that we're all One, that we come from love, we would treat each other differently, and we'd treat the planet differently, and very, very different things would happen. Slade: So do you think, and I mean I'm just asking you to kind of philosophically ponder a little bit, do you think it's something that we're meant to overcome, that it's sort of maybe a soul chosen... like you said, if it's a video game, is it a survivalist game that you are agreeing to go into with the limitations because of those limitations, or do you think it's the intention of a higher power that we come in forgetting... Erin: I think it's both. Slade: Yeah... Erin: I think that the system is set up so that we don't remember. But I want to clarify that by saying, Some people do remember. There's a lot of people that remember but they're told by society and by how they're raised and everything that it's probably not real or not true. Kids have a very strong grasp of cooperation and love and being very unconditionally loving. And then our societal structure often changes their nature to be, I don't want to say selfish, but looking after oneself. Not sharing. But I think it's all, I don't want to say it's all part of the game, because that sounds, I don't know, I don't like that, but it's part of the system and I'm not 100% sure why it is but I do know that it's beneficial in some way or we wouldn't keep doing it and I also know that some people do remember and that's... When people have their awakening, they remember and then it's very... it feels very important to share that memory with other people, which is why I kind of started my blog. Slade: Yeah... Erin: Is to wake people up. And to help them remember that they're a spiritual being having a human experience and that we can design and structure this playground any way that we want. Slade: You've written a lot about The Other Side. You have an e-book actually available on your website called The Other Side, which is a collection of some of the information that you've brought through, specifically about the other side and what happens when we die, what happens before we incarnate, the in-between. I'm just wondering, Is there anything that you've discovered about the other side that was particularly surprising to you, that you hadn't heard before from another source? Something that might have been unexpected or peculiar? Erin: Yeah, I think usually when I would do a reading and I would connect with a deceased individual, they would send love and they would send hope and all kinds of ideas to make a person's life better. But there was one situation where I was speaking with a gentleman on the other side and his client was, his daughter was my client and he was very intelligent and he was coming through very clearly. And when I got off the phone with my client, I continued talking to this guy because that's how strong a connection we had and how interested I was in speaking to him. And he was very interested in speaking to me. So he was at a real high vibration and I kind of asked him, What do you do over there? What's going on? And one of the things he said is, It's sort of like a creation experience. There's a lot of different things you can create over there. Different experiences, but one of the things that he was doing is engaging in sort of philosophical discussion, sharing of wisdom with other beings on the other side. So that sounded really cool to me. It was a little unexpected. Some people on the other side want to create sort of a fantasy-realm for themselves where they re-live a little bit one of their most recent life and they set things up to see what would have happened if they had taken a different road. So it's almost like you seem to get an opportunity to say, What would have happened if I had taken that job? Or what would've happened if I married that guy? And all the curiosity you ever had in your life, you're allowed to kind of see what would've happened if you had taken a different road. So there are apparently people spending time doing that a little bit. The other thing I saw which was, I was not expecting is some times, and this is very, very, very rare, so I don't want people to worry about this. Sometimes, if a person crossed over and they had either suicided or there was some mental anguish going on with them, they, I saw, had a tendency to re-live a lot of the anguishing experiences, hanging on to something that they really did not need to hang on to but which they could not seem to let go. And in those cases, what I saw over time because I would read for the same client and we'd kind of check in to see what people were doing, there were angelic energies around them that were helping them to heal and helping them to close those wounds so they could properly and fully cross over and release their life. The life that they had just had. Because there's something about they don't want them to cross over until they're able to drop that persona and be back at One, in peace and kind of become their higher self again. Does that make sense? Slade: Yeah, interesting. So I wonder if, do you think that corresponds with what we call earth-bound spirits and spirits that are trapped or do you think it's something else? Erin: Yes, I do think that some spirits have a difficult time crossing over but I really, really, really, really want to stress that that's a teeny tiny percentage of people. Because most people easily slough off the connection and are able to cross over completely and fully, but I have seen some energies that are either too afraid to cross over because they fear judgment or are a little bit confused and they need a little extra help working on releasing and cutting the cord with this life. So yeah, that happens sometimes. Rarely. Slade: Cool. Well, you know, the thing is, you do so many fascinating things including, you have a whole paranormal investigation team which we'd have to do a separate episode about. Erin: Yeah. Slade: So I won't take you down too many rabbit holes. But I was curious about the connection between the things that we're talking about. The readings, the mediumship, connecting with the other side, communicating with spirits, and then astral projection, which is another really big topic for you that you've written about. You have a book about astral projection. So, what do you use the astral projection for? What's the application? Erin: Yeah, okay that's a great question. When I was young, when I was 15 to maybe 18 or 20 years old, I used to astral project because I was getting attacked by lower vibrational entities on the astral plane. And it wasn't something I was trying to do and it certainly wasn't something I was trying to attract, but it kept happening. I finally got to the point where I said, You know, if you're going to keep attacking me, I'm going to go on the offense because I don't like this. So I started projecting three or four nights a week, and I would go on patrol and I would remove and clear lower vibrational entities that I saw either around my house, not inside but outisde, and then I started doing that for other people. And then that kind of died down a lot. I got real focused on college and dating and marriage, children, business etc. And so my astral projection experiences now are focused very differently. So now when I go out, I'm either helping a spirit who is having difficulty crossing over. I do some astral projection work on my paranormal investigations to identify and look at the ghost or entity that is plaguing our clients and I communicate with it to see what its deal is. And also sometimes I'll visit friends because that's fun. Also I will visit either another dimension or go up to the, oh let's call it the Ether, where I'll communicate and commune with my own deceased relatives, friends and loved ones from this life and previous lives. Slade: Awesome. Okay well that makes me want to get the book now. So I assume that the astral projection guide book is about mastering some of those techniques for those purposes, correct? Erin: Exactly. Yeah. The book really covers a lot of detail about how to prepare yourself to astral project because you really want to be mentally prepared and then some techniques to achieve it faster and also troubleshooting some common problems people experience when they first start projecting. Slade: Very cool. I'll put a link in the show notes and on my blog as well so people can go check that out. I'm curious what's next for you. Do you have anything special, project-wise, coming up on the horizon? Erin: Yeah, I'm working on an intuition development program. It'll be an audio program. This is something I've been wanting to do for at least five years, but I have not had the time to devote to doing it. And now I finally do, I have completed the script so all I need to do is record it and get it produced. And in this program, people will learn how to use their clair-abilities: clairvoyance, clairaudience, sentience and cognizance. And we'll also go over the practical ways that you can use it in your daily life because a lot of people don't realize they can use it for everything. And it will also go over how to prepare yourself to be able to hear your guides and receive intuition whenever you desire, where you don't have to just wait for it to strike you. Slade: Very cool. You'll have to come back on when you get all that up and running and share it if you'd like. Erin, it's been a real pleasure catching up with you and finding out what you're up to. Tell everyone where they can go find you online. Erin: The website is erinpavlina.com and I'm sure Slade will post it up somewhere. There's hundreds of articles on there that you can read for free, which I love. I love to hear people's feedback on the articles, and often we go over to my Facebook wall and talk about each article, so that's available for people as well. Slade: That's wonderful. Thank you, Erin, for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Erin: Thank you. It was great catching up. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Do you have issues with faith? Are you guilty of trying to plan out every little detail of your life? This is a little reminder for you to trust in something greater than yourself — it can be the natural world, the universe, a higher consciousness, God, or even just the Mystery. Having this kind of faith is about trusting that the outcome will be exactly what it should be, no matter what it is, and it will happen in its own perfect time. Give your divine timing over to the divine — it’s better at it than we are. You can take a break from the impossible job of coaxing the universe. Take a break, take a breath. And I’ll talk to you later.

Empathy — experiencing external emotional energies as your own moods and sensitivities and feelings — is the foundation of being psychic. If you identify as a lightworker, or someone who is actively seeking a spiritual path, absorbing other people's energy comes with the territory of everyday life. For some professions, it can be an occupational hazard. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: ...empath, psychic protection, psychic shielding, astral projection, grounding, meditation, kundalini, white light, auras, spirit guides... Psychic Shielding for Empaths The Astral Projection Guidebook by Erin Pavlina HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today I want to share some techniques for psychic shielding and managing your energy. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. BEFORE I FORGET I'd like to say a quick thank you to my newest supporters on Patreon: Julia David Linda I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. Listeners who support the show on Patreon can access bonus Q&A episodes, where you guys send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. I'm thinking of offering a new level of support for the show where you get to access the downloadable courses and books from the shop on my site. The way I’m thinking this would probably work is that each month one course will be featured and accessible and then I would rotate through most of the products I have available. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. Write and tell me. I’ll let you know for sure when I decide to do this. You can always edit your pledge amount if you made one months ago and want to raise it to access the bonus content. I’m including a new link now in the show notes on how to do that. To find out how you can become a patron, support my time in producing this show, and access the extra bonus content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits I’d also like to give a quick shout out to Titti and Heather, Patreon supporters who requested today’s show topic about managing and protecting your psychic energy. PSYCHIC SHIELDING FOR EMPATHS I’ve yet to encounter anyone who has a high level of natural intuitive abilities — such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, or claircognizance — who is not also primarily clairsentient. Empathy — experiencing external emotional energies as your own moods and sensitivities and feelings — is the foundation of being psychic. If you identify as a lightworker, or someone who is actively seeking a spiritual path, it comes with the territory of everyday life. And for those who take this identity into the professional realm — obvious careers such as psychotherapists, counselors, coaches, social workers, medical professionals, massage therapists, energy healers, psychics, ministers, teachers, and child care; but also human resource professionals, customer service workers, hair stylists — anyone who deals with numerous individual people, called to assist (at least listen to) others who are processing a lot of negative conditions and circumstances — residual energy is literally an occupational hazard. PSYCHIC PROTECTION FROM HUMAN ENERGY Here are some excerpts from reading requests I’ve received asking for psychic protection techniques for specifically human-to-human energy exchange. Listen to the following and see if you identify with any of these: I need to be empathetic enough to effectively communicate, be able to explain my point of view without having to be defensive or worried about being attacked, still show compassion and a willingness to listen, YET remain detached enough that I can be true to myself, authentic, stick to my guns. I find myself constantly being drawn in to other people’s drama. I’m a good listener, and I care about other people, but sometimes it feels like I’m a dumping ground for other people’s stress and bad energy. My friends and family love to talk to me about their problems. I’m the one everyone comes to for advice. I feel that it’s truly my life purpose to play the part of the counselor. On the one hand, I do feel that I’m helping and being of service to others… but more often times than not, I end up feeling drained. I proudly identify myself as a light-worker, a way-shower. I am very open, very intuitive, very sensitive. I want to continue growing and opening myself further, but there’s a part of me that resists. Just as I start to pick up on someone’s vibes, there’s a part of me that wants to rise up, slam the door… to protect myself. How can I do both? I guess I’m what you call an empath. I am a psychic sponge — I absorb everyone else’s energy and I don’t know how to turn it off. Is there a way I can turn it down or protect myself without turning off? I worry a lot. I worry about everyone. I worry for them. It’s like I have a sign on my forehead that says “Leave your problems with me.” I know it may sound crazy to someone who doesn’t experience it, but it can literally make me feel ill — my stomach is either in knots or my neck muscles are stiff all the time. I worry more than anything that I’m going to give myself cancer from carrying all this stress. I try to be positive, but it feels like the whole world wants to tear down my attitude. The relationship is over. It has run its course. We both know it, we both agree, and we both want to move on… But there’s still a lot that has to be negotiated in order for us to go our separate ways. Every time we even talk on the phone, it’s like the wound gets torn open all over again, and we both end up in tears. How can I move forward and heal without backsliding into that painful place that feels like square one? Help! I feel like I’m under psychic attack. I’m afraid that if I open up my intuition too much, I’m going to make myself more vulnerable. I most often share the following psychic “soft” shielding technique with empaths who work in para-professional or healing arts fields where heart-centered connection is a requirement. It has become a staple training in the Automatic Intuition program. EMPATHIC SHIELDING I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of Purple Light and White Light Shielding — Purple Light being the highest angelic vibe you can invoke for spiritual protection, nurturing, and support; White Light being the universal holy shield. WHITE LIGHT MAY BE TOO HARD CORE The thing to keep in mind about White Light is that it’s entirely impermeable and allows for too little heart chakra to heart chakra reflection/ interaction. White Light protection in everyday relationships is a bit overkill. TRY PINK LIGHT VISUALIZATION As an alternative to using White Light shielding, use Pink — the ethereal, aura color representation of your Higher Self. The color of rose quartz, which can also literally be assigned, associated, activated, and amplified by the crystals themselves. When talking to (anyone with whom you may require this softer, tender-hearted protection) picture yourself sheathed in a column of pearly bubble-gum pink light, from just above your head extending all the way through the floor beyond your feet. Imagine it being poured on top of your head, starting at your crown chakra. I personally picture this substance as having the appearance and viscosity of liquid soap or shampoo. You might also envision that you’re Glinda the Good Witch in her big pink bubble — that’s about the the right size in relationship to your body/aura. (and, it’s just plain fun to call forth your Inner Glinda once in awhile. Even the biggest bad ass among us has an Inner Glinda.) PINK LIGHT AS BOTH MIRROR AND FILTER What happens is...When the subject you’re communicating with projects onto you, the most positive authentic heart-centered energy is reflected back to him/her. The Pink also allows for your loving energy — compassion, concern, good will — to pass through, yet the White Light (which is still present within the Pink) blocks negative energy. So, it’s a semi-permeable shield — which expands the Highest Self-loving Energy that either of you project; and it’s a kind of filter — magnifying what you most hope to receive/ project, while still blocking negative psychic energy completely and absolutely. USING ACTUAL CRYSTALS If you have rose quartz crystals physically present, they can act as a switch or consciousness trigger for turning on this shield. I recommend that therapists and mediators actually have some piece of rose quartz in the line of sight of both parties; on the table or desk between you is ideal. You can wear rose quartz as jewelry or carry a piece in your pocket. Just seeing this color acts as a subconscious activation switch, even for those who don’t intellectually know the symbolic spiritual significance. The Woo Woo Stuff — the visualizations, the meditations, the rituals, the spells — is really just a representation and a reminder of your commitment to a particular conscious intention. Just going into a conversation aware of what you want to block, what you want to project and receive, impacts your attitude and word choice and allows you to set the energy. When you set a strong energetic intention like this — when you’re willfully driving the vibration — others must conform or deal with the discomfort. They have no choice but to match that energy or they have to leave. In which case, the integrity of the kind of conversation you want to have is ultimately maintained. Remember, if in doubt, you simply express how YOU feel; that’s the most honest thing you can do. Your feelings are non-negotiable, no matter how controlling another person might want to be, or think they can be — when presented with someone’s feelings, there’s nothing they can do but accept them. Anyone not down with the good vibes — who refuses, who chooses over and over again to be difficult — is undoubtedly someone not worthy of your time and energy. I’d say two chances would be my line in the sand — after which, as much distance and lack of contact you can make happen is entirely warranted. You can’t have a war if both sides don’t show up. We have legal channels and barriers if necessary — security, attorneys, mediators. (If you keep answering that cell phone when he calls and engaging in another verbal battle, you are participating.) Don’t forget the most basic intention manifestation/ law of attraction factors — if you establish beforehand how you WANT the script to go, then you’re creating it — not reacting on the fly and finding yourself unequipped to provide the details of the Best Case Scenario. If you prepare for the conversation going badly, if you prepare a dialogue of argument, the Universe will be sure to shoot that scene for you. You may be pleasantly surprised, even blown away, by how positively others will respond and behave if YOU are prepared for them to. MAINTENANCE Cord cutting Clearing meditation Astral projection (Erin Pavlina’s technique) for those of you who practice any kind of psychic readings it’s really important to disconnect or log off readings - we are overly focused on tuning in - not logging off properly is like leaving a door or window open… What I do is establish protocol with my guides, programming a particular object, or even better, an associated ACTION with energy management. charging a piece of jewelry remember, when I talked therapists having a large piece of rose quartz on the desk or table between themselves and their clients Guide Assignment - let your guides manage all this My Secret Service protocol All of this is a more advanced level of energy and protection, so I really want to stress the basics of being grounded. Especially if you are spinning in the ether, overanalyzing, overthinking, if you describe your circumstances as a cloud hovering over you, if you feel pulled in too many directions — if you feel like there’s not enough time in the day… Ground your energy. If you feel overwhelmed, Focus on the basics, focus on the physical. For me, that is exercise. If my workouts are maintained, it helps manage my appetite and most importantly it impacts my sleep. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not in a state of mind to manage these more complex energies. Get the physical sorted first. If you’re not a fitness buff, go for a walk every day. Just 30 minutes or 45. It will change everything. If you have physical limitations and that’s not an option for you, then work on visualizing your energy being grounded. Kundalini meditation would be good for you. OR start with perfecting a basic visualization of your spine growing down into the ground and becoming roots, like a tree. THAT is great place to start managing the foundation of your psychic energy. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE You just received a gift. A magical energetic gift. The ability to complete any creative idea you have. And if you jump on this now, with enthusiasm and optimism and perseverance, I’m predicting the positive outcome will be tremendous. Don’t hesitate. Stop thinking about it, go for it. And I’ll talk to you later.

Michelle Vandepas is a best-selling author, TEDx and Keynote speaker and workshop and retreat leader attracting clients who know they want to dig deeper into or do more with their lives and businesses. She works with those who need a bigger audience, have a message to share, and know that now is the time. For Michelle, it’s not about who you are, but what you’re here to do. Her online courses, live mastermind programs, and VIP retreats have attracted thousands of people who now understand how to “BE” in their DO-ing, clear about their PURPOSE and filled with the SPARK of life. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron GUEST LINKS - MICHELLE VANDEPAS TheSpark.love The SPARK Facebook GroupPurpose: The Alignment Guide Free Gifts from Michelle HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I’m sharing a conversation with Michelle Vandepas about aligning with your purpose. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. And to tell you the truth, I am personally really looking forward to what that message is going to be! You may not realize this, but I use them for myself. It’s Friday, October 13, 2017 as I record this, and it feels a bit like the sky is falling. We’ve got wild fires in Northern California, people starting to die in Puerto Rico from drinking water out of creeks and ditches, going weeks without power or cell service… and millions of us in the US are about to lose our healthcare coverage. I really don’t know how much to address current events on the podcast, because the majority of you are listening from the future. Thousands of you. I want the content to be evergreen—meaning it can speak to you at whatever point in time you are listening. There is great power in the synchronicity of when you receive these messages. And even if I try to be super current with events in the present, they’re going to be a week behind, at best. So much changes, day to day... So, if I seem like I’m saying too little, not saying enough, or seeming to ignore something that happened this morning or went down in a big way yesterday, it’s just because recording is a snapshot in time, but the messages transcend time, to come and find you in your now. I am attempting to make content that has that ability. I am admittedly dancing around this. Awkwardly. If you have any input about how you’d like me to handle timely events, I would love to hear your suggestions. Shoot me an email. If you’re fine with my making these episodes entirely timeless, email me and let me know that too. Before I forget, I want to say a quick thank you to Merrie Kisch, my newest supporter on Patreon. And also thank you to Ann Luke-Montez who raised her pledge amount. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, thank you. Listen, I’ve lost a lot of people who are angry that I am communicating in audio. I have gone to great trouble to make most if not all the episodes available as a written transcript — today’s episode with Michelle about aligning with your purpose does indeed have a full transcript. For the record, there are eleven years worth of posts — hundreds if not thousands of articles — available on my site. Go to sladeroberson.com/archives There’s a search feature and tons to read. But I’m still getting emails from long-term followers who are disappointed. They don’t like the change. They want me to go back to short blog posts once a week. And you know, this platform has to grow and evolve. I needed to make this new and exciting and to breathe new life into Shift Your Spirits with this audio. Working with me is essentially talking to me, and I know from the feedback from those of you who love the show that it is authentically aligned with my voice. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that pledging your support on Patreon is one of the ways that you tell me to make this show for you and to ignore those who are sending me, well, hate mail for making this show. Some people do not like change. Change is the only thing in the world you can rely on. You gotta be a change surfer. You gotta learn to adapt and be flexible in all areas of life… But to wrap up this rant — it’s not just a “pledge drive” when I tell you about Patreon. It really literally is you saying “Slade, I love this podcast. I’m out here listening. I find the shows meaningful and helpful. Please keep sending me episodes." …I will. I plan to. Listeners who support the show on Patreon can access bonus Q&A episodes, where you guys send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. I just released a bonus episode “How to Manifest a Relationship” as a tie-in to the show on soul mates. You guys who are supporters will find that download in the posts section on Patreon. You can edit your pledge amount at any time, like Ann did, if you decide you want to access the bonus audio. I’ll put a link in the show notes on how to do that. https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002804683-How-do-I-edit-my-Pledge- To find out how you can become a patron, support my time in producing this show, and access the extra audio content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Okay. Let’s get to this week’s interview. Purpose. It’s one of our favorite subjects to talk about. And I’ve found someone perfect for us to talk to. Michelle Vandepas. TRANSCRIPT of INTERVIEW Slade: So, by way of introduction, for those of you out there who may not have heard of Michelle Vandepas, Michelle, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do. Michelle: So... Wow. I am a - so that's a great question, right? I suddenly realize I don't know how to put myself in a box of who I am and what I do. So I'm an author. I write. I'm a coach. I'm a business coach. I'm a book publisher. I'm a TEDx speaker. Those are all my accomplishments. But really who I am is someone who is highly concerned about the energy in the world and how I believe when we all are connected to our authentic self, when we're on purpose, when we feel alive and we feel aligned with who we are, that we can help change the planet to be a better place. Slade: Well, you know, in the time that I've known you, and we were just chatting before we started recording, about how we've known each other for probably ten years. And in that time, I've seen you do all the things that you're talking about. The TED talks, courses, workshops, masterminds, in a lot of areas that obviously are connected and make sense. But I'm wondering how did helping people align with their purpose become your purpose? How did you identify - how did you land here? Michelle: Yeah, good question. So what's really interesting is I've always been doing this in my business coaching, and back 20 years ago when I owned a business, a manufacturing business, it was a lot of coaching the employees and the staff members about how they could contribute the best in the work place. So I feel like I've always been coaching other people to be on Purpose. How I kind of came full circle and decided to devote the next few years of my life to helping people with it is I think when we're not feeling aligned with our own Purpose, everything else is just slightly off kilter or out of whack. So it's very difficult to run a business if you don't feel like you're doing what you're here to do. It's difficult to raise a family if you're always in stress about it and you don't feel aligned. So no matter where you are in your life, it comes back to understanding who you are at the core and then I know you relate to this. You write about Purpose all the time, Slade, so I think there's something fundamental that when we can accept who we are, know that we are here for a reason, that we can feel on Purpose with our lives, it helps everything else unfold. It helps all other areas of our life. So I think that's where I feel I can make the biggest difference. Slade: Okay. So Life Purpose. You hear those two words together a lot. It's a tricky thing to identify. I can tell you right now that this show will get tons of downloads just from that keyword or phrase in the title. I've seen it before. As you said, I do write about Purpose and speak to people about it and it's probably in 99% of the conversations I have with people when I do readings. So the thing is, back to the idea that it's a little tricky to identify. For a lot of people, it gets mixed up with creative passions, hobbies, jobs, career tracks, maybe it's a little of all of those things. Just tell me how do you define Purpose? Michelle: Yeah, I love this conversation. So the way I view Purpose is you're already living it. Everybody is already living it. Even if they don't know what it is. It is just something that is inside of us. And Purpose is how we express out into the world. In the very biggest picture, like the hugest picture, is how we express our love into the world. But that's difficult because love comes with so many romantic notions that it's hard to always wrap our brain around that. So let me give you an example. I like to work with archetypes when I'm talking about Purpose because I think it helps us relate a little bit easier. Most of us can relate to feeling like we're a teacher, we are a leader, we're a caregiver, we might have mom or dad energy, we might feel like we're a nurturer. These are energies. These are expressions of a way to give back or to live our life. But they don't have really anything to do with a vocation or a hobby or a job or a passion. So if you identify with, let's say, the caregiver archetype, you enjoy helping people, you like to nurture other people. You may or may not become a nurse or a hospice provider. You might be able to live that archetype through being a teacher or through being a barista or through blogging. That archetype can come through many many ways. And that's usually something that we're born with. That's an essence of our soul about how we express out into the world. If you don't feel identified with that archetype, if you don't feel like you're a caregiver, it's not going to be the first thing that is expressed out while you're out in your world. So to bring this back around, if you have a job in - let's just say you're a blogger, you will naturally tie into your gifts that you were born with, such as teacher or leader or inspirer or caregiver, through your writing, when you feel more connected with the archetype of your individual purpose. Does that make sense? Slade: Hmm.. oh yeah! Actually I really love this. I love the archetypes, and that's a good filter to view this from. Because it's sort of like an ingredient, like you said it's an essence, and you can put that essence in a lot of different places. Right? Like it sort of comes out of you no matter where we put you. If you're a nurturer, or a natural cheerleader, it doesn't really matter if you're literally on a sports team or you're just working in a bank. Michelle: That's right. Slade: It's gonna kind of express itself to the people around you, right? Michelle: Right. And where I see people get a little disrupt or feel disengaged with Purpose is when they're trying to chase it around their work. So if you know that you're a caregiver then you're suddenly like rolling your eyes and thinking, 'Ah, I gotta go be a nurse.' Well what you said is totally on point. That no, start with what you're already doing in your life and notice how caregiving shows up. Or notice how cheerleading shows up. When you start noticing what you're already doing in all areas of your life, you'll feel more connected. And as you start feeling more connected, then you're willing to express it more. You're willing - because then you have proof that yes, this is who I am, right? The world becomes our mirror and we go, 'Yes, I am a cheerleader.' This is awesome. People respond to this. And then we do more of it naturally. Slade: Hmm... So what else do you think people tend to kind of get wrong when they go looking for their Purpose? Like you said, when they go chasing it and they get off track, what's some other... 101 bungles... Michelle: Yeah. I'm the perfect poster child for this, right? We always teach what we learn, or we teach what we need to learn, whatever that saying is. So a great example is, I had a period of my life when I became very engaged with my artistic side of myself. And I loved painting, and doing all kinds of creative endeavors and I spent hours and hours... I had some luxury of time back then, and spent a lot of time developing my creative self and my artistic self and I went to workshops and I had some shows and I suddenly had this light bulb - wow this must be my Purpose. And so I decided, I set up shop, I set up my own art exhibits, I suddenly was investing in getting things framed and having to sell things and then I was asked to do a couple of commissions and I'm like, oh man, I hate this so much. It's like, my passion and my creative expression suddenly turned into a job. Because I had mistakenly thought my Purpose was related to my passion. And I can have a passion for art that isn't necessarily my Purpose. My Purpose is more about inspiration, teaching, leading, and I can do those things through my art, but the art itself was not my purpose. Slade: I'm actually kind of comforted to hear you say this because I live an entirely second life as a fiction author. So I have this, these two worlds, or two roles, and sometimes it just makes me uncomfortable trying to have to make them both be about the same thing. And I really just learn to kind of let them be two things and in my mind, my Purpose feels like it's related around Shift Your Spirits, it's what you know me for, it's very much what you do as well, inspiring, enabling, coaching, supporting people, teaching, telling stories. And then, you know, the other thing is an art. It is a passion and it's a hobby. It's also business but it doesn't have to be - everything doesn't have to be in one box, right? Michelle: Um hmm... let me ask you a question. In your fiction writing, do you feel as though you're bringing any of your inner Purpose like inspiring, and leading, and those things through any of your dialogue or your characters? I'm just curious. Could be yes or no. Slade: Yeah, I actually ask myself this question a lot because I feel like it's not so on the nose that I feel like my stories have to be inspirational reader's digest type fiction or something. Or like some - I don't write stories about people who are on a spiritual mission or anything like that. So I have asked myself this question and I think it's more about a deeper emotional kind of journey. The ability to give someone another life in another world to experience, which is so much of what I get out of reading fiction, and I think that there's a case to be made for story-telling being such a huge part of so many areas of what we do in the world whether it's ministry or teaching or just entertainment. Stories are big business and they're big soulful enterprises in and of themselves. So I think where I come down with it is I feel like my magic comes in the form of words. And I have always had a gift for storytelling and sometimes that includes hosting someone like you and creating a platform for you to tell a story. You know what I'm saying? Michelle: Yes, that's beautiful. Slade: Yeah and I can make a case that we're all storytellers and, I do tell some of my intuitive training students a lot that I think intuitives - storytellers make great intuitives. People who speak symbolic language have an ability to take that vocabulary into a lot of different vocations. So, again, not to get too much in the weeds about myself personally, but we're coming back to this idea that it's an essence that you already have and it's something that you can take into anywhere we drop you. Right? Like, ultimately if you're wiling to. Michelle: That's right. And I just want to circle back around with you because you also blog and you write and you've been doing this a long time and obviously these podcasts. So you have a gift with words and that writing and podcasting is just one way you're choosing to express that gift. You could choose to express that gift maybe in song writing, or maybe something that I haven't even thought of. Writing copy. You're just choosing to express your gift of a way with words in these platforms right now. Doesn't mean blogging suddenly is your Purpose. Slade: Right, yes. Exactly. And I have had periods where I was a song writer and I was a - I've done different kinds of artistic pursuits just like you were talking about. The difference between kind of your creativity and your passion and your art and then you can, you can or you can not choose to express that in combination with a Purpose or in combination with a job. I tell people all the time sometimes the greatest way to ruin your passion is to turn it into a business. Michelle: Yeah! Like my art! Exactly. Slade: So when I was thinking about the fact that I was going to be talking to you today and I thought, you know, this is an area of expertise for you, that you've gone even deeper in than I have, but I was trying to think of my listeners and kind of where they fall on this question. Because like I said, it's nearly always a component of any reading that I do. And I was trying to think of, how can I ask questions that the people listening would ask if they were sitting here in front of the microphone and I kind of identified - there's a few different people that are at different stages of asking themselves this question. So I wondered if you would indulge me and let me ask you kind of a question, there's kind of three different angles. And I wanted to ask for advice for each one of those people. Are you game for that? Michelle: I'm game! Slade: Okay! Michelle: Let's see where it goes! Slade: So, the first one is the person who has no clue what their Purpose is. They really feel like just the canvas is blank, and that's a very terrifying feeling. You know, the blank page and you don't, something's supposed to be written on there and you don't know what it is. So what do you say to that person who has no clue what their Purpose might be? Michelle: Yeah, great. So and this comes up a lot with the people I work with, who maybe their kids are now gone, or their job is over or they're retiring and they feel like, now what? But it can happen with people of all ages for a variety of reasons. And the first thing that I want to tell the listeners is really to reassure them that it really doesn't matter if you know your Purpose. It's like it doesn't matter if you can see the ocean. It's still there. Your Purpose is there. Now you may feel a little frustrated that you don't know what it is. You may feel disconnected to it. But it's there. It's inside of you. So I would encourage listeners who are in this space to just breathe in to the fact that they are alive on the planet, they have a Purpose even if they don't know what it is. And allow it. Allow the expression of their Purpose to be shown to them over some time. In my book it's a 28-day process of journalling and asking questions. But the first stage of that is to live with the affirmation that I am already living my Purpose. Slade: Okay. That's awesome. What do you say to the person who kind of already has a clue what it is, right? They know deep down in their heart what their Purpose is. They feel that calling but maybe they're in a state of fear or procrastination, you know, they're sitting in the cubicle at work and they're dissatisfied with what they're doing and they know what their heart wants to do or what they're being called to do in some way. What does she do next? How does she get started? Michelle: So first I would encourage not the DOING of it. And I would really encourage the BEING of it. Because I think what happens is we skip steps. We're like, 'Okay I know that I'm supposed to be out there speaking to the world.' Well speaking again is a doing. It's not a Purpose. So is the Purpose really that you would like to inspire people with the message? Is your Purpose that you feel like you're a leader, that you have a calling to change other people's lives through leading or through inspiration or - it's tricky because it's like you have a gift for speaking and that's the gift and that could be how your Purpose is done and expressed in the world but we gotta go first underneath that - what the BEING is. And so, I would encourage people who know deep inside that they're supposed to go speak, that comes up a lot with my clients. "I know I'm supposed to go speak." Be out there on stage. Be more visible. I'd encourage you first to tap into what is it that your call - what is it that calls that part of yourself? Are you feeling like you're here to lead? And then keep going into that energy and express it more and more in what you do right now. So if you are called to lead, do that in the job you have right now. Do that with your family. Do that as you move about the world. And as you're deepening that confidence in yourself, it's amazing how opportunities start opening up to allow you to do more of how you want to express that feeling in the world. Slade: Okay. These are good. I'm having some epiphanies around this stuff. So I've got one more. It's a little challenging. And I can actually think of a couple people that I know that are peers that are out there who might be listening, who - okay, what do you say to the person who knows what his Purpose is, maybe he's been doing it for awhile, who's been working at it, and then suddenly he's not seeing the "success" with it that he had expectations for? What's going on with that person, when they feel like they're, they know what they're supposed to do, but for some reason it's not taking off the way that they think, "Oh! It's my Purpose. I'm doing it, therefore the wings should just spread open and I should fly." What do you say to the person when that's not happening? Michelle: So, Purpose is being, and Purpose is not success-driven. So Purpose is back to how do you express your love in the world? How do you express yourself out into the world? If you were then taking that and let's just pretend that you're here to inspire other people and your chosen way to do that is to become a public speaker, then you have to learn the business of speaking, you have to learn the nuances, you have to understand how to book gigs, how to write contracts, you have to then go learn the pieces of running that business if that's choosing, if that's how you're going to choose to express your Purpose of inspiration out into the world. But again, and then I do business coaching as well, so I can speak to this. Your Purpose is how you're expressing in the world in all areas of your life and so if you're putting, 'OMG, my Purpose is all wrapped up in this business,' you're going to have heartache and downfall because business has natural ups and down cycles. And so you've got to come back and be grounded in who you are. I want to come back for a minute because I think there's a piece here that we've tiptoed around a little bit, Slade. And that is, people feel scared of their Purpose. Like if Slade, you know, think back ten or twelve years ago and if you suddenly knew that you were here to inspire people about Purpose and how they can become intuitive, you may not know, have known how to do that. All those years ago. And there might have been some fear for you. Slade: Oh yes. Michelle: And so... Right? It's all of us. And so if we can go into what is it that we are expressing and continue to do that every day we strengthen the muscle of accepting who we are. If someone were to tell me that I'd be on the telesummits with thousands of people and coaching some fairly well-known names out there, ten years ago, I would've been terrified. And go, 'No, I don't have those skills. That's not me. I don't have that confidence. I don't have that knowingness,' right? And so we start by giving ourselves either small steps or big steps, whatever it is, but confirmation that we're on the right track. Because that builds that muscle that gives us our own acceptance. I think when we don't accept the gifts that we were born with, it's really difficult to go be - feel successful, but feeling successful is a life, not just a business. It's how do we feel in our life? Do we feel fulfilled? So I think I want to come back around to - it's the feeling of being fulfilled that I think we chase, and money seems to represent that and business success represents that. But let's come back to how are we expressing, how are we ful - being fulfilled, how are we helping, how are we serving, and then maybe it's business coaching that this person really needs. Slade: Great advice. Thank you so much. So tell us about Spark. What is this? Michelle: So I think you know I've played a lot with this idea of Purpose, passion, fulfillment creativity, and the word that sums all of that up for me is Spark. And so I've created a system for helping us all keep that spark alive inside. I don't know how you feel, but you know we're just on the other side of another mass shooting here in the United States, we've had hurricanes, there's fires, there's wars all over the world. It feels like it's pretty difficult sometimes to stay grounded that we can even make a difference with all these world problems. And so, getting in touch with our own spark is the beginning of feeling alive and then feeling like we can help in whatever way that looks like to us. Big or small, helping the local food community, helping a stray cat, helping stop genocide and wars, wherever it is that you personally feel like you're called to help. It starts with connecting with that spark inside of us. Because when that flame starts dying out, it's really difficult to even just get off the couch, right? We become glued to the news, we get into overwhelm. So the system I've created are always different areas where we learn to connect in with our own spark so that we can express more fully our authentic selves. And, like I say in this book, Purpose book, which is the first step of the system, how can we not be authentic, right? We are authentic. We just don't always recognize what that is. And then we try to cover it up, or we have our baggage or we eat too much or we do all kinds of self sabotaging things because we don't really know who we are. And so this system takes us through some self-reflection. I'm not here to tell anybody who they are. It's all inside. We just have to uncover it. We have to recognize it. We have to love who we are, you know? It's that thing that we gotta love ourselves first. And it's true, but we have to learn who we are so that we can love ourselves. Slade: So the book part component of this that you're talking about, it's a new book you have out called Purpose: The Alignment Guide : 28 Days of Inspiration, Reflection, Intention and Creative Expression. Now this sounds more like a program than just a book. So explain to us how this book works. Michelle: Yeah, it is. It's 28 days. Each day, wel, each week there's an affirmation. The very first one is 'I am already living my Purpose.' And there's coloring exercises ,activities, writing prompts, and the book takes you through my thoughts about why I believe we're all already living our Purpose. Just a short chapter on that. And then it encourages you to reflect on how you are living your Purpose day to day. There are daily affirmations, daily questions, the book takes you through how does the earth energy affect you? I'm finding it very interesting right now with things like fires and hurricanes and so forth to not be affected by that, and I think a lot of us are affected by intense weather or even just a big snowstorm. And so, how does that affect your day to day living, and does that make you go more internal or does that cause you to be angry in the world? And just having a place to write down and explore these feelings helps you understand and learn more of who you really are. Who we are at the core. So the book is a 28-day exploration with writing prompts for every day. Journaling and loads of cool coloring pages and there's also a coloring book that you can download at no cost or purchase to go along with this with all the really cool images. And the images are a little edgy. They're not like flowers and butterflies. They're what I call kind of galactic images with weird eyes and the sun going sideways because I think that's how I feel right now. Like everything just a little big sideways. And so I want to acknowledge that and express that. And the Purpose is just the first workbook in a 9-month system. So there's 8 more books coming out, each one exactly the same format. So it's a 9-month program that I have on helping you connect back in with who you are. Slade: So why is it 28 days specificially? Michelle: Yeah, so there's a couple of answers to that. It is a nice system of every week you look at a new affirmation and in this case, a new area of Purpose. And then we all need a day or two or three to just rest. So it's not like a month-long system. You can start this in the middle of the month, you can start it in the middle of the week, you just work through the days and then you, at the end of the 28 days, it's a moon cycle, it's a natural cycle. You just rest, let it all integrate, allow your subconscious to process everything you've been thorough. It's like savassana in yoga. You just incorpirate everything that you have learned and thought about and doodled and processed over the last four weeks. And then after a few more days, you can start again on the next book. Day 1 and go through another 28-day process. Slade: Very cool. It actually would be fun to do that with the moon cycle if you wanted. I'm a bit of a witch so I like to do everything like ritualized around the moon calendar. It just, it gives it a certain kind of structure that feels, I don't know, it feels empowering, so I like to play with that. That's very cool. Michelle: Yes! Yeah! Slade: So, not to compare this to anything in any way other than a compliment, but I really, as I was looking at the material, it appealed to me in much the same way that the artist way appealed to me. I think that there's a certain type of person who may have done that years ago back in the day who would really be turned on by your book. Thank you! Thank you. I actually mention Julia Cameron in my dedication. She's a huge mentor of mine. I have interviewed her a couple of times. I've been to a live workshop of hers. I bow down to her as one of the creative goddesses of the world, so thank you, I take that as a huge compliment. Slade: Oh, that's very cool. We share her as a hero for sure. Yeah, so I definitely think that you can make a connection with the type of work that you're doing and so if there's anybody who - because I know once you've done something before, maybe you don't really want to go back through that process again, but this would be something new, and it's a little bit shifted of course, around this idea of aligning with Purpose, but the experiential part of it feels similar. In an exciting kind of way. Have you had any ideas about doing like a group around it? Like a Facebook group or something? Michelle: Yes! So - thank you for asking. Yes, and I have one going right now. So theSpark.love group on Facebook. You can come and join for free. No charge. There are people uploading their pictures and their doodling and I answer questions in there, and so thespark.love is also my website. That's the name of the group on Facebook. So just come join and then obviously I offer paid classes and I have a live retreat coming up in May, so obviously I'm doing this also as part of my own coaching business, but everybody come and join at least for free so we can get to know each other and I can help you through the process. And then if there's a next step, happy to talk to you about that. Slade: Oh that's very cool. I am a big believer in the social power of doing things in groups. If I have the opportunity to take something in a class environment I always go for that because I can accomplish so much more when I have interaction with other people around it. I'm a big believer in that so basically you're saying somebody can go and sign up for thespark.love Facebook group and the only thing that they would really require would be the book, which is not a huge investment, if they wanted to really participate in this and plug in with this whole concept, right? Michelle: That's right. $16.95 on Amazon, and nothing else. Just connect in the group because there's other people that are having conversations about Purpose and that's always a cool thing. Slade: Well I'll definitely pull all your links so anybody who is listeining can either go to my blog or they can go direclty to the podcast feed and just click on those. And go and sign up. You also have a free course that people can download on your webiste, correct? Michelle: I do. There's a Purpose course on my website, there's the coloring book, there's a couple of meditations. The website is again, thespark.love because it's how we express our spark as love out into the world. That's the biggest expression of who we are. And so, yes, I have all kinds of free gifts. I have a downloadable course. Come get your gifts, thank you! Thank you for this promotion, yeah. I'm so good at promoting other people but we're all like that, right? Thank you. Slade: Yeah, well there's some very specific places to jump and plug in to what you're doing and it doesn't cost anything other than your interest, you know? So it's a very powerful and easy thing to promote. I do want to ask you before we wrap up the conversation. One of the things that I really like to ask those of you who've been around working in this space, for several years now. Is there anything that you feel is a message that's kind of missing from the conversation on personal development or something that needs to be brought forward a little bit? Michelle: Yeah, good question. So I am so over self-improvement. Like, there was a time in my life when I'm like, I wanted to get my hands on everything around self-improvement and personal development. These days I think it's - the conversation at least that I like to have is, we don't have to improve anything. We can choose to explore our gifts and develop them if we want to. We can always learn more things. But it's really about what, uncovering what's already there. It's really about going inside rather than looking outside and the more I go deeper in this, the more I know that to be true for at least myself and many of the people I work with is, how can we really uncover who we are rather than looking outside for answers? And so, in this book, even though I'm here having this conversation with you, it all comes back to what is true for the individual, not what I'm saying, not what you're saying, not what my book says. These are all tools to help you explore more deeply what's true for you. Slade: I love that approach. Thank you for sharing that. And Michelle, thank you so much for coming on and taking the time and having a conversation with me around this topic. I know everybody's going to enjoy listening to it. Michelle: Slade, I love you. It's been an honor to connect with you over all these years and I'm looking forward to the next one. Thank you for having me. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Have you seen or heard any owls lately? Any owl totems or symbols crossing your path. Owl energy is about the ability to see everything around you, to find the real truth in the shadows. This symbol can mean that someone around you is trying to throw you off or disguise his or her real intentions. Make sure you’re not lying to yourself right now. If you’re being delusional, wake up. Not facing the truth in one area of your life will block you from moving forward in any other area. Look into your darkness a little bit. That’s where you’ll find the way out. And I’ll talk to you later.

