Shift Your Spirits

John Shaughnessy has solved the mystery of the ancient pyramids built all over the world. Amazing lost scientific knowledge on how the moon is a grandmother clock that regulates large cycles on Earth, like ice-ages and interglacial periods.

If you're interested in the civilizations of the ancient past, Shaughnessy proposes a revelatory, mind-blowing new theory...

Why the Pyramids Were "Really" Created by Brandon Ellis

Pyramid Gravity Force 1 Video lecture

Pyramid Gravity Force: How the Earth's Pyramids Work by John Shaughnessy

There is Something About the Moon... by Wendy Salter and John Shaughnessy

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John:

Well, I'm John Shaughnessy. I come from Massachusetts. I grew up in Massachusetts a few miles outside of Boston, downtown Boston in a small suburb.

I first got introduced into space, generally the... whatever you want to call it, the Cosmo. I got a part time job working on the weekends at the Museum of Science. And in the Museum of Science, they have a place called the Planetarium. I was taking tickets. I sold tickets to the Planetarium show and I just fell in love with it. I was doing special effects. I was involved with running around during the show and changing slides in the old Don Howard projectors.

I had to place myself Saturday, Sunday mornings, I'd get in there early. I had to place myself, this big giant sized projector, I could... After I knew what I was doing, I was click shutting the lights down and having my own light show and...

That lasted about two years but it sowed a seed in me.

Later on, like, I've always had, say, psychic anomalies that would just come in and I would know stuff before it happened or... to the point where I freaked out my friends I was hanging out with. You know, I just shrugged it off, made a joke out of it, because I didn't know what was actually happening.

Back in the day, you didn't have a class in middle school on how to deal with your psychic personality, you know what I mean?

Slade:

I still don't think they have that on the curriculum.

John:

Yeah! You know, there's reasons for it, you know? It scares the hell out of people. Well, the ones that are in control, anyhow.

That all being said, I joined the navy. It was my first geographical cure and you know, jumped into the service. I was on a small ship, the USS Miller and we did a couple of major cruises. I was at three 6-month deployments. One of them, it was like a small shakedown cruise just going up and down the eastern seaboard, say, from Halifax to Puerto Rico and maybe down to the Bermuda Triangle.

One particular day in the Bermuda Triangle, I had an event and that kind of shook me to the core.

You know, we're a mighty ship and it was a clear blue day. Not a cloud in the sky and the ocean was the same colour as the sky, really. You couldn't tell where the horizon began and end. We just lost power - this mighty ship with backup generators, batteries. Everything just went completely dark, still, quiet. There was no waves. Just amazing, and it was about 10 minutes of just sitting there.

The eerie thing is it wasn't a lot of talking. It was like we were just looking into each others' eyes, because we had little battery lights that lit up so you could catch people's faces. It was like a show made up of mimes, you know? We were just looking at each other. It was, What's going on? What's happening here? So it was pretty profound.

After we got the power back, generators finally kicked on. We got going and really, there was no real investigation that actually came down to the crew. I wasn't an Officer. I was just an enlisted man, so it kind of triggered something in me and I started chasing the paranormal, you know?

One of my favorite books back then, I forget the author, it was 'The Probability of the Impossible'. It was like, maybe hundreds of incidences where things just defied logic and science. So I just got hooked into that and the Bermuda Triangle. There was a lot of books back then of the Bermuda Triangle and von Däniken. It was Erich von Däniken's work I grabbed a lot. Chariots of the Gods. Started reading a lot.

I was always interested in the unknown, the mysteries. If somebody couldn't figure something out, I'd show up. But if everybody had it all figured out, it didn't interest me. So any puzzle or conundrum wasn't working right or something like that, I kind of enjoyed solving those problems. It's just how my brain worked and a lot of times, I would get intuitive...

I'm the type of guy who would get from A to C without going to B. A lot of areas in my mind.. I have the mind where I can put things together inside my brain. I don't have to draw things. I can just, you know, build up systems and troubleshoot without having to do the hard work on the bench, so to speak. I can walk it through and all that while working and kind of works like that.

So I got into the power industry. I'm retired right now. I got into generating electricity at the utility level. Gas turbines and boilers, steam turbines, so pretty large machines. 100,000 horsepower. I got into hydroelectric dam operations. I used to supervise, I was a supervisor in the big utilities, Con Edison Northeast Utilities, and retired now.

So that's good. So I can put more of my work into my real passion and that's these leftover enigmas that seem to be sprinkled all over the planet.

One particular time I got into... I was watching, getting into the pyramids. I touch topics and I just dig deep into them. I read all I could. I just get obsessed with it and I just hit a wall. I just hit a block. I was fascinated with gravity early on. I thought that was an awesome field to get into and try and unlock and basically get some kind of anti-gravity machines going.

I did a lot of experiments. I was able to manipulate the weight of an object in an apothecary scale with rotating mass.

As I got deeper and deeper into this, I would be reading Einstein's theory of special relativity, a lot of Tesla's work. Self-taught, really. Whatever I kind of got obsessed with, I just dug into it until I got to the bottom or got bored with it and couldn't get any further.

One particular day I came into the living room. The TV was on and Michio Kaku's a pretty famous physicist out of New York. He was cutting right to a commercial and he kind of just, the last words he said as I was doing the dead drop into the lazyboy was, 'We still don't know what these pyramids are doing!' Then it just went off to a commercial. I muted it like I usually do.

I just had an epiphany in my brain, just a thought going, I wonder what's on the other side of Giza? You know, the Giza Plateau pyramids. I've always had globes around me. If you came into my house, there's globes, atlases, maps and things of that nature. So I was pretty up on geography and, like I said, I got a little bit of training when I was 16 at the Museum of Science because I was obsessed with how the universe worked.

So I got up, I walked across the living room, looked at the globe. There's a floor-mount globe about a three feet high and I found Giza and I spun it 180 degrees. Same latitude. Not antipodal, latitude. My finger landed right on a Hawaiian island chain, right? So that's strange. Just my background in gravity and the tidal lock with the moon and things like that automatically clicked in subconsciously, like this, the only real connection here is gravity. It's such a large distance.

Therein lies the basis, the foundation of a theory that I've put out into the world with books, videos, talks, conferences and so on and so forth. So as time went on, next couple of weeks, my brain was just set on fire. I was driving down the road writing down notes. It's like you got this proverbial download of 30,000 words in about 5 minutes. And you're like back-engineering what you just took in kind of, type of thing.

Because it was pretty profound. You know, the hair on the back stands up, on your neck stands up. You get the shivers. You know you're on to something.

Long story short, I started saying, If Giza lines up with Hawaiian hot spots, what are the other pyramids doing? You know. So you gotta back out of my early theory that there's a connection between the two and say, Well if there's a connection between those two there's gotta be a connection to the other ones.

Lo and behold, every time I went to a large cluster of pyramids, a large pyramid, 180 degrees and on the same latitude, there would be a volcano that aligned with it. So the pyramid at sundown in Mexico aligned with Mount Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, which is an ancient volcano. It has a, if you can believe it, an alien-shaped, elongated, not alien, elogated shape skull for a magma plug, and it's got huge claws at the base of it and nobody knows where it came from, who built it or anything. They rival the size of the Spinx, so that's interesting.

Then I went over to the Chen pyramids, a large cluster of pyramids and that aligned with the... ironically, the Bermuda Island, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, it was made up of two ancient dormant super calderas that actually make up that island.

And then there's El Tigre. It lines up with the Andaman Islands. Down in Guatemala, those pyramids are twice as high as Giza. As I said, El Tigre, the other name escapes me but... La Dante. It was like, 'Okay, these pyramids are lining up with these volcanos, or this strip of volcanic islands, or another island with a volcano.'

So after I get up to 20, and then 30, and then 40, I said, 'Okay, alright. There's definitely a connection here.' And I'm like, at the time I didn't have it all figured out. I don't know if I have it all figured out now but I'm pretty deep into the theory.

I was like, 'Okay, what's driving this...'

My mind at the time, I just felt like gravity was static on the earth, that my concept of gravity was static gravity like, we have the gravitational field and it's x amount of meters per second, the force of it, and...

After writing the book, I wrote my book and then a lot of times you get as much information as you have, and you have to get it out of you. You have to put it in writing and so I put my first book out, Pyramid Gravity Force. During that process of putting that all together, if you look at the cover of my book, it's the earth, the moon, and a large pyramid. A large super-imposed pyramid on the planet earth and I got a little one-line diagram that goes from the pyramid down to the core and back out to the moon.

So that's where the gravitational energy was coming from that was actually connecting these spots together. Now, at this particular geographical time, geological time, sorry, geological time frame that we're in right now, the Nile Valley pyramids are aligned with the Hawaiian hot spot. That particular alignment is active right now. That in and of itself is, I call the Hawaiian hot spot the Magma Relief Valve of the planet in that particular location. It's the only constant erupting volcano because it's artificially controlled from the large pyramids on the other side of the planet.

So basically we spin through the gravitational field of the moon, and that is the perpetual motion. This is a perpetual motion energy machine and you get the feedback from that energy when you go down to the ocean and see the tides roll in and roll out. I mean, this is a massive energy connection between this heavenly body we call the moon.

So I said, 'Okay, it is the engine, the mechanics behind the system that basically lowers the gravitational field. When the pyramids of the Giza plateau spin through the moon's gravitational field, it lowers the gravitational field under the Hawaiian hotspot and allows that magma to dribble out.

Now, granted, different alignments out there in the solar system like we just went through, not to get off topic. I gotta watch out or we won't be coming back.

I mean, this is a real weird alignment anyway. I'll just touch this. Hopefully I can get back to where I was going.

Slade:

I'll bring you back in a minute. I'll bring you back.

John:

Well, I mean, this is where I've sold a minimum in conjunction with that, at the same time, we have all the planets on one side of the sun. You have this huge draw of gravitational pull collectively by all the planets, and that's why... Consequently, we have this very hot summer that we just went through. On top of when the sun is at a solar minimum, it actually puts out more radiation. It's actually hotter. Most people can probably identify.. when they walk outside, it feels like someone's jumping on your head.

Slade:

Yup.

John:

Pushing down on you. It's like someone's deflecting your field. It's like you're carrying a 50lb backpack around everywhere you go.

Slade:

It's making us feel a little crazy, right?

John:

Oh yeah, definitely. It's a lot of energy coming in and most people probably intuitively will just duck in from one shaded place to the next. From one air conditioning place to the next just to stay out of it.

Anyway, so that all being said, getting back to the moon and the pyramid here.

When we spin through the, the alignment of the pyramids and the Giza Plateau, they're set up in the Orion configuration, or dogleg. The smallest pyramid cuts into the moon's gravitational field. Because we spin in to the moon's gravitational field.

So what this does, this way they have it set up, so if you can visualize, the earth spins in to the moon's gravitational field, it sets up the Fibonacci vortex, okay? And then the other larger two pyramids, GP2 and GP1, follow suit and flow through it. Now that creates a huge gravitational vortex in that zone and it goes through the planet and lowers the gravitational field on the Hawaiian hot spot and allows the magma to freeflow .

T

Tracey Dawn is an Intuitive Counselor and writer. She is passionate about guiding others in building a relationship with their inner self. She provides intuitive readings, online courses, meditations and blog posts to inspire you to live your best life. Through inner work, Tracey believes everyone has the capacity to develop their intuition, harness their personal power and discover their innate sense of happiness.

Tracey and I talk about tapping into the power of being calm, and creating communities around the concept of happiness.

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Tracey:

I started studying psychology in high school and then followed it into university, got my degree there. Thought that's what I wanted to do was become a psychologist. But as I studied psychology in university, I just felt it wasn't for me. I wanted to do something more proactive and more pro-mental health, pro-wellness, rather than reactive.

Yeah, so I always knew that I was some sort of psychic or intuitive when I was a kid, and then growing up into being a teenager in my 20s, I was also a really strong empath, and that started to negatively affect me, because I didn't realize that I was an empath and didn't realize kind of what was happening to me as I was absorbing others emotions and problems and I started to wear it on my skin and it started to show as physical ailments on my skin and in my life.

So that was the big learning experience that I didn't really know what was happening at the time.

And then in my 20s, went to my local spiritual centre and took a set of meditation classes. That was really life changing for me because I learned how to meditate and learned how to set grounding, and how to create healthy, energetic boundaries. To really own my own energy and then have that healthy safe boundary from others and other harmful energies.

That was a really big turning point for me. I knew how to move forward and own my space. And then from that point on, I saw it as such a gift to be an empath.

And then I wanted to use my psychology from there and combine it with being an intuitive. And just learn to help people in that type of way.

Slade:

How did you recognize that you had gifts as an intuitive? What were some of the things that alerted you to having psychic abilities?

Tracey:

Yeah, it started when I was a kid. I used to hear things people were gonna say before they said it. The phone would ring and I would know who's calling before I picked up the phone. Of course, that was before Caller ID, which takes the fun out of it now. And then, I...

A big turning point for me, actually, was in my 20s. My dad passed away from a terminally ill... He was terminally ill and had a neurodegenerative disease and that was a very heart-wrenching process to go through that with him. But when he passed away, he stayed with me in spirit. And he came back to visit me and be with me for quite a long time.

I didn't really know what was happening. I could hear him laughing. I could hear him speaking to me the day after he passed away and I thought, Oh no, I'm losing my marbles here.

You know, this isn't good! As a psychology graduate, I thought, Oh no, I'm hearing voices. I'm gonna have to go to the psych ward and get assessed for that because when you hear voices and you're a psychology graduate, you know that's not a good thing.

So I was too afraid to tell anyone. I don't feel that anyone in my family is inclined towards that intuitive psychic lifestyle. So I just felt very alone and afraid to tell anyone. Afraid that I had really gone over the deep end in my grief.

As time progressed, yeah, it was hard. Time progressed and I still would hear him talking to me and it became so real. I knew it was real.

And so, on my own, I started to research, you know, what's happening. I went to the library and started reading all these books and then went online and was like, looking online trying to just find some support with other people that had had this type of experience.

I began communicating with my dad on a regular basis. As I did that, and became more and more aware of his presence around me, I also became more and more aware that there was a load of spirits around me. It wasn't just my dad. It was a whole crowd.

And I can remember that exact moment, opening my awareness to that and just being like, Ohmygosh so there's my dad but who are all these other beings around me? And I could feel how ecstatic and happy those beings were around me, that I was finally aware of their presence.

Slade:

Yeah!

Tracey:

So that was a pivotal moment for me. It was really exciting.

So again, I started, still not telling anyone, reading books and going online and I came across the term 'Spirit Guide', which I never heard before. Of course I've heard of angels, you know, in the past, but I thought angels were this kind of cherub-looking, very religious figure and I didn't think I believed in them, but all of a sudden, I'm surrounded by spirit guides and angels, so...

Anyways, I get on the computer. I'm trying to find, you know, look into spirit guides and what does that mean... came across your website, actually!

Slade:

Yay! It worked.

Tracey:

Yeah, that was about four years ago now and yeah... I was really really happy to find your site. It gave me so many answers of what the heck was happening to me. This is real and this is a good thing. It's actually a gift. It's nothing to hide or be ashamed or embarrassed about.

It's a gift and how to use that gift.

Slade:

That's such a cool... you know, that's such a cool moment for me to actually kind of shine a light on for a second. Because as you were telling that story about that moment that you became aware that, Oh wait a minute - there's a lot of something around me. You know, it's not just this one connection with my dad but there's actually some other kinds of spirits around me and they're ecstatic that I've noticed them.

When you were saying that, I flashed back to that moment for me, just for an instant, I was back in time and I remember that moment, that idea that, they were like, Oh yay! He can finally see that we're here, kind of thing. And how expectant they were for that to happen. So that took me back for a second and then I remember, everything that you've said about psychology and studying sort of the more clinical, academic route.

I had all of that conflict in myself as well. How can I be both these things? How can I be somebody who studies this and even takes it seriously, but also, I'm talking to people that aren't here. My whole impulse to put that out into the world was really... I think that at the time that I did it, I did it for myself, never thinking that anyone else would really run across it.

So to be here all this time later and to hear that you came along and found that, and that, there was so much comfort to be found in someone else saying, Yeah, this is happening to me too but I've decided it's okay. You know what I mean?

So I kind of want to say to everyone out there, who has whatever that is that they're hiding from everyone else that they think they're going to be judged over, I think sometimes you really do have to just be the person who's willing to raise your hand first so that other people can coalesce around you or whatever.

And that, if that's where you are in this moment, whatever it's about, just know that there's someone like what you're saying, who's gonna come along and see that and immediately be mired in it and connect with you.

It's the fastest way to not be alone in whatever it is that you're experiencing. Does that make sense?

Tracey:

Yeah, definitely. It's a big reason why I'm doing this - to help other people who are in that state, and let them know they're not alone. And help them to see that it's a gift.

Slade:

Yeah you talked about the empath thing. About how being an empath, and absorbing toxic energy, started to manifest as illness for you. I hear a lot of people talking about being an empath in a way that's almost like a victimhood kind of thing. I get it.

I'm not saying that if you feel victimized by that, or overwhelmed by that, if you're in a state in your life where you're like, Ohmygod, I just feel like I'm being bombarded, I get it. I think that's a natural progression of awareness in that area.

But what was it, really, that allowed you to stop feeling victimized by that and to feel more empowered by it?

Tracey:

It's definitely being aware of my own energy and what my energy feels like. So that I can then be aware when someone else's energy is in my space. And then having a daily routine of grounding myself, setting up my boundaries, doing what I need to take care of me, for the day, so that I go out into my life...

Because we tend to avoid people if you're an empath. I think a lot of empaths like to stay at home and are introverts. It's just easier that way. But you can't stay home all the time. YOu know, you gotta go to the grocery store, sometimes you have to go to the airport where it's really busy. Being on an airplane can be tough.

So you need to have those tools to go out into the world so that you can handle it appropriately. And in that way too, you can build on those gifts because it IS a gift. Once you can harness it, you can start to move forward and grow with it and use it and be grateful that you have it.

Slade:

Well, you and I were speaking right before we started recording about the climate in the world at large right now. We're speaking in July 2018, for those who are listening from the future. It's just really a disgruntled energy is the way that I described it to you, that I was absorbing. And I thought it was so timely because we set up this scheduled meeting so far in advance, not really knowing the week that I would've had, going into this conversation with you.

I love how things work out in a meaningful way time-wise, because you are someone that, your energy is very calm. It's something that I've always noticed about you. It's a way that you're very different from me. You have a stillness about you in your voice and it's very attractive and safe.

It's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you come on and have you talk about the work that you do. Because you do, sort of, represent something that I instinctively felt like we needed to hear and to think about.

So I was really drawn to this blog post that you wrote called 'Why Being Calm is a Superpower'. I struggle not to react to things in passion and anger. I'm always trying to dial myself down.

So tell me about this concept of being a calm superhero. Give me some advice.

Tracey:

Well I think everyone struggles with not reacting. Because I think that's the quickest and most natural way to react. It's a lot of what's happening around us, especially right now as you mentioned. It's just a really turbulent, chaotic time in our world unfortunately. It's really hard to watch the news and be aware of what's going on in the world.

So to be a calm superpower, it came to me. Superhero movies are everywhere right now. I don't know how many they made but they're just everywhere. And they're all so powerful and fast and strong and this and that, but what about being calm? I do believe that is a superpower. I think it's actually more difficult in such stressful times than to react.

So it does lean on a lot of meditation principles. But it's basically having that peaceful centre. So not immediately reