Episodios
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In this episode I explored John C. Parkin and his wife's philosophy that rests mantras that start with the phrase "F**k it".
Their book came out in 2019 and made a lot of noise because for the first time, a swear word was associated with a spiritual practice. And although their method is not for everyone, it actually rests on sound principles.
Swear words and profanities are looked down upon and sometimes even banned by religion, especially the three Abrahamic ones (i.e. Judaism, Islam and Christianity). It is considered disrespectful, negative and a sign of lack of control. I have to admit to partaking to that point of view myself at the start of my spiritual journey. But then, I unpacked both my prejudice and my privilege and have now changed my views. Swearing is not something I do often, but I no longer consider it "unspiritual". I think this ties in with the episode I did about whether spiritual people get angry, which you can listen by clicking on this link.
To get an idea of what the F**k it philosophy is like, I did a fourteen day experiment on my social media, which I also share on the podcast. It was both fun and interesting.
Of the six basic mantras that are at the core of the F**k it revolution, I have retained one: "F**k it, I can relax now".
In conclusion, I have enjoyed this experiment and would recommend it to beginners on the spiritual path. I would love to know what you think though, so please feel free to comment below.
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This month's guest, Cindy Stal, brings a whole new level of wisdom that comes from her first hand experience at healing incredible pain with pleasure. Her awakening happened as she was sitting in her corporate job, in a grey office, with a grey carpet, a grey ceiling and when she looked outside, she saw the grey sky and thought to herself, "I can't do this anymore". She started thinking about how she dreaded going to work on Sunday afternoons, and I am sure some of you will relate to this.
A second powerful moment in Cindy's life was when her first husband was in hospital for cancer and she wandered into the hospital chapel and prayed. It's not something she did often at the time, and she heard "Follow your passion". She looked around, only to find out she was alone in the church.
When she gave birth to her still born daughter and experienced pain like never before, the voice came back and said "You have to keep your heart open or you will lose everything". So she listened to the voice. Keeping her heart open was the simplest yet the hardest thing she had been asked to do. It is so much harder than to close it down to protect us. And thanks to keeping her heart open, her husband and her became closer instead of growing apart. They were able to be there for each other.
Cindy challenges the narrative of the grief industry that tends to reinforce the victim mentality. Instead, Cindy wants to invite us to embrace pleasure as the powerful healer that it is. Pleasure is about choosing life again. This lead her to create the Pussy Oracle, a beautiful deck laced with gold, pink and purple, that talks about so much more than pleasure and sex. To find out about Cindy, head over to her website. You can also find her on IG and FB.
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Angel numbers are a very special way that they can get your attention, through digital clocks, car plates or house numbers. And this is great.
In this week's episode, I am going to explore the meaning of numbers 1 to 9 in traditional numerology, then dive into the meaning that Diana Cooper, the angel lady in the UK, assigns to them only to invite you to check how it lands with you.
It can be confusing to see that each spiritual teacher assigns a different meaning to angel numbers. Who is right? You are right, inasmuch as what matters is how you feel about one particular teacher or number. Number 3, for example, reminds me of my dad. But to a Christian, it will have the particular association with Christ consciousness or the trinity.
Angel numbers are one of the signs that angels use to communicate with you but what I have come to learn is that they use a sign that is significant to you rather than what it is supposed to mean universally. For this reason, I invite you to do an audit of the symbols that mean something special to you. One number can mean something different to you because it is the day you met a certain person, or got your first job, or whatever.
I also encourage you to listen to EP 23 about signs from the Universe to get a broader understanding of how signs work.
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The BBC has released a powerful documentary called Backlash, the murder of George Loyd. This documentary is the foundation for today's episode. All spiritual people should care about black lives and equality. I felt called to do this episode also because in my interview with Barbara With last month, we talked about World Peace and the fact that peace starts within. I do not believe that anger at systemic oppression falls into that category. That anger is righteous anger. It obviously should be channeled positively but I will be the last one to judge people who have taken part in riots in response to systematic oppression. I will also not tolerate people who call out "wokism" when it is about human rights and basic decency.
We live in times where there is a rise in fascism and fascist ideas, which can be very seductive and keeping silent in those times leads to validating these ideas. It is right to be upset when human rights are violated. It is not enough not to be racist, we need to be anti-racist.
The spiritual community is mostly white. It is rare to see people of colour as attendees not to mention as speakers and that needs to change. In the UK, 18% of population is black and there should be a proportionate representation in all spaces, but there is not.
White spiritual communities still violate the culture of indigenous people by selling white sage and palo santo in "spiritual" shops. I still see dream catchers sold in Mind Body Spirit Fairs. And no one bat an eye lid at it. Even Lee Harris, who i respect and love, has a lit white sage wand in his videos. This needs to stop. Please listen to Episode 75 to educate yourself around what cultural appropriation is.
Listen to the episode for book recommendations to educate yourself on the topic of racism.
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In part 1 of today's episode I talk about the dangers of ignoring our intuition. You know how important it is for me to keep you safe on your spiritual journey. I have actually already published an episode on how to do that and I invite you to listen to it, if you haven't already. I have also already done one episode on intuition. Click here to listen. And sometimes listening to one's intuition is a question of life and death, as Emma Turton, one of my guests shared in EP 29 on Health, Illness and Spirituality.
In part 2 of this week's episode, I share the three main reasons we don't trust our intuition.
In part 3, I share what we can do about it.
In Part 1, I share three stories. Two that happened to me and one that happened to the engineers of NASA. So it's not just little old me. These are cautionary tales. Intuition can do two things for us, it can steer you away from danger, or it can pull us towards wonderful things. As you might have guessed by the title, today we talk about the dangers of ignoring it.
In Part 2 I explain why it's actually perfectly reasonable not to trust our intuition. We have all been conditioned to ignore it and more often than not, it doesn't make sense.
But because intuition is here to save us from danger, like the sign on the road above this text, we need to take three action steps to change our relationship to intuition. Here are the three things I encourage you to do:
Go on a treasure hunt for stories of intuition Analyse your stories of intuition to spot patterns Pluck up the courage to take actionI share one story where I had the courage to take action, which in that particularly story meant to speak up for what I had been shown BEFORE I knew if it was right. This is a story that I shared in my memoir, Spiritual Lawyer. I invite you to do the same. Find the courage within to act on it. And for now, just pick one of the three points I listed above. You don't have to pick the most difficult. You can start easy.
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Barbara With is a musician, a composer and a channeler. Barbara had a twenty year career as a musician, touring on the road with her original material. It is during that time that she discovered automatic writing. She was writing a letter to a friend and suddenly the whole mood shifted. The words that came out were full of love, compassion and were very uplifting.
You know it's channeling due to the nature of the words. Its fruits, so to speak.
Because she had been mentored for a long time, she knew what was happening.
Three years ago, Barbara was called to go on a Peace Pilgrimage. She rented out her house and travelled the world on a peace tour. She took a leap of faith and closed down all the activities that supported her financially. What happened was phenomenal. First, she toured in the US, then in January, she headed towards the UK. She travelled 23,000 miles. She was in the UK during the Julien Assange trial. She contacted the Aetherius Society. But mostly talked to everyone who asked her why she was in the UK by sharing her mission to bring world peace, through working on each one's individual peace. Peace starts with us. It starts within.
During year 2, she headed to Georgia and set up to lay the foundation of her work. She had been teaching about world peace since 1999. This time, she created a global conflict REVOLUTION TM challenge. You can download it for free on her website. It starts with us, and as we go through the process, the world around us starts to change.
She is now at the end of her second year and has been invited to speak at a conference in Barcelona about the Science of Consciousness. This coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Russell Einstein Manifesto.
Barbara's main guide is Einstein and she is really excited what he will have to say considering the anniversary of the manifesto is on the 9th of July and the conference is on the 8th. Barbara will be rubbing shoulders with Deepak Chopra, Nassim Haramein and more. She will be channeling Einstein on stage.
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Fun fact, I don't think there is anyone who is more scared of seeing ghosts and spirits than I am.
As usual, we started the episode with a definition of ghost and a definition of spirit. The consensus in the Oxford dictionary seems to be that ghosts are apparitions of dead people that appear mostly as nebulous images whereas spirits seems to be seen as the non physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character, also known as the soul. My personal definition is that ghosts are stuck in limbo or earth bound, whereas spirit people are visiting. Usually spirit visits are positive and have a purpose. To learn more about the spirit world, listen to Episode 49.
The commonality between ghosts is that they have usually had a brutal or upsetting death which has generated such intense emotions that they are not able to move on. I am sure a lot of you can relate to that feeling as it can happen sometimes when something overwhelming happens to us.
In the episode, though, I explore a third and fourth option for what people perceive as ghosts. The third option is an energy imprint left by an action done so many times by someone that that would leave a trace even after they left. The fourth is more interesting: it happens when our soul splits and we leave a fragment of it in a place and time where we have experienced trauma. It happened to me and I have helped clients retrieve soul fragments. I have never heard of a psychic who had seen such soul fragments but I would love to hear from you if you have. This can happen for example, when you have a car accident or maybe you receive some shocking news. Your soul isolates that moment in time energetically to protect you, but it also drains you so when the time is right, it is important to be able to retrieve these soul fragments.
In a similar vein, I do wonder if people who are experiencing NDEs have ever been seen as "ghosts" by psychics before. Again, if you have, I would love to hear from you. Check out the episode I did about NDEs with this link.
The fifth possibility are entities, which I have touched upon briefly in episode 08, which I encourage you to listen to.
Science does offer one option too and I want you to explore that one first to make sure you are safe, and that is carbon monoxide poisoning. Have your boilers checked, friends. Keep healthy.
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In this episode, I share my experience of a healing session in the Akashic Records with the support of Chantal Vanderhaeghen, a Mind Body Spirit Counsellor, with whom I have worked for several years. The healing session was for me and I wanted to explore the reason why I have not been able to release the weight that I want despite having brushed up my eating and having joined a gym about a month ago.
Healing sessions happen very often in the Akashic Records and I would like to invite you to listen to EP 57 if you haven't already, to understand better what the Akashic Records are.
As soon as I asked the question in the Akashic Records, I was shown myself wearing a full suit of armour, medieval style. I heard the words "Armour of Motherhood". It made a lot of senses. What I was shown is that the thirty years of battles I have experienced as a mother had created that heavy energy around me and that heaviness had created extra weight in the physical. I was aware that I tend to use weight to create a protective layer for myself, but this was new.
I was astounded as a few days before I had been listening to a Lee Harris interview about his book, the Future Human, where he says he sees the energy of war leaving the Earth in the ten years to come. I had also interviewed a woman for the podcast who is a Peace activist. It felt like the Universe was conspiring to help me let go of that warrior energy.
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Today I want to talk about the Dark Night of the Soul, which is a very common concept in spiritual circles, especially mystic ones. It's a phase of our lives where we experience a lot of pain and loss, but that pain and loss ultimately transforms her and helps us find a greater meaning in life.
I have experienced many dark nights of the soul, but in this episode, I focused on three of them in the hope that they will inspire you or help you if this is something you are going through right now. Right now, I am in the happiest part of my life, and I believe that the levels of joy I am experiencing are probably more intense because of the pain that I have been through previously. However, despite this, I will never buy into the No pain no gain philosophy.
I believe that the reason we sometimes have to experience pain is that we sleep walk through life and maybe even live someone else's version of life instead of our own. And we are too afraid of change to live the life that we are meant to live. this wake up call can come in the form of a job loss, a divorce, the death of a loved one, a challenging illness or an accident.
They are of course traumatic and my purpose is not to serve you a dish of toxic positivity. There is however an opportunity for growth in them. And sometimes, these events happen because we don't listen to the more subtle signs we are sent by the Universe. Not always, but sometimes.
It is our job to find the meaning in it. Or to look for the bigger picture. The model of the Hero''s Journey can help us understand that we all go through these and that they have a universal power.
What we should not do is try to avoid the pain and the loss. It's important to stay with it, as buried feelings never die.
The three episodes I share are as follows:
Three brushes with death when I still lived in Paris that showed me the link between emotions and illnesses. Please refer to Episode 29 on Health, Illness and Spirituality with Emma Turton. The loss of my career when I was pregnant with my third child, which helped me leave a career that was not fulfilling me and be a better mum for my children. A car accident that showed my mother's true colours and helped me make a final break with her.If you have experienced a dark night of the soul and would like to share it, feel free to use the contact me form to share.
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I am sure you have had wind of the turmoil that is agitating the UK right now after the Supreme Court decision of the 16th of April that decided that the legal definition of a woman is linked to biological sex. If not, where have you been hiding. This has really shaken me to my core and prompted me to record my first advocacy episode where I debunk the idea that gender is an ideology and put the debate where it belongs: in the human rights camps.
I was going to do this as a speech at my next toastmasters' meeting but then decided it would do nicely as a podcast episode. Speeches at Toastmasters are limited to 5 to 7 minutes and it's not enough to explore the topic in depth.
In a nutshell:
Sex and gender are two entirely different concepts. Members of the medical community in the UK have described this ruling as absurd and scientifically incorrect.
Sometimes the law is wrong and outdated. The Supreme Court refused to consult members of the trans community before ruling and the Good law Project is already preparing a case to take the UK government to the European Court of Justice. You can help by donating to them so that the blow to human rights that just happened can be corrected.
This is not a case of standing by and allowing things to unfold. Trans rights are human rights.
In the meantime, if you are a woman, please post on social media that trans women are welcome in your space by following Katie Neeves' suggestion on LinkedIn.
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A quick reminder that you have until next Wednesday to purchase my Trust Your Intuition Online course for half price. Click here to invest.
Our guest this month shares her journey of having grown up in a household with a mother who "found Jesus". It's taken a few years for Nismah to deconstruct her mother's faith and live her best life. She has a podcast where she interviews people who have gone through the same process called the Escape from Religion.
What is religious deconstruction? It's the process of pulling apart and re-examining one's religious beliefs. It originated in the US around evangelism. Wikipedia tells us that people who deconstruct have described destabilizing feelings of anxiety, guilt, anger, confusion, and fear, as well as curiosity, awe, and liberation. As an open-ended process, the outcome of deconstruction is uncertain.
I think it's a good idea for us to re-examine our beliefs, whether religious or other, so I was really excited to have Nismah on the podcast.
Nismah experienced religion as toxic due to the numerous rules and conditions that she had to follow, that she believes lead to self abandonment. She explains that she finds it hard sometimes to distinguish between religion and cult because where do you draw the line?
We also discussed how sadly religions tend to have an all or nothing approach to their teachings, which is difficult for some people, especially when some of it does not resonate. Nismah describes her deconstruction as a gradual process that culminated one day as she read a passage in the Bible that claimed that women had to be silent, and she had a profound reaction to it, recognising that it did not align with her values. It turns out the rampant homophobic environment she grew up in was the last nail on the coffin, as Nismah discovered she was gay.
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A quick reminder that my Trust Your Intuition Online Course is available at a 50% discount for the whole month of April (2025)on my Thinkific platform. Click here to purchase.
But before we start on the how to stay high vibe no matter what, I wanted first to define what is high vibe. Sometimes when we want to define something, we have to say what it’s not. So there’s two things that for me, high vibing is not.
The first thing that it’s not is smiling when you feel like crying, shouting, kicking or screaming. That is not being high vibe. Smiling is easy. I can just smile now, but inside I can have incredible feelings bubbling in me that make me feel totally disconnected from this smile. So for me, high vibe comes from a much, much deeper place than just smiling and pretending things are okay. High vibe for me is an energy. Now I’m going to explore a little bit this idea because I think as children, we all knew when people were pretending they were happy and when they were not because all children can read energy. I remember numerous instances when my mom would say, don’t be silly, or this or that or the other because what I was looking at didn’t fit with how it made me feel. And I think all children are like that. So maybe actually the start of this episode would be for you to ask your children and have this conversation with them to help them understand that there’s nothing wrong with them.
The second thing that being high vibe is not is complaining, bitching, gossiping and feeling like the world is against you. This is really low vibe.
To me, the definition of being high vibe is a feeling of unconditional happiness that comes from knowing that the universe has your back. And I need to say this is work in progress because from where we come from, if you are from the same kind of background as me, where we were taught to feel that the world was full of dangers, that we had to be careful with strangers, that we shouldn’t trust other people and all sorts of things, this is kind of an alien concept. It will take some work on yourself, on your beliefs, on your mindset to get to the point where you have this unconditional happiness. And also talking about unconditional happiness, we are also taught to believe that something or someone is going to make us happy. And that comes from the fact that our parents want to make us happy. So if we’re not happy, they take it personally as a sign that they haven’t done their job. I remember as a child feeling sad, feeling angry feelings that were not welcome in our house. We had to be happy and if we weren’t, we were constantly reminded how other people were less happy than we were less fortunate, and we should just count our blessings, which is counterproductive when you’re dealing with emotions.
Note: I mention in the episode that my memoir My Father Who Art in Heaven is only available privately. This is not longer the case. It is now available on Amazon. Click here to purchase it.
Here’s a couple of tips that I’ve identified that can help you to be high vibe regardless of the circumstances.
Stop labelling things as good or bad. Ask yourself how can I make the most of the this situation? Don’t complain about what is happening to you Ask yourself: how can I turn this challenge into an opportunity? Face your fears and ask ask yourself if they are real. A great way to do this is to use Byron Katie’s process. Listen to upbeat music, be mindful of the lyrics though Do something creative Watch something funny and have a good laughBe aware that because this is an episode from a previous podcasts, my facebook page has changed and some of the references to websites are no longer active.
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In today's episode I touch on the subject of keeping yourself safe whilst exploring spiritual practices but also the line that exists between the two, which is sometimes hard to define. A spiritual experience badly managed can result in a mental illness or breakdown.
A reminder that my Trust Your Intuition Online Course is available at a 50% discount for the whole month of April (2025), as I believe that intuition is the tool that will keep you safe. I believe that in the context of this particular episode, it would help you find a safe spiritual teacher to mentor you through these experiences. Click here to find out more.
If you are reading this blog or listening to the episode after April 2025 and want to make sure you never miss a discount or promotion, sign up for my newsletter with this link.
Intense spiritual practices can lead to psychosis or other mental health challenges. They are to be taken seriously and not to be practiced on your own or at the hands of inexperienced people. They can literally lead to paranoia, obsessive rituals, unshakable beliefs in false information, grandiose beliefs, extreme guilt or fear of being punished, incoherent or jumbled thoughts and withdrawal.
Spiritual practices and beliefs can also be used to bypass negative emotions and trauma, and lead to people believing that they have no ego or are all "love and light". This is actually rather dangerous as these individuals usually end up projecting their unresolved feelings onto you. I have had people psychically attack me when in that state of mind. It's nasty.
The first four statements that can help you screen yourself for mental illness (though it is often hard to be objective when we are in the thick of it) are:
I feel that others control what I think or feel I see or hear things that others do not hear or see I feel it is difficult for me to express myself in words that others can understand I find it difficult to make the difference between what's real and what's notTo understand how the mind works, I encourage you to listen to EP 63 on how the mind works.
My personal experience of both clairvoyance and psychosis had led me to understand that they feel very different even if you might see exactly the same thing. And that difference lies in the mental state you are in when they happen. If you are grounded and calm, they feel serene. If you are agitated, they can upset you. Not to mention you can believe that something that is not here, actually is. I didn't. I knew exactly what was happening. I share about these experiences in my memoir, Spiritual Lawyer, which is available on Amazon. Click here to purchase.
I remember when hearing about kundalini awakening for the first time, wanting to experience that. A kundalini experience is a process of activating a dormant energy that is believed to be at the base of our spine, which can lead to a spiritual awakening. Dr Greyson, whom I mentioned in EP 66 about Near Death Experiences, has written a paper about it where he mentions that the Western model of science is not able to explain them. He does, however, compare them to near death experiences.
In relevant spiritual traditions, people were kept safe and supervised by an experienced member of that community, a shaman, who usually had experienced something similar. This leads me to caution everyone about doing breath work and even meditation without the presence of a highly qualified person with a mental health background.
This being said, I also believe that some of these experiences can be caused by tears in our energy fields, possibly due to substance abuse or trauma and that repairing the energy field can go a long way to support mental health recovery. I would never, however, advise not to seek professional help.
This is of course a first exploration of the theme and we might circle back to this topic in further episodes if need be.
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Today's episode was inspired by a conversation i had with one of my clients over the weekend. A conversation came up with some relatives where the fact that she had "manifested" her house was disclosed and it made her feel very uneasy. She wanted my opinion as a mentor.
My advice is to keep things close to your chest when you start your spiritual journey. Not everyone will be supportive. Not everyone will understand. Not everyone will know. The world is full of people with strong opinions and not enough people who listen and honour other people's experiences. I am not blaming anyone. We live in a society that has not taught us how to do this.
I was asked on the Caroline Martin Breakfast Show on BBC Radio on Saturday (at the 2h48min mark) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0kxh99b what I would say to my detractors, and my answer was that I am not here to convince anyone. I really am not. In a way you could say that I am here to preach to the choir.
Your new found spirituality is like a seedling that needs nurturing in the right environment. If exposed to the elements, it might not be strong enough. Our spiritual journeys require us to be discerning and to ascertain who is "safe" and who is not. What I mean by safe is someone who will respect our experience. And if we are lucky, throw a light on it that will help us understand what the heck is going on. That requires experience. I want to be that person for you.
I have been on this journey for forty odd years and I feel that although my spiritual "tree" is not a 100 solid oak, it's pretty strong and has healthy roots that keep me grounded whilst my branches reach further to the sky. The more upward you go, the deeper your roots must be, so my advice is also to learn to ground yourself.
It's also important to keep ourselves safe and avoid cults. I want to refer you back to EP 02 on how to cult proof your journey. As we depart from traditional religions, we are at risk of behind roped in by people who don't have our best interests at heart. Click here to listen to the episode about cult proofing your journey. https://pod.fo/e/1f2f7a
Your best protection is to have a strong intuition and for the launch of my memoir Spiritual Lawyer on Kindle, I would like offer my trust your intuition course for half price until the end of April (2025). Click here to find out more. http://spirituallawyer.thinkific.com
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Laura Richard is the author of Married to a Nice Guy and a speaker who specialises in narcissistic abuse. In this episode she shares how her religious education contributed to staying in a toxic marriage.
Laura is the host of the That's Where I'm at Podcast and in the recent episodes, her guests have talked a lot about religious abuse and she believes the two are connected. Her podcast initially talked about the things that are not talked about, and it gradually became more centered around narcissistic abuse. The more she interviews guests on the topic, the more Laura feels she deepens her understanding of the topic.
The most important first step when you leave a marriage to a narcissist is to have your experience validated. Often times, people who have not been through it do not understand. They might ask, for example, why did you not leave him? Why did you put up with all of it. One of the reasons is that it is a very gradual process at the start. You don't see it coming until it's too late. Either they know something about that you are ashamed of and threaten to tell everyone, or they create so much fear in the relationship that you are paralysed.
Laura was raised as a Catholic, left the church at 15 then joined some Christian churches when she married but she is now deconstructing religion. In her view, the worse thing about it is the manipulation which then leads to further manipulation by men in relationship because it's based on patriarchy and oppressive. And you are afraid that if you leave, God will be angry at you. Laura sees a similar pattern in abusive marriages. There is a lot of mental dishonesty, but you can't see it because you have been raised in it. That's something that struck Laura when she was a child, how people would say one thing in Church and do almost the exact opposite after they left mass.
Laura remembers that even though her mother was a devout Catholic, when the time came for her funeral, the Catholic Church refused to do a service because she had been cremated and wanted her ashes scattered. Not only that, they told her and her sister that their mother was going to the purgatory for not wanting to be buried like other people. It was very painful.
Laura was married for thirty-two years and she wonders if her faith did not keep her longer than she needed to be in her marriage. The bible group she attended encouraged her to pray for her marriage and for her to be a better wife. It seemed that saving the marriage was more important than Laura's wellbeing, and even safety. She was encouraged to be a better person as if that would solve the marriage's problems, when in reality it was her husband that was the problem. She remembers how she was told that God hates divorce, so the pressure was on her to make it work, to stick it out. The reality is that it keeps women in toxic marriages longer than needed. And often times, women are being gaslit at the pulpit.
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In this episode we do something a bit different and explore the American TV series called the Good Place to extract from it seven spiritual lessons. At the start of the episode, I describe the premise of the show, without revealing the plot twist that comes at the end of the first season. If you have not watched it, I highly encourage you to do so.
I refer back to EP 28 which answers the question of whether it is spiritual to help other people.
Here are what I consider the seven spiritual lessons of the Good Place are:
1. Life is complex and it is actually fairly hard to decide if a decision is good or bad
2. Lying is not always morally wrong
3. If you do good with an ulterior motive, it defeats the point
4. You don't need to go to a monastery in Tibet in order to become enlightened
5. We all have free will
6. Every day it gets harder to be a good person
7. We all need a purpose in life.
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Death and dying was a taboo when I grew up, which in a way encouraged me to want to talk about it even more. I purchased many books on the topic, especially Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ books which I found very enlightening. She offered a model for the journey that people who are faced with death go on that comprises five phases.
* denial
* anger
* bargaining
* depression
* acceptanceThis was never meant to be a rigid model but more of an observation of what the majority of people went through. It is incredibly useful to normalise but also to support people going through this journey. I think since her seminal work, others have taken her model and expanded on it, especially for those who stay behind, i.e. the loved ones of people who die. They are likely to go through a very similar cycle though in my limited experience, people tend to stay stuck in the denial phase almost until the end.
What is really important to understand and I have discussed this in previous episodes, is that the person who is dying must be at the centre of a circle where no one is allowed to offload onto them. Offloading is only allowed outwards. So if you imagine a circle where the dying person is in the centre, then you have their loved ones, then maybe their friends and relatives, then their colleagues, if they have any or their acquaintances and last professionals involved. It is unethical for anyone to offload how they feel inward in the circle. This is what has been called the Ring Theory. The idea was born out of the frustration of a woman who lived in cancer and who had one of her colleagues tell her how upset she was about it. I hope you can see this was adding a burden onto the woman living with cancer that she could have well done without.
The other idea I explore on the podcast is that our departed loved ones care probably a lot less about their funeral arrangements and you attending the funeral than you think they do. If, for any reason, you are unable to go to someone’s funeral or you don’t want to go, let go of the guilt and know you can create your own ritual.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is whether we need to let our loved ones in heaven “rest in peace”.
I also encourage you to listen to EP 23 about signs, as your loved ones often communicate with you through these and I would love for you to know how to interpret those signs.
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This episode was inspired by Kyle Gray’s new book, The Angels Are With You now. After I listened to the audiobook of it, I had an impulse to go to a Leisure Centre to return some equipment last Sunday. Unknown to me, there was a Mind Body Spirit Fayre held at that Leisure centre at the precise time I turned up.
I saw a gorgeous piece of selenite with angel wings carved on it, which was a definite sign that angels were with me, especially since I had spotted two car plates on the way with 444 and 777 on them respectively. As I walked around the Fayre, I came across a tarot deck stand and there, on the table, was one of Kyke Gray’s decks. I decided to buy it becasue I had a chance to look at it. I had purchased one of Kyle’s decks six months ago and had to return it as I did not like it at all. I welcomed the opportunity to be able to see the cards for myself before I gifted myself that deck.
Looking back I think it was also the angels’ way of buying myself a gift as a reward to having finished the mamouth task of editing my second memoir, Spiritual Lawyer.
There are five ways that we separate ourselves from the help that angels can give us.
Believing that our problems are not as important to the angels as the problems of other people Believing that if we ask for help from angels we are somehow depriving people who need the help more than we do Focusing too much on seeing angels and believing there is something wrong with us if we can’t Obsessing over finding out what the name of our guardian angel is Believing that we are not good enough to speak to angels directlyListen to the episode to hear about this in more details.
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Carl Honore is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and TED speaker, Ageism Disruptor and voice of the global Slow Movement. His latest book is called Bolder. And I am really pleased to have had him on the podcast.
If you have been on your spiritual path for any length of time, you would have heard invitations to slow down, so I thought it would be good to have Carl on the podcast as the expert on the topic.
Carl's journey started as a stressed father who was always rushing. Every day was a race against the clock and I think a lot of us can relate to this. One day as he was trying to rush through the bedtime story he was reading to his son, he took stock and realised that it had gone too far. This set him on a course to understand our relationship with time. As the journalist that he is, this took him around the world, as he explored the different ways cultures approach time.
The Western world has a capitalistic relationship with time. Everything revolves around the clock. We believe that time is money. So slowing down is costing us.
Carl talks about reconeccting to his inner tortoise, which I find very endearing but which also reminds me of Grand Master Oogway in Kun Fu Panda.
During our discussion, I think Carl and I were able to recognise that the moment he took stock of what he was doing, in terms of rushing fatherhood, was an awakening moment of some sort. He had another one that led to another book called Bolder, that I am reading at the moment and finding enlightening.
Even though Carl identifies as agnostic, he is open to the idea that life has a spiritual dimension and he is definitely on a quest to find answers. Carl can be found on his website and on LinkedIn. You can subscribe to his substack account with this link. To watch his TEDtalk on the power of slow, click here. To watch his TEDTalk on ageing, click here.
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When I started on my spiritual paths, I admired people who had spiritual gifts such a clairvoyance, healing powers or who could do remote viewing. I assumed that people who had those gifts were more spiritually advanced than I was, but I have since realised that this is not true. The pursuit of spiritual gifts such as described in the Autobiography of a Yogi can actually be a distraction on our spiritual path. if they blossom, good, but if they don't, that doesn't mean anything about us.
In today's episode, we are going to talk about the ethical side of spiritual gifts and why that is incredibly important.
I have been reading the Ethical Psychic by Jennifer Lisa Vest, who has both an academic view point from her background as a professor of philosophy and the practical view point of a practitioner of various modalities such as shamanism, reiki, medical intuition, reading the akashic records and more. I do recommend reading her book whether you have psychic gifts or are seeking the guidance of someone who has.
Just because someone can do something doesn't mean that they should. And that is the starting point of this discussion. Discernment, boundaries and ethics are paramount because I believe that psychic gifts can actually be harmful be they not used appropriately. This is the reason I was actually quite reluctant to use mine. I was afraid of doing harm and leaving people worse off, especially with my tarot readings.
People who seek the guidance or help of people with psychic gifts are often vulnerable. Some also need mental health support that they might not be willing to seek out for whatever reason, so it is our responsibility to recognise that and encourage our clients to go to counselling or seek professional help when they need it.
I have a couple of rules that I stick to. I do not read for kids. I do not read people without their permission. I only work with clients who are perfectly aligned to what I offer. I set my intention that the information and guidance that I share is always, to the best of my ability, useful, uplifting and inspiring. And I never use my gifts for entertainment.
Of course a huge part of being ethical as a psychic is to refrain from cultural appropriation which is something I explored in last week's episode.
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