When you think about finding your soul mate, always ask yourself this question: "Who do you want to be when you meet the love of your life?" This approach to passion takes care of many of your needs, beyond just the sexual and romantic. This is the compass of self love that will set you on a course for a great life, no matter who you are and whether you ever choose to partner permanently. HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. One of my Patreon supporters requested an episode with my views about soul mates and twin flames. I asked her "Are you sure you want to hear what I really believe about these topics? Because I may not say the things most people want to hear… I have a pretty no-bullshit opinion when it comes to this subject.” She said that’s what she was hoping for and to bring it on. Listeners who support the show on Patreon can access bonus Q&A episodes, where you guys send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. But since I feel like this topic is a popular one, I’m going to put it out to the whole podcast audience, instead of doing it as an exclusive this time. There is also a level of support that includes a free download of the guided meditation “Messages from your Spirit Guides." So, if you want to find out how you can become a patron, and access the extra audio content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Bear with me. This could be a random, non-linear conversation. I pulled up a lot of the material I’ve written about soul mates over the past twelve years. I’ve skimmed over it. It’s safe to say, my observations have not changed much. My opinions have deepened. But I’m asking you to bear with me as I talk about it, because it could move in circles. Spirals, even. My intention is that if I free-flow through this subject, as if I’m collecting little bits of wisdom and pointing them out to you, one or more of them will resonate with you and whatever questions you may have about your own life in terms of partnerships, karmic connections, soul mates. There are a lot of messages for a lot of different people waiting to come through me. So, I’m just going to dive in and swim around, and see what I can bring to the surface, okay? If you’re still seeking, I will say this: The more you grow into the person you’re truly meant to be, and you know yourself and have greater access to your wisdom… Unfortunately, it seems cruel, but your pool of potential mates gets smaller, not larger. When you were in your teens, every potential person you caught in your net was a Young Adult trilogy just waiting to be written. When you’re older and wiser, you start throwing back all the little fish without wasting much time and energy. You throw back some big fish, too. And you’re okay with it. Because you know yourself and what you truly require out of a partner. Some of the big red flags I’ve noted for those who are seeking: If you’re trying to find a partner, that’s problematic. If you think you’ve found them, but you're working to make them love you. That’s a huge red flag. If you’re calling more than one friend and/or psychic to help you decide if this one is the One, chances are … it isn’t. No bellows required, here. You should not find yourself over there fanning the flames, trying to keep the spark going… That’s not how this should work. Listen, the beginning should be fairly easy, and fun, and lot of mutual chemistry and excitement… If you’re working just to get in the relationship in the early stages. You’re in danger, girl. That’s some of the What Not to Do. Here’s a couple of things you definitely should do: Say yes to things. People, events, invitations. Things that don’t, on the face of it, have anything to do with dating. Meeting potential partners through other friends is healthy. It makes sense for a lot of reasons. And always ask yourself this — number one question: Who do you want to be when you meet the love of your life? In other words, orient your life around other kinds of passions. This approach takes care of many of your needs, not just the sexual or romantic. This is the compass and self love and true passion that will set you on a course for a great life, no matter who you are and whether you ever choose to partner permanently for life. I’ll dip back into all of this more during this episode. SEGMENT You might not know it, just from reading the articles on Shift Your Spirits, but Relationships are the #2 Most Requested type of Reading I perform. Although I can only directly tune in to the person who gives me access and permission, I am a big believer in the unique wisdom offered through astrological composite charts. This is where the natal information of two people is cast together as a chart of the synergistic relationship, as if the relationship itself is literally a living entity with its own personality and spiritual qualities. (I offer interpretations of these composite charts as a "bonus" to consultations for those with relationship questions, assuming you can supply the necessary birth information for both parties.) Here are some of my “truths” about soul mates and relationships. These are some general chunks of wisdom I’ve observed during relationship readings and couples sessions, and truths I’ve learned the hard way — through my own personal experiences. Relationships are the mirrors by which we experience ourselves. You are always having a relationship with some part of yourself, reflected and externalized by your partner. There are differences between soul mates and twin flames. In the Western Hollywood vocabulary, soul mate is often intended to refer to a specific type of soul-contracted relationship that is synonymous with a twin flame — the idea that each person has one and only one perfect potential romantic partner. While I wouldn't say that there's no such thing as a twin flame, I would venture that it is a rare phenomena and not one which everyone is destined to experience in this lifetime. I also believe that we have many potential soul mates with whom we can create a variety of successful partnerships, including marriage. Here’s what most people think they’re describing: Of all the souls in all the galaxies there's just one and he happened to be born in the same era of time, same part of the globe, same culture, same language ... he even went to the same school and works out at the same gym. Those are some incredible odds. That's a tiny pool of possibilities. And a ton of pressure. Nobody's finding love under those circumstances. And you know something I’ve noticed: The only people who use the term "twin flame” and mean it — like, it’s not just a cool idea they daydream about, but they’re ready to set themselves on fire over it — they are usually in a crazy-ass triggered state. That’s just my opinion. I’m sure I’m crushing somebody with that statement. You don’t have to agree with me. But I feel a lot of people resonating with that, and if you’re one of them, Yes. Keep the twin flame terminology in the Amazon page description of your paranormal romance series. Read all the delicious fiction you want to read about twin flames. But probably don’t base any important life decision on the concept. We all have many potential soul mates with whom our partnerships defy categorization, type, or role — members of our spirit family, those with whom we walk together. Not all soul mates are required to exist within romantic, sexual, and/or marriage templates in order to be spiritually fulfilling. It's quite challenging to create a relationship with someone when the connection is greater than any known social construct, especially in the beginning. The power of the initial spark may be hard to compartmentalize without assuming it is meant to be romantic. Spiritually important relationships are learning experiences even when they don't end up in bliss. Soul-contracted (in which you have chosen prior to this lifetime to know one another for the purpose of delivering [shared] lessons) or karmic relationships (in which we work out unfinished business or repay energetic debts) - these may often be painful or difficult, even while still being very spiritually significant. Sometimes it's not about you — it may feel like you're playing the Lead, but sometimes you are a Supporting Actor, playing the role of messenger or teacher for your partner. Projection and Transference are tricky forms of love. If you're a light worker, with a life purpose and/or a professional career that involves heart-centered healing, be aware that there is a big difference between clients/patients and friends/lovers. Anyone who appears to be both will probably belong to the client/patient category. While “saving someone" may be motivated by a truly loving intention, it can be a disastrous foundation for a marriage. The pattern in your relationships is carried by you, not by your partners. Mary has a disastrous relationship with John. Mary has another disastrous relationship with Bob. Mary has a so-so relationship with Michael. Mary says that all these men have the same issues. While that may be true, who’s the obvious common denominator in all these pairings? That’s right, Mary, we’re looking at you, girl. If you’ve got a pattern, you’re the pattern. Human beings are not ideas. Be careful that you're not having (desiring to have) a relationship with an idea. If you prioritize a Role over an individual person, you will be disappointed by anyone's inability to become that Idea. Being alone is always better than being with the wrong person. If you're not complete, no one else can complete you. The ideal relationship is not 50-50 — in the highest numerical quantification, you bring 100% and your partner brings 100%. 50-50, 60-40, 70-30... These recipes are expressions of (and probably formulas for) co-dependence. Sharing your life with someone who also has a life of his/her own can be the icing on the cake. But icing with no cake is a plate full of frosting, which is probably way less appealing (and ultimately less nourishing) than it sounds. Having a relationship is never a good substitute for having a life. A relationship is a unique entity co-created by the participants. It is not ultimately comparable to any other partnership. You always attract the relationship with the lesson you are meant to learn at this time. You can't really fail at a relationship if you maintain the philosophical position that allows you to perceive it as a learning experience. Lowering your vibration, playing small, or dumbing down to your partner's level in order to make the relationship "work" is unsustainable. Don't bank on conditional future beneficial changes in your partner. "She'll be perfect for me once she..." "He'd be perfect for me if he'd just learn to..." This is like playing the Change Lottery. Evaluate the relationship based on what you know to be currently true. What if he never changes in the way you hope? The balance of energetic currency in a relationship does not have to take the same form to be reciprocated. An excellent massage may be reciprocated by a gourmet meal. An expensive gift may be reciprocated by priceless emotional support. There IS such a thing as a successful, temporary, transient relationship. Important or significant do not necessarily equal forever. If you doubt that he's your soul mate, you're probably right — he's not. Listen carefully when someone tells you she's not good enough for you — this is truth straight from the source. When people tell you they "don't want to hurt you" or "don't want someone to get hurt," it usually means they're preparing for that likelihood. This is a big clue to their expectations, if not their intentions. If you want to be in relationship with a woman or a man who's into yoga (fitness, hiking, books, pets, spirituality... insert your interests here) don't look for him/her in a bar. You may get lucky, but the odds are stacked against you. Statistically — logically — most people in bars are into one thing for sure — drinking. Go to a more obvious, relevant source environment. 511 — Too Much Information. Confession, Authenticity, and Honesty are not necessarily the same things. Don't talk about your exes or introduce your history of relationship nightmares as a topic of conversation during your first few dates. Why do people continually make this mistake? If you want to open up, open up about a bright future, not your neurotic past. (Not yet, anyway... Save your Dark Secrets for someone who can receive them in the proper time and context.) Be clear about your intentions and careful what you wish for — your ability to manifest is very powerful, for good or bad. If you choose to manifest a relationship where money/financial security is prioritized over other qualities like mutual love/respect, please don't be shocked when you find yourself in a loveless marriage with a rich dude who treats you like a trophy. Your ability to receive (deserve) Abundance affects not only your relationships with people but also your relationship with other forms of wealth such as money. The Good News is that the person you want to become, the life you ultimately want to create for yourself, and the partner you want to attract, with whom you can share your highest self and your best life, can be achieved as one goal. This power, this happiness, this flow — it's a package deal. You are most likely to fall in love with someone else when you fall in love with you — with your world. You are most likely to meet a partner who shares your values in an environment where like-minded people congregate over mutual ideals. Let’s talk about surrender. I recommend you surrender the whole love hunt. Let it go. Surrender this whole ... grasping thing. You're spending way too much energy on what's missing. But — let's make sure you spin the word surrender right: It's not "give up" because "that ship has sailed." This is about tapping into the phenomenon where the things you're looking for usually show up the minute you stop striving so hard to find them. Now, you can’t cheat this magic. You can't "pretend" not to look, yet really be looking... Surrendering this constant “love hunt” is about redirecting your energy to the person you’ve always wanted to become. That version of yourself is the same person as who you want to be when you meet the love of your life. So trust that you can let it go. You’re not going to “miss” anything that’s meant for you. It'll happen when it happens, and you can either waste energy on it or effortlessly allow it to find you. Let it find you busy making other amazing things happen in the world. Your ex is getting married. You saw the engagement pics on Facebook. You’re internally beating yourself up for having such a petty emotional response. "Even that asshole has someone … really?" "There must be something profoundly wrong with me that I’m still alone, while…" It’s entirely human to have this internal conversation; but while you’re at it, ask yourself: "Who do I want to be when I meet the love of my life?" Prioritize becoming that person. The better you know yourself, the more likely you and your potential mate can recognize one another. It’s not about finding them; it’s about finding you. Focus on a passion that has nothing to do with anyone else. Alone or partnered (or something else) it’s a win in all potential scenarios. Becoming who you've always wanted to become — focusing on a passion that has nothing to do with anyone else — this is the key ingredient to attracting the right partner. It's not about finding them; it's about finding you. Have you ever considered your ideal romantic partnership from this perspective: Who do I want to be when I meet the love of my life? What backstory will I have lived — one of victimhood or one of transcendence? What do I want to be able to share? Why will he or she be proud of me? What will I have to offer? When you lean toward becoming the person you've always intended to be, your vibration changes. There's an evolution in the signals you're sending out. These are the vibes that attract the person you're meant to be with. Can you really manifest a partner? Most popular philosophies about the law of attraction want to conflate manifesting with creating. We're told over and over again that we create 100% of everything that happens to us. I've come pretty close to screaming my problems with that. I believe there's a difference between creating and manifesting. Creating involves projecting, forcing, a strength of will. Manifesting requires receiving, allowing, a passive grace. There's an important component to meeting the love of your life that is out of your control. I believe we all need to accept that. It is luck. It may be destiny, it may be fate… You can manifest anything. You can create and attract all kinds of things in this world. You can influence many aspects of your experience. You can design much of the life you want… but you cannot design other people. You can be ready. You can be willing, open, brave. You can definitely be in the process of discovering who you are in the world. The better you know yourself, the better you and your potential mate can recognize one another. After eleven years of giving professional readings, I've observed that there are exactly three kinds of clients who ask questions regarding soul mates or romantic partnerships: Those who are single and dissatisfied and want to know how and when to acquire a romantic partnership. Those who are already partnered/ married, deeply dissatisfied or distressed. Those who are partnered to one person and pining away for another (an actual person or an ideal). Then there are the clients who book readings to ask about other concerns: Those who are partnered, happy, and working on another area of their lives. Those who are single, happy, and working on another area of their lives. So, I have a Theory: If unhappy single people need guidance meeting someone, and if unhappy coupled people need guidance breaking up, then I must deduce the following: The "happiness factor" in our lives is entirely based on internal perspective. The "happiness factor" in our lives is independent of romantic status. Did you get that? A boyfriend will not "complete" you; and "getting a girlfriend" is the worst kind of substitute for "getting a life." The Other Kind of Passion The elusive missing component to your sense of fulfillment, sense of joy, and sense of purpose in life is found in an entirely different area. It has little (potentially nothing) to do with whether or not anyone wants to date you. The simple joys are found in numerous, humble external circumstances (easily accessible by most people, excluding obvious extreme hardship and tragedy) or the sense of peace is found in the internal modes of attitude and choice. A Common Thread The good news is that the "fix" for dissatisfaction is usually a single, universal pursuit that affects all facets of the life you're creating. The fix is unique from one person to the next, but there's a common thread within the life of every individual. If you do indeed have a soul mate that you are destined to meet, that individual most likely waits for you within the vicinity of your sense of purpose, or within the realm of another humbler, simpler pursuit of happiness. A shared hobby. A common interest. There's one passion you can focus on that transforms all areas of your life simultaneously. Deep down, you already know what that passion is. As you're reading this, you have flashes of this knowledge -- that goal you know you must achieve… that thing for which you feel you were put on this earth... Go back to doing that -- love will find you there. If you do not know what that passion is for you, talk to me. Instead of the way I usually do the oracle at the end of an episode, I want to just share some thoughts with you. You know what I find consistently amazing about the Universe? (Well, just one aspect, among so many...) Over and over again I am awestruck by the rarity and perfection of the connections between souls in the briefest parcels of time. It's so easy to take for granted, to go worrying the Magic That's Missing like a toothache or a raw spot on your gum, your tongue returning helplessly to a mysterious emptiness or source of pain... Where's the Soul Mate? Where’s that perfect Co-Star? But stop this week (at least today) to consider the precision and force with which unimaginable abundance still manages to find you. What are the Chances? What are the Odds? I mean, when you consider how vast is this one dimension we most exist in — is the third dimension one dimension? or do we exist in three? oh, hell, it doesn't matter, we don't consciously occupy much among many — when you contemplate how many billions of souls are incarnate at this moment, from among the trillions who have come and gone... When you consider the eye-blink in time in which we dwell, how can it be that we have come to know one another? What fragile spark of miracle has made possible your best friend? ...the sweet pets that have found you, who seem grown from pieces of your heart. ...the books that have defied so much chance to fall off shelves right in front of you and speak to you across miles and centuries. ...that even one human being loves you (let alone the many). ...that the clouds have piled up in a big sky just so, just for you, just in that moment. ...that there can be such a perfect song that knows how to find you riding radio waves across across air and space, that can always manage to make you cry. ...that you could accidentally wander in front of a landscape so picturesque you forget to breathe (just for a second). ...that a stranger meets your eye in passing, smiles, and is gone. The improbable choreography, the great Spiral Dance, dwarfs all petty bothers and complaints and leaves me speechless, looking about in wonder. How can it be? Really, how can this be that I am here in this moment — that we are here — that you have chanced to listen this and share in contemplation of my questions... For just a moment notice what is greater than your sadness or even your joy, what you're missing or what you find in plenty... Fucking Amazing. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com and I’ll talk to you later.

I was not raised in religion. My interest in spirituality is entirely self-motivated. When I was seven years old, I asked to attend a Vacation Bible School, so I could ask questions like "Is Mother Nature God's wife?" MENTIONED IN THE SHOW The Magicians Drawing Down the Moon - Margot Adler The Jungle Book (1967) God’s Eye Trust in Me - Siouxsie and the Banshees HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today’s introduction is probably not going to be as lengthy as the last one — I’m recording these episodes close together, so I’m not sure how much more original insightful life experience has occurred in my world in such a short span of time. We’re on the backside of Hurricane Irma, as I record this, in a lovely cold drizzling rain. We lost power here only briefly from about 10 pm at night to 7 o’clock this morning. I mean, if you’re going to lose power, that was an ideal window. I can’t really complain about it at all, but I am stunned to experience the winds we had last night, this deep inland, in the mountains of Tennessee. I really truly hate it for all of you who are still without power across the Southeast. Or suffering from lack of the basics. I cannot even imagine. I am truly grateful for my luck and privilege. If there is anyone in our community in need with like a GoFund Me page or another organization they’d prefer we support, please contact me if you can and I will lend whatever I can in terms of sharing your needs with my platform and audience, helping to expand the reach of your requests and messages. I hope everyone and their pets came through this okay. I have absolutely no wacky supernatural meanings or godly messages to attach to these storms. Because I’m not Kirk Cameron. But I do have an oracle message for you at the end of the show. So stay tuned after the final links and credits. I do have one new tool I started using in the last few days. My friend Matt posted this on Facebook: "My serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations. The higher my expectations of other people are, the lower is my serenity. I can watch my serenity level rise when I discard my expectations.” He has a personal note: try also replacing "expectations" with “attachment.” I looked it up to find the source, and it is actually from the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook. Page 452. That’s cool. I’m not in AA but I love a good re-framing technique. Remember my not-complaining for a month back in the spring? I continue to fail at this, pretty miserably. I have to admit it. It’s really hard not to complain. People are frustrating and disappointing. They are. So, I like this idea that lowering my expectations, increases my sense of peace. When I notice my internal chatter critiquing something (especially someone) I just say “Lowering my expectations. No expectations. Just doing my thing. Just moving through here.” And it’s pretty powerful in the short term. It’s an almost immediate interruption of negative internal dialogue. You can refer back to the show notes and try it out. I always like to tweak these mantras and make them personal, my own words, in my own voice. Since I am recording again back to back, I don’t have a lot of new patrons to call out. But I see Wendy Bassett did just slip in with a pledge. Thanks Wendy! If you started supporting the show this week, between the last few episodes, I have not forgotten you. I will thank you personally next time. It’s a time delay issue between recording and publishing. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. You can support my time in producing this show by pledging on Patreon. For as little as $1 a month, listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. There is also a level of support that includes a free download of the guided meditation “Messages from your Spirit Guides." So, if you want to find out how you can become a patron, and access some of this extra audio content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Today, I want to tell you a story about when I went to Vacation Bible School where I infamously posed the question: “Is Mother Nature God’s Wife?”. I am proud to say I became a full blown heretic before I even got to third grade. SEGMENT As I’ve talked about before, I was not raised in religion. My interest in spirituality is entirely self-motivated. I’m sure my parents must have kind of wondered where this little mystic kid came from. Because nobody had to shove it down my throat, I was into it! I can make a case that I was into it in a completely authentic way that never would have happened if I had been indoctrinated by adults. When I was seven years old, I asked my parents to let me attend a Christian institution known as Vacation Bible School. We have to take a minute to talk about this diploma or "certificate of recognition," as it’s technically called. I snapped a pic of it with my phone from my mother’s archives and I’ve posted it on my blog so you can check it out. The Jesus in this illustration is giving me Kris Kristofferson. With maybe a little Kenny Loggins/ Dan Fogelberg… You know, singer-songwriter vibe. He’s a white guy, of course, bearded, pretty ruddy complexion actually. He could almost be related to the Brawny paper towel guy. He looks like a young guy from a 1950s Boy Scouts of America pamphlet grew up to become a hippie. He’s wearing a creamy hemp poncho with a hood and he’s got this far away expression on his face, faintly smiling at whatever he’s seeing in the distance. And he’s making this complicated hand gesture. He’s working magic, I guess. I mean, the hand positioning reminds me of something you’d see Quentin do on The Magicians. But then there’s this small guy in the foreground in a leather skirt and sandals with a do rag who looks a little Native American at first glance - and honestly, as a kid, I thought he was and wasn’t really sure what the connection was supposed to be. Now I see this guy is tossing handfuls of seed from a fanny pack contraption onto this barren looking ground with gnarled and twisted plants. So I guess Jesus is working some crop magic for this guy. Maybe for someone who’s more educated in children’s bible stories, this will ring a bell, or when you see it, you see all my misperceptions and know what it’s truly intended to be … but I still for the life of me can’t imagine what this scene has to do with Vacation Bible School. But. It is pretty. And there’s something delicious and utopian about these campy mid century church illustrations that I admit appealed to me. As a kid I was as an easy recruit (initially) for Church-sponsored functions. Beyond the promised hype of craft projects and pizza socials, I was hungry for hard-core religious experience. My serious dedication is evidenced by this certificate that I was just describing, which has a little gold foil seal on it that says "Perfect Attendance." CHURCH-SANCTIONED SPIRIT POSSESSION Someone had explained to me the Southern Baptist phenomenon of Being Saved, in which any average child on Earth can experience a life-long form of holy possession by the Son of God Himself — simply by asking for it to happen. This was incredible news! I already knew I was protected by an enormously tall lady who looked like Catwoman in a nightgown and no child ever believed in, stalked, and engaged with fairies more than me. Not only did I applaud my belief in fairies to save Tinkerbell when Peter Pan came on TV, I dressed up in full green Peter Pan attire — green tights and felt elf shoes — one of a handful of "Halloween" costumes that I found reason to wear on several other occasions throughout the year. Considering I never set foot in a Catholic Church until I was 19, my intense longing from the age of 5 to "go as" a Catholic Priest or a Franciscan Monk for Halloween does make me open to the traditional notion of past-life memories. In her incredible work on modern Neo-Paganism Drawing Down the Moon, Margot Adler finds a common thread among the witches she interviewed — an instinct for engaging in spontaneous ritual theater at a very early age, despite socialization toward any particular religious tradition. I certainly built enough henges in the woods behind our house, charged enough mystical paraphernalia — wands, crystals, arrowheads, amulets, potion bottles — and entertained an audience of invisible spirit guides and guardian angels with an artistic commitment and devotion only rivaled by my current will to podcast… And while all these mystical experiences would be quickly dismissed or, at best, patronized by adults — and I knew not to discuss such things with unsympathetic audiences — here was a similar magical experience that was not only socially-acceptable, it was praised, encouraged, an absolute sin if you missed out on it. You didn’t need to tell me twice — sign me up! As if that wasn't promising enough, the Baptist Church attended by most families in our neighborhood was called Mars Hill — which I took as an affirmation of my desire to one day be part of the future mission to colonize the Red Planet. At the time, I really thought Being Saved could propel me in my aspirations to become a Priest and an Astronaut — simultaneously! It would be a few years before I came to understand that in polite white Christian America, there is a thin line between piety and stigma. You're supposed to be a good Christian — but you're not supposed to be too good at it. The same behavior that defines the believer also damns the mystic. Believe in God, pray every day — just don't tell anyone if He answers you Stand up in church and sing — but without emotion or fervor — do not speak in tongues or writhe in ecstasy — if by chance you really feel something, for God's sake, keep it to yourself Do not rest until you've forced your belief on everyone you encounter — but don't make the mistake of behaving like you mean it. Ask What Would Jesus Do? and if all else fails, set an example of what not to do by reminding everyone what judgment feels like I took the school in Vacation Bible School pretty literally. I came with some challenging philosophical questions. I genuinely thought this teacher — Miss Alice something, it’s noted on the certificate — might have some answers for me. She required you to stand up in the class to ask your questions. I opened with “Is Mother Nature God’s wife?” She tittered and kinda laughed it off, and talked about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And I was like “Yes, exactly. Where’s the mom? Everybody has a mom…” She waved me back down into my chair and tried to change the subject. Looking back, I’m sure she didn’t know what to say or how to handle it, she probably was philosophically challenged—she was probably, what, in her twenties? That seems old to a child, but to most of us, now, she was a child herself, parroting some Bible School teachings to a room full of six- and seven-year-olds. I remember feeling put out and angry that she wouldn’t call on me anymore, but I was able to channel my emotions into creating a really intensely colorful God’s Eye out of yarn and popsicle sticks. An object I was not surprised to discover years later is actually a ritual tool, magical object, and cultural symbol evoking the weaving motif and its spiritual associations of for the indigenous people of western Mexico. I waited a day or two and she finally called on me again to stand up and ask another question: "If God didn't want Adam and Eve to eat that Tree, why didn't He plant it somewhere else?” She exhaled in loud exasperation, pursed her lips and, again, waving for me to sit down, shot me a glare as she continued on with her Rated-G version of naked people, forbidden fruit, and Original Sin. That day’s arts and crafts project was drawing scenes from the Garden of Eden story. I was a huge fan of Disney’s original animated film of The Jungle Book, which came out a few years before I was born. People used to tell me I looked like Mowgli, probably because I was skinny and tan and had long brown hair. One of the most compelling scenes for me was when Kaa, the serpent, hypnotizes Mowgli while singing “Trust in Me.” (Sidebar: Siouxsie and the Banshees recorded a great cover version of that song.) I envisioned the serpent tempting Eve with its evil magic had to look something like this, so I drew a big close up of a colorful snake with psychedelic eyes. Miss Alice whoever she was actually confiscated this illustration before I even finished coloring it in. I’m actually pissed that it’s not in my mother’s child art archives. It was a really pop art concept piece. She whispered to me the snake was not an appropriate subject and suggested I draw something “prettier” because, you know, it’s the Garden of Eden; it’s full of animals and plants and... (Honestly, it’s hard for most people of any age, let alone kids, to get past the nudity in the Garden of Eden myth. Am I right?) So, I drew a picture of Adam and Eve, buck ass naked, picking fruit and surrounded by cute animals beneath a lush jungle canopy. Now, as I saw it depicted in a television miniseries, the crotch region was artfully blocked by bushes and waist high plants. I went with that coverage for both figures, but the Eve in my picture is reaching for an apple overhead (of course) and I rendered her knockers in full detail. What? She’s picking fruit. She’s naked. It would look stupid to put her entire body behind a bush. But, that is exactly what Miss Alice demanded I do in a furious whisper. You can tell by looking at the finished drawing that the full body bush in front of Eve was an after the fact censorship bar. It ruined the picture, if you asked me. I made it to the end of the week, but I wasn’t leaving without putting forward one of my biggest beefs with Christianity. Fortunately, we were discussing Heaven. Unfortunately, Miss Alice would not call on me. I finally just stood up and blurted out “How can it be Heaven if our pets aren’t there?” She told me to sit down, that I had not been called on. “If you can have anything you want in Heaven that makes you happy, then why can’t you have your pets there?” She actually bared her teeth at me at this point. “Sit. Down. And shut up." As I slowly lowered myself into my chair I said "I don’t want to go to Heaven if my pets aren’t going to be there.” I remember looking around the room at all these kids staring at me, their faces masks of shock and anxiety. And when Miss Alice asked for another question, every hand in the room shot up. Guess what everybody wanted clarified? But you won’t believe what happened next. I was sent to a church psychologist. Immediately. Right then. Removed from class and sent to someone in the building who ran “tests to see how smart I was.” Looking back, these activities resembled those assessments for kids with behavioral issues — or possibly “gifted” designation. Pictures where you describe the emotional dynamic taking place, etc. At one point, the lady gave me one of those eight-pack jumbo crayons sets, like the ones for really little kids, and asked me to draw a picture of God. Well, I thought about the old bearded man in a robe sitting on a throne of clouds… I could visualize it, but honestly, rendering that much white, in crayon, is problematic. It was too ambitious for the circumstances. So I went with my Starry Night technique. I had discovered if you drew with two or three crayons of similar or complementary hues as if they are one crayon, you can achieve a kind of Vincent Van Gogh effect. I took the yellow, the red, and the orange, and drew a big, thick stroke sun in the center of the page. Not the son like Jesus, s-u-n like the big fiery globe of molten life-giving light and heat at the center of our natural existence. Sun worship. The ultimate pagan religious expression. I pretty sure they called my parents in and just asked them not to bring me back. I remember feeling like they were insulted after meeting with that church psychologist. But believe it or not, I still chose to be saved and baptized there and went through with it. I’m pretty sure it happened that Sunday after the close of Vacation Bible School. And that’s a whole other tale of disappointment and disillusionment I’ll have to share another time. Ultimately, with the odd exception of a Halloween party where I technically didn’t make it past the parking lot, we never really went back to that church. But as I sit here right now thinking back on that time, without malice or disgust, I am 100% positive if Jesus had been teaching that class, I would have been his favorite person in the room. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Go back in time. What were your original thoughts and intentions? Return to your earliest authentic impulses. Recommit to those. Shed everybody else’s noise. Everyone else’s opinions and advice and judgments — even though they may be coming from a good place — it’s all too much. You need to tell the world to shut up so you can hear yourself think. Turn off the radio and drive with just your thoughts. Get back to you. To your truth. And I’ll talk to you later.

Most hauntings, or what we call ghosts, are probably psychic echoes. Residual energy. They’re like moving gifs or image loops.I had a haunting experience unlike most psychic echoes — a type of temporal phenomenon I hadn't considered before as the possible origin point for a ghost. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW You May Be Someone's Future Ghost CLOUDBUSTING novel by Eric Slade HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I am back from a week’s hiatus for the first episode of our fall season. It seems to be working out pretty well to do a run of 12 episodes and then take a week off. It greatly impacts my quality of life to be able to do this. It also allows both Linda and I to catch our breaths and catch up on our To Do lists. I, for one, am thrilled to see the back side of summer. I didn’t think about the podcast actually capturing my energy during a time I would normally retreat a bit. July and August - not my favorite time of year. You know how a lot of people have Seasonal Affective Disorder and they experience low energy in the winter? Well, I have the opposite of that. Hot humid summer drains me. It’s like a weight. It’s the psychic equivalent of that heavy lead blanket they lay on top of you when you have X-rays at the dentist. You know what I’m talking about? I love fall. Or autumn. I’m gearing up for my most productive time of year. I spend October and November furiously writing. I can’t wait to be in hardcore, creative mode, with a sense of truly moving forward after so much stagnation and confusion. I’ve mentioned the eclipse energy so many times, so I suppose I should share at least personally how that all shook out for me. You know the whole “Who am I? What’s my light? Where and how and why am I shining it into the world?" I didn’t experience a shedding of my skin in terms of a transformation to something different, for me it’s been more of a recommitment to my original intentions. A return to my authentic creativity. What I feel a need to shed is everybody else’s noise. Everyone else’s opinions and advice and judgments — even though they may be coming from a good place — it’s all started to be too much. (Without even getting into the cacophony of political conversation.) I just want the world to shut up so I can hear myself think. Do you ever have those moments when you turn the car radio off and just drive with your thoughts? I need to get back to Me. To my truth. My creative impulses. I know that sounds general. How it has come in specifically for me at this time is how it affects my writing. I’ve been writing non-fiction professionally for twelve years now. I’ve been publishing fiction for barely three years, but I’ve been writing it for over four decades… I’m not bragging, I’m just saying, I know how to do this. It’s the Thing my life has been oriented around. And I lost the thread this summer. I couldn’t hear my own channel. There was so much freaking static, and it really scared me, to lose that part of myself. I was in a state of total anxiety for at least three months. I am really plugged in to author communities online — indie publishing, industry news, classes, conventions, collaboration, marketing collectives, cross promotion… It is an absolute din of chatter. And I just reached a breaking point where I had to yell Silence! My Automatic Intuition community does require me to be on social media, it is a priority, so unplugging as much as I might like to is not realistic at this time. If social media is part of your business, then you’ll understand. So, what I have done is turn off all the notifications for groups that I belong to. I didn’t quit everything in a moment of madness; I just muted everybody. I can go back and start turning things back on when I’m in the mood for it. I’m in writing mode right now, not marketing mode, so a lot of posting and commenting about marketing and business-y writing stuff is just not helpful. When I shift gears, my desire for conversation and collaboration may change. The issue is that other people’s opinions drown out your own wisdom. I needed to hear my own channel, without any well meaning interference. So for me, that’s what the eclipse has been about. Returning to my creative origins, remember who I was when I was a creative writing major and pursuing my degree was only about pursuing my art. I had no real clue about what it would look like when that became an actual business. And in some ways, creatively, that’s a treasure that got buried and I needed to unearth it. So, for the next 10 to 12 weeks, my writing surge will focus on the creative in creative writing. I’m tuning out the market, and what everyone else is doing. I’m just getting clear about my identity, without judgment. This decision if you want to call it that has brought me tremendous peace. And the discomfort was part of the warning system helping me identify what is not working for me. I hope you have had some similar epiphanies, at least an inkling of what you need to do to get back on track. I have had some emails in the past few days from listeners who are still suffering from low energy and wondering when it’s going to pass and what they can do to get some relief. For me personally and for most of the people I talked to, it was really terrible before the eclipse and has started to shift. It’s not immediate, but it’s definitely happening. We are only barely out of Mercury Retrograde, still in the "shadow" period of that. Depending on your sign, these energies could be moving through at a different point. It's not just you, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're already feeling some relief. (You could be sensitive to these huge storms. At the time of this recording Friday Sep 8, 2017, we are dealing with the aftermath of Harvey and bracing for Irma. If you’re listening from one of the areas affected, be safe. Even for those in other parts of the world, the vibrations from the winds alone are said to be setting off seismic earthquake sensors in some pretty far flung locations. I can imagine if you are sensitive to psychic energies and storms, the anxiety pouring into the collective from those who are displaced and in danger… It’s pretty hard core.) If you’re listening from the future, the following suggestions will work regardless of when or under what circumstances you’re experiencing overwhelm. I am of course talking about emotional or mental overwhelm, not physical danger and natural disaster. But, this advice is for everybody. When the psychic or ethereal or mental or emotional energies are overwhelming you... Focus on grounding the physical. Just start with your body. If you already work out, be consistent and stick to your exercise plan. Go into robot mode, just show up and go through the motions. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like it, do it anyway. If the only thing physical you can do is go for walks, go for a daily walk. At least 30 minutes, preferably in nature or a park or somewhere away from traffic. Gorgeous fall weather already happening for a lot of people. (Spring for Ozzies and Kiwis...) I would personally choose late afternoon or evening to release the stress of the day, but for some people first thing in the morning sets you up to handle more during the day. Get up 30 minutes early if you need to. You'll make it up in deeper sleep. The tiniest bit of discipline or success generates crazy amounts of momentum. And if all you can do is breathe, just breathe. Focus on your breath. These energies are a storm. Storms pass. Be safe. One of the ways I chose to cope with the eclipse and mercury retrograde was by painting and rearranging my office. A can of paint and a color change is a relatively inexpensive way to transform a physical environment. And just as with the body, shifting the physical energy provides a foundation for bringing back the other layers of consciousness and productivity. Because here’s the thing - you can’t hang a challenging transformation on a brittle foundation. It just collapses. You know how it is when you’re sick… You’re not creating anything when just lying there with a fever trying to breathe is your only realistic goal. This has been a longer than normal personal intro. I still don’t feel like I fully recapped everything, but I think we’re all still processing. If you like hearing this personal stuff, do shoot me an email and let me know it’s helpful. I’ll be happy to share more as it comes up in our conversations. Ok. I want to get into today’s story segment but, before I forget, I want to take a moment to say thank you to my newest supporters on Patreon: Dr. Keith Holden, Jen Bookout Ramowski, and Russ, who requests some privacy and anonymity. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. You can support my time in producing this show by pledging on Patreon. For as little as $1 a month, listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. There is also a level of support that includes a free download of the guided meditation “Messages from your Spirit Guides." So, if you want to find out how you can become a patron, and access some of this extra audio content, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits And now, finally, here’s today’s story about how one becomes a ghost. SEGMENT I feel most hauntings, or what we call ghosts, are probably psychic echoes. Residual energy. They’re like moving gifs or image loops. I’m not a medium, so I don’t experience human spirits in visitation, such as a relative or recently departed friend coming in. What most people would call demonic hauntings…Negative entity attachments, that type of thing…Yeah, I do not experience that at all. I have very specific psychic security in place. Layers and layers of programming and refined rules with my guardians to keep that kind of energy away from me. It is dealt with far outside the perimeter of my personal space. The only other explanations for what I’ve experienced as ghosts would be the results of some kind of irregular time phenomena. I actually wrote about this type of ghost in my novel Cloudbusting. And then there is the idea that time is an entirely abstract human construct and doesn’t really exist in the way we perceive it. Ash Riley brought this up in her interview on dream interpretation and past lives. The idea that past lives are multiple lives and might be happening simultaneously, in some kind of parallel dimensions. So, today’s ghost story is about a time phase shift I experienced. And when it happened it was the first time I was aware of the idea that we could witness the origin point of what might become a future haunting. You May Be Someone's Future Ghost About 3 years ago I had a haunting experience that was truly unlike any other — a type of phenomenon I haven't heard anyone else speak about; a kind of ghost I've never even really contemplated. I had a conscious awareness of myself as a future ghost to someone who will occupy my house years after me. It was the day I realized my mother and I were going to have a beloved family pet euthanized. I woke up that morning to find a text message that it was time. Buddy was eighteen years old, he had an amazing long life, but he was in decline. We anticipated he probably wouldn't be with us for another year. Still, he took a quick turn for the worst and I can’t allow that situation to drag on one more moment longer than it needs to. I spoke to my mama by phone and assured her I would go with her to the vet. The appointment wasn't until 3:00 in the afternoon, so I told her I'd come over early, observe him, confirm his condition, and spend a little time with him, say goodbye. One of the worst things at that point is waiting. When the decision has been made and it's the right one, I don't have the patience to wait. Waiting at all seems cruel to me. When you're terminally ill, in agony in your own skin, eight hours is an eternity. I hated for him to go through that. (Incidentally, I believe strongly in euthanasia for people, too.) After getting off the phone with my mother, it was torture trying to putter around my house, and kill time until I was due to go over and see Buddy. I'd only lived in my new house for two months. It was an old place, built in the 1930s, but I can absolutely assure you — don't be too disappointed — it was not haunted. I performed every spell of invitation I know; I stood in the dark and listened to the quiet until my ears were ringing… nothing. My new house was eighty-one years old, but it had only been home to just three families in all that time. Lots of kids had been raised there, their handprints are pressed into the patio concrete, their names and birthdays are carved into the workbench in the garage. From what I know of the history of the house from the previous owner and the elderly neighbors next door, my house had known mostly love. No deaths, no tragedies, no violence. The energy of the space was truly peaceful, and of course, I was grateful for that. But there's a part of me that doesn't mind a little lingering spirit here and there. A little psychic echo. I’ve lived in haunted rental houses all my life; I finally bought one, and it was spirit-free. My friend Tina’s houses are always centers of paranormal activity. I'm pretty convinced at this point it has little to do with her houses; I think they move around with her. She’ll become periodically excited by the escalation of activity — thumps and bumps and footsteps and such — and beg me to come over and experience it. It never fails, though. She complains that, several hours before I’m due to arrive, her own ghosts all go quiet. Nothing happens while I'm there; she just as fun catching me up on the evidence. And later I hear that the house remained peaceful for days afterward. I have a heavy angelic security detail. I've worked for years to put it in place, customize it, and maintain it. They clear the spaces I intend to visit. By my request, I have a larger than average buffer zone. Other than the guides I may intentionally connect with at my clients' requests, almost nothing "randomly spooky" gets through. This could also have something to do with the stillness of the new house I had bought. But honestly, I don't think so. I tried to pick up on some ghosts. I strained to hear just a faint echo of some soul who had resided there in the past. I did have one small flash of a psychic memory, imprinted out in the yard near the edge of the property. There is an original thriving boxwood hedge around three sides of the property. It was one of the features I really loved about the house, this living green fence. But boxwood is meant to be maintained in a box like shape, which requires a lot of hedge trimming. I’ve mowed my share of grass, and I’ve weedeated and edged many a driveway and sidewalk, but maintaining the perfect planes of this boxwood was another level of yard work. It’s not just the top you see. Once you finish the top, you have to go back around the property and do the outside wall. And then you have to go back around the property and do the interior wall of the hedge. Oh. My. God. This was some physical labor. Even though I hadn’t heard a peep out of any ghosts inside the house, one day while I was out there sweating away, I heard a grumbling voice. A man, bitching and moaning to himself about this hedge. I was thinking it too, but I distinctly heard him. And I saw or felt that he was doing this with giant manual scissor like trimmers. This was decades ago, long before electric hedge trimmers. It was just a minute or so, and it soon faded away. I blessed him from the future and at least felt a little more grateful for the obnoxious clatter of my power tool chewing through the job. But back to the present. To the morning of Buddy's last day. I'm alone in my kitchen, and I allow myself to have one really big loud ugly cry for Buddy. And in that moment, I felt someone with me. It was a teenaged girl. She couldn’t see me, but she could hear me crying and was trying to communicate with me. I knew — and I can't tell you exactly how I knew, I was just certain in that instantaneous claircognizant download kind of way — that she wasn't a ghost. I was the ghost. She was in the future, and she heard the psychic echo of my grief. I had just left it there, imprinted it on the space, and a girl who will one day live in that house after me, picked up on it. I was in shock — I'd never thought about our ability to do this, or at least to be aware of it in the present while it is happening. Have you ever thought about this? Maybe it's just me. I don’t know about you, but now I feel incredibly on display… You know what I mean? What am I imprinting? What’s getting recorded? It's like those time capsules I used to bury in hopes that someone would dig them up one day. I've also written messages inside the closets of my dorm rooms before … I’ve left objects or notes in apartments when I moved out of them… It made me think of all that. Who’s watching me, picking up on me from other times, other dimensions? I felt bad. I wanted to assure her that I wasn't haunting her — I wasn't trapped there or anything — I was just crying for someone I loved. It never occurred to me that anybody would hear it. Out of time. I did my best to project to her a feeling that everything was okay. I spoke clearly and explained my situation, in case some future ghost hunter did want to record like an EVP… I don't think she could really make out my words at all. It was like when somebody is on the other end of a bad phone connection — you can hear her asking "Hello?" in that same one-sided kind of way. Anyway, this signal — this vortex, this brief wormhole in time, or whatever it w as — faded away. It probably only lasted two or three minutes, but it left me wondering about the temporal aspect of haunting. Are you, right now, someones's ghost in the future? OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that — hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Endings are openings for new beginnings. If you’re still waiting for some fresh new direction to present itself, hang in there. It’s inevitable. It’s seasonal. There’s no flailing or striving required, really. Conserve your energy and allow it to come to you…It’s on its way. It’s picking up right now, like a breeze. You’ll feel it when it arrives. You can’t miss it. And I’ll talk to you later.

What if all this spiritual stuff were bullshit? What if it all is magical thinking? To be honest, I'm still not comfortable with how closely what I put out into the world resembles religion. I think religion is literally mankind’s worst invention ever. And sometimes I fantasize about being an atheist. I daydream about it. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW DUNE by Frank Herbert Bene Gesserit LITANY AGAINST FEAR I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear" from Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series © 1965 and 1984 Frank Herbert Published by Putnam Pub Group ISBN: 0399128964 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” —Edmund Burke Dr. Keith Holden Ep 12 - Power of the Mind in Health and Healing Dream-walking & remote viewing Ep 21 - I Dream I’m Other People Atheism & ESP HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT INTRO Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I want to share some of my thoughts about atheism and psychic ability. It’s not an especially long episode, but events this week have put me in a sensitive place regarding religion. And by sensitive, I mean Over it. It’s Friday, August 18 as I record this and I’ve just admittedly broken my own code of not making politically divisive posts on social media. If you’re listening from the future, this was the week of the events in Charlottesville, Va where Heather Heyer was killed at a neo-Nazi rally. I won’t go into all of that here. If you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on the subject, I’ve posted an original piece on Facebook and on Medium.com. So feel free to friend me or check that out. I received a lot of support, and a little bit of really ugly backlash. I probably won’t be doing this again any time soon, but I wanted to go on record at least once, about where my line is. I do believe that Silence can be seen as support or approval. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the Edmund Burke quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” So, I felt triggered to do some not-nothing. ... As always I have an oracle segment at the end of this show. Be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on at the end, after the final links and credits, and leave you with an extra message… BUT BEFORE I FORGET This is the last time I’ll be recording before the Solar Eclipse. It’s weird to try and imagine what I may be thinking or feeling about all of that by the time you hear this. It might take a week or two for my real life introduction segments to catch up with all the processing we’re probably doing. It’s been a volatile time. One of my closest friends Lacy lost her mother to cancer last week. And a lot of my energy is with her right now. This is episode 24. My intention is to do episodes in runs of 12, with a week off. My first mini season came out at like 13 or something slightly off because well, I was just starting this podcast and trying to find a rhythm for it. And I failed to communicate when I took that first break. So, I want to be sure and let you know if you’re listening in real time, we will skip next week. This allows me to plan breaks through out the year so that Linda and I can catch up on production and transcription and have a little bit of a buffer on putting out these shows. I want to take a moment to say thank you to my newest supporters on Patreon: Jason Chinn and Chris Lynn I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. You too can support my time in producing this show — and you can support Linda, who transcribes all my words each week — by pledging on Patreon. For as little as $1 a month, listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. So If you want to find out how you can become a patron, especially if you would like the transcription to continue, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits And now, here’s today’s episode. SEGMENT What if all this spiritual stuff were bullshit? What if it all is magical thinking? I fantasize about being an atheist. I day dream about it. It would just be easier. The intellectual side of me wouldn’t feel discomfort. My ego wouldn’t worry about being judged. To be honest, I am still not comfortable with how closely what I do and put out into the world resembles religion. I think religion is literally mankind’s worst invention. I can make an argument that just about any social ill or self-inflicted problem of the human race can be traced back to religion somehow, some way. The magical part of me is resentful. I feel like religion stole the magic tools and misappropriated them. I admit to playing with those same tools, speaking much of the same language. And part of me really does not like that. The vast majority of us try to express this conundrum as being “spiritual but not religious.” There’s a part of me that badly wants to rail against the whole thing. I don’t want to be associated with anything which a whiff of religiosity I want to be able to freely and clearly without complication say “this is all bullshit.” So much of it is. Or else it’s been so badly muddied. Yet, here I am, trying to explain what I and others experience, to harness it, to make it useful to us in some way. I go through this internal checklist, testing what I can dismiss. It’s definitely easy for me to imagine you can be psychic without believing in spirits or religion. Psychic ability could simply be a bio-technology. Like any other function in our bodies and minds. There is a lot of amazing complicated involuntary stuff happening within our biological vessels. There could other explanations for what we perceive as the presence of spirits. I always think one day there will be scientifically supported biological explanations for psychic ability, spiritual phenomenon. We’re always reading those cool science pieces others share on Facebook about interconnection, the mind’s impact on the body…evidence or proof of some mystical wisdom. It’s one of the reasons I loved having Dr. Keith Holden on the show... Maybe spirits are cellular memory. It’s ancestral intelligence passed through DNA. The Native Americans believed in this. If you read Dune by Frank Herbert… The Bene Gesserit - an order of witches who can access the intelligence of all the women who preceded them matrilineally as biological ancestors. It’s like have the voice of every mother and grandmother before you as an enormous hive mind of counselors within your own head. After the episode about dream-walking, One of my listeners — Sterling — wrote to me and proposed the theory that we remote view others in our dreams and help them during crises … and the person receiving that assistance may experience it as a spiritual presence. What if our guides are living people connecting to us psychically, on another plane? What if all this stuff is symbolic thinking? It’s true in some way, but representative of something else, like icons on a touchscreen. What if what we perceive to be spiritual phenomena is a kind of User Interface with parts of our intellectual technology and consciousness we don’t fully understand how to access and use. Yet. I hate to think about how a few hundred years from now I will be viewed as a misguided superstitious idiot with good intentions and bad information. But here’s the one stumper... What do we do with synchronicity? My friend Lacy pointed out it’s the one phenomena every one experiences, regardless of belief. Atheists still experience synchronicity, right? How do they explain it to themselves? I’d love to know, but I doubt there are any atheists listening to this show. If you know of one, or some books or links, I’d love you to share them with me. Weirdly, I randomly stumbled upon a blog post I had written almost ten years ago called Atheism and ESP. I want to share that story with you right now “Can an atheist be psychic?" Mark, an evangelical youth minister, asked me this question last weekend at the coffee house. The wi-fi cafe where I go to write in the afternoons and on weekends is the favorite mobile office for a lot of ministers in the community where I live. You might assume I would prefer to be surrounded by a flock of bright-eyed New Agers, but not only is an environment like that unlikely to exist in Chattanooga, TN it wouldn't necessarily appeal to me. I am comforted by diversity. There are a few Buddhist monks here and there, plenty of college students and professors and even a few technopagans (usually in the evenings), but the overwhelming number of "regulars" whose work weeks most resemble my own are Christian preachers. We each have "our" (preferred) table or couch -- our spots where we play modern scribes on laptops, week after week... I can't say that they see the resemblance between our roles as much as I do -- but they behave as if it's true, and actions are what counts. If the cafe were filled with mystics who wanted to chat, I'd never get anything accomplished. And, besides, I see the distances and the differences as a promising vision of an interfaith future; where we respect each other as people first, regardless of our vocabularies. Even though Mark is Pentecostal, he experiences a high-level of clairaudience that is more similar to my own than anyone I've ever met. He's even "confessed" his ability to me, to ensure more understanding between us. Just like anyone I meet on my path, my goal as a minister is always to communicate permission for you to believe what you will, and encouragement for you to create the world you want to live in. I politely refuse to argue theology, politics, or define Source with anyone -- last time I allowed myself to engage in that conversation, I almost lost Mark -- he asked me by whose Authority my abilities are endowed, and I succinctly responded "Mine." "Now don't fret," I quickly appended the statement when I saw the light in his eyes go dim, and I picked up the silent keyword heresy, "You already know the Source resembles your own in a way that words and definitions only confuse. Repeat your Question, ask my Source directly this time, and not me..." I mentally stood back, stood down from the protection I normally project, and received his quick, shy, telepathic probe. It was interesting to note that he went straight for my guides and they answered him directly. Mark looked flushed and slightly embarrassed, but the pinched eyebrows relaxed, and his face softened with a kind of child-like smile. He suddenly looked hopeful and happy, like he'd just heard something wonderful and clever. Guess he found the Authority he needed in there, the one my personal labels could not have affirmed for him. Now, reassured, Mark respects me and trusts me enough to still ask me brilliant, challenging questions once in awhile -- but not to challenge me; more to share with me the ways in which he feels challenged. So, back to last Saturday, when Mark turned around in his chair, peeked over my laptop and asked me "Can an atheist be psychic?" "Absolutely!" I said. "I feel that psychic abilities -- extra-sensory perceptive abilities -- are independent of any agenda we might attach to them. Look at this way: you can draw a picture on a napkin without being an artist; you can sing in the shower without being a musician; you can talk without being a speaker; you know when something tastes delicious, whether or not you can deconstruct the recipe and whip it up yourself in the kitchen. The mechanics of the senses have no predetermined goal." See, only a day prior to this question, I began participating in a university study which profiles psychic abilities, or extra-sensory perception, from a purely clinical, scientific perspective. I have grown so used to attaching my own faith and personal understanding of the supernatural, that I'd actually forgotten that academic ESP literature rarely addresses religion or spirituality at all. You don't have just five biological senses, you actually have nine -- your psychic faculties exist and are constantly available to you, regardless of any belief system. Your body -- certain regions of your body -- act as antennae. You receive and process information using your four extra senses much as you do the five you're most familiar with -- you don't have to believe in anything to be able to see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. You can interact with, respond to, receive information from, and communicate with your environment -- especially with other people or other living things in your environment -- regardless of what you believe or don't believe. How you process, define, identify who, what, or where the information comes from is another conversation entirely. You don't have to see radio waves to use them in your everyday life. You don't have to believe in electricity to flip switches. You don't have to understand the way light behaves as both waves and particles to be able to see. I feel that anyone can strengthen their psychic senses. You are psychic; you use these senses all the time. You don't have to sit down and pray once a week to be able to smell. You don't have to remember to hear when you wake up in the morning. Now, who it is you may be hearing... That's another story. I have this other daydream where one day, I just come out and reveal to you guys, that I am a Psychic Atheist. And I pivot everything I do… Because, here’s the thing. I can still do readings. The information that I get is still accurate and useful. The source of this information is what I’m questioning here. I think even the Akashic Records in theory could be retained in a philosophy of psychic atheism. Does this conversation make you feel uncomfortable? Or does it spark your imagination in some way? I don’t know — I just wanted to talk about this. To put it out there and see what comes back. Does anything about this resonate with you? I really want to know. Talk to me. OUTRO Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. You don’t have to use the purple button on your iPhone — some people don’t like that app. My personal favorite podcast app is Overcast. So, check that one out. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE If you’re feeling hurt or angry about another person’s behavior toward you, now is the time to release the negative energy around those circumstances. If you hang onto it, it’s going to attract more of the same. Anger and resentment are tough bonds—they’re super glue—they keep you attached to the events that create initial suffering, they keep them alive within you, and it drains you. Forgiveness is not forgetting, it’s not falling to resist, it’s a clearing of energy that serves as the first step in creating room for peace and joy. So, help to contribute your part in that. And if nothing else, forgive yourself for having unrealistic expectations of a situation that can’t provide perfection. Perfectionism is one of the ways we sabotage ourselves. And I’ll talk to you later.

Melany Oliver has over 10 years experience healing deep emotional wounds. She helps women wounded by childhood trauma and negative relationships learn to love and accept themselves. She also helps those who are heartbroken or unable to attract their life partner release energetic blocks to manifesting true love. She’s the creator of Healing the Broken Heart, Complete Heart Attunement, and the Heart Paths, which support those on a spiritual journey learn how to process their emotions and life lessons. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: ...Reiki, Thai yoga massage, holistic and complimentary therapies, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), hypnotherapy, theta healing ... cording, energy cord, etheric cord, energetic divorce, energy exchange, cord cutting... GUEST LINKS - MELANY OLIVER melany-oliver.com Healing the Broken Heart Complete Heart Attunement HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I’m sharing a conversation with Melany Oliver about healing from heartbreak. And, of course, as always, there’s an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message. BUT BEFORE I FORGET It’s August 14, 2017 as I record this. If you’re listening right when this episode comes out, we have just experienced the eclipse. And hopefully you’re moving toward your best intentions for the future and a break with past patterns that no longer serve you. It will likely take a while for this energy to move through and there’s still work to be done around this Leo / Aquarius duality. My simplification of the theme you should be considering, or the questions to ask yourself, revolve around the idea of your true identity. Leo energy (for everyone) is about being a star, shining your special light, and the Aquarius side of things is about the greater humanitarian definition of who you are. Who, on a larger scale, will receive your light. Who is your true self? What are your gifts? And how do you intend to impact the world. It feels like a test right now — you will either become reaffirmed in who you want to be or you may realize you’ve strayed from the path you set for yourself, or you may discover a new image of who you truly are and feel the nudge to adopt that new self. The challenges and changes right now are about embracing what will allow you to shine, and releasing what is not working. I’d like to take a moment to say thank you to my new supporters on Patreon: Ann Luke-Montez Janet Thomasson Miki Lea I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support and I’m really excited to see the new names each week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me, so thank you. You too can support my time in producing this show — and you can support Linda, who transcribes all my words each week — by pledging on Patreon. For as little as $1 a month, listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. I just posted the latest bonus episode on how I do a psychic reading, step by step, in great detail, so you guys who are supporters can go listen to that if you haven’t already. If you’d like to listen to that episode, you can find out how to pledge your support for the show at patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Okay. Let’s get into today’s interview. Melany Oliver has over 10 years experience healing deep emotional wounds. She helps women wounded by childhood trauma and negative relationships learn to love and accept themselves. She also helps those who are heartbroken or unable to attract their life partner release energetic blocks to manifesting true love. She’s the creator of Healing the Broken Heart, Complete Heart Attunement, and the Heart Paths, which support those on a spiritual journey learn how to process their emotions and life lessons. I’ll let her introduce herself... Melany: I'm Melany and I work with emotional wellbeing and I help people process their deep emotional pain. And empower them and not allow their emotions to sabotage their life, to rule their life, and that's the basics of what I do. That's the main, that's the core of what I do is really all about emotions and emotional empowerment. Slade: I know a lot of people who are listening are going to be wondering where your accent comes from. Tell us where you come from. Melany: Haha.. I was born in Brazil. My mother's half Brazilian, half Italian. My father's English, Welsh-English. I grew up in Dubai so... I don't know where my accent's from. I think it's mixed up. Slade: It's very interesting, yeah! It's funny because whenever I listen to you try to speak, there is a part of my brain - I was originally a linguistics major in college and this is not something that I talk about a lot but it's funny because I'm very good at identifying English-speakers and you know, and where they come from. Like a lot of people in America can't tell the difference between a New Zealand or South African, stuff like that... Melany: Yeah... Slade: And I notice when I'm listening to you, that there are parts of my brain... Melany: Haha... you're confused! Slade: Yeah, I'm trying to at - I'm like, i heard something there that sounded British and then I'll hear something else that sounds a little different. And so, yeah, um I just - I felt like in the moment as I was listening from the perspective of the audience, like, Everyone's going to wonder where is she from with the lovely accent! Anyway... Melany: I get that a lot. I get - people don't know where I'm from. I've gotten from everywhere, literally. Slade: It's fascinating though. You have a very different worldview, I'm sure, from the intersection of all those cultures. I am curious in hearing, how did you become a professional intuitive? Melany: Basically I had no idea what I was going to do. And I remember applying to university and I applied to so many different courses and I honest - when I got the results and I just did not know what to do. And so what I did was I took a gap year and I went traveling and studied a lot of different modalities. So I started reiki, I did Thai yoga massage, and that's when I started to realize that actually I really like the whole alternative medicine field. And so I studied holistic and complementary therapies at university and then from then on I just started to study all sorts, you know, NLP, hypnotherapy, and in the background, I've always been, you know, an intuitive, but never really... I never really took that on board as a profession, but over the years of treating clients through massage - so I did five years of massage - I started to realize that people used to have a lot of releases emotionally and I was able to pick up their emotions just by giving them a massage, reflexology or aromatherapy massage, and that's what also got me interested in the intuition and aura reading and all of that and so it was actually a gradual process. I did start doing tarot readings from when I was around 18. I was very young but I only started to really take this professionally 10 years on when I was around 27 because I just didn't feel confident enough at the time and it was just a lot of encouragement from friends who had had readings, and messages from me and it was basically they encouraged me and that's how it kind of started. Slade: You were definitely not the first person, massage therapist, that I've spoken to who has discovered their intuition in that practice or in that sort of hands-on healing. I would say that, gosh, there's probably like a third of the people that I speak to who are emerging as intuitives or who just discovered that they're empaths... Yeah, do some type of bodywork where they're actually touching the clients and, yes so that's really fascinating. Of course, that's not how I come to it at all. I'm a terrible masseuse. I end up just petting people like they're cats. Which can be kind of nice, depending... Well, you know, you have a unique focus though for your practice and you're the creator of Healing the Broken Heart and Complete Heart Attunement and your website talks about how you specifically help women who are heartbroken and unable to attract their life partner release all kinds of blocks to healing their heart and attracting love. So how did that become the focus of your practice? Melany: Again, it wasn't something that I chose. It was something that - it kind of just happened naturallyI started doing more. After the massage phase, I went into more healing. And healing in general I was doing Reiki healing, theta healing and all sorts of other - NLP, hypnotherapy, and over the years again, I noticed that my main clientele were women who were heartbroken. And after seeing a lot of women, I also - based on all the tools that I know - I also started to see a pattern emerge in terms of a process. So, for example, I wouldn't just go straight into forgiveness work. I need to first release the overwhelm and then release the resistance, and then perhaps if they're ready, then to go into forgiveness. So it was years of treating women who were heartbroken and that's how I created my processes and it just kind of landed on my lap. It just happened. It wasn't something I specifically chose. Slade: Well, I think that there's a theme actually in discovering our purpose. It's often about following where people ask us to go more than it is about deciding where we're going to take them. You know, that's a piece of advice that I give a lot, so... I feel like I was a little drafted into doing this as well. One of the things I noticed though, in all the times that I've spoken with you, you use the term "heartbreak" in kind of more expansive way than most people do, you know what I mean? Melany: Yeah. Slade: You use the concept of heartbreak beyond just the romantic love, so... Melany: Oh, totally. Slade: How do you define heartbreak in the context of spiritual healing? Melany: Yeah, and I've also - sometimes I use the wound, heart wound or emotional wound, and it's really anything that breaks your heart, and it could be your mother passing, I've treated clients that they couldn't get over their loved ones passing. That in itself is a heart wound. It could also be for your pets or anything like that, but any form of trauma, any form of emotional hurt that really hurts you and you're not able to get over, that is a heart wound, and a heart break, and yeah, that's - you're absolutely right, it's not just about partners or exes and things like that. It goes deeper than that. Even childhood wounds. You could have had your heart broken as a child by parents, family, teachers. It's really about the emotion, the emotional wound, I define it as a heartbreak. Slade: That - You have something called the Heart Path series that's about processing emotions and emotional discipline. Tell us about the Heart Path series. Melany: So the Heart Path 1 is more about the self healing. So it is about emotional discipline where I go into how to process emotions, and not just emotions but also how it affects your mind and how to shift your mindset after processing your emotions. So Heart Path 1 is really about healing yourself. It's a complete self-healing journey and these are tools in which you can use over and over again and you'll probably go through the journey, as I have, many times. So that's the main focus of the Heart Path 1. Heart Path 2 is more about your intuition and developing your intuition and really connecting with your heart, with your heart's wisdom and the reason why I did it in that way - it's also - the whole Heart Path actually is based on my own journey and it's based on everything that I've learned and my favorite tools and how to develop yourself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and the reason why I've put the intuition part second is because if you haven't dealt with your wounds, if you haven't really healed your childhood traumas or any form of trauma, your intuition will be heavily influenced by your wounds and you'll not be a clear channel. Perhaps you'll hear your intuition but you won't trust yourself to follow it. You will react based on your emotions. So it is a process. And the last part - the Heart Path 3 is more about aligning with your heart's purpose, with your heart's desires and it's more about manifesting but more in alignment with your soul, with your heart. So that's the Heart Path. Slade: Okay, so I'm not a woman, as you may realize, but I have, of course, experienced heartbreak, and there are thousands of women in my audience who I'm representing right now. So just speak to me as if, you know, if I came to you and I was considering working with you one-on-one, walk me through the process. Like, what can I expect if I approach you and I say, "I just can't get over this woundedness." Walk me through what working with you one-on-one would be like. Melany: Sure. So normally I would always start with releasing the overwhelm because when people come to me, they're not in a good place. They're normally in a dark hole, or they're stressed out and completely overwhelmedSo the first part is really about bringing yourself back into balance, grounding, and preparing you to go deeper. Because when you're overwhelmed there's no way you're going deeper into your wounds and you're not able to process anything. The second part I always check if there's any resistance, and I work with releasing resistance through reframing and using different techniques. Again, exactly what it says, to release resistance so that we go deeper. And after that it's more about processing the deep hurtful emotions that everybody avoids. That's why they're stuck. So I sit most of the time it's really sitting with clients through that painful emotion and I do guide them through visualizations, guided imagery, and to bring out, to pull out their pain, their hurt, and sit them through a process so that they can process and really release that deep core emotion that they've probably suppressed over a very very long time. And then once the emotion is really released, and I have - I don't know how to say it - I can sense when somebody has reached the core, when someone has really accepted that emotion and truly released it, then we can start on rebuilding, whether it's their self-esteem and working on self-love or whatever. The core whatever they need, then it's all about reprogramming and rebuilding. So this is, I guess, you can say, a brief framework that I use through my processes, through the way that I work with clients. Slade: I would love to get your advice about obsessive thoughts. So - and I'm asking for a friend, and for my past and future self, when I'm in this state - but you know the kind of thing I'm talking about, which is maybe the relationship is broken and it's starting to unravel and you kind of know it deep down and he's not responding to your texts, and you feel in your gut that something's wrong and your imagination starts filling in all these scenarios, or this is something that I see everyone go through like my friends. You've just broken up with somebody. You've really willfully chosen and made that decision to move on and you know it's the right thing to do, but you can't stop thinking about the person. It feels like an actual sickness, you know what I mean? Like, you're just obsessed. Melany: Yeah. Totally get that. Slade: So do you have any advice or rules or guidelines for how to deal with that? Melany: Absolutely. And this is a classic case of "cording". So when you're obsessed with someone and you're continuously thinking about them and you have - it's like - when you - firstly, before I speak about that, when you have a relationship with someone, immediately you create an energy cord so there's like an energy, etheric cord between you and that person. So one of the tools that I teach my clients, and I guide them through, is to do an energy exchange and a cord cutting. And really that makes a big difference. But this is - you have to do this consciously, some people may not want to do it. Also, depending on where the cord is - so most of the time these energetic cords the way - when I see it in my mind, it's through the lower chakras, if you know about the chakras, and especially the sacral chakra, which is all emotional. So definitely there's cording going on, so the first thing is to really do a cord cutting, an energy exchange. And then second I have some very specific NLP techniques that I use to cut you from the past, from those thoughts, and it works really well. So, and clients are almost always surprised at how well it works actually. Slade: Is cord cutting something that someone could do on their own or are they just too stuck in their own energy to really trust doing it by themselves? Melany: Yeah, it's definitely something you can do on your own. You can just use your intention and really imagine that cord and you take your energy back. You give back their stuff and you consciously make the decision to cut the cords. You can certainly do it on your own, but obviously there's some clients that maybe they're not able to, they're scared, or they don't know how. But it's really that easy. You use your mind, you use your intention and you really do it consciously. You make the decision to almost do like an energetic divorce with that person and so that you can move on energetically and you do feel a difference in your field. Slade: I am particularly good at doing this for myself. And I have a Venus in Gemini, which is like, it's like this sign of the serial monogamist, but because it's in an air sign, it's about being able to plug in and plug back, you know unplug again, and I always try to share this with other people and I am not judging them but they seem to be really bad at it, so... This is usually with friends or family members, or someone close to me more than specifically clients, but I see people who are trying to hang on to friendships or to create a civil relationship with the ex, way too soon after the breakup - Melany: Absolutely. Slade: Like there's really no break. It just is kind of like this extension, this drawn out connection and I believe that you can have healthy relationship with your exes. I have some kind of civil friendly connection with everyone that I've ever been in love with. I'm happy and proud to say. But I do believe that there has to be a very hardcore period of distance. Melany: I absolutely agree. Slade: Yeah, so what's your role for that? Melany: I actually had to tell clients to stop - well, unless they have children, then that's a whole different story. Slade: Right, yes. Melany: Because obviously you need to be connected if they're the father or mother of your child, but if it's just an ex and that's... especially clients that I have treated who have been in abusive relationships, I had to actually tell them to have no contact because it was not healthy and what they were doing actually unconsciously is wanting, seeking approval and seeking some sort of validation and sort of having them in the background as a way to - maybe some day, who knows. And that is not healthy, you know? That's not where you want to be. And I agree. You have to fully cut cords, have no communication until you are in a healthy space, then maybe in the future, okay. Maybe you can but yes, so... especially for clients who I see are really struggling then I do recommend that, to have no contact. Slade: I have a ritual that I do. There's actually a meaning of the word "casket". It's kind of a rural sort of Appalachian term for a little chest, where you keep keepsakes, like love letters and mementos and things like that. But I love the fact that the word also is something that we bury the dead in, right? It's a casket. And so I sort of created a ritual around that concept where I believe that every sign of the person, like if you do have photographs, if you do have letters and little things, if it's not something you're returning to them, it's something you want to keep, it needs to go in this casket and it needs to be bound up, tied up, and it needs to go in the closet for at least a year. Melany: Totally. Slade: Yeah. It needs to be a death. You really need to mourn it. Melany: I have - Slade: Yeah, go ahead. Melany: I was just going to share a really interesting story. So I had a client who was in an abusive relationship and she had an - it was over, but she was still suffering the aftermath which I was working with her through, she had diamond earrings that she was wearing every day, and it had been I think 5 years or I can't remember how long it was - and she was still wearing them every day. And I made her either sell it or, you know, sell it and buy something else but she was so stuck in that story that I asked her, I think this would be a good idea for you to do to really break free. You don't need that. You can buy yourself another pair of earrings. Anyway, so she finally, she did it. And two weeks later, she went back home and her mother gave her a gift which was a diamond earrings that was way bigger and more beautiful than the one she had from her aunt. It's just so funny. She emailed me and I was like, That is just hilarious. So when you hang on to things, you know, it's just things. It's material things. It's not, doesn't mean anything but psychologically it was keeping her stuck in the past and she manifested diamond earrings but bigger and more beautiful and didn't have the same memories, let's say, that she was carrying with her every day. I thought that was funny. Slade: My mom actually - and I remember watching her do this and really being aware of the symbolism of it, but I didn't want to, you don't want to stop someone in the midst of them doing something and make them self-conscious about it. But she very instinctively when she was divorced, she had divorce jewelry that she felt like she couldn't wear anymore or whatever. And her instinct was, I'm going to go have this melted down and have them make something new out of it. And so she went and had this piece of jewelry, I think it was a ring, designed, using the stones and the precious metals from these other pieces and she made this whole new thing for herself. She designed it and it was hers. So she transformed all that into something and I remember at the time - Melany: Beautiful. Slade: being very aware of the symbolism of that and I thought, Well she's doing it already, I'm not going to call attention to it. She's instinctively doing something that, yes, you would advise someone else to do and the thing I think a lot of people forget is, your subconscious mind is aware that that thing is on your body. Melany: Absolutely. Slade: It's aware of the weight of it and the - you catch sight of it in the mirror even though you've looked at those earrings a hundred times... Melany: Yes. Slade: Some part of you knows you're wearing them and it's broadcasting those memories. Melany: Totally. And it's like subliminal messages, you know? Slade: Yes. Melany: Unconscious messages that you're not consciously aware of, but like you said, you catch a glimpse of it, you're putting it on every day, and it's constantly reminding you of that, so, yeah... I get rid of everything. When I'm done, I'm done. Slade: I do too. And like I said, I'm very good at it. Melany: Maybe I'm extreme. Slade: It's - you know the thing is, I'm one of those people who I anticipate pain. I know how long it takes to move through that energy and in to heal, regardless of how good you are at it, or how much you make the choice to do it. There's still going to be some period that just sucks. And my way of dealing with that is like, Let's hurry and do it as quickly as possible. Like, the fastest way is through it, so if I'm going to have to suffer for the next 6 months, then we better get a move on. Melany: Yeah. Slade: And so, that kind of propels me through it or into it and it's almost kind of like, I feel a rush, a sense of needing to hurry, so I can be over soon. Melany: I have the same approach for myself. Slade: Yeah, I think it comes from having been through it multiple times and really getting good at it and thinking, You know what, I know what this is about. I know what I have to do to get to the other side of it. I am not someone, just for the record when I said I have connections to everyone I've ever been in a relationship with, none of those people have I ever for one second considered getting back together with. I don't understand that whole phenomenon. I kind of feel like if somebody's worthy of your love, there's probably something about them that always will be. With the exception of someone who's abusive or is a sociopath or a narcissist or has some issue that makes it toxic for you to be connected to them. But I do believe that the average person who's making average mistakes in relationships is still worthy of being out there somewhere as a Facebook friend or whatever. And that's okay. Melany: Yeah. Slade: You use a term in your Heart Path series, "emotional discipline". Is that what we're talking about? Melany: Yes, it is. Totally. And because, if you have a lot of emotions that you haven't processed, you will just act in ways that are - that will probably sabotage your relationships, it will take over basically your decisions, your actions, and... Well first in terms of, and when it comes to exes, going back to what you mentioned, you truly need to have healed that before you either leave, before you can have a mutual friendship, let's say, a respectable, respectful friendship. Because otherwise, as I mentioned before, there'll still be a little part of you that is looking for approval for - that is seeking some sort of acknowledgment or something. Does that make sense? Slade: Yeah, no. That actually hit me really hard when you said that the first time, and I thought, Oh, I'm a little guilty of that. I'm a little guilty of the person who doesn't want to be with me anymore still thinking I'm a good person. Like, that is something that I'm, at least subconsciously wanting to have and yeah, I'm absolutely guilty of that, for sure. The other thing too, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but on a really basic level, you can't attract something better, you can't attract the person who's meant to be with you if that space is occupied, you know? Melany: Yeah. Slade: It's like the seat next to you, if someone else is sitting in that seat, no one else can come along and sit there. Melany: Absolutely. And maybe the person will and you'll miss it. Because you're so stuck on the past, like you said, your field is - your heart is filled with someone else so you still have those strings, those cords attached to the past that you're carrying along with you. Trying to move forwards and trying to manifest but with all this stuff in your field, so it will block you, yeah. Slade: So that's the manifesting part of the cycle. The process, right? Melany: Yes, oh yes. Slade: And you really can't do, you can't manifest when all this foundational stuff, when you're wounded, when you've got cords of attachment draining your energy, occupying your thoughts and filling your heart, you can't manifest anything. Melany: Well, you can, but it won't be the right person. Slade: Not what you want. Yeah, manifest a bunch of crap. Melany: Yeah, exactly. So that you can, again, you're going to manifest things to trigger you to waken you, so that you realize, okay I need to deal with myself. I still have emotions, trapped emotions down there that need to come out, so... To manifest true - someone that is in alignment with what your heart truly desires, then yes, you need to let go. Otherwise you can manifest but not the right person. Slade: What do you say to the person who is manifesting the same relationship over and over again? What's that about? Melany: That is definitely about trauma, because what you're doing is you're repeating a pattern and what I have found normally, it's childhood trauma. It's not just about an ex or even a few exes. It's always childhood-rooted core... these are like core deep-rooted trauma where you're seeking to be loved firstly, but in the wrong way. And it's only when you can truly go back and do inner child work, which is what I do mainly, with these type of issues. After we've released all the exes, then you can start to really, well, then you can start to manifest after you've healed your childhood wounds. Yeah. Slade: What message do you think is kind of missing from the spiritual, psychological world where, you know, the personal development world where we talk about these things and discuss it and want to be better. What do you think is the message that is missing or sort of needs to be brought forward? Melany: One of the biggest things that I have seen is that a lot of people think that the spiritual world and being spiritual and all of that and self-development, maybe not so much self-development, is all about being positive and thinking positive and all of that. Which yes, that is the goal, and essentially that's where you want to be. But however, it's about facing the dark stuff, facing your fears, facing these wounds that nobody talks about. Something that people are ashamed of and this is actually something that I post about on my social media, which maybe has shocked a few people. But I was ready to wake people up. It's not about being positive. If you're struggling, if you're stuck, then no matter how much, how many affirmations you do, or how much you try to think positive, things will not shift until you deal with those hurtful, painful emotions and your shadow and these traumas. Slade: Hmm... Yes. Melany: I don't know if it's emphasized enough. Slade: Yeah, it's shadow work. I mean, I think that actually came up on the last interview that I did, so there is a connection here and you and I were talking before we started recording about this particular time period. The whole eclipse phenomenon and everything being about a break with the past, a break with old patterns and re-aligning somehow, and the thing is, you can't break with patterns if you're not kind of acknowledging them. Melany: Yes, absolutely. And that's actually another good point. This is another thing that may be missing is, I see a lot of people use spiritual concepts and even things like meditation, to bypass dealing with their stuff. And then they wonder why they're stuck months later. Oh, but maybe I need to meditate longer. And no, you actually need to be consciousYou need to actually face your stuff, and not try to transcend them. Slade: I also have a theory that a lot of our purpose is found in that painful stuff. It's about a transmutation of our life lessons because nobody wants to hear somebody who's just really happy and has an easy time of it telling us how to live. All your credibility and all your wisdom comes from these traumatic things that you contend with and learn how to deal with and your best hope at impacting someone else is to offer them a shorter path through that. Melany: Yeah, absolutely. And the only reason I say that when I started my spiritual journey or my spiritual path, nobody told me this. I was just told I need to be positive and I need to be grateful and I need to think positive thoughts. Which yes, but I didn't actually realize that I actually had to deal with my dark stuff. So that's why I emphasized on this point as well. But yeah, you're right and it's only when you've gone through certain experiences that you're able to help another take the shorter path, you know. Slade: Yeah, yes. So you have five free audio tools that are available for my listeners if they go to your website. Tell us about these tools and where we can go to find them. Melany: Sure. These are really the basic tools to release overwhelm, start to release fear, and really bring yourself back to balance because when you're in a state of stress and overwhelm, there's no way you're processing anything. So you can go to my website. It's Melany-Oliver.com. Or if it's easier, you can also go to MelanyOliverHealing.com. And you can subscribe to my website and you'll receive these five tools and they're, like i said, this is the foundation. This is the basics so that you can start to get centered, get grounded, start to process some of your emotions and really bring you to a place of balance. So that you can be conscious and then you can start to do more deeper work. Slade: Are these guided meditations? Melany: No, these are audio tools. I just speak about each tool so you can hear me speak. There are i think two meditations on them. Links that I've put up there as well. But they're tools so you can start practicing as of today. Slade: Okay, that's awesome. Well I will put your links in the show notes and on the blog post so everybody can just click on that and go sign up and get those and start using them. Thank you, Melany, for talking about this subject. I know it's probably one of the number one reasons why people do seek advice in the first place, so I know that there's somebody out there listening who has really learned a lot from your talk. Melany: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. It was really nice to speak to you. Slade: Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. You don’t have to use the purple button on your iPhone — some people don’t like that app. My personal favorite podcast app is Overcast. So, check that one out. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about that—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…now. 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE It’s important at this time that you remember your self worth. That you hold your head high and hold yourself in high esteem. You can set firm but gentle boundaries with others without being isolated from them. You can also delegate from a place of authority. Remember you have allies who can assist you in the external world even as you focus on your internal self-care. And I’ll talk to you later.

An interview with Ash Riley about dream interpretation and past lives. We talk about everything from improving your dream recall, to theories about time and consciousness, to how our phobias can have origins in past lives. Ashley Riley is a spiritual entrepreneur, intuitive lifestyle blogger, and personal development mentor who enjoys empowering others to tap into their own inner-strength. She is the voice behind In My Sacred Space, an intuitive lifestyle blog which explores personal, spiritual, and intuitive development, and incorporating spirituality into daily life. This episode has a full text transcript below. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW: Kyle Cease Hannah Ehlers-Bond Many Lives Many Masters by Bryan Weiss Journey of Souls by Michael Newton Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique Past Life Regression The OA on Netflix GUEST LINKS - Ash Riley In My Sacred Space Online Dream Interpretation Course Free ebook Connect with your past lives through your dreams HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I’m sharing a conversation with Ash Riley about dream interpretation and past lives. We talk about everything from improving your dream recall, to theories about time and consciousness, to how our phobias can have origins in our past lives. And, of course, there is an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on, after the final links and credits, and leave you with that extra message… BUT BEFORE I FORGET I wanted to share a bit of an update, or an observation, really, about the last episode—episode 21—in which I shared a dream I believed to be about a woman abducted in Arizona. After publishing the show and listening back, I noticed something I had never thought of before. There were no cell phones in that dream. And because of that, I don’t feel it could possibly have been from a present or even recent time period because the first thing she would have done when she ran out of gas is call or text someone. She didn’t even check her messages when she went on break. I feel like this detail alone blows my theory that I was dreaming about something urgent or something happening in the present. The fact that I couldn’t find anything remotely resembling the story could also support this incident having taken place in the past. Assuming it was real and it happened, of course. But, you know, after this conversation with Ash, I’m not sure remote viewing through dreaming is what this was about at all. There may be something underneath, deep within the dream content, thematic, more important than the details of the story it presents. You’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about when you hear this interview segment coming up. I also want to comment on this eclipse season again. I feel like we will definitely look back on this time period as a turning point in our lives. I’m not going super deep into the astrology of all of this, so be sure and consult better minds than mine. Actually, I am sharing and reposting a lot of articles on Facebook, which is where I tend to share time-sensitive content, so please send me a friend request on Facebook if you’d like to access some of what I’m reading about the subject. First of all, though, if you’re experiencing some turmoil, breakdown, identity crisis, life quakes, I want you to know that it’s not just you. That may be a small consolation, but I do find that comforting, myself. Because I talk to so many people all over the world every week, I am in a unique position to notice patterns that are going on out there. And if that corresponds with some of this eclipse astrology, cool. Regardless of spirituality or faith or total lack of those things, we still have a collective consciousness. And there are some powerful common themes presenting in a lot of people’s lives right now. I’m recording this Aug 8, 2017, so if you’re listening when it comes out or soon after it, it’s obviously timely. But if you’re listening to the archives in the future, this message may still hold significance for you. You may be experiencing something similar and some serendipity has allowed this message to reach you at whatever time and place you are. It’s okay to believe it speaks to you now — whenever you hear it, just like the oracle message at the end of the show. This pattern or phenomenon or transit we’re going through seems to be about shedding our skins, or having our identities challenged. If you are presented with a strong impulse to take an action right now, if it’s a clear action, even if it seems sudden or impulsive, move toward it. If it’s wrong, you will get immediate feedback, and you can back off, but the biggest problem everyone seems to be having right now is a kind of paralysis. Lack of decision. Feeling lost. Not sure what direction you’re going in. Not sure how to move forward... So, I have to ask you this…What is wrong with waiting? What about surrendering, allowing yourself to be carried where you’re meant to go? Check again — your situation may feel like an emergency or like something has to be tended to immediately. But does it really? Can it wait a few weeks? If you can wait, I would advise doing nothing. Make no decisions, take no actions, observe the thoughts and feelings and wait for the message to emerge from them. Or for the circumstances to resolve themselves. Chani Nicholas sent out a newsletter this week, and there was a section that really spoke to me. She wrote: "Try not to rush to replace what is leaving. Try not to jump to conclusions about what to do with the new room. Try not to assume too much just because being in the unknown is uncomfortable." I want to take a moment to say thank you to my new supporters on Patreon: Theo Walker Darla Antoine Alisa Martin and James Roberson It’s nice to see some life long supporters showing up in Patreon. Darla Antoine was one of the first people to take my professional intuitive training almost 8 years ago. Alisa is one of the people in the world who has been talking to me about spirituality the longest. Decades, she’s been listening to me. She’s also the friend I mentioned in the last episode whom I apparently visit in the dream space every once in a while for a chat. And James Roberson is my father. Actually both my parents support my show on Patreon — my mother was the first person to pledge, which was before I started thanking people on the show. But my dad is actually a fan and listens to all the episodes, and reads all the posts. I know a lot of you don’t feel like you can be your authentic self with your family. And I certainly celebrate the value of chosen family. But I want it to be known that my parents do support my work, and would do so even if it’s not their thing. I am very blessed in this way. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support. I’m really excited to see the new names every week. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging. It means more to me than you may realize. You too can support my time in producing this show — and you can support Linda, the young woman who is creating our transcripts every week — by pledging on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. So If you want to find out how you can become a patron, especially if you would like Linda's transcription to continue, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Okay. Let’s get into today’s interview. Ashley Riley is a spiritual entrepreneur, intuitive lifestyle blogger, and personal development mentor who enjoys empowering others to tap into their own inner-strength. She is the voice behind In My Sacred Space, an intuitive lifestyle blog which explores personal, spiritual, and intuitive development, and incorporating spirituality into daily life. And Ash happens to love talking about a few things that I don’t talk about so much — dream interpretation and past lives. She even mixes the two together. Here’s my conversation with Ash: Ash: In My Sacred Space has been my little side passion for the last going on four years now, I think. It is, it started out as a lifestyle blog, and I talked to you about this the other day, where it was sort of this amalgamation of spiritual living and however that manifested itself in your life. And it was from home décor to cooking or gardening or general spirituality, whatever. And slowly and surely, over the last four years, it’s kind of gravitated toward serious focus on personal development and metaphysics. And so, last year, around July, I decided to start doing readings for my followers. I’ve been doing them for friends for a long time and I’d also been doing dream interpretations for friends for a long time, and obviously for myself. And I’ve been doing personal development coaching for my friends. So I decided to bring all that together into this online space that I had, and offer it to all the people who’d been following my blog for the last three to four years. And, I use a combination of numerology, tarot, personology, really any kind of psychic tool that is at my fingertips to dig into a person’s soul path and really figure out what the real lesson they’re trying to learn in these challenges that they’re coming into in their lives and how can we bring that subconscious block forward into their awareness and help them release and heal that? And so, with my mentorship sessions especially, I like to do a combination of numerology and personology and dream interpretation and we’ll use tarot to kind of direct us in each of our sessions. I ask them to set goals for each of their sessions and then we work through whatever comes up. It’s been really fascinating because I see – I have clients who come in and something will spark within me intuitively about what they’re going through and I’ll throw it out there and they’ll initially be resistant to it. They’ll say, “No no no, I’m over that, that’s not what’s happening.” Then I have them keep a dream journal in between sessions. And they come back to me with all these dreams. And I start going through their dreams and it is just like, screaming out in their dream symbolism that this is what’s going on. And it’s really great to have something tangible like that to point to. To kind of help them blast through the cognitive dissonance of what’s going on. Slade: This is one of the reasons why I wanted to - well I wanted to talk to you about a million things, and we could probably do so many different episode topics or whatever, but when you brought up this subject of dream work, I was like, “Yes! That’s what I need to talk to you about.” Because I have started to talk about my own dream experiences a little bit. And interestingly enough, how dense I am about – like if somebody else told me their dream and it had an obvious symbol in it, I would be very quick to see it. But when it’s my own, it’s not as apparent to me, you know. So, I am not a dream expert. I’m not even a very good dreamer. Like, my dream life is so disappointing and so many people will bring this up to me. You know, potential clients want to talk about their dreams or they, you know, want to know if I do any kind of interpretation around that symbolism or whatever. And I can, sort of, I can do that when it comes up in conversation, of course, but when you said that this was an area that you focused on, I was like, that’s really cool because I want you to supplement my understanding and my wisdom. And, you know, I don’t have to explain it to people because you can explain it better than I can. But yeah, so I have a bunch of questions about dream interpretation and dream work and specifically about some of the, like your free e-book on this subject, and some of the courses that you have. So, just first and foremost, I was interested in knowing how did you end up specifically making dream work a focus. Like, what drew you to the topic specifically? Ash: I’ve always been a pretty avid dreamer, even back when I was a kid and when I was younger. And I’ve always had pretty good dream recall. I didn’t actually get into the interpretation of dreaming until I sort of discovered spirituality a few years ago, and I just found it to be the easiest avenue for me to start accessing and developing my own intuition. Because, as I said on my website, you can literally do it in your sleep. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Slade: So talk to me about the – you have a dream interpretation course. Tell us about that. Ash: Yeah, so, like I said, I’ve been doing this for myself for a long time, and I started to do it for friends and in my Facebook group for people. And it’s something that a lot of people have a lot of curiosity about. But it seems like they – not a lot of people have a good knowledge of how to go about interpreting dreams. And, you know, for some people it’s just like, “Oh, what does this one dream mean?” And I really want people to understand that there is so much more to dreamwork than just figuring out what this dream means. Because you can use dreamwork to do so many things. And that’s why I have my two e-books on my website. One of them is how to contact your spirit guides through your dreams. One of them is how to access your past lives through your dreams. You can dream with intention and set specific intentions with your dreamwork and access parts of your multi-dimensional self in your subconscious mind that you don’t necessarily have access to on a regular basis. And that opens the door to so, so much. With how you develop on a personal level, and how you live your life. Slade: What are some general tips that you would tell somebody who’s kind of at the beginning of this process? Because you’re right. I don’t even think about it until I have one really good dream that seems meaningful and then I think, “Ooo! What was that trying to tell me?” But, you know, you just sort of altered my perspective in how this is really something that you want to monitor in an ongoing way, right? Because the patterns are so important and, I mean, I really stress this in my intuitive development mentoring as well, is to watch for the patterns of what’s being brought to you and following that as a way of discovering your practice. So, what would you tell somebody who’s like, “Ooo! Okay, yeah, I want to go into this.” What are a few basic good practices for starting a dream journal or dream interpretation log or, you know, what would you advise? Ash: Get into the habit. Dreaming is a routine, and waking up every morning and writing down what you remember from your dreams is a habit you want to get into. I’m to the point now where I am interpreting my dreams while I’m still in them. And that just comes from routine practice and having it on my mind that I’m going to remember this and figure out what it means. And then, I’m not even necessarily lucid in those dreams when that’s happening. It’s just something that I naturally do now. Now I hear a lot of people tell me, “Well, I don’t dream.” And that’s not necessarily the case. Everybody dreams. Every night. It’s just a matter of whether or not you remember it. And, a lot of times the reason you don’t remember it can be because you’re a really deep sleeper. People who have a lighter sleep pattern tend to be able to remember their dreams more often because they’re – you have the best dream recall the second that you wake up. Particularly if you’re waking up during R.E.M. You’ll be likely to remember your dreams more. So there’s little tips and tricks that can help with dream recall, like setting an intention before you go to bed telling yourself that you’re going to remember your dreams. You can set an alarm clock for like, around 2:30, 3:00 am to wake you up, and then you immediately just write down the things that you remember. Don’t move when you wake up in the morning. Just lay there and try to remember what was happening in your head before you woke up. Because the more that you – dreams are stored in your short-term memory initially, and when you wake up and you start to move around, it can make them fade away. So it’s really important that you kind of sit still and try to hold on to them and commit them to your longer-term memory. So like, repeating the symbols that you saw and the actions that happened in the dream can be - can help you commit those to your long-term memory and then get them down in your dream journal. Gosh, there’s just so much… Slade: Well, so there’s another topic that you’re really into that I’m also deficient in. There’s two things that are really attractive topics to a lot of people in our collective audience, and that’s past lives and dreamwork. And so, you actually combine those two things. I don’t really do a lot of past life readings, past life stories don’t come up for me very much in readings and you and I have talked about it. I mean, it’s not that, there’s just some people who focus on different things or they receive different types of information. Some people are natural mediums. Some people pick up on angelic energy or some people are more attuned to energy centres in the body. You know, there’s different things. So, one of your expertise that I don’t have is this synergy of the past life information with the dream stuff. So tell me about how you – how do you get at the past life stuff through your dreams? Ash: Just learning to – a bit part of dream interpretation is learning to identify what type or types of dream you’re having. And a lot of times you can get things mixed together in a single dream, different elements. There can be pieces of it that are past life, but it’s sort of layered underneath modern day symbolism, so learning to identify which parts of the dream are what and what is really coming through in that dream is kind of an art form that you kind of have to learn to develop. And they have a lot of checklists and things like that as supplementary material in the course that’ll help you figure those things out. Slade: So does the course have – tell us a little bit about what’s in the course content-wise. Is it video? Is it audio? Is it workbook style? A mix? Just to get some people interested in it, why don’t you describe it a little bit more in detail. Ash: It’s a mix of things. There’s a video lesson in every module, and there’s downloadable worksheets. There’s exercises. There’s homework assignments. I give access to tons and tons of resources that are free. I have a Facebook group for everyone in the course to come in and they get to work with me one-on-one in the Facebook group, and with each other. Because a huge part of learning this is practicing and you can practice on yourself for a really long time, but when you start to really practice with other people, it gets interesting because you start to learn that different people have very different dream styles and very different dream symbolism. Like, I have one friend who is also a prolific dreamer, but her dream style is so different from mine that it’s almost – it’s difficult for us to interpret one another’s dreams because they’re so different from what we’re both used to. So it’s really cool how you can learn your dream style and learn to identify different types of dreams. Learning to dream with intention and the course gives you all kinds of worksheets and downloadable things to help you learn those basic fundamentals and really give you a good foundation for learning how to figure yourself out, from a dream standpoint. Slade: Do you feel that one of the things that’s going to occur as you get into this and study this, like you said, as you’re analyzing and learning about your dream style – do you kind of develop your own symbology, or your own language, like where is the relationship between the kind of archetypal dream dictionary sort of scenario, versus your sort of personal symbolism. Is there a difference in the way that you teach it? Ash: There’s definitely a difference between archetypal symbolism and your own personal symbolism. A lot of people think that it has to be either or. I don’t teach it that way. I believe that you can find the layers of meaning in your dreams and that the archetypal symbolism and your personal symbolism can both be simultaneously true. Slade: So tell me like a cool example of a past life dream story that’s come up either for you or maybe somebody in your group. Ash: Oh goodness. My past life dreams tend to be really, really heavy. And the reason why is because they’re coming up because there are things that are karmic patterns that I’m trying to heal. And so, a lot of them tend to be really emotionally painful. But I do have one anecdotal story that’s not so heavy. That I will share with you. Just not to bring everyone down. And I actually talk about it in my e-book on past life dreams. One night, I was falling asleep and I just happen to idly wonder, have I ever had any past lives as a man, because all the ones that I’ve seen so far in my dreams and various other things have all been me as a woman. And I had a dream that night that I was a Roman or Greek soldier, and I was in an army and there was like this big celebration happening, like we’d just won this major war and there was like this feast going on and I was sort of like a lower guy on the totem pole, and there was a certain area of this place that was reserved just for the generals and the people who were really high up. But I also had this really stubborn F-U streak and I was drunk and decided to crash the general’s party. And that’s really all I remember of this dream, but I definitely figured that that has to be where my whatever I-do-what-I-want streak comes from – it’s that life. Slade: That’s cool. That’s interesting. You know, as you were talking about that, I was thinking, well I’m putting you on the spot asking you to recall this. And I actually – when I was in high school, I think I was doing some kind of fiction competition or something. I was writing a short story for some submission and I based the short story on a dream that I had had about being a World War I trench soldier in France. Probably, you know, British soldier in the trenches. You know, that famous – where, I mean, just gazillions of people died in that area in that time period, so… And like you said, it wasn’t really - definitely was low on the totem pole. I wasn’t anybody famous, and the dream itself was just sort of a snippet of being in that experience and having a lot of sensory detail about what it felt like and I was not interested in any kind of military anything. Military history, nothing. So I didn’t really read about that kind of stuff and I wasn’t attracted to movies or anything about it. But because of that dream, I have had a lifelong interest in a World War I and World War II history, particularly in Europe, and am constantly drawn to things about the trench warfare in particular. So, I don’t know. It’s really weird. It’s like I can take on the idea of past lives and the story and if somebody told me, “Yeah, you know that was a past life experience you were picking up on.” I’m like, okay cool. But at the same time, I don’t have any kind of hard and fast belief about it. You know what I’m saying? I don’t know. Like I feel I’m a little wary of like, being like, “Yes, you know, this is definitely true. And this is how it happened.” So, it’s just one of those things it’s like, if it comes in and finds me, I will definitely take it on board, and it certainly sounds like a good explanation, don’t you think? Ash: Yeah. I think for me, identifying a past life dream, like I said, it tends to come with some really heavy emotional energy. And I wake up in the morning with what I have termed to be the past-life-dream hangover. And it’s sort of like this dream that just sticks with you all morning and you’re really still processing a lot of the emotional energy that was attached to it. And I very much feel that emotional energy when I’m in that dream. With what’s happening and what’s going on. And, like I said, they almost always mirror something that is going on in my current life that is attached to that karmic pattern. Slade: Interesting. So it’s like, something that is happening in your life now will prompt an attachment to that memory or bring it to the surface in some way, you think? Ash: Yeah, and, I mean, I’m in the camp that believes that our lives are actually – time doesn’t exist and our lives are happening simultaneously, and so it’s not even necessarily a past thing that happened. It could be that I’m actually tapping into this other life that is me as it’s happening. And we’re experiencing these things at the same time. Slade: Interesting. Okay, now that’s really good. That’s juicy. I like that. How did you arrive at that theory? How did that come to you? Ash: I think that – first of all, I think it’s actually a scientific fact nowadays, but coming through my spiritual development, I have channelled stuff about it that has just sort of come out and like, “Wow, where did that come from. That’s really juicy.” And then I go look it up and it’s like, “Oh! This is related to Einstein’s theory of relativity – weird!” Slade: Yeah. Ash: And then I’ve also seen a lot of other people have come up with sort of the same information. And when I see a recurring pattern in things that other people are channelling and feeling and thinking, I pay attention to that. And I don’t necessarily – I think people get too bogged down in the details. And they miss the commonality and the theme with the little nuggets of truth that are at the base of it. You know what I mean? Slade: Yeah, you’re right. Most people are interested or concerned with the who and the detail – the kind of set dressing of the historical time period and, you know, all that kind of stuff because that’s fun. Let’s face it, you know. We all want to get dressed up and be a princess in another culture. But, yeah, you’re right. The underlying theme there is really what’s most important from it. I, you know, as we’re sitting here talking, and maybe it’s because I’m, you know, picking up on your energy and you’re drawing things to the surface, but I have an actual other good past life experience story. When I was in Hawaii at an Angel Therapy Practitioners’ Conference – I think this was in 2008 – I met a British woman there named Hannah Ehlers who I will link to Hannah in the show notes, and I’m probably going to have to send her a message now and say, “Hey, you need to listen to my podcast.” I haven’t talked to her in forever but I just remembered as you were speaking that she and I were hanging out in the pool as one does in Hawaii at our convention, and she was talking about how she does past life readings on people and that was, you know, kind of one of the things that she did. And I told her that I had had this lifelong aversion to anything that has to do with childbirth. Like, seeing - Ash: (inaudible) Slade: Yeah, yeah. And probably a lot of people do, because if the past life thing is real, then, you know, there’s a ton of us who have died in childbirth, right? And, so, I mean, I have – even if it’s a silly labour scene on a sitcom, like it is – I cannot be in the same room with it. I have to turn the channel and this was a lifelong thing. It just would make me cringe. And it was one of the only things that I could identify like that in my whole life. I have no snake phobias or fear of heights or anything like that, but the sound of someone being in childbirth, even in fictional circumstance, was like, NO, cannot do this. And I said something to her about that, because we were talking about it, and she just very quickly told me what the situation was. And she told me she said, “Actually, you did not die in childbirth. You were in the other room and you experienced your wife being in distress and dying in childbirth and so that’s why the sound of witnessing it is not really about experiencing it so much as just hearing it is very triggering. And I was like, “Wow…” First of all, I would’ve guessed that it was because it was something that happened to me personally, and I would never have thought, “Oh, I didn’t necessarily go through it but I witnessed it in some way.” That has made a different imprint. Because actually, there’s a sense of helplessness when you are the person who maybe is not the victim but the witness. Or, you know, somebody who cannot help someone that you care about, you know, when they’re sick or in distress or whatever. Speaking of heavy stuff, you know, but – so I took that in and, I was like, okay, she was very quick with the story and she told me a whole lot of other specific details and how it related to a phobia that my mother has that was very accurate as well, and she even told me, she said “Your mother was present at that time. She was your child and you two survived the situation. And that’s a past life karmic thing that you have as souls.” And, you know, it just went on and on and I was like, “Okay… okay cool!” And I have to tell you, and I’ve never told her this, I don’t think, but I’ve never once had that experience since that conversation. Like, I can watch Call the Midwife all day long now. Ash: Have you ever read, I think it’s Many Lives, Many Masters? Slade: Yes! Way back. I was probably in my teens or early twenties. Ash: That is like the exact thing that Brian Weiss talks about with his clients when doing their past life regressions. He brings them back to this moment where this phobia centers around, and the minute that that’s brought into your conscious awareness, it can finally be processed and released and it no longer exists anymore. Slade: You’re right. That’s so true. Ohmygod I love this. Now I want to have Hannah come on the show. Shoutout to Hannah! Very cool. And I’m glad you remember the Many Lives, Many Masters, because that’s kind of like one of the bibles of past life stuff, right? Ash: Right. I’m actually a huge fan of Michael Newton as well. Journey of Souls, Destiny of Souls, I thought was a really great thing. It’s kind of more like between-lives work, but it’s still really really good. Slade: So what’s the difference between between-life work and past-life work? Ash: So past life work is, they take you into the past life itself, and dig around there and bring things into your awareness. Life between lives is where they take you into I guess what you would maybe consider the bardo state, where you’re doing your pre-life planning, so to speak, about what you’re wanting to experience in this life and which past lives is attached to and why and it sort of gives you a view of the afterlife in a structural form and kind of what happens during the death process when you come back into that place and you review your life and you see what worked, what didn’t and what you want to create in the next one. Slade: Wow. Have you done any of that for yourself? Ash: I did! I did a Quantum Healing Hypnosis Therapy session which is a Dolores Cannon method, and it is technically a life-between-lives type work thing. Have you ever seen the OA on Netflix? Slade: Yes. I like it. Ash: Okay. There is a part in the OA when she’s sort of in her near-death state and she’s talking to the woman in the room with the galaxy walls and everything. Slade: Yes! Ash: I forget… Slade: Beautiful. Ash: That’s very similar to what I saw in this regression when I experienced my death and went into that place. I was standing there and I was able to look down at the floor into this sort of like pool and see myself on my deathbed and there were these three beings that were there. They were very tall and I kind of got the feeling that that was sort of like my counsel. And I was standing in front of them and we were reviewing that life. And the imagery just really stuck with me and when I saw that part of the OA, I was like, “Ohmygod! That’s it!” Slade: It’s interesting that you pulled that out because that is the most impactful memorable image to me, and there are a lot of them, in that show actually. There’s some amazing stuff. I mean, even the crash sequence on the bridge when the car goes into the water and all that stuff. I mean, there’s so many scenes that are shot in very unique ways but you’re right. That part where she crawls up into the room where the walls are made out of stars and… there’s something about that that – I welled up emotionally, like, you know, felt very teary watching that. Even from the first time you see it and you’re not really sure in the context of the story, you know, what may be happening or whatever, but just as an image, that tweaked my mind. That was an Inception-kind of feeling for me, watching that. It was very cool. Awesome. So, let me ask you this. Because it’s all fun and it’s very interesting and it’s kind of good story telling. How do you think we can use these stories to make a difference in our lives now? What kind of result do you see when you work with someone around this dream stuff? What can someone expect to improve I guess about their current situation? Ash: The sky’s the limit. It all really just depends on what your intention is and what you want out of it. You know. It’s a tool like anything else. It’s like using tarot cards. It’s like using a pendulum or going to get a psychic reading. It’s all - whatever information you uncover is going to help you in whatever it is that you’re attempting to move forward with. I think it’s particularly good when you’re working with blocked emotional energy from be it past lives, current lives, whatever. Your dreams are – they’re your window to your own subconscious mind. They’re constantly reflecting yourself back to you. The parts of yourself that you are unaware of or that are unknown to you. And in some ways, it’s very much shadow work. Slade: Yes. Ash: And the whole purpose of it is to help us integrate more and more of that shadow self until we become whole. Consciously whole, I should say. Slade: There are a couple takeaways for me from this conversation with you that really change my perspective on a few things. I never really thought about dreams as being a psychic tool. I don’t know what I – I had it in a different category entirely. Like, maybe psychic ability is like a channel and then dreams are a channel, or something like that. But you’re right. When I work with people around the concept of tools, I use that word very loosely to describe anything from a modality to a technique to a divination art to, you know, a subject that you might study or healing practice that you take on. So I’ve never really thought about, oh, dreams just need to be another one of those tools to pull from. And the other thing is this idea that you sort of - sums it up when you said, “It’s essentially a kind of shadow work.” But the idea that one of the reasons why these dreams are important is not so much the surface layer of the visuals and the detail and the costumes and all that kind of stuff. But this idea that whether it is actually a memory of a past life or it is your brain presenting your own stuff within that story, it’s still useful for the theme that’s at the bottom. You know what I mean? Ash: Right. Slade: Like whatever the theme is that’s trying to be communicated to you. So that’s really cool. Thank you, for that. I will go away pondering and thinking about this whole topic differently because of that. And, you know, I think that actually might give me a shift around my whole attitude about dreams, because I’m kind of – I’m a bad dreamer, so maybe I sleep deeper than I thought or whatever it might be. But I, you know, it’s weird when you have an attitude like, “Oh, I’m not good at that so I’m not going to do it,” and I have a little bit of that prejudice against this topic. Ash: Um hmm. Slade: So I’m interested to see how that’s going to impact me. Because you’re right, it will change my intention when I lay down to go to sleep, just having that shift and kind of opening up to the possibility of that. So it’s very cool. Thank you for doing that. Just to make sure that we get an invitation from you, where should people go if they want to start working with you or if they want to download some of your free resources. Tell us where to go. Ash Go to my website at https://inmysacredspace.com/ and basically you can navigate to just about anywhere on my site from the home page. I, like I said, I do readings, I do – and I wouldn’t necessarily call it a “reading”. I work much more in the realm of personal development. And so, you can come to me. I’m not going to predict your future for you. I’m not going to tell you if and when your ex is coming back to you. What I will tell you is what it is that is underneath the surface that is keeping you from having meaningful relationships. And I’ll help you pull that forward and then we can work through that. You know, I’m much more geared toward helping you overcome these things than just telling you what to do or what to think or what to see. Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. You don’t have to use the purple button on your iPhone — some people don’t like that app. My personal favorite podcast app is Overcast. So, check that one out. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and If you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. So take a moment to think about your issue—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud—I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…NOW 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Right now, your thoughts may not be as logical and factual and true as you’d like to think. Emotions are running the show. But remember, you are not necessarily your feelings; you are the one experiencing them. To get some perspective or relief, you can zoom out and observe them from a distance. Emotions are about the sacred element water. And water is about fluidity. So, lose your rigidity. Relax your self-imposed rules. See where the water wants to carry you and allow change to happen with as little resistance as possible. And I’ll talk to you later.

I'm sharing a recent phenomena I've been experiencing — I dream that I'm other people. Like, I'm tuning in to other people's lives when I'm sleeping. This episode has a full text transcript below. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW "You Are God; Act LIke It" Ash Riley HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT Hey, thanks for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. I’m your host Slade Roberson. For eleven years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I want to share some creepy dream possession experiences I’ve been having. And, of course, as always, I have an oracle segment at the end. So be thinking about a question or a concern you have. Hold it in your mind, and I’ll come back on at the end of the show, after the final links and credits, and leave you with an extra channeled message… BUT BEFORE I FORGET It’s August 1, 2017 as I record this and over the weekend the ‘Shift Your Spirits’ podcast did indeed cross 10,000 downloads. It's cool to stop and think that what you are doing right now has happened over 10,000 times in just the last four months. That’s kind of mind boggling. This double new moon in Leo eclipse month Thing seems to be really messing with me. I am a Leo, so, I heard, you know, that it’s especially difficult for Leos. I am struggling with my writing at the moment. I’m a working writer. I have been for over a decade. I write specific hours every day. It’s a job. It has taken me by surprise to be struggling with my process, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. And I don’t want to be someone who complains and feels no joy in the thing that I do every day. That I identify as my purpose and who I am. So, you know, that’s just not happening. That’s not an option. So, I have decided to back off a little and take some time and energy to redecorate and reorganize my study. I spend way too much of my life working and creating and communicating from a room that’s disorganized and a little depressing and just crammed with random stuff. It’s one of those ugly spare rooms many of us have that became my workspace by default. It just hasn’t been shown the love and the intention, and I’m hoping that since I’m struggling with an internal process, the solution may be to shift the physical external environment to better represent how I want to feel on the inside. You’ve probably heard the How to F up Your Ability to Manifest episode — it’s the most downloaded episode of this show ever — so you’ll know that one of my rules is: if you want to state a complaint about how horrible your life is, you must attach a possible solution. So that’s how I’m going to handle this. I’ll keep you posted. Also, another big milestone. August 1st is also my blog’s birthday. Eleven years ago today, I sat right here in this very spot, in a completely different life, and I posted my first post: “You are God; Act Like It.” And with that one message released into the collective, my life began to change drastically. For the better. And I became this person that you know now. I want to take a moment to shout out to Scott Vaughn, who is my newest supporter on Patreon. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate all of you who have pledged your support. It demonstrates that you are enjoying the show and want it to continue. That’s very encouraging to me. You too can support my time in producing the show and the young woman who is creating our transcripts by pledging on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes, where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. So if you want to find out how you can become a patron, especially if you would like the transcription to continue, please go to patreon.com/shiftyourspirits. I’m going to cut this introduction here. This episode is a little bit longer than the others. Maybe you will like that; or maybe you want me to keep them short. You can write and tell me how you feel about the show length. But for now, I want to share some personal experiences with you about my dreams. I don't dream very much, you know. Like, most of you probably have stress dreams about your everyday life or you have these dreams that are very whimsical and full of symbolic wacky stuff that doesn’t make much sense. And, you know, the kind of thing that you explain to somebody the next day and tell them this cool story about, “Ohmygod I had this dream last night and it was really weird and this thing happened and this other thing happened” and, you know, being on the outside of that looking in, I am always a little bit annoyed by people who tell you long drawn out blow-by-blow dream stories unless it’s like about you or there’s some really significant punch line and they’re pretty good at telling stories. But to people who kind of dump this sort of old school psychiatrist dream info dump analysis scenario on you, like on your lunch break or whatever, that always has annoyed me and I wonder if one of the reasons why I’m annoyed by it is because I’m a little jealous. I’m envious. It doesn’t really happen to me. Of course, there are exceptions and I’m speaking in really general terms, but I don’t really dream. And when I say that, put an asterisk there and a footnote, what I mean by “I don’t dream much” is – either I’m not aware that I’m dreaming when it’s happening, or I don’t remember it. I don’t have any kind of recall about it later or sense that it happened. I am a light sleeper, meaning, you know, I’ll wake up really easily if someone is making a noise or something like that. I’m very noise-averse. I do almost sensory deprivation when I sleep. I wear earplugs. I wear a visual mask, you know, a little velvet mask over my eyes to block light. And I like white noise, but even that has gotten to the point where that bothers me as well. So – but, I will say this – I am a very regular sleeper. I sleep the exact same number of hours. Every night I go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time, seven days a week. My internal clock is like, within ten minutes. I rarely use an alarm clock. I wake up at the same time just automatically and, once I’m awake, I’m awake. And I get up. Like, I don’t really like to be in bed, but, you know, just that’s to kind of give you some context about where I’m coming from. I’m not an insomniac or, you know, I don’t have any issues around sleep really at all other than I’m very protective of it. But I am sort of jealous of people who have daily symbolic sort of stream-of-consciousness films happening in their interior that they can get up the next day and think about. And obviously, you know, I have exceptions to this. I recently mentioned on one of the episodes of this show when I was talking about signs and synchronicities, when all that was happening, I did actually have this really super symbolic, very-aware-of-it-when-I-woke-up dream about the giant snail hovering in the sky. And I was able to look that up. But, you know, I don’t really have those kind of dreams where you can look it up when you wake up. And you know, I would like to have that sort of dream life because I feel like it’s one of these tools within the kind of intuitive realm where it’s a whole channel that I don’t have. I’m like somebody who doesn’t have cable or doesn’t have Netflix or something. I’m like, missing this whole psychological intuitive creative platform. I just don’t have access to it, so, I don’t know. There’s different theories about this. I had one person tell me that maybe because of the kind of work that I do, that I’ve become used to slipping in and out of certain kinds of consciousness states in my daily waking life that other people don’t access. And it’s one of the reasons why people want to meditate more or, you know, do sort of mindfulness activities and that I actually have incorporated that so much into my sort of work life that maybe there’s something that other people don’t get that they only get when they dream, and so, maybe that’s been sort of messed up in some way, or, not messed up, I don’t want to say there’s anything wrong with me. I just think it’s different. Or, it could be – I don’t know… I don’t know. If you have a theory, you can write and tell me. If you have some kind of feeling about it. But anyway, I’m not that stressed about it. I have kind of given up thinking about it. But I do feel a little bit apologetic about the fact that I don’t write about dreams and I don’t do a lot of dream analysis conversations and it doesn’t come up a lot in readings. If people approach me about that subject, or, you know, I get like requests to write certain article topics, or to do shows about certain topics. And that might be one of those areas that people are like, “Oh, do something about dream analysis or dream symbolism,” and people often write in asking for me to do sessions that are sort of launched or prompted by analysing dreams that they’ve had and wanting to know what they mean. And so I feel like it’s one of those areas that I just don’t have access to. I don’t think we all have to do everything. There’s a few things I don’t do. I don’t do mediumship, I don’t do dreamwork, and I don’t do a lot of past lives stuff. And so, I’m a little disappointing in those areas if you’re hoping to get a lot from me. But, the good news is – one of the reasons why I wanted to record this episode and tell you about some dream stuff that’s happening with me that is a little bit fantastical and interesting is because I’ve had it on my brain. I’m getting ready to interview someone for this show, Ash Riley, actually, and she and I have done a little bit of pre-conversation about where we want to take the conversation that would be interesting for you guys, and she mentioned dreamwork. And how that is something that she’s focusing on a lot right now, and I thought, “Cool! This is my opportunity to bring that to you guys through someone else’s expertise if not mine.” But, so I’m going to interview Ash and likely you’re listening to this either right before the episode with her or right after. I’ll put them somewhere close together because they came together in my mind in creating them. So, anyway, I wanted – and I got into the conversation actually a little bit with Ash in Messenger and we were texting back and forth and I was telling her about, you know, this - what I’m telling you right now – that I don’t dream, except, I have some really cool exceptions. But, I do want to say this. You know, as an adult, I rarely, rarely, almost never have nightmares. Or bad dreams. Like, ever. That’s just not a part of something that I experience and so I’m very thankful for that. But at the same time, I also don’t have very many cool like “Inception-like” surrealist fantasy dreams either. So, I don’t really have anything in either extreme too much. But – I used to dream – I used to have bad dreams a lot when I was a little kid. Mostly about my brother. I would have a lot of fearful dreams about him because he was very accident-prone. He was kind of a disaster kid and I was usually the one that was with him when the 911 would go down, you know, whether or not we were out playing somewhere or whatever. So, I had a lot of anxiety about him getting hurt and me having to rescue him. So, of course, you know, I had dreams about that a lot. The other thing that I remember from childhood about dreams was, when I was a little kid, I took books to bed. I don’t remember ever having an interest in stuffed animals, but books to me had a kind of a quality that maybe other people project onto their stuffed animals, and I think books kind of had like these little spirit animal souls to them or something. I also remember very distinctly throughout my entire life from the earliest memories that I have, feeling like, if I read just before falling asleep, which I do religiously, it’s part of how I do fall asleep, if I read while I’m falling asleep and I have a book in my presence in my bed with me, that there’s a really good chance that I can slip into the world of the book through my dreams. And you know, like I always want this to happen now about my own novels. I’m always working on fiction somewhere over in another corner of my life, and one of the things I’ve noticed is, it tends to be the very last thing that I think about when I’m falling asleep. Because I’ll be reading someone else’s fiction up to the point that I’ve become sleepy, and then as I kind of turn out the light and put my book away and take my glasses off and rearrange the pillows and then kind of go in for that last little bit of wakefulness before I sleep, I will think about my own books and, you know, the scenes that are coming up that I have to write, and something that I am worrying about or trying to figure out, trying to make sense of. And so, I did have this one really cool experience. Only one time have I ever dreamed my way into one of my own books, and I kind of think that deep down, this is what I’m hoping will happen when I’m thinking about – I’m thinking – okay well maybe I’ll fall asleep and I’ll fall into my dream world and I will figure something out about – like, the book will happen for me like a movie and then I can just get up tomorrow and be like, “Oh that was amazing I’m going to write that.” So it only happened to me one time. When I was working on the novel, HAVENWOOD, which is a historical fantasy. There is a sort-of plantation in this – in the main character’s world. She owns a farm and there is a long section in the book where she’s actually working in the fields with her workers, you know, as one of them. And I did have this really amazing dream that was a fly-over drone shot of the scene of her working in the fields and this line of – actually they’re elves who work for her, so that was really cool. And I remember it being very lucid and as I was kind of hovering over them, I was like, “Ohmygod they are my elves; they look amazing!” It was like, the first time that anyone had ever sort of CGI-movie-effect shown me my own imagination in a way that felt like I was an audience for it. And it’s kind of hard to describe when you tell someone like, “I know what these creatures look like, and I can describe them, but I also don’t see them the way that you see something on screen in a movie.” And so even if, you know, if someone ever were to make a movie or something that I’d written, I would have the same experience anyone else has with like, seeing it for the first time, adapted in some kind of visual way. So anyway, these are the kind of things I think about around dreaming. But - so obviously there are a few cool exceptions. So when I say “I don’t dream,” there’s a “…” but, you know, once in awhile, I have these kind of cool, you know, sort of scenarios happen. And the reason why I wanted to talk about this on this episode, and the point, which I do have and I am getting to, is lately I’ve started to dream just a little bit more frequently, and by that I want to say, quantify that as sort of here and there. Maybe a few times a month? And this has been, let’s say, in the last six months or so. My dreams are not sort of freaky versions of my life. They’re actually very normal dreams about other people’s lives. Like, this episode is about the fact that I have a theory I’m beginning to believe that I dream that I’m other people. And that these people are probably real, like they exist somewhere out there in the world and that I am picking up on them or walking into their life in some way. I’ve heard people say that, you know, astral travellers are, you know, or – no, I know what I’ve heard. The theory that ghosts might actually be people who are astral travelling and one of the reasons ghosts always appear to be in nightgowns and stuff is because they’re sleeping. They’re sleeping people who are astral projecting from, you know, another part of the world or whatever. I don’t even know where I heard that but it’s an interesting idea. It would make a cool movie. But, so, I’ve been having these dreams that really make me think: okay, wait a minute. I think something’s actually going on here. And I want to tell you one that I had a few months ago that really freaked me out. And it was so exceptional that I also told a friend of mine about it and it became like, a whole thing and it went down in my notebook and I’m just now getting around to talking about it to you guys. But, a few months ago I had a dream about a waitress, and – actually I should say, I had a dream that I was a waitress. And I knew lots of circumstances about my life. I knew that, you know, I was working in some kind of chain restaurant. It felt like an Applebys or like an Outback steakhouse or something like that. I was a little bit older, you know, maybe in my late 20s, like, at an age when people go back to school. And I had worked at, sort of cooler places before as a waitress and I was sort of not happy about working in this sort of chain environment because I didn’t feel like the tips were as good, and I was just generally kind of depressed about it. And I was in nursing school. I’d gone back to school and I had decided I was going to go into nursing, and I was probably having some kind of like, sad-on-return you know late 20s, early 30s kind of life crisis because I remember very distinctly feeling this sense of ‘ennui’ about this shift at Applebys or whatever. And, also, knowing that I was doing this because I was in nursing school and I wasn’t really excited about the nursing school thing either. I was kind of going through the motions and I was depressed. So, anyway, there’s this guy that I’m waiting on and, at one of my tables, and he’s a little creepy. He, he’s not creepy in a sleazy kind of way, like looks like a Wanted poster or anything like that. He was actually kind of nice and clean-cut looking but he was a little too, like, dead in the eyes, even though he was smiley and he was flirting, not in a gross, like super obnoxious way, but he was just overly friendly and leering and he just, you know, he just creeped me out. And I was really anxious to sort of get rid of him and give him his check and send him on his way. And it wasn’t really busy. It was like an early shift before, you know, a lot of dinner crowd. There was like, one little family and, you know, then this guy was by himself. Anyway, long story short. He was kind of rattling me to the point where I just didn’t really want to go back to his table and I finally had dropped his bill and so I went to this other waitress and I told her what was going on and I described the way he was making me feel and everything, and she said, “Well, I’ll watch the table and I’ll run his card or whatever. Why don’t you just, you know, like go take a break, go to the bathroom or something. Just don’t even bother interacting with him and maybe he’ll be gone by the time you get back.” And so, I was like, “Yeah, cool.” And I went to the bathroom. And here’s where the part where it really freaks me out. I always have a sense when I’m having these dreams that I’m other people – I’m in their body so I’m not seeing myself from outside the body but I do have moments where I look down and I notice, like, “Oh, I have a girl’s hands” or “I have - I’m a different skin color” or something like that. So I’ve seen my clothes, I see things sort of out of my peripheral vision. And, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this before, but I’ve never ever had a dream where I was looking in a mirror. I’ve just – I can’t think of any instance where that’s ever happened. So I go in this bathroom, and at that moment I realize that I’m lucid dreaming. I’m aware that I’m the dreamer even as I’m aware that I am this girl. And I know as she’s walking towards the mirror I’m thinking, “Ohmygod, I’m going to need to see what she looks like.” And I’m sort of waiting for that moment when her eyes will pan up and make contact in the mirror and I will get to see what she looks like. And there’s a sense of nervousness about it because I’m kind of thinking, wait a minute, I can’t see myself in a dream and see another face looking at me. This is going to be really weird. And as she gets close to the mirror and looks up, it actually feels painful to me, like a migraine kind of pain, or actually it felt a lot like when your eyes are super dilated from being to the eye doctor. I remember one time they just really dilated the crap out of my eyes, like to the point where it was almost painful. And it was like that kind of feeling. And like this feeling like, please don’t make me look at myself, like I can’t do this, and thinking, surely there’s going to be a cutaway. Something’s going to happen and break this moment. I’m not actually going to look at myself in the mirror and see someone else looking back, and I did. I distinctly saw – and I was like, squinting, it was like the light hurt and it hurt to see this face looking back at me, but I saw who I was very distinctly. I had blond hair, and you know, like I said, I was sort of in my late 20s, and relatively attractive young woman. Sort of depressed looking, you know, kind of tired-like. She hadn’t really gone to much trouble to sort of make herself – you know how you just sort of go through the motions of what’s acceptable for you to look like when you go to work and you’re not feeling it, you know? She looked, sort of, harassed and kind of tired and – but I saw her distinctly and the whole time I’m thinking, “Ohmygod, I am someone else. I’m dreaming I’m someone else’s life.” So at that point I sort of slip away from the lucid part and go back into her a little bit. And I think there was a little bit of a time jump in the dream, you know, as dreams do. It sort of cuts like a television show, and I’m finally off work and I’m leaving and I’m walking outside and I’m somewhere desert. This is a desert environment I would say most likely Arizona, and the reason why I thought it was Arizona because that’s the one kind of state in the southwest that I’ve been to that looks like what this looked like. But, you know, we’ve all seen a lot of tv and so we know what that part of the country looks like and it’s definitely that part of the country. But I am getting into my car and I’m, you know, going home or whatever. It’s kind of not super late in the evening, but you know it is night time. The sky has a kind of glow to it. It’s more lit up than I think it would be in Tennessee, which is where I live right now, probably because of the flatness of the geography or something. So I’m noting all these things as the dream is happening to me and I get in my car and I start driving, I want to say north. And there’s really nothing once I start driving away from this sort of little area off the highway where there’s like, you know, restaurants and convenient stores and you know hotels and all that kind of stuff that there is off any interstate in the United States. I’m sort of driving away from that, going towards an area that looks more sparsely populated and I get a few miles down the road and I run out of gas. My car is like sputtering and I pull over and I’m thinking, “This is impossible. I distinctly remember getting gas, you know, maybe two days ago max.” There – and I feel this really weird panic because my first thought is like, all the gas has drained out of my car, like, how is this possible? Like it’s gone somewhere. Somebody took my gas or else it’s been – some hose or something somewhere’s come undone and all the gas has spilled out of my car. And that was my sense. My sense was not like, what’s wrong with the car or, you know, oh crap I ran out of gas. You know like it was something I could accept. I knew she knew that something was like really really wrong with this scenario, and I get out of the car and I’m thinking, ohmygod, like, do I keep walking home or do I try to walk back to sort of civilization? I think I was sort of somewhere kind of halfway in between and it was going to be potentially a hike either way and I’m thinking, oh but I don’t want to leave my car on the side of the road and all this kind of stuff is going through my head. Someone pulls over to help me and it’s the guy – the creepy guy from the restaurant, and I’m thinking, oh crap, you’ve got to be kidding me, like, I definitely – it made all the hairs kind of stand up on my arms and on the back of my neck and I was getting like a creeped out feeling but more than anything it was a little bit annoyed feeling, like, ugh, here he is, and he’s like, smiling and you can tell he’s just so thrilled to be able to help me in this scenario. And he has this whole excuse to interact with me again and… So, the thing is though, he’s trying to convince me – he’s being very sweet and very nice and very low key. He’s like, “Listen, you know, obviously I can take you back. We can get some gas. I have a gas can or I can take you back and you can call someone.” He’s not being super obnoxious about it but he is trying to convince me, like, you know, like, just get in the car and let me take you with me. And I’m kind of, okay, you know, convinced, I’m thinking I’m being overly paranoid. If I hadn’t had seen this guy earlier in the evening and had this interaction with him, I probably wouldn’t feel afraid. But it’s something about the synchronicity of it being him was bothering me a little bit, but I gave in to it. And I got in the car, and he’s being really chatty and really friendly like he was in the restaurant, but he’s not driving back towards town. He’s driving out away in the direction that I was originally going but he’s going on and I’m like, okay wait a minute, trying to figure out a way to kind of say, wait a minute weren’t you going to go the other direction, without sounding panicked, trying to sound nonchalant about it. I look over – I kind of glance over at him. I’m trying not to look at him too much or whatever. I’m sort of trying to stare ahead and act like, oh crap what’s going on I gotta get myself out of this situation. And I glance over and he has his hand on his lap, kind of inside his thighs, and there’s a gun in his hand. And he has it laying there. In his lap. For me to see. At that moment, the fear drove me out of this woman’s body and out of this dream. I wake up and I’m like, ohmygod, that was – that’s a person. Something really happened to this person and I’m dreaming it. And I don’t know if it happened at the moment that I was dreaming it or if it’s something, you know, I mean not to toot my own horn or anything, but one of the things that I don’t do is like, you know, police detective psychic work where I find missing people or something like that. I’ve never had that kind of experience and the first thing that crossed my mind was, what if this is a straight up like medium, you know the tv show kind of scenario, where I’m picking up on some kind of criminal information that’s very valuable and real? And that was my first thought. So it’s Sunday morning when I wake up and I always go to breakfast with my friend Tina every Sunday morning. And Tina is a friend of mine I mention often because she’s very much into paranormal investigation and she has a lot of supernatural sort of experience happen in her house a lot. And so we ended up – we always end up talking about this stuff, especially if something happened during the week and she often has, you know, little creepy things happen to her that she loves to tell me about, and so, I, of course, was like telling her this whole story just as I’m telling it to you guys, and she immediately goes into – this is a real thing, this is really happening, you need to look this up, is there some way we can Google for this woman? Is there some kind of missing persons thing? So we’re sitting there in the restaurant where we have breakfast and on the smartphone looking for missing persons listings for Arizona. You know, that’s kind of the first thing we start with. And so I really quickly found out that there are actually Missing Persons groups on Facebook and they’re organized by state. And so, Tina’s like, let’s scroll through here and see if you see this person. Would you know her if you saw her? And I said, you know what? I would absolutely know her if I see her. I saw her in the mirror. If I see her face, I will recognise her. So I’m scrolling through there and I’m really expecting that I’m going to see a picture of this woman and be like, ohmygod it’s her, you know. And I’m scrolling through there and the thing that I was really struck by was how no one even came close to looking like this woman. None of the listings were for anybody that I’d even think, ooo could that be her? Maybe that’s her? Nothing was even close, you know. It was like a child or, you know, an elderly woman who was, you know, Latino just completely not anything that I was anticipating seeing, and I think my fear in this moment was, okay what if there’s a whole bunch of people that are kind of close to this woman’s description and I’m going to have a hard time deciding, could that be her could that not be her? But I have to tell you guys, I spent, you know, that whole day and then it started to really bother me and haunt me the more that I couldn’t find, you know, a record of her in some way, the more stressed I got about it and the more I started to look and go into other states’ groups and look in New Mexico and look in, you know, Utah and just anywhere that I thought might have that landscape, just thinking, you know, the synchronicity of this is too powerful for me to not follow through on it. It has to mean something. I couldn’t find her. I never found her and the thing is, I never even found anything close. It was a total bust. And I thought, alright, well, spirits, if this is your way of giving me some police detective psychic kind, you know, of bit of information, this is horrible because I can’t do anything with it. I don’t even – I can’t even be the crazy person that randomly calls a police station and reports something. And I’ve heard that, you know, psychics call in and tell - report things to detectives all the time. I didn’t even really – like, who would I call to do that? Even if I wanted to just make some kind of random, like, put-it-out-there sort of phone call. But anyway, I – this one has really stuck with me as being significant partly because of the fact that I saw her. And secondly because part of me believes that the reason why I could’ve been picking up on it is because it was happening at that moment and that that could’ve explained why it wasn’t a story yet, posted on a website. You know, it could’ve been some time later. I don’t know. Even as I’m telling you this, I’m feeling like maybe I need to go back and look again. Now it could be this missing persons cold case or something. But, so – my whole thing is: why would I dream this? Why would I dream something so specific and about another person to this degree? I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me. I know what it feels like to have a normal dream where I’m like working and it’s tedious and it’s weird and doesn’t make sense when I wake up but you know there it is. So since having this experience, I also have had a few other examples and they’re not anything that interesting or significant. They’re, like I said, I don’t have freaky dreams about my own life. I kind of have these normal dreams about other people’s lives and so, just to try to pull up a couple of examples because I usually don’t even remember them for very long after I have them. But I recently dreamt that I was in Amsterdam and I was some kind of architecture or interior design person and I was at some kind of conference in Amsterdam and I was out having drinks with other people in my field and we were all speaking German and I don’t know if, like, I felt like German was not my language necessarily, but for some reason, either a lot of the other people at the table were German. There was some reason why we were speaking German and I recognize that I was speaking German because it’s a language that I’ve taken a little bit of. And then, at one point, you know, in this bar I run into this guy from high school. Which, I don’t even think that’s the right term because I think we’re all Europeans in this dream and I don’t think they call it high school. But, I ran into this guy who knew me from my home, who was a teenager and – I’m a man in this dream but I’m like, a completely different age and I’m from somewhere I want to say, like, Hungary, maybe? And this guy recognizes me from school and I remember being sort of annoyed that I had to talk to him and do that whole like, ohmygod, you know, like how are you, it’s been ten years, and you know that whole thing. And he wasn’t somebody that I really liked very much or wanted to have that whole pissing contest with. He was kind of a douche bag and obviously trying to impress me. The one thing that I noticed as I’m dreaming it is that we switched languages. He was speaking to me in another language and I don’t really recognize this language. It definitely sounded Slavic to my ear. And I’ve studied German and Russian and there were a lot of eastern European languages that sound vaguely similar to Russian, so I knew it was a Slavic tongue from one of the smaller sort of eastern European countries. And that that was my native tongue. That was my first language and there was a sense of relief and flow about that language. In my mind, as the lucid dreamer, I know what’s being said. I sort of just claircognizantly understand what’s being said even as I can hear that this is a foreign language that I don’t speak. So that was just like a dream. You know, that I had one month. And then maybe the month after that, I had another dream that I was staying at this hotel with a friend of mine who was like, a girl that worked with me and I know this sounds really cheesy, but I think we were models and we were possibly like, British. We were European and I think we were speaking English but we were in Tokyo. We’re in Japan and we’re in this really nice fancy hotel that we’ve been put up in as part of a job. And we’ve been out partying and apparently maybe our job there is over and we’re supposed to check out of the hotel and we’re actually overstaying. You know, it’s like you have to check out by a certain time and we are literally too wasted and hungover and just rode hard to get it together and you know pack and all this stuff. And I remember laying there, just, ugh, feeling horrible and my friend is kind of like chattering away and I’m just waiting for there to be a knock at the door and for the hotel management to come and throw us out and I’m thinking, I’ve got to convince her we need to pull it together and get out of here because they’re going to throw us out. And… Yeah, so that dream doesn’t really lead anywhere either but those are just the two that I can think of in this moment as I’m recording that show you how I have these really specific dreams and I’m other people in really specific places and I know a lot of details about their lives and these are not dreams about me. And they’re not dreams from a past life or something like that. They’re just kind of like I’m tuning in to someone else. Like I’m just wandering around the globe in my sleep, slipping into someone’s dream life in some way. And here’s something really weird – I have a friend who’s a long-time friend of mine. We worked together in a metaphysical bookstore so we’ve had lots of conversations about metaphysical things. And she’s a dreamer. She’s a big-time dreamer. And she will regularly, maybe once a year, something like that, she’ll send me a message on Facebook and say, “You were in my dream last night and we hung out and had coffee and we talked about blahblahblah and it was really cool to see you.” And it’s kind of half in jest, but to her, like she says she really does feel like I visited her in some way. And I’m thinking, well that’s cool because I don’t really have that experience at all. But if you have it, that’s fine. So it’s kind of weird because it’s been this ongoing sort of joke, at least with her, that I travel around and visit her in my sleep and I’m thinking, what if I do that in some other kind of way? What if this is like an intuitive channel that maybe other people have this experience. Like, I know if you’re listening to this, and you’ve had this experience, I’m going to hear from you and I want to. I want you to email me and tell me. You don’t have to tell me like, your whole dream or whatever. Just tell me if this happens to you at all and what you think is going on here. Because my feeling from having been told by a psychotherapist that there may be something different with the way that I’m compartmentalizing different levels of consciousness and how I use them. That there may be some things that I do when I’m awake that I then don’t do when I’m asleep. And if so, maybe that allows me to isolate this thing that happens to all of us, like think about it. Maybe in the midst of your super-populous dream life, because you’re one of those people who has, you know, these colourful wacky dreams every night of your life, and you have a whole variety of stress dreams, and running from people dreams, and you know, sex dreams and whatever it might be. You also somewhere in that mix, you might be slipping into these dreams that you’re other people, and maybe you’re not even really aware of it. Maybe you think it’s just - you’re you. But think about it. And I’m going to ask Ash about it. See what she says. When she’s on the show, because I’ll definitely going to talk to her about dream stuff. So I feel like this will come up. And I’ll try not to re-tell the whole story because that’ll be really irritating. Maybe I’ll send her this before we speak or something like that. But anyway, yeah, just a theory. Just a thought. Just a weird little thing that I wanted to share with you guys because I think about sharing it all the time. And I’m like, where do you start with this subject. And so I want to say, just as a P. S. that I always feel like – I felt the same way about the episode that I did about signs because you have a lifetime of dreaming. You have a lifetime of signs and synchronicities, so where do you go in and start a conversation about that? So my feeling is, I just kind of have to hit record, and plop down and tell you whatever comes up. You know, what’s most on the surface of my mind, so, this doesn’t really represent the best examples ever, other than the weird story about seeing my own face and the dream and being someone else. That was the reason why I picked that story for sure. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget that dream. But, yeah. Write me. Tell me. If I’m on to something here, or if you’ve had this experience, I’d love to hear from you. Alright, I’ll shut up now. Talk to you later. Thanks again for listening to the Shift Your Spirits podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. You don’t have to use the purple button on your iPhone — some people don’t like that app. My personal favorite podcast app is Overcast. So, check that one out. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the Attunement at automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or a concern you may have. And this week, when I looked at the very first ‘Shift Your Spirits’ post from August 1, 2006, I realized it was an oracle message. It spoke to me that way, across the years. So I’m thinking it will speak to you as well. So take a moment to think about your own issue—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud—I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…NOW 1…2…3…4 MESSAGE Your creativity and your divinity are one and the same. You most resemble God, the Creator — the ultimate, all-encompassing, whatever-you-want-to-call-it expression of All That Is — when you are co-creating your unique reality. Don’t get stuck on the word “creative” and think I’m only talking about “art.” Think bigger, more generally. If you think you don’t create, you’re wrong. You are creating your reality each and every moment. It’s inevitable and unavoidable. Creativity is inherent. It’s eminent. In Genesis, God literally assigned Adam [man, human beings] a role in Creation: to name everything. That’s our job — to continually explore and define all of reality. Reality is information. The ultimate goal of information is to saturate all creation. Thoughts are tools; words are their handles. What words are you wielding? Do they reflect how you want to feel? I’ll talk to you later.

I'm publicly sharing one of the exclusive Q&A episodes recorded for my Patreon supporters, so you can hear a sample of the bonus content. This episode answers a question from the listeners about "Discovering Your Life Purpose." The Q&A content for patrons of the show is shaping up to be somewhere between personal mini-readings and universal questions people have about spirituality and personal development. This episode has a full text transcript below. MENTIONED IN THE SHOW "How Badly Do You Want It?" Chani Nicholas Free Will Astrology Colette Baron-Reid Wisdom of Avalon Oracle HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits TRANSCRIPT Hey, thanks for listening to the ‘Shift Your Spirits’ podcast. I’m your host, Slade Roberson. For eleven years now, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today I am talking about life purpose. Of course, as always, I have an oracle segment at the end of the show. So be thinking about a question or concern you have, hold it in your mind and I’ll come back on at the end after the final links and credits and leave you with an extra message. But before I forget, I wanted to mention a few milestones that are happening right now. It is Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 as I record this. My birthday was Sunday, July 23rd and I am the first day of Leo. Hey to all the other Leos out there. I should’ve told you last week so you could’ve, you know, sent me a birthday message in time, but I, you know, sometimes the way I record these episodes and when they actually go live is not so timely. I also like to make, you know, this content as evergreen as possible, but I have heard from some of you that you do enjoy it when I tell you a little bit about what’s going on in my life, currently, and those of you who keep up and listen to each episode as they come out will probably appreciate this a little bit more, but, who knows. It might be interesting to look back someday if I ever listen to an archive episode and remember, you know, where I was at the time and place that I created the episode. Anyway, so the reason why this is significant other than this being my birthday, it was also a new moon in Leo. And it’s one of two new moons that are occurring in Leo, which is very unusual, from what I hear. And it’s also the start of an eclipse season. We’re going to have an eclipse coming up here in August. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. If you want to know the exact dates of all this stuff, like the new moon in leo, and when the eclipse happens and what sign it’s in, all that stuff, be sure and Google it for exact information. I don’t go really deep with a lot of astrology because that would be entirely its own podcast, and there are people, greater minds than me, speaking about astrology. Incidentally, I really like Chani Nicholas, as far as an astrologer that I follow and read, and Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology always makes me happy. I’ll try to remember to go back and put those in the show notes for you so you can check them out. But, you know, just to, kind of, bullet down for you as you’re thinking about, what does this all mean for me right now, you know. If you’re listening to the archives in the future, I want you to think about the fact that it doesn’t mean that it’s not relevant. Because there’s always something significant about when a message comes to you. And that can happen out of time, so just, you know, think about what I’m saying here about what this means and apply that to wherever you are at this time when you’re listening to this. This phenomenon, or this energy that’s moving through right now, from the best that I can tell, is really about identity and issues of, you know, shedding your skin and transforming in some way, and so, everything that I’m reading, it kind of feels disruptive and major and it’s revolving around big questions, like, who am I in the world, and, you know, what am I doing, and what is my role? And I know it felt a little bit more intense to me leading up to the new moon, whereas the new moon feels like it kind of gave new energy to this question. So it went, for me, from feeling like a crisis of “oh my god what am I doing with my life” to more of a sense of “okay, you know what, this is who I am, this is what I really need to kind of man up here and let go of, and here are some things that, you know, aren’t working for me as much anymore. And, my theory is that when you hear something like this, you know, whether you believe in the astrology or maybe you believe in the synchronicity of what I’m talking about and how it applies to what you’re going through right now. Whenever you get these messages, I think it’s important – there’s a part of you that - flash - instantly knows, what it’s talking about, right? There’s a part of you that’s like, ohmygod, that’s talking about my job, or, you know, whatever it might be. Or “ohmygod, they’re talking about that project that I really secretly want to do.” And when you have that sense of knowing, like, “Ooooo I know what this is talking to me about”, I think you need to willfully take that, drag it out into the light, and deal with it as purposefully as possible. Because when you don’t, what tends to happen is, it kind of – you get dragged into it and it kind of tends to happen TO you, and you have less control over it. The circumstances are usually not as empowering as well. So, when you know you’re like, facing some kind of change and you have a glimpse into, sigh this is what I need to do. Do it. Just make it happen. Don’t wait for it to happen to you. That’s my philosophy. And, as always, you know, it is a choice. So I don’t know. I like to be the one who gets to make the choice, if at all possible. There’s a lot of responsibility in controlling something, but I do believe that, you know, stuff happens and you’re going to have to go through stuff, and it’s just so much easier to do it like a leader, you know. Just to go in and make something happen, even when it’s difficult. So, that’s kind of my thought process. That may be very personal to me, but hopefully that mirrors you in some way. And is adaptable to some of what you’re contemplating this week. Anyway, other milestones about the podcast. This is the 20th episode of the podcast! And, from all the statistics that I’ve read, there’s this figure that always floats around out there. If you are in the podcasting community, or you listen to people who teach and talk about the medium, you’ll hear a lot that most podcasts do not make it past 15 episodes. So I’m a little bit happy that I’ve flown past that mile marker there. And thank you for your support in making that happen! I mean, if you weren’t listening to it, there’d be no reason for me to keep making it. I’ve heard this other metric about podcasts – that there’s a kind of significant milestone when you reach 20,000 listens. That somehow really legitimizes what you’re putting out there and makes you kind of visible as someone who is, you know, doing this for real. It tends to be that people who advertise are looking at that metric as a kind of proof of staying power. So, 20,000 listens sounds like a lot, but, at the time that I’m recording this, we are at 9719 listens for the show, like 300 more episode downloads and we’ll be at 10,000. I’m actually pretty confident that by the time you’re listening to this, we’ve actually already crossed the 10,000 mark. So, you know, in a few short months, we are halfway to that milestone of 20,000 listens! You know, halfway there. So, that’s really cool, and exciting. And, the other thing that I wanted to say about the podcast this week is, just kind of how blown away I am by how many of you have responded to my request to support the show on Patreon. I cannot tell you how much it excites me – the whole Patreon phenomenon, which, you know, you can – I’ll give you a link in a little bit and you can go check it out and see what it’s all about – but, I can’t tell you what this would have done for me 11 years ago when I first started blogging ‘Shift Your Spirits’. At that time, the only way to really support your show financially was through, you know, annoying Google ad-blocks, and I really hate that automated third-party advertising. It just – it feels really inauthentic to me. And, you know, sometimes you get this weird, like, you know, political ad or something, you know, that you would totally not support and it’s like flashing right there in the middle of your post that you spent all this time and energy on, and it’s – in some cases, maybe even, you know, opposite of the message that you’re trying to put out into the world. There are a million reasons why I just don’t like it, but 11 years ago, you know, I chose to put it out as a passion project, and to work week-after-week putting out content. And, you know, I supported myself through doing readings for other people, and that really, you know, kind of paid for the show, so to speak, and allowed me to keep doing it. But it would have been really amazing 11 years ago to have had the opportunity for people who loved the blog and were reading each week to just have a way to donate to the show and support it. And I can’t imagine what kind of support that could have grown into over this length of time. So, anyway, you know, that didn’t happen. That didn’t line up for me. But it’s lining up for me now as I’m shedding my skin and kind of evolving my storytelling and writing into being this conversational audio medium, which is very exciting and I really love to do it. So there’s this whole, kind of, re-birthing going on for me, and a shedding of the skin, which, you know, there’s a lot of people who are dropping away at the same time who, maybe the audio doesn’t appeal to. So, you know, there’s some growing pains involved in this, but there’s a real passion behind the people who really like the show, and that means so much to me, and it’s really evidenced by the support on Patreon. So, one of the things that we are doing to address the fact that there are still a lot of people who love this show, or love this content, who have been following the blog for many years, who just want to read it, or maybe they have a limitation that makes the audio difficult for them, and that is to offer full transcripts of the shows, which is amazing for a lot of different reasons. So, you know, just as synchronicity would have it, someone within my community, one of you out there listening, Alan – thank you very much - introduced me to a young woman who is transcribing the show! Long story short, she was here and she found me and the story of how she found me was really too cool to ignore, and so I decided to go ahead and pay myself out of pocket, up front, even though the podcast is not really at the point that it can support her, I’ve gone ahead and hired her. She’s too good and too perfect for what we’re trying to accomplish here. So yes, thanks to Linda – Linda, I’m sure you’re listening and typing away – anyway, just a little shout out to you. Also a shout out to the latest supporters on Patreon: Leanne Steiner Titti Backstrom Helen Auburn Laura Speltz Nick Lovelady Nick, I gotta tell you, you’re the first and currently only male supporter of the podcast. Now, I know there are other guys listening, because I hear from you and I know who you are and I talk to you about the show. Thank you for listening. So I am challenging the other guys though, to show up and make their support known on Patreon as well. I truly appreciate all of you who have pledged your support. It demonstrates that you’re enjoying the show and you want for it to continue, and that’s very encouraging to me. In addition to covering the young woman who is diligently transcribing these episodes, you can also support my time in producing the show by pledging your support on Patreon for as little as $1/month. And listeners who support on Patreon can also access bonus Q&A episodes where you send in questions, I record answers to them, and they go out to patrons of the show exclusively. So, if you want to find out how you can become a patron, especially if you would like to see transcripts of all these shows continue, please go to https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits. And speaking of the bonus episodes, today I’m sharing one of the exclusive Q&A episodes I recorded for my patrons about life purpose. So you can get a glimpse into what these extra episodes are all about. I am actively collecting questions from my patrons. One of the things I’m noticing about these episodes that’s different is these kind of, they’re kind of like these mini-readings. Or somewhere between a personal, individual reading and a public talk on the subject. And it’s a really good venue for speaking directly to your question when it represents something that a lot of other people are interested in hearing answered as well. You know, the Universal stuff. And it’s proof of how our most individual questions are also universal questions, right? So it’s interesting that pattern is emerging. Anyway, without further chitchat, here is a taste of the exclusive bonus episodes for my Patreon supporters: Discovering your life purpose. Hey, welcome to the first Q&A of the ‘Shift Your Spirits’ podcast. This episode was created exclusively for people who support the show on Patreon. So, of course, thanks again for your support. It truly means the world to me and I am happy to record some special bonus content just for you guys. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, you can send me a message through the Patreon page itself, or you can just email me: contact@sladeroberson.com So our first question comes from Emilia and it’s a doozy. It’s a big Life Purpose question but, you know, I think it’s probably truly representative of one of the biggest questions that everyone has. Emilia writes, “How do you figure out how to serve spiritually? How do you find your "why" or what it is you are put on this earth to do. It's my biggest frustration, because I know the answer is probably sitting right in front of me.” Okay, yeah, so, I mean, part of that you answered yourself in that, you know, it probably is sitting right in front of you. It’s probably so much a part of what you already do that there is a little bit of a ‘forest for the trees’ scenario going on here. And, you know, I always have the image of the person who is looking for their sunglasses and they’re on the top of their head, you know that thing that we do. Those kinds of things come to mind. But I get it, because there’s a part of it that’s inherent and it is what it is, and it’s sort of foisted on you, or it’s sort of a part of your DNA, and then there’s another aspect of it that’s very much chosen. It’s a wilful choice. And I just want to say, kind of as a disclaimer, that this is a question that is a lot easier to get at working with someone one-on-one, obviously, right? So, if you were to book a reading with me or book a session around this, this is, literally, like, 90-something percent of the readings that I get touch on this idea of life purpose or career or creative entrepreneurship. The place where sort of all those things swirl together. What’s my major? That kind of thing. It’s weird that I really struggle to come up with some sort of Top 10 list of ways to discover your purpose or something like that. So forgive me. I’m going to go with a little bit more of a rambly thought process. I’ve been jotting down notes since I received Emilia’s question and, you know, she didn’t really use the term “life purpose”, but that’s sort of what she’s getting at. And, so, I’m going to do my best to give some general thoughts that maybe anyone can sort of apply to this question, or this search, and, you know, it’s a hard thing to say to someone, but relax the search a little bit. Sometimes the people who are trying so hard and so desperately and working and really sort of exhausting themselves trying to figure this out are not getting any closer by doing that. So, just keep that in mind. Let’s chill out on this a little bit and relax and think about letting it emerge for us. Because the thing is, whenever anyone mentions life purpose, or what you came here to do, or what your dream is for your life, there are things that flash on the screen of your mind, and I would bet that a lot of what you do when that flash occurs is suppress it. Ignore it. Sweep it under the rug. Tell yourself, like, no I can’t be that. I can’t ask for that. There’s something there, oftentimes, that people simply don’t acknowledge. You kind of know what your purpose is, but you’re afraid of it. So I have a couple of questions for you that I really want you to think about and meditate on. If you want to pause this, grab a pen or grab your phone, notes, app, or whatever it is so that you can write these down. I want you to really sort of contemplate a couple of things. So question number 1: What’s the thing you’re afraid to tell people your purpose is? Okay. The other question that I want you to think about is, what did your purpose used to be before you talked yourself out of it? So, a few things should be coming to mind there. And maybe you need to go off when you’re not listening to me ramble on about this. You know, go and really meditate on those two questions. But, some things should start to emerge for you. Do some journaling around that. Put those questions at the top of a page as header and set a timer and just do some automatic writing, and write everything that you can think of in answer to that question and see what comes up for you. There are some things in there that want to emerge. I promise you. So, lets - again, it’s kind of hard to speak about this in a general way because it sounds really abstract. So, let’s think, you know, that thing that kind of flashes in your mind, the thing that you’re sort of afraid to tell people that your purpose is, you know, the dream that’s too big to share, the dream that scares you or embarrasses you a little bit. Whatever that might be, let’s put it front and centre in our consciousness, right? And the first thing that I would advise you to do is just sort of move towards it vaguely, with a lurch, with a guess. Just sort of an educated, like, I want to go over that way. My purpose somehow is to be a writer so the first thing that I’m going to move towards is simply writing something. Or towards creating a list of ideas of things that I’d like to write. So just a general movement towards that thought process. Okay? And so, the next step, or maybe, you know, it’s something more altruistic. It’s some kind of volunteer work or philanthropy. And so, you think, you know what, in my heart, I want to be someone who raises tons of money and really changes people’s lives. I want to go into a town and, you know, establish clean water for an entire village in a part of the world that doesn’t have it. And, by the way, I know a woman who did that. She never bragged about it. I only found out about it at her memorial service after she’d passed. But anyway. So - maybe she’s here with us reminding us of different examples of what purpose is. It’s not always something creative. Emilia’s question was specifically about how do you serve spiritually. So let’s say you have just this sort of vague sense of – I want to do something to make a difference. I want to help people in some way. I want to change their lives. So that’s a vague kind of bulls-eye, but it’s still a target and it’s something that you can move towards. So the first thing you want to do is simply try something in the vicinity of whatever that thing is. Make something or do something. Here’s the key - for others. Make something, do something, for others, that’s in the vicinity of that feeling, right? Because you’re kind of testing, you’re pinging the idea, you’re throwing something at it. You know, the image of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing if it sticks, okay? That’s what you’re doing. That’s sort of the first step in trying to find your way. So it’s a call-and-repeat, a Marco Polo kind of game that you’re playing with yourself and the rest of the world and the Universe. And it involves other people. So, the answer to your purpose is in the feedback from other people. So, sometimes you have to start that volley, start that conversation, that back and forth, the experience. So you have to lop the first shot. You have to say, I’m gonna volunteer for this soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. I’m going to go and serve some meals, or whatever. From that experience, you know, things happen. You make other connections. You meet someone there. You’re able to share again. Put it out there. Share it with someone. Let someone in that environment know about your dream. Share it. Someone will then have a next step for you. So the feedback will come from other people in the vicinity of what it is that you’re doing. If your purpose is something more creative, like the example of being a writer, then you need to write something. And put it out there. And allow people to give you some feedback about it. You need to get direction from outside your own head. And you also need affirmation. You know, that you’re kind of on the right path. The thing is, once you take that first step and get that feedback, that clue, it’s like the Amazing Race. Every step there’s like a ticket waiting for you with an instruction for the next round of activity or action. So, all you got to do is move towards the vicinity of what you think your purpose could be, what you’re afraid it might be, what you’re shy about it, acknowledging it, or maybe you’re truly passionate and really direct about it and you’ve just been procrastinating. You know, there’s those people who – they really know what their purpose is. You know, maybe they’re a singer or musician and they haven’t performed in years. They sing in the shower but they haven’t written a song, they haven’t picked up the guitar that’s sitting in the corner of the room. You’ve got to do something and you can’t do it in your ivory tower where there’s no feedback. You need feedback from other people. You need to hear – "Yes, you’re really talented" or "Yes, that resonated with me." "There’s something there", "You’re on to something." And then you follow those clues towards the next step. Another thing that’s really effective in getting a ball rolling and serving spiritually is simply to host something. Hosting something is a really powerful position to be in. And, you know, this doesn’t have to be necessarily a big event that involves a lot of expense or, you know, logistics. It could be something as simple as hosting a Facebook group where you can discuss a particular topic. Invite all your friends and, you know, get other people involved. The idea in hosting something is, it’s a selfless thing to hold space for other people to participate around that topic or that purpose that you have. So it’s not just about you saying, “I’m a leader, here follow me”. It’s more about you saying, “Here, I’ll cover the admin. I’ll make this space and create a cool graphic for it, and I’ll, you know, monitor the comings and goings of people who want to join the group. You know, I’ll market it a little bit, put the word out there, I’ll be in charge. You guys just come and participate. Come and participate with each other.” And, the cool thing is, in providing a forum or space for an event that you’re hosting for other people, thinking about them and the connections they make, everyone knows who the host is. Everyone goes through the host. Everyone greets you. Everyone sends you the Facebook request to ask to be in the group. And so you kind of get to touch everyone in the room, and everyone associates it with you in a way that may come up for them later. But by hosting something, you’re establishing yourself in a very passive way, and in a way that serves other people as being someone connected to this idea, and so you are kind of planting yourself in other people’s minds as being someone connected with this idea. And so, that will create opportunities for you because when they are looking for people to participate in their events or their charities or their projects, they can invite you. You’re going to be top of the mind for everyone in that group. So hosting something is a really good idea. It’s a powerful marketing tool, by the way, and it’s a very authentic and unsleazy way to put yourself out into the world. So host something. The thing to remember though is, once you put whatever it is outside yourself, it’s kind of not yours anymore. And you don’t really want it to be, right? Because you’re wanting to serve other people. So it belongs to the world, once you create that thing and you put it out there. It belongs to the people who receive it. And those people who care about it can begin to manage some aspect of it for you. And often you will find allies. You know, I recently had the experience, if you listen to the podcast, which I know you do, of having somebody take a post that I did and turn it into a coaching modality. Diana Frajman with the 3x3 project, and a lot of people have written to me and, you know, it resonated with them about how they’re applying that to themselves. So my purpose was really so, kind of, secondary in that whole experience. I mean, it’s part of what I do. I share ideas around spirituality and productivity and, you know, just how I manage my own life. And I put it out there in a way that it’s meant to serve other people. Someone else came along and took it up and adopted it and made it into something else. And so, you know, I’m attached to it in a way, but, you know, it’s almost as an observer and as a participant myself. So that’s a really cool feeling. And the fact of the matter is, I didn’t do that on my very first post. You know, this is after years and years of writing, and there are little things here and there that I’ve put out that people have taken and done other things with, and so it really is about other people. You know, putting yourself out there in a really authentic way and kind of not having any expectation about it. And waiting and seeing where other people place the emphasis. And then you can respond to that further. So, you know, at that point you’re really just kind of following where people are asking you to go. And this is a really good clue about developing a practice, developing a business. Being – this is something that I tell my students in my intuitive mentoring program – your clients have the direction and the instructions for you about where you’re supposed to go. It’s not so much about you, again, going into the ivory tower and deciding what your purpose is and then coming down off the mountain with your stone tablets and announcing to the world what it is. It’s a little bit of a back and forth. You’ve got to get it going outside your head. You gotta ping the Universe. You gotta throw something out to the crowd. See what they do with it, and adapt accordingly. And follow where they want to go. If you simply look around in your life and you step back and you take note, start, maybe, even taking a record. What do people ask of you? You know, what do people come to you for. There are certain kinds of things that you’re the go-to person for, right? Maybe it’s things that people complain to you about. It may not seem so altruistic and lovely, but start to take note of what it is that people are asking you to do, because you could go through life in service by simply answering the questions that people have for you. Or by simply doing the things that people request whenever you see someone in need of something and you think, “Okay, well how can I provide that for them? You could go through your entire life just, sort of, doing that, and I would say that that would definitely be a life of purpose. You have to really listen and observe. These directives can kind of go right over your head because you’re so busy looking for something – Tada! You know, like, big and important and The Thing. So I imagine in my mind that there’s like a Venn diagram, right? There’s an overlap – imagine 3 circles – what you’re good at, what you enjoy, what other people care about, and there’s a point in the centre where your talents and what you love and what other people care about overlap. But also think about, you know, the thing that you have had to strive the hardest to conquer in life – how that overlaps with something that a lot of other people suffer as well. What’s something that you have struggled with and survived, that you see a lot of other people struggling with in the world? Think about that Venn diagram. Where does that overlap occur? That can also be a clue. You know, there are clues to your purpose hiding in your dreams. There are clues in your childhood play. The things that you pretended and the things that you love to act out. It’s interesting to me – I always think it’s fun to think about the fact that kids like to pretend to work. You know, they play office and play all these like, you know, sit at a desk and perform menial paperwork. We used to like to pretend that we worked in a library and we would, like, stamp all our books. It’s such a, like, a thing that if you did have to do it as a job, you would not think of it as a joy. But obviously children recognise a joy in service, and in work and in performing those kind of activities and being efficient and creating organization out of chaos. So think about the things that you like to play as a little kid. What kind of stories are you drawn to? What do you love to read about? What stops you in your tracks on Facebook? What gets you to post an angry face? What gets you riled up and feeling outraged? There are clues there. There are also clues, you know, in the thing you like to escape into. Maybe it’s as simple as the thing that you’re drawn to escape into, maybe you need to create that kind of escape for other people. Maybe you just, you know, voraciously read happy ending sweet romance novels. And, you know, it’s just your secret candy that you live for that keeps you going and bolsters you emotionally in the background and nobody even knows about it. So maybe you need to put some of those out there into the world. You could do it under a pen name. No one even has to know. There are also clues to your purpose and how you can serve other people in your astrological chart. And again, this is something that I would look at with an individual person that I was doing a reading for. You know, I look at the True Node, or the North Node. There are a couple signs that show up there that tell me specific things. Obviously, I work with people who tend to have more similarities of purpose, and so there are certain things I look for there. There are clues in the Ascendant in your astrological chart, your rising sign, which is, you know, who you are in the world to other people, how other people perceive you and how you interact socially. There could be some real clues there. There are areas of your chart that, you know, affect your career, finances, creativity, sometimes there are clues in that part of your chart as well. But it’s really a synergy of all those things, you know, is there a pattern there? I might look at several different things and see something reoccurring and that might give me a clue. But even when I’m doing a reading for someone, there’s a conversation. There’s a part of it that you have to provide. I can get you going in a general vibe, but when it really starts to come together is when you have those details and you have those specific things that light you up. And I can sense when we hit it, because I’ll get up and start pacing the room. It changes my energy when I’m talking to somebody about that stuff. One other thing that I really want to stress again, you know, I did mention, you know, maybe your purpose in how you serve other people is connected to something that you’ve had to fight against, or something that wasn’t so great. Maybe it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, or it’s the one thing you would change about your life. If you could get rid of anything about who you are and what you’ve experienced. You know what? I hate to tell you but that stuff’s gold, you know? One of the reasons that I interviewed Ryan McRae, the ADHD nerd, on the podcast was because he’s someone that I’ve encountered who chose this thing that’s been a huge challenge for him. It’s probably something that he never would’ve wanted to have. But he’s worked so hard to overcome it, and it occurred to him that like, “This sucks and this is hard for me and I’ve had to create all these systems just to allow me to kind of be on an even keel with other people”. And so, what he does is he represents that sucky thing for other people who are experiencing it as well. There’s something extremely powerful and authentic in being coached or led or encouraged by someone who has crawled through the same shit as you. Obviously, the ditch that you’ve been through gives you some credibility that somebody who is just Pollyanna-perfect is like, no. You don’t want to hear what they have to say. You want to hear what the person who’s been through it has to say. And only someone who has been through what you’ve been through can really, really understand. And so, think about what is it in your life that might represent that? How could you put that out into the world? How could you turn that around and make it service? And you know what’s funny is, as I’m saying that, I realize that that may be one of the most challenging ways to serve because it brings up a lot of issues of shame. Even if it’s something you can’t control. Something that is, you know, a disability, or something that was imposed upon you that’s not the result of something that you did or chose, but just a crappy hand that you were dealt or whatever. There’s still a lot of shame in standing up and saying, “Hey, I’m messed up in this way”, “I have this physical disability”, “I have this mental illness”, “I have this disease”. But if you can make that shift, if you can get past - what are my family and friends going to think - there’s millions of people out there for whom you could be a hero. So yeah, it’s not always something you’re good at, or you’re talented, you know, at doing. It’s not always, like, “Oh I’ve always wanted to dance and I took ballet when I was a child”. Sometimes your purpose is sharing how you survived the horrible, most worst thing in the world, and how you overcome a struggle for which you had no inherent gifts or talents or abilities and you had to scrap it together, you know. There’s a great opportunity there. There’s a wealth that’s a treasure chest. What’s the Joseph Campbell quote… where you… something about where you stumble is where your treasure lies. “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” ― Joseph Campbell You know, your sense of purpose should be less about living a purpose and more about living with purpose. So don’t overlook the purpose you express in your every day life already. It’s in your relationships, it’s in how you conduct yourself with empathy and compassion. It’s a filter through which you judge everything. What you prioritize, the decisions you make. The bottom line may simply be, how do you contribute to others? How do you make the world a better place? How do you make someone’s day a little bit easier? And, you know, back when I first started doing this thing that I do that you know me for when I first decided, “Okay fine, I’ll do this purposeful thing. I’ll put myself out there and talk about my spirituality or whatever”. The message I kept getting from my guides – it was pretty creepy - I’ll have to tell you the story sometime of how I went to this trance-channelling event and the trance channel even said this message, but - the message that sort of launched ‘Shift Your Spirits’ that remains the driving affirmation, I suppose, is that: You’re already everything that you’ve ever wanted to become. You fulfill your life purpose with every breath you take. I want to leave you with one little thing. I was looking at, you know, the different things that I’ve written about purpose on my website, you know, seeing if I have any articles to pull from – which I really didn’t. I just kind of winged it, because it’s not something, like I said, that I’ve ever created a comprehensive BuzzFeed checklist post for. But I ran across this thing in my life purpose category. It’s a post called “How Badly Do You Want it”. And I wanted to read this and do a reading of it and kind of share this with you. Reading blog post There seems to be this perception that identifying your passion is the hard part. Once you really nail that down and put your energy into something you truly love – can’t live without doing – that everything just “flows." The flow, free of obstacles, is somehow the ultimate judgment on your choice and your efforts. And then, here comes this video of Oprah talking about “failure" as simply helpful information trying to move you in another direction. (I happily shared that video on Facebook; in the moment I ran across it, I thought it was a great message for anyone feeling overwhelmed and burnt out…) But, wait – if it's not going well, I must be doing it wrong, right? That’s kind of the message. The idea that failure is trying to move you in another direction and be helpful. Some higher power must be trying to move you in another direction. So, where do we put all the success stories about perseverance, about all the people who didn't get it right on the first or second or third tries? All this sounds good in new age theory, but I have to admit something to you: it is not my personal reality. My websites have been hacked multiple times over the last few years — I didn’t take that as a “sign” that I should simply abandon eleven years' worth of published writing and twenty thousand readers and, “Oh well, you know, I’m getting hacked a lot. That’s the Universe’s way of telling me this is not my purpose. I’m just going to go do something else.” My last book launch suffered from some technical difficulties and every planet you can name was in retrograde at the time that it happened. You know what? I have a whole other catalogue of books to release. So, that passion hasn’t changed. Just because everything in the world got thrown at me, and it was a hurdle, it's still the direction that I’m meant to go. You know, I didn’t decide that that’s somehow telling me “No, it’s not flowing so obviously you’re not supposed to be doing this anymore.” My latest book — HAVENWOOD — which was really the Big One. I’ve put out non-fiction, obviously, and some shorter fiction, but I’d never written and released an epic historical fantasy novel. This was “I want to be a writer when I grow up” Big. It was a life-long dream of mine. It is a passion of mine. After nineteen months of work, I imported the final edits for the formatting stage of that book, and… The text was jacked up with errors and random code. It’s my “passion.” And it ain’t “flowing." So here’s what I wanted to share with you from this: Sometimes I think the Universe is sparring with me. It’s egging me on. It’s literally testing me. It’s not just trying to point out – oh things aren’t flowing very well for you, therefore you should change direction and that’s what failure’s trying to teach you. No. Here’s what I think is happening. I think the Universe is saying, “How badly do you want this?" And I say, “More than all your potholes and razor wire, Universe. More than all your barriers and blocks.” It’s not the first time that I’ve crawled out of a ditch and crossed the finish line bruised and bloodied. It won’t be the last. Fuck your flow, Universe. Fuck your flow. It’s not always about it being easy and it’s not always about it being flowing. This post is ultimately a message about Perseverance. So, yeah. Serving. Serving with Purpose. Finding your Purpose, choosing a Purpose. You know, you can make one. And you’ve got several. Do them all. Do a little bit of everything, but the main thing is, put it out there and get feedback. And the feedback will guide you. Maybe the feedback will tell you this is a brick wall, go in another direction. And it could happen. But don’t be discouraged. Because if it’s really something that’s meant to be, and it’s something that you’re really super drawn to, and you don’t have to think very hard to discover what it is and to go after it, then sometimes all those hurdles and the fact that it’s hard is, you know, the Universe’s way of testing you. So, the thing about Purpose. You know, the conclusion about purpose is it’s both this big wilful act, and at the same time, it’s this passive, just breathing and being who you are at the same time. And so it’s a volley back and forth between those two things. And I think what those things are is a spectrum of your energy as you project who you are to the world. Sometimes it’s just a little moment: you being you, smiling at a stranger on the sidewalk, answering a text from your friend, taking your kid somewhere they need to go. And then other times it’s you off in your office working really hard, blood sweat and tears for 19 months to produce a piece of art. So, it’s all that and everything else in between, but I hope that some of what I’ve said here has given you something to contemplate and to allow you to either affirm what it is that you’re doing or maybe gives you a new sense of direction. Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling for now. Thank you for being a patron, and participating in this Q&A episode scenario. Really, seriously, send me your questions. This is a great prompt, and, you know, you can make them relatively personal. This is still a small group of people, so try to keep in mind, you know, that your question obviously I’m going to answer it in a way that it will speak to more than one of us, but there’s a small group of you in the room right now with me energetically out there representing, so send us your questions and I’ll keep creating these for you guys. Thank you for your support. Thanks again for listening to the ‘Shift Your Spirits’ podcast. For show notes, links, transcripts and all the past episodes, please visit ShiftYourSpirits.com. You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. You don’t have to use that purple button on your iPhone. Some people don’t like that app. My personal favorite podcast app is Overcast, so go check that one out. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free e-book and guided meditation to help you connect with your guides, please go to https://sladeroberson.com/. And if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the attunement at https://automaticintuition.com/. Before I go, I promised to leave you a message in answer to a question or concern you may have. I pulled a card for a friend the other night after a long, late-night heart-to-heart conversation. From Colette Baron-Reid Wisdom of Avalon Oracle, which I have as an app on my phone. This deck and Oracle app were inspired by The Mists of Avalon, a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which is one of my all time favorite works of fiction ever. It is probably why my own fiction is in the historical fantasy genre. Anyway, in just a moment, I’m going to read the card to you as today’s Oracle. The message of the card spoke not only to his situation and mine, but I feel like it speaks to this eclipse season as well, and the transformation that we’re going through. So take a moment to think about your own issue. Hold it in your mind or speak it out loud. I’ll pause for just a few seconds right now. 1…2…3…4 Absolute truth, courage, self-respect and responsibility. The Lady of the Lake represents the highest order of respect for yourself and the manner in which you operate within the world around you. She is the harsher element of truth, where denial is swept away by a tidal wave of events. In the ancient legend of Avalon, the Lady of the Lake presented Merlin with the sword of truth. The magic that welded this metal was fired by the will of the Goddess. When the Lady of the Lake appears, she demands nothing short of total truth and integrity; and she asks you to be mindful of all the signs, signals, and omens that present themselves to you. This is not the time to second-guess. If a signal appears, be assured that a challenge has been presented. Moving forward without acknowledgment of the challenge will result in unnecessary difficulties. If the signal is to move, she pushes you to act. Do so, for a victory is imminent. Regardless of your question, the message is to take care when the Lady of the Lake appears, as serious business is at stake. The Lady reminds you of your personal responsibility in shaping your reality and its consequences. Seek the sword of truth within yourself and great success will be yours. Have courage, for when the Lady appears, the strength of Avalon is behind you in support of your quest for wholeness and abundance. and I’ll talk to you later.

Have you ever found yourself in a stressful or dangerous situation and had a complete stranger offer assistance? As if they’d been placed there, by fate, or impossible coincidence, miraculously timed to step in and help … And then, just as mysteriously, disappeared? Maybe looking back it seems like the Universe was using this ordinary person as a divine messenger for you — an ordinary vessel, but with a supernatural role and unbelievable timing. But have you ever experienced this phenomenon in such a way it left you wondering if these helpful strangers were even human beings at all? ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS: Stranger Angels - Part 1 Stranger Angels - Part 2 The Paranormal Memoirs Are you new to podcasts? How to subscribe to my podcast free HOST LINKS sladeroberson.com Get an intuitive reading with Slade Download a free ebook and meditation Automatic Intuition Patreon.com Support this Show TRANSCRIPT Have you ever found yourself in a stressful or dangerous situation and had a complete stranger offer assistance?  As if they’d been placed there, by fate, or impossible coincidence, miraculously timed to step in and help…And then, just as mysteriously, disappear? Maybe looking back it seems like the Universe was using this ordinary person as a divine messenger for you. An ordinary vessel, but with a supernatural role and unbelievable timing. But have you ever experienced this phenomenon in such a way it left you wondering if these helpful strangers were even human beings at all? My name is Slade Roberson.  For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive counselor and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather.  I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Now a quick FYI before we go further — I’ve added a new feature to the show. For years now, before I send out a blog post, I try to tune in and listen for something that will speak directly to you, that will serve as a message. Like an oracle. And I get email replies, every week, with tons of you saying the post was a direct answer to a question you had. This is a really popular phenomenon -  for both of us - and I want to bring that to the podcast… So At the very end of this episode, after my final links and credits, I have a channeled message for you.  Be thinking about a question or concern you have. It may be answered by the show itself. But hold it in your mind and I’ll come back on at the end and leave you with something extra… OK So,  Back to the show.  Today, I want to share one of my own experiences with what I call stranger angels… (although I would never have used that terminology at the time…) In January 1992, when I was twenty-two years old, I traveled to Europe.  I flew to London with a small group of friends and stayed for a few days before splitting off from them to go meet up with another friend Allison who was waiting for me in Paris. We had arranged to connect at a specific hotel between the Latin Quarter of the 5th Arrondissement and the 13th Arrondissement on a Saturday morning — but the only trains I could take required that I arrive either half a day early or half a day late. So, I opted to travel in the wee hours of Friday night/ really early Saturday morning which would put me in Paris at 1 am. We were going to share a room, but I figured I could splurge and check into my own room for one night at the same hotel and sleep for awhile until Allison woke up. I only had a little bit of British cash when I left London, but I wasn’t concerned — all the train stations I’d ever been to in large cities like New York and London were always bustling with activity at all hours, even in the middle of the night. So I figured I could go to a money exchange when I arrived in Paris and turn in some American traveler’s checks for francs.  After the Channel boat crossing, which was actually pretty crowded, there were only four other people in the car on the train with me — two girls from New Jersey, Joanna and Julie, an Australian guy who eventually introduced himself as James, and a nondescript man in a khaki-colored trench coat who remained several rows away, never joined in our conversation, but nevertheless seemed to always be staring and closely watching us whenever I glanced over at him. The Jersey girls made entertaining companions, they were chatty and easy to be with; James from Australia was shy and although he moved closer to sit near us, he mostly just listened to the conversation. I was unprepared when I arrived at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris to find it an absolute ghost town — every kiosk, cafe, ticket booth, and bank was dark, locked up with those roll-down gates like you see on the front of mall stores when they’re closed. This was a Friday night in Paris; I thought there would be people everywhere. The Jersey girls yelled a cheery goodbye and snatched one of the only waiting taxis, and James melted away into the streets with the small crowd who exited our train from other cars. I wandered around in an awkward circle, looking for signs of activity, and quickly realizing I was not going to find any. This was a really ill-planned arrival. I had been so comfortable in London — I was traveling with friends from the US; staying in the apartment of British nationals; there was no language barrier; not to mention a kind of “past-life” familiarity that was at least partially supported by recognizable landmarks from years of studying English literature. Now I was alone in an abandoned metropolis with just enough high school French to read signs and grunt nouns and adjectives and to possibly butcher a verb conjugation or two, in a pinch. I was an obvious tourist carrying everything I had in an enormous pack; an easy target for a mugging. I was actually thankful there was a freezing fog everywhere to ensure the streets were emptier than they might otherwise have been. There was only one other person anywhere nearby that I could appeal to for directions. And he was watching me. The man in the khaki-colored trench coat, who had been staring at me on the train, was lingering, lurking at a casual distance. At least he was a familiar face, and if he had just arrived from England then chances were good he spoke my language. Feeling like a child who’d lost his mom in the mall, I walked up to him and began babbling about my circumstances — where I was trying to get to in the city, where I might find a money exchange… Why was Paris of all places shut down like this on a Friday night? I felt no sense of danger from him. Honestly, I suspected he might be cruising me, and I was more than willing to play along with that a little bit in exchange for crucial information. I was confident I could politely fend off any sexual advances, if that was his motive. As I talked to him, I realized there was something vaguely off about him. In the back of my mind I was cataloguing the details of his manner and appearance. He introduced himself simply as “Uh… John” and something about the way he said it sounded like a lie made up on the spot. When he spoke, his voice was soft and polite, yet he made no facial expressions. He was absolutely emotionless. He spoke English, yet I could detect no traceable accent — it wasn’t British, or American, or Australian. I can picture his face clearly and I would immediately recognize him if he walked into the room right now— but I can’t really describe much about him that would be identifiable or unique. His eyes were an unusual icy blue, but other than that… He could have been thirty… or he could have been forty or even fifty. His hair might have been a dirty blond… or maybe a light brown, or even silvery-gray. He was dressed from head to toe in monochrome — his pants and shirt were the same colorless beige. Only his shoes were a different color (and I noticed that, despite the cold, he wasn't wearing any socks). His clothes had creases in them, as if they had been taken directly out of packages. I felt like if I could have checked inside his collar I’d find price tags still attached. It reminded me of when I’d worked in retail stores, the way the body forms we dressed for the window displays appeared before the clothes had been steamed. That was it — he looked like a living mannequin. He looked too new, too perfect — yet totally unremarkable. He had absolutely no body hair — zero -  no stubble, no shadow, no hair on his wrists — not even the faint down that a woman or a child might have. He gave off an anonymous perfume that smelled exactly like… unscented dryer sheets. Even his breath was like a warm load of clean towels. John was… supernaturally ordinary. He offered to informally exchange the small handful of British pocket money I had on me — I handed him what amounted to less than five bucks, and turning away from me for a moment (probably to keep me from seeing into his wallet, I suppose) he produced a bill that, although still a modest amount, was at least quadruple the value of what I’d given him. “But it’s not enough for a taxi all the way from here,” he said. “You’ll need to walk quite a way first, as far as you can.” Using a rail map posted on a wall for reference, he showed me where I was and where I was headed. “Once you are in view of Notre Dame, or come to the Seine, you should be close enough to hail a driver to take you the rest of the way to your exact destination”  He hesitated for a second and then offered to walk with me. I told him that wouldn’t be necessary — I appreciated his kindness but I anticipated it might be more difficult to get rid of him later if I needed to. Before we parted ways outside the station he also warned me about the dangers of walking through this part of Paris in the middle of the night. He ominously advised me to “Be invisible,”  As far as ensuring that my path was relatively deserted, the weather was probably a blessing; but the grace of the cover it provided me came at a price — it was miserably freezing cold. The moisture in the air was just light enough to remain a dense fog, but it soaked me as well as any steady drizzle might have… It was a long, harrowing (shitty) night. I would need another thousand words here to itemize the petty trials of that night’s walk. My feet were blistered and swollen for days… I could not get warm the entire week that I spent in Paris… But to simplify the story, I can’t recall many times that I have felt that physically vulnerable. Had I been a crow, I could’ve kept moving directly south, but the streets were a crooked, uncooperative labyrinth that required constant course correction. I expended a lot of energy “being invisible” as I had been instructed. I encountered very few people — a handful of prostitutes propositioned me from the caves of doorways and shopfront awnings; I constantly crossed and recrossed streets to avoid anyone on the sidewalk; I ducked into phone booths from time to time to collect myself and maintain my bubble of cloaked energy. It didn't take me long to realize that John was following me. He remained a block or two behind me, and stopped when I stopped. Who has nowhere to be and nothing better to do than to follow me through the streets of Paris at 3 am in the middle of January? A serial killer? But I have to admit maybe I was a little comforted by his strange yet at least somewhat familiar presence over the alternative of being completely alone. Hours later — after walking and walking for hours — I spotted the recognizable architecture of Notre Dame. Soon after that, I was across the Seine and in the Latin Quarter. Thinking surely I was close enough to afford a cab the rest of the way, I stopped a driver and spluttered my destination.  He laughed at me and pointed — to the street I was seeking, which was about a few hundred feet away. I walked up and down that street for another hour — not only was the hotel not there, the very street number itself did not exist. After pacing back and forth and carefully tracking the building numbers to convince myself I wasn’t hallucinating, I was literally in tears. In frustration, I sat on a bench and surrendered to having arrived at being finally and totally lost. That’s when I saw John again, across a square formed by a jumbled intersection of streets. I was just pissed off enough and desperate enough at this point to walk right up to him and demand to know why in the Hell he was stalking me. He disappeared down a side street that looked like an alley and I followed him. But it wasn’t an alley at all — It was an improbable, completely eccentric continuation of the street I had been pacing up and down. The numbers picked up and continued. No sign of John, but there was the hotel. That Monday, a few days later, I was with my traveling companion Allison and her friend Natalie. We were walking from the Champs-Elysees headed to the Eiffel Tower when someone waved at me from the window of a restaurant. It was Jersey Joanna and Julie, smiling and waving excitedly at me. it was such an unexpected joy, the unlikely synchronicity of seeing these familiar faces.There were two men sitting with the girls who turned around to see who they were waving at. One of them was James the Australian guy — and I thought Wow! They ran into him again too? That’s kind of cool. What are the chances? And then I made eye contact with the Other guy. It was John. Why would he be with them? They never even spoke on the train… Allison was like “Do you know those people?” She was looking at me like — How is it even possible that you would just run into someone Here? I was kind of too overwhelmed in the moment just trying to process the coincidence to explain how huge it actually was, so I just said. “Yeah. They came over with me on the train from London.” But that wasn’t the last time I saw John while I was in Europe. I saw him again, a few weeks later, on the day I was mugged at gun point in Amsterdam. My time in Paris was… difficult. I felt stressed, distracted, uneasy, but also mute and invisible. I’m someone who talks a lot, but because my roommate Allison was fluent in French, she did all my talking for me. Her friend Natalie was a French national, and although I’m sure they didn’t purposefully exclude me, they chattered away with me along as a silent third wheel, just listening, catching only about fifty percent of what they said. They dragged me through two full days of the Louvre… Madonna-and-Child, Madonna-and-Child, Madonna-and-Child — “Oh, look, the Mona Lisa; neato” — Madonna-and-Child, Madonna-and-Child… Endless palatial corridors of Madonna-and-Child.  I felt like I was stuck in some virtual reality walk-through of a really tedious Art History textbook. I told Allison “If I don’t see something painted after 1890, I’m going to lose my mind.” So I ducked out and went for some amazing (much needed) inspiration from the modern art collection at the Pompidou Centre — without the girls. When Allison and I were finally alone in our room that night and she switched back to English, my voice came out thick from lack of use. And when we spoke, we bickered. She kept asking me. “What are you looking at?” I was standing by the window — again — peering out through a gap in the curtains, not really conscious of what I was doing or that it was even noticeable until she pointed it out. She accused me of acting paranoid, day after day — constantly looking back behind us when we were walking, checking and re-checking the lock on the door, and lurking near the window watching the street. She said “You’re making me nervous. It’s like we’re being followed.” I couldn’t explain myself so I let her believe I was just being a pill; that I was miserable being in Paris with her. (Which I kinda was.) I told her I was going to cut my stay short and go to Amsterdam alone. She didn’t protest; I’m sure she was relieved to spend her remaining days with Natalie without having to be my translator.  Maybe France simply did not agree with me.  Arriving in Amsterdam I immediately regained the better mood and sense of comfort I’d had when I began my trip in the UK. I met a couple my age from San Francisco, Marty and David, who were staying in my hotel. They had been in Amsterdam for most of the previous week, their last three days coincided with my first three; they were able to show me around to all the “best” places nearby they’d discovered to hang out and eat, reasonably inexpensive ones that weren’t such tourist traps. We went out to some great clubs every night and, best of all, I could participate fully in conversation again. I had exactly the kind of traveling experience I had hoped to have. I became attached to Marty and David pretty quickly, and when they departed, their absence was palpable. I had little expectation of achieving that same sense of joy or meeting other strangers I could click with so effortlessly.  Truly, my intuition said “Might as well go ahead and leave” — but there were a few sites I wanted to see while I had the chance and they seemed appropriate for that lonely, invisible state I had fallen back into. The first day on my own, I went to the Anne Frank House (a profound adventure that deserves its own story sometime) and then I came back to my hotel room and watched the flocks of thousands of birds that would wheel out into the sky each evening at dusk above the Centraal Station just across the canal from my window, moving together like an enormous tornado or a computer-animated coming swarm in a killer bee movie. They would hover in a shifting cloud for close to half an hour, as if they knew they were performing for an audience. The next day I chose to walk across town to the Van Gogh Museum. It was a fortunate serendipity on some levels — there was a special temporary traveling exhibit on Mackintosh Art Nouveau, which is absolutely my favorite art history design period ever. The entire upstairs of the museum was converted into complete rooms that replicated Art Nouveau interiors, and there was a small movie theater playing a documentary on the period. Although there were a half-dozen other people in the theater with me, I felt like the installation existed at that time and place just for me — like I had successfully manifested it… and I had more of these intense past-life memories that had made my time in England feel so electric. When the credits scrolled across the screen and the lights came on, I pulled myself up with a satisfied sigh and headed reluctantly toward the exit. I’m sure if you’d been there watching me, you would have seen the smile on my face MELT when I saw ….  JOHN sitting in the back row. Part of me was like Are you kidding me? But my physical response was fear — I didn’t even look at him, I just kind of weirdly acted like I hadn’t seen him — like you do when you see someone you don’t want to run into— and I just fled the museum. The wind that channeled between the buildings was the only thing that kept me from running all the way back to my hotel — I would round a corner and find the signs and traffic lights swinging wildly, and I’d have to lean into the force of the wind as if I was hiking uphill. It created that horrible sensation you have when you’re being hunted in dreams, your body stuck in slow motion, your limbs lagging behind the directions of your mind. It’s easy for me now to look back and wonder about the questions that must have been going through my mind — Who is this guy? Why would he be following me like this? Is he a stalker, a serial killer — maybe he’s some kind of cop who mistakenly thinks I’m a serial killer? Why would anyone want to tail me? And you know How is it even possible that he can keep up with me from one city to the next? At the time — honestly — I did not care. I wasn’t thinking anything except "I want to go home.” I hurried from the museum as if the United States was just a few miles away, and if I could move fast enough and push myself, I might reach it before I ran out of breath. I’d been abroad for about a month at that point — maybe I just wasn’t as “worldly” as I would’ve fancied myself to be; maybe all these enormous gray winter cities were smoothing away the edges of my personality… maybe I was just incredibly homesick and this was what that felt like. But more than anything, I felt threatened. I felt unsafe. I felt like I was in danger… and the stranger behind me, who I couldn’t seem to shake, corresponded with this atmosphere of fear. Fear often turns into anger (especially for me) and the anger gets directed at the person you blame for making you feel afraid. (Regardless if that’s appropriate or not) But at some I wasn’t just running away anymore, I was also fuming, and I knew it was building up ( and like, God help him if he actually caught up to me) – which, I kinda wanted to happen. I may have looked like I was moving away from him, but I was really marching toward the break where I would turn around and just RAGE. I heard a voice in my head (a man’s voice, not my own) say: You are powerful. And I answered back: I AM powerful. You are protected, the voice said.  And that slowed me down a little bit. You are fine, the voice assured me. Now, I was out of breath. There was a stitch in my side. I’d dropped into a slower pace of determined, sustainable endurance, and the words I was hearing rearranged themselves in a sing-song affirmation in time to my foot falls: I am powerful, I’m protected, I am fine / I am powerful, I’m protected, I am fine / It became a mantra, a chant that helped me maintain my speed, it pulled me along, but also calmed me, put me into an altered state. I came face to face with this man with dreadlocks who was standing right in my path. I ducked to the side to go around him and he matched the movement in what seemed like one of those awkward “Excuse me, after you” kind of dances But Dreadlocks wasn’t trying to pass me, he was shadowing me, mirroring me, “guarding” me like a basketball player. When I just stopped, he walked right into me as if he were going to embrace me with one arm and shake my hand with the other. He grabbed me and held me close him, and shoved a gun against my belly. At least, a pocket full of something meant to feel like the nose of a handgun. “Money,” he said to me in English. “Come on.” Two things flip my switch: being assaulted or bullied being in the presence of someone I care about who is being assaulted or bullied When I was in my twenties, I had virtually no ability to manage defensive anger and my temper turned on and up in one direction – full-on, unbridled, absolutely ape shit. No warning, no ratcheting up by degrees… And it came with a loud, hateful, free-style narration. My Daddy used to say that I had The Kind of Lip That Will Get You Killed in The Wrong Circumstances. My friends in college were amused by my tongue-lashings and called this aspect of my personality “Julia Sugarbaker.” I doubt Dreadlocks would have ever predicted the manner in which I responded. He had no way of knowing just how pumped up on anger and fear I already was. I probably looked like someone running away, which his instincts identified as prey – but what he ran right into was Royally Pissed. When my words came out, I screamed them, berating the pedestrians who passively walking by as much as my mugger, and on some level, I was screaming at John. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. You’re going to mug me, in broad daylight, two o’clock in the afternoon, in the middle of the damn street? And you expect me to believe you’ve got a gun and you’re going to shoot me with it in front of all these people for spare change? You know, it’s no shock to me that every fucking piece of shit would-be thug in America actually does carry a gun because our whole society prides itself on the fact, but in the Netherlands, man, really? That’s a pretty big deal for you to be carrying here, isn’t it? I mean, you’re either a serious hard core criminal or you’re faking it. You’re obviously small time, because why else would you be holding me up for a handful of cash that won’t even buy you a cup of coffee? What is that in your pocket anyway, a plastic cigarette lighter?” Dreadlocks glanced around nervously at the crowd I was drawing and said under his breath “Man, cool down. Just give me some money, that’s all I want.” I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out some Dutch coins and the crumpled, sweaty French bill that John had given me that night at the Gare du Nord. I’d never spent it. I had continued to carry it around like a talisman. I was even a little bit pissed to be giving up something I’d come to think of as a souvenir. Dreadlocks-man held out his hand between us and I slammed the money onto his palm, slapping it hard enough that the coins leapt and pinged off a grate in the sidewalk. He held onto the French bill, looked at it quickly, and shook his head like he was disappointed with me. “Man, come on,” he said, as if he were trying to say “I can’t do anything with this…” “No? Cause you said all you wanted was money; that’s all I got; that’s all you’re getting. Would you rather have some traveler’s checks you can’t possibly exchange without an ID and a really good forgery? If so, you’ll need to walk me back to my hotel and let me get them out of my room safe for ya, you wanna do that?” He looked at the French bill again like he was trying to decide whether or not to just give it back to me. “Come on,“ he pleaded one more time. I saw him look over my shoulder and his eyes re-focused. I knew exactly who he was looking at. In a much lower, confidential, whisper I said to him. “You see that man behind me, the one in the trench coat? …Yeah, I can see that you do… You’ll notice I also don’t even need to look because I know he’s back there. He’s been following me for two weeks. He’s some kind of cop, or some kind of detective, I don’t know who or what he is, but he’s watching me, and now he’s watching you too. You just got that guy for a witness.” It really wasn’t a bluff; and maybe the authenticity of my confession gave it power. At any rate, the doubt and confusion played out quickly. The Dreadlocks guy backed away slowly at first, clearly keeping his eyes on John, and then he turned and ran. I was so jacked up on the adrenalin of the situation, I swiveled around with the full intention of finally laying into this “stranger” John who was following me. I was mad enough to punch him.  Of course he was there, just as I knew he would be, keeping to his minimum fifty-foot distance. John just opened his hands and held out his palms, slightly shaking his head. He grinned with a kind of lop-sided, regretful smile. He looked, more than anything, sad and… apologetic. As if to say, “Sorry that it had to be like this.” And then he just walked away, back in the direction we’d come from. He was just swallowed by the crowd. I’ve attempted to relate this story without interpretation, because at the time it happened, and for many years after, it was just an odd mystery that became one of those “the time I was held up at gun point” stories. Knowing what I speak about and write about these days, of course, you’re gonna infer some paranormal or spiritual significance... Honestly, it may not even compare that well to the more profound angelic intervention stories you might have heard — it just happens to be one that happened to me. And I’m sharing it with you because it’s an event that came up again a decade later. This is just a Prologue. In 2002, ten years later, I met a man named Jesse — who somehow already knew these events had happened to me — and he’s the one told me What It All Meant. So... thanks for listening and stay tuned to the next episode of the Shift Your Spirits podcast… For show notes, links, and all the past episodes please visit shiftyourspirits.com You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’re new to podcasts, it’s that purple button on your iPhone. Click it, search Shift Your Spirits and hit Subscribe - then all the episodes will be there for you, automatically. And you can take them with you to the gym or listen in your car … that’s what I love about podcasts. Also, if you want to support the show, it would really help me out if you’d leave a rating and a review in iTunes, and share it with some friends you think would be into it. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free ebook and meditation to help you connect with your guides please go to sladeroberson.com and If you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, check out automaticintuition.com BEFORE I GO I promised to leave you a message in answer to a concern or question you may have. So take a moment to think about that—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud—I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…NOW MESSAGE Your situation needs some forgiveness. You need to let go of any past anger you’re holding onto. It’s holding you back. You either need to forgive someone else…OR You need to forgive yourself... For placing unrealistic expectations on this situation.  I'LL TALK TO YOU LATER

On SYS episode 01, I’m telling the story of how Shift Your Spirits came to be. Back in 2002, over the course of a few months, my seemingly "ideal" life was systematically ripped away from me. I crawled out of the wreckage by listening to the voices of spirits and angels who were communicating with me. The directions they gave me led me to rebuild my life into something more closely resembling what I'd always wanted it to be. SHOW NOTES Show notes and links HOST LINKS sladeroberson.com Get an intuitive reading with Slade Download a free ebook and meditation Automatic Intuition Patreon.com Support this Show TRANSCRIPT So, true story. In 2002, at the age of 33, I had a stroke. You know that joke about ‘don’t give yourself an aneurysm’? Well, I did. I was working at the time at what I thought was my dream job. I was a student adviser at a university and I had also found an agent for the first time in my life for my fiction. So, on paper, my life looked, if not perfect, then perfectly suited to me. And, in a matter of months, it turned into hell. It all got pulled out from under me. On a Sunday night, I was out with some friends. I think we were at a bar or a restaurant, and then a club and anyway, I do remember hearing kind of a pop in my jaw, like a TMJ thing, you know. Like your jaw just kind of popping weird. And soon after that, my contact lens in my left eye just really started to torture me, so you know, I told everybody I gotta go home and get these contact lenses out of my eye. It’s Sunday night anyway, I’m working tomorrow. So I went home. And I woke up the next morning partially paralyzed. The entire left side of my face was sort of melted or frozen, and the reason why my contact lens had been bothering me apparently the night before is because my eye could no longer blink. So the paralysis extended down my neck and into my shoulder and kind of partially affected the fingers on my left hand. So I had to wear a patch over my eye and I sounded drunk when I spoke and, you know, I was missing tons of work. When it first happened, that Monday morning, and I called in sick, and - this is part of the reason why this job turned out to be hell - my boss didn’t believe me. He thought that I was calling in hungover, and insisted that I come by and prove that my face was paralyzed. So I left the emergency room after being there for most the day and having doctors see me, and I went by my office, and very angrily pointed at my melted face and said, “See?” So, needless to say, I just wanted to go home and crawl under the covers, you know. And I started missing a lot of work because of this and I eventually did lose my job over it. And I became kind of a shut-in there, for awhile. So my name is Slade Roberson. For over ten years now, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’ where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than the leading new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I want to introduce you to my new podcast. And tell you a little bit about the origin story for ‘Shift Your Spirits’, how all this got started and where I hope to take it in the near future. So, after ten years writing for you every week, I want to do something new. Most of my job revolves around talking to you guys, one-on-one. I do intuitive readings, I go on other people’s podcasts, I do interviews with other intuitives to see if we can work together on my mentoring program, and I coach people to do what I do. So, you know, everything I do is talking. So why not, you know, record some of it and let everyone hear all the good talking stuff. So, back to the story. It took me about nine months, maybe ten months, to recover most of my speech. Like, to get, I would say, maybe to about 90% recovered. And one of the things that the speech therapist advised me was to sing and to recite poetry because it does sort of use a different part of your brain and it also helps exercise those muscles and re-wire them as the nerves are coming back online to the cheeks, and the tongue, the lips, and everything. So, what ended up happening is I started to listen to a lot of rap and I would actually stand in the mirror for long periods of time and try to sing and annunciate the rap that I was listening to. And I credit Missy Elliot for being my speech therapist and a big reason why I recovered so much of the speech that I did. So, hey Missy, thanks girl! I also, you know, started to pray a lot. I was shut-in in my home by myself all the time, talking to the cat, talking to the walls, and you know, talking to my guides. I was really haunted in that house for those nine months. And, you know, there’s that joke about doing what the voices in your head tell you to do. Well, I really did start to hear my guides speaking back to me. And this conversation, this dialogue, started up and I really got to the point where I had nothing left to do but to trust them and I said, “You know what? I don’t know what to do with myself at this point. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” I did manage to get another job during this period. It was working for a guy who ran an online company and so there were really just one or two people working in this sort of warehouse space, and they were doing a lot of fullfillment for his online store. So it was pulling merchandise and packing it up, like a mini three-person-Amazon kind of scenario, and I also ended up losing that job. The guy was a little shady. I worked there for close to two months, during the end of the year, and I was promised to be paid for all that time that I’d been working on Christmas Eve. He wanted to get a lot of his Christmas sales and merchandise in to pay the few of us who were employees. So, Christmas Eve came and, of course, I wanted to go out of town and go home and visit my family and I went by to pick up my cheque or my money from him, and I found the warehouse locked. And it took several frustrating weeks to even get him to call me back and communicate with me. Long story short, he had no money to pay me. He never did pay me. And that whole experience actually was a big eye opener for me. I saw for the first time, how someone with a relatively small operation could run something online that looked like a big full-fledged business enterprise, and I do think that something clicked for me. And so I look back on that as a good thing that occurred, even though I’m still mad about the money that he owes me. What it did do was it made me mad as hell. And I came home from the holidays not having gotten paid for all that work that I did. And I thought, you know, I could do what he’s doing. Actually, I could do something better than what he’s doing because I wouldn’t deal with all this physical merchandise and stuff. I would just, you know, deal with writing content and possibly publishing, which is what I always wanted to do. So I took what was literally my last 35 bucks in my chequing account and I registered my own domain. And I decided I’m going to figure out how to do this online publishing thing. Remember this is 2003. So it took me a few years. I taught myself HTML, CSS, PHP. I literally just stayed in my house 24/7 learning to code. And at the time I was also still working with this agent on my fiction. And he had been talking to me about my platform as an author and we were trying to come up with some type of non-fiction part of what I did, to create an opportunity for me to teach and to possibly write a column, to do something that was in coordination with the fiction. So he had read all of my fictional stories and he was like, you know, there’s a theme. All writers have a story that they kind of keep telling over and over again and you definitely have one. And I was like, really! Okay, well what is it? And he said, all your characters are Joan of arc. They all have the ability to hear these voices, or they have some kind of psychic ability, and they’re socially outcast for it. Or they’re persecuted in some way. So what’s all that about, he asked me. And you know, so I told him. He was the first person that I told. What I never really mentioned to anyone else in my life up to that point. Because I was afraid people would think I was insane. I told him that I hear voices. That I hear spirits around me and I communicate with them. So, while he was trying to find me a column where I could write some of this non-fiction stuff, because he did see a bridge between the paranormal elements and my fiction that I was writing about and this real thing that was happening to me. But, of course, I had discovered this thing called blogging, which was a new kind of website, and I was experimenting with it. I was teaching other people how to blog. That was really sort of starting to become an income stream for me, or job, for me at the time, with all the skills that I had learned around self-publishing. So I decided, you know, I’m just gonna make a blog. I was doing it for all these other people, you know, these businesses that were hiring me to develop email marketing programs for them and blogs and I was teaching them how to use it. I was setting everything up, and they just really never seemed to do as much with it as I knew that they could, and it was frustrating to me that I was going to all this effort to build these beautiful little scenarios online for them to market themselves and put themselves out there, and they just didn’t do anything with it. So I started to become a little insecure that maybe I didn’t know what I was talking about. That maybe, you know, I was wrong about my strategies for developing online content and marketing it and getting people to pay attention to it. So as an experiment, I’ll take these articles that I’ve been writing for my agent about my paranormal experiences, my experiences as a child growing up, seeing and hearing things, and just all the stuff that I was writing about. The guides. I thought, I’ll just do an experiment and create a blog with that stuff because there’s nothing further from business-like than a blog about paranormal experiences and I just wanted to see if I went through the motions of pretending that I was my own client, and I built the blog and I did it as frequently as I was supposed to, and I did the email capture form, and I had a subscriber incentive. All this stuff that you’re supposed to do online to build an audience. What if I just do it, and just see if it works as well as I think it’s going to. And I actually didn’t think it would work. I, kind of - a part of me was still very much in the closet about all this and very shy about anyone knowing about it or hearing it. So I sort of tucked it away under a sub-domain on my web presence, and I thought, you know, I’m just going to stick this here, and maybe I’ll get enough of a trickle of interest that it’ll give me the data to sort of see if this works. And the name for the blog, Shift Your Spirits, really came to me fully formed. It was one of those things that my guides said, here’s the name of your blog. And I thought, okay, that’s cool, that works. So I slapped that name on it, and it wasn’t even like, ShiftYourSpirits.com. It was just my own, one of my business domains with this weird little folder tucked off to the side where no one would see it. So, this other weird thing happened around that same time. I started finding these books left in strange places, okay? So, I remember one time going out to my car in the middle of the night because I would go grocery shopping at like, 2:00 in the morning so that I wouldn’t have to see and encounter a lot of people. It was a vanity thing for me. I was wearing this eye patch, and my speech was slurred, and I just didn’t want anyone to see me. So I would go to Kroger in the middle of the night when there were, like, three people working there. And I came out to my car and found a book on my windshield. And it was called “Messages from Mother Mary”. And it was this little book about people who had seen and heard the Virgin Mary. And, okay, so there’s a whole Virgin Mary sighting experience that I have which I have to tell you on another episode that happened around this time. So we’ll come back to that, I promise you. It’s, like, one of the big stories that I want to tell. Anyway, so not long after that, I was living in a second story loft that had kind of a balcony outside of it. This place was almost like a prison. It was gated. It was very hard to even get into the parking lot, let alone get at any of the individual apartments. And so I had this balcony that you could only get to from, you know, going through my apartment. And I heard a thud one day and went outside and found a book on my balcony, like someone had tossed it up over the railing and/or dropped it from the ceiling, where the roof of the building, and it had just landed there. And it was called “Quantum Spirituality”. So anyway, more stories later about those books and their content. But anyways, so this strange stuff was happening, these synchronicities, and meanwhile I was writing this collection of articles. I had about twelve, which is what I usually advise people to do when they were starting out. You know, put out about a dozen, ten or so articles when you first start a blog, and launch it with a collection. And people started writing to me. Like, a lot of people started writing to me who had read these posts and were commenting on them, or emailing me and asking me if I could do a reading for them, if I could connect with their guides, or tell them what their guides’ names were. Things like that, and, at first I was, like, I have no idea if I can do a reading for someone else, but I’ll try! You know, and so I started writing these emails back to people where I would just sort of tune in and I would listen and I would get information from their guides or about their guides and sometimes the people would send me a question and I would tune in and get an answer for it and I would send it to them. And they were these really short little email readings that I started doing, you know, dozens of them every day. And this blog that I put out there, that I didn’t want anyone to see really, blew up. It became the single most productive, effective, successful blog that I’d ever created for anyone. All the mechanisms that I put in place were firing and I was building this subscriber list really quickly. I think, you know, after like a month, or six weeks, into doing this experiment, I had 800 people following my blog and getting their new post delivered to them in email. So, I decided at that time, well this is really cool. I’m going to offer these readings that I’m doing for people as a free incentive: If you subscribe to my blog, I’ll do this quick little email reading for you. So, oh my god, I literally put it online and took it back down the next day. I got so many people who signed up and sent me their information, sent me their questions, wanted a reading from me. It took six or seven months for me to complete all of those readings. Meanwhile, continuing to create the blog posts and.. I put something else out as a free subscriber incentive. Something that people could just download. Because it never occurred to me that so many people would say yes, and, anyway… Fast forward nine, ten months later, I’ve been doing this blog and doing all these readings and, at that point, I had done literally hundreds of readings, and I just realized one day, I can do readings for people. And so I started to accept donations, and then I eventually started to charge for it. And I stopped being a web developer and just, kind of became a full-time psychic. So, I’ve been doing this now for almost eleven years at the time of this recording. So many of the posts that I’ve written over the years, I’ve read out loud, as you do, you know, as you’re editing them, and I always thought that so many of my posts were better read out loud. Or they made really good spoken word pieces. And I also have so many stories that I just want to tell you guys that are very daunting to try to write. Like the experience with the Virgin Mary, and... just some of those kinds of things that are big whoppers that I always intent to write about and they’re just too long to be posts, and they’re too hard to put down in words. Yet, I tell these stories all the time to people that I’m friends with, and so I’ve always been thinking, “If I can just tell this story, and record it like I tell it to a friend of mine, that would be cool, and that would be the way to put it out.” And, you know, a lot of what I want to share with you, too, are other people’s voices. There are so many people that I talk to all the time, who are my peers, who do this kind of work, or do something similar but interesting, and I’d love to showcase what they do and I’d love for you to be a fly on the wall and listen to some of the conversations that we have about spirituality and paranormal experiences, etc. And, you know, I also have these friends and family members who have cool ghost stories and I always think, “Yeah, man, I just need to, like, record them telling me these cool ghost stories and share those with my audience as well.” So, I’d like to do some interviews on this podcast. My hope would be at least a couple times a month starting out. I’d like to have some guests on and let you guys get to know those people as well. So, if you are one of the people who’d like to be a guest on this show, by all means contact me. One of my best friends, Lacy, told me that she predicts that doing this podcast might actually go beyond my intentions of just simply flipping the writing into speaking, so I’m excited to see what might happen next. I certainly never intended for the last decade of my life to happen the way that it did. But it’s been the most rewarding job that I’ve ever had, and one that I would have never thought to do, had I not just put it out there. So I’m putting this next phase out there, which is Shift Your Spirits in audio format, and I hope you’ll tune in with me and come along, and see what happens. So, thanks for listening to this introductory episode. You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’re new to podcasts, it’s probably that purple button on your iPhone. Click it, search ‘Shift Your Spirits’, and hit subscribe. Also, since this is a new podcast, it would really help me out if you would rate the show on iTunes and leave me a review. Share it on social media, tell your friends about it. It would make a huge difference in my efforts here and I would be extremely grateful. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free guided meditation to help you connect with your guides, please go to https://sladeroberson.com/. And if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the attunement at https://automaticintuition.com/. For show notes and links, visit ShiftYourSpirits.com 0 Likes

On SYS episode 02, I share some grandmother magic -- one of the magical ritual prayer spells that I practice, how it came to be, and how you can develop one of your own. There are simple but powerful rules for this kind of prayer magic. The story involves a glass bowl that belonged to my maternal grandmother, and a painting of the Virgin Mary given to me by one of my readers, one of my first clients. SHOW NOTES Full notes and links HOST LINKS sladeroberson.com Get an intuitive reading with Slade Download a free ebook and meditation Automatic Intuition Patreon.com Support this Show TRANSCRIPT So this may be an odd piece to put so close to the beginning of a new podcast, but then that statement in itself says a lot about my complicated relationship with spirituality. Mother Mary is very much connected to how and why I started ‘Shift Your Spirits’ in 2006, and I’ve been promising, intending to tell my story about her this entire time, and I never seem to get around to it. I’m getting closer. Maybe it makes a kind of sense that I would start a podcast here. My relationship with Mary is significant and complex. I’m one of the most unlikely people I can think of to be visited by the Virgin Mary, but I was, and that is a story in itself, which I will have to come back and tell you on another episode. I’m not even sure how to think about her. I suppose she is an ascended master to me. No offence to anyone who believes she is the mother of their messiah. I certainly was not raised Catholic. I wasn’t raised to be a Christian. I was raised surrounded by Christianity, but I do not identify as a Christian. I do believe in magic and miracles and spirits. I consider myself something of a witch. I’m known to be a psychic. I’m an eclectic, spiritual but not religious, as I imagine you probably are as well. My name is Slade Roberson. For over ten years now, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’ where I write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than the leading new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I want to tell you about some grandmother magic. One of the Magical Ritual Prayer Spells that I practice. It involves a glass bowl that belonged to my maternal grandmother and a painting of the Virgin Mary given to me by one of my readers, one of my first clients. Now, this glass bowl is actually an ashtray. It’s a beautiful, heavy, amber-colored glass ashtray with this pattern of rays in raised ridges on the bottom. It’s kind of a mid-century modern sunburst. It could be an antique from as far back as the 1930s to the 1960s. I was born in 1969 and this belonged to my grandmother who died in 1971. My maternal grandmother, Victoria, who was called by her middle name, as I am, her full name was actually Queen Victoria, she kept this ashtray as a prize knickknack on her coffee table for years, maybe decades. My aunt Vera assured me that no one was ever allowed to ash in it though. Now, a little bit about Vera. She’s the oldest of 11 kids. She’s my mother’s sister. The first book I ever published was actually my aunt Vera’s autobiography. My mother edited the book and I formatted and published it. It’s called “Stop Over in Wilder”. It starts with this beautiful opening passage about the first time Vera saw a plane flying over her hometown as a little girl in the 1920s. Wilder, Tennessee was one of those little towns that literally disappeared. It doesn’t exist anymore. It makes me think of a few other films and books like “A Trip to Bountiful”, which started out as a play. And then, of course, “Fried Green Tomatoes” at the Whistle Stop Café, Fannie Flagg novel, that was also turned into a movie. Both of those works are kind of about this phenomenon of towns that, from, you know, the early 19th century, that, by the end of the 19th century just aren’t there anymore. Before Vera passed, she gave this ashtray to me. And, for the record, I’ve never ashed in it either. Now the painting – it came to me from a woman named Debra Estep, who friends and family call “Debs”. Debra, several years ago my mom was undergoing a major surgery and I had posted about it online. Debs saw it and she sent my mom this little angel coin. This medallion for her to keep with her as a protection. So Debs is this really sweet soul. She’s a military mom, she – to be someone I’ve never met before, she has been very generous to me over the past decade. And to my mom, who she also doesn’t know, she’s just a really kind soul and a really cool person. And actually she told me that this painting is called a mezzotint, or metzotint. I’m not even sure how to pronounce it. She told me to Google it and, actually now that I’m here recording this I realize that I forgot to Google it. Some of you might want to look that up and see exactly what it means. I’m just looking at it, so that works for me. But back in 1985, Debra was working part-time as a receptionist for an attorney. And the attorney’s secretary asked her to proofread an advertisement he was going to run in the paper. He was looking for a part-time person to be a companion for his elderly mother. Debs thought about it that night and the next day, she went into the attorney’s office and she pitched him the idea of hiring her for the position. She told him, you know, he could find anybody to answer the phones, but he was going to have a hard time finding someone he could really trust to care for his mother. She said he had a dry personality and he just kinda nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll think about it and let you know.” Leaving the office, Debra thought, “Oh well, he seemed less than positive about that idea.” She was 27 years old at the time and she thought he probably wanted someone a little bit older. But the next day, he approached her when she arrived for work and he was very enthusiastic and friendly in a way that she’d never seen him be before. And he told her he wanted her to start working with his mom the very next week. So Mrs. Mays was 86 years old at the time. She was sharp as a tack as they say. A brilliant woman. She’d graduated from college in 1918 with a degree in Pharmacology. And over the five years that Debra was her caretaker, there was no subject that they didn’t discuss. Mrs. Mays kept up with current issues and world news. With all that had happened in the century she’d lived through, listening to her was like a lesson in history. And Debra would often bring her young children to visit. Mrs. Mays adored them and they came to call her “Grandma Mays”. After she passed in 1990, her family invited Debra to her apartment and generously offered her any of the woman’s possessions she wanted as mementos. So, the mezzotint of the Virgin Mary with Child was one of those three items Debra kept to remember her time with Mrs. Mays. 25 years later, Debra was reading my blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’ and I had written about this connection I have to Mother Mary, and she said she had the impulse to send the mezzotint to me. And as she was boxing it up, she sensed that Mrs. Mays was with her and wholeheartedly approved of giving it to me. So, needless to say, I was touched once again by Debra’s generosity towards me. It was a really sweet gesture. And it was also charged with so much history and sentiment, and, you know, that alone makes the image extremely powerful regardless of what the image is of. I had just purchased my first home and it was a first image I hung on the walls in the house. And I saw that as a blessing from Mary herself. So I sent Debs a picture of the picture in my still-empty new house. So the glass ashtray, the magic prayer bowl, it sits on a low chest in my bedroom now with the mezzotint of Mother Mary hanging just above it. And so this ritual, or the rules of this ritual that I do, I’m not sure if it’s religious. It could be sacrilegious. To me, in my mind, it feels like a little old catholic lady meets a granny woman witch kind of ritual. So the thing about the request that I put in the prayer bowl – some of the kind of rules I have around this is that it’s gotta be something big. It can’t be petty stuff, it can’t be selfish or materialistic. It’s gotta be about someone other than just me. And more than anything, it has to be something that I can’t affect or control any further on my own. Usually it’s something I’ve already tried to affect or impact and I feel like it’s finally come to the point where it’s outside of my power. And at that point I’ve gotta surrender it. I’ve gotta let it go and give it to Mary. I actually say that a lot, “I’m gonna give this to Mary.” And so the requests are written down on little pieces of paper and they’re also left open in the bowl while the request is, sort of, active. And if, in some way, the prayer gets answered, or the problem gets solved, or taken care of, or resolved in any way, when they’re done, so to speak, I fold them up and close them but I leave them inside the bowl. Everything that I give to Mary in this way is taken care of. It’s really kind of miraculous and I don’t take it lightly and I don’t throw a lot of things in there because I don’t want to mess with this perfection that I’ve got going. So there’s a lot of reverence about where I draw the lines and what goes in there. But the stuff that goes in there – it gets taken care of. Some of the, you know, kinds of things that I put in there: I have some friends, for the past few years who have been trying to adopt a child and, that went into the bowl. My own brother and sister-in-law were pregnant last year with the first and only grandbaby in our family. Their little son named Hayden, who was born on Christmas Eve. And obviously I did an ongoing kind of prayer bowl request. It started out with a little piece of paper just sort of announcing that they were pregnant and it just had their names and baby on it. And then when they had their gender reveal party and we found out that it was going to be a boy, there was this blue, tiny clothespin that you wore on your collar, on your shirt or whatever, at the party, to indicate the sex that you were predicting that the baby was going to be. So everyone had a little blue clothespin or a pink clothespin. I had a blue one because I correctly predicted that it was going to be a boy. So when I got back from the gender reveal party, I added the little blue clothespin to the piece of paper that said “Parrish & Heather’s baby”. And then, later on, when they chose a name for him, I wrote his name, Hayden, on there as well. So I imagine that Hayden’s prayer request and his little slip of paper with the blue clothespin on it is likely to reside in this bowl the rest of my life. That’s one that I don’t see ever being closed up or put away. There’ve been other things that I’ve put in there. You know, whenever someone comes to me with something really serious and heavy going on in their world, especially if they know about this prayer bowl thing, which now I’m probably going to get even more requests, but if someone makes a really specific request to me, or I see it as something that I can do on behalf of them, it often involves other people’s loved ones, I will put their name on a paper and put it in there. And, like I said, it always gets taken care of. There’s only one time that it didn’t work. And that was with one of my pets - a cat named Cinco, and I’ll tell you that in just a second. First, I wanted to go back and mention that – I don’t know how this happened or it emerged or evolved, but there seems to be some significance to the color of ink that I write these prayer requests down in. So, red ink - I use Sharpies, by the way in case you’re wondering - red ink is usually for something that’s kind of a short-term, emergency situation, like maybe a health crisis or someone’s, you know, going in for surgery. Something that is immediate and going to have a resolution fairly soon. I tend to write those in red. Things that are long-term or ongoing, such as my nephew, Hayden, his request is written in black and most of my general requests are written in black ink. So, there’s this one time that the prayer bowl did not work, and that was with this cat, Cinco, that I was talking about. He was a feral cat that I spent over a year, kind of feeding and luring, closer and closer, to trusting and to being able to come inside during the winter and stay in the garage where it was a little warmer. It took months and months of putting out food and inching him closer and closer, to get him to a point where he would come into the garage during the winter and huddle near a heater. At one point, he was badly hurt and he had something stuck in his eye. I was horrified. I knew he was going to die this really slow, agonizing death, or if be - he did survive, it would be after a lot of suffering and he was going to be impaired for the rest of his life. So I was able to trap him with a raccoon trap and took him to the vet and they were able to save him and save his eye. They fixed him, you know, neutered him, and I brought him home and returned him back out into the woods and he disappeared for several days. But he eventually started coming back again and, this was a really wild animal. He was the most timid animal that I’ve ever encountered and I don’t know that he ever would have been a pet. He was just to the point where he would let me, sort of, quickly brush my hand along his back, you know, when he walked around my feet, but that was as close as he got to being a pet. He was a really, really, gentle, pretty, sweet little animal. He was solid grey and he was very hard to see in the woods. He looked like a shadow. So, long story short – I didn’t know this was going to be a story about Cinco, but maybe I need to eulogize him a little bit – he was attacked and killed by a coyote in broad daylight. And we heard it and it was really horrifying. And we didn’t know for sure if what we heard was him. It was more of a, kind of, suspect noise in the woods, but he didn’t show up to eat his appointed time that evening. Spent weeks looking for him in the woods, looking for some sign of him. Hoping that maybe he had run away because of the coyotes that were back there and that, you know, maybe he might come back again. And there’s something, kind of, nothing worse than something disappearing, and not knowing what happened. And so… I was so caught up in all the practical ways of looking for him that I didn’t really think to give it to Mary. And by the time that I did, you know, it was probably a week had gone by from when we assumed he had been snatched by the coyote. And I wrote his name on a piece of paper. And I really didn’t do it in a sense of empowerment. I didn’t do it as something that I felt like, “I’m giving this to Mary to solve”. It felt like an afterthought, and I don’t know why, but at the time I couldn’t locate the green – I couldn’t locate the black sharpie or the red sharpie. I grabbed the green Sharpie and I thought, “Well, green is kind of like the color of life, so it’ll be fine.” So I wrote his name down in green piece of paper and I put it in the prayer bowl. I’ve never written anything in green ever again. The thing about the way I believe that these spells and these rituals work is they are a kind of programming for our own brains, you know, and, to me now, the color of that green ink is - it’s kind of poisoned, you know, and so I have this really strong association and sense of hope and manifesting positive things when it comes to the black and the red, so, you know, I’ve become very superstitious about the green and I won’t be writing anything in green ever again. Unless I evolve some new kind of programming where it makes better sense. But right now, those are kind of the rules of this ritual that I do. So whenever I tell this story to somebody about the Mary bowl, the Virgin Mary ashtray, I get requests from people. And they’re essentially prayer requests. So if you have something like that, and you follow me on social media, and you want to contact me and tell me about it. I – if it’s, you know, if it’s something you genuinely feel like fits the criteria, by all means, let me know. But the reason why I wanted to record this and tell you about it is because, explaining all this would be a little hard to write down. But more than anything, I’m telling you this because, you know, you can make your own magical prayer bowl, or prayer bottle or prayer jar or, anything like this. It takes something that you feel has some emotional significance, and maybe some spiritual symbolism, something that you identify with as being a conduit between you and the divine. Whatever that is, I encourage you to make one. You can borrow my rules to get started and you can adapt them however you think they best work for you. So thank you for listening to ‘Shift Your Spirits’ podcast. You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’re new to podcasts, it’s probably that purple button on your iPhone. Click it, search ‘Shift Your Spirits’, and hit subscribe. Also, since this is a new podcast, it would really help me out if you would rate the show on iTunes and leave me a review. Share it on social media, tell your friends about it. It would make a huge difference in my efforts here and I would be extremely grateful. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free guided meditation to help you connect with your guides, please go to https://sladeroberson.com/. And if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the attunement at https://automaticintuition.com/. For show notes and links, visit ShiftYourSpirits.com

On SYS episode 03, I talk about how your ego spins messages like a DJ spins songs. Carl Jung believed that a precise diagnosis could, in and of itself, spontaneously launch the healing process. So, learning how to identify these messages is the first step in consciously separating from the Voices that are not you — were never you — and no longer serve you. SHOW NOTES Full notes and links The Money Shift HOST LINKS sladeroberson.com Get an intuitive reading with Slade Download a free ebook and meditation Automatic Intuition Patreon.com Support this Show TRANSCRIPT Carl Jung believed that a precise diagnosis could, in and of itself, spontaneously launch the healing process. Your mind and your spirit, your psycho-spiritual wellness is very much dependent on the messages playing in your interior monologues, your imaginary dialogues, and the messages that get communicated through your relationships with other people. My name is Slade Roberson. For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition. Today, I want to talk about how your ego spins messages like a DJ. The whole point of psychoanalysis and talk-therapy is to identify, to become conscious of what messages are playing within you: how they got there, who authored them, where they came from and when you either chose to adopt them or had them forced on you. You were not born with any of the messages that are currently playing in your mind. Absolutely everything you say to yourself, about yourself, was written by someone else. Your words are not original. They’re always repeated. Even if you have an original thought, it must be expressed or translated into language, and language can be broken down into basic parts which you did not invent. Even if your ordering of words, or unique literary device, has never been expressed in quite the same way before by anyone else on earth, the building blocks of the language itself, the vocabulary, the words, the letters, the full names, are inherited from an enormous collective culture that has travelled to you across thousands of generations of humanity. You downloaded these messages. You absorb them. You parrot them. You either consciously hear them and take them within you, or you unconsciously become infected with them as mind viruses. These messages and fragments of everyone else’s opinions and beliefs become a part of your own mental database. Your own interior library. Your own sound collection. These messages have the capacity to organize around archetypal energy patterns and become Voices with a capital “V”. Personae with whom you develop ongoing persistent relationships. Now if you’ve worked with my book ‘The Money Shift’, then you’re already familiar with how this phenomenon plays out regarding the voice of your abundance archetype. Similar relationships are taking place with any number of archetypes, beliefs, issues, your self-esteem, your inner child, your saboteur, your rebel, your artist. You can investigate absolutely any relationship you have with any template or archetypal energetic pattern within your psyche and begin to make conscious choices about the conversations you are allowing to play. Think of the music or mp3 library on your computer or your smartphone. Although you call these songs yours, and they’re very representative of who you are as a person, on some level, of course, you’re aware you did not write, sing, play, or record any of these songs. You have the capacity to identify these songs and their artists as separate from you, even as you employ them to assist you in expressing your thoughts and emotions. When you listen to your music collection, you have no problem behaving as an active director, even a tyrant, in choosing what you want to hear in that moment. You repeat your favorites obsessively. You will skip a song you don’t want to hear. You may even delete one you never want to hear again. You make choices according to present energetic requirements to chill out, to get yourself revved up and moving, to have a good cry, to dance around the room. You adjust the volume to appropriate circumstances. You can even shut the whole thing off. It’s relatively easy for you to identify the songs, messages, voices you love in the context of your literal music collection. You know who’s singing, you know the lyrics by heart, you know when the song was released, you can recall the time you heard it, where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. You can do the same thing with the songs that get on your nerves and drive you nuts. Yet you have no problem avoiding them or ignoring them when you want to. Now, approach this metaphor as it relates to your self-talk. The inner monologues and dialogues of voices, messages, and beliefs that you allow to play in your mind every day of your life. It’s interesting how you unconsciously assume you don’t have the same power of choice. Notice how the negative voices seem to get so much more airplay as opposed to being shut down or avoided. Why is that? You were not born hearing, and believing, and identifying with these words: asshole, bitch, fag, fat, lazy, slut, stupid, ugly. Every single one of those came from somewhere outside of you. So here’s what I want you to think about. What are some of the messages, the voices, you have downloaded that cause you pain or hold you back? Who are the original authors? Who introduced you to these messages? Where were you when you first heard them? Your internal mind chatter feels much more like some god-awful music channel you were forced to listen to and have no control over. The gentle, supportive, loving voices of your spirit are out-numbered. They’re drowned out. Are you just waiting and hoping one of those nice songs will come on sooner or later? Who says you can’t delete the ones that aren’t serving you? Or at least skip over them when you hear their opening strings and just jump to one that brings you power and joy? Your ego is an obnoxious DJ. It has taken over the playlist endlessly spinning a heavy rotation of fear-based tunes. Observe this station carefully. Consciously. Diagnose where these voices and their messages came from. Acknowledge that they were never started as yours. They came from somewhere externally. And you internalized them. This kind of identification is the first step in consciously separating from the Voices that are not you — were never you — and no longer serve you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Shift Your Spirits. You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’re new to podcasts, it’s probably that purple button on your iPhone. Click it, search ‘Shift Your Spirits’, and hit subscribe. Also, since this is a new podcast, it would really help me out if you would rate the show on iTunes and leave me a review. Share it on social media, tell your friends about it. It would make a huge difference in my efforts here and I would be extremely grateful. If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free guided meditation to help you connect with your guides, please go to https://sladeroberson.com/. And if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the attunement at https://automaticintuition.com/. For show notes and links, visit ShiftYourSpirits.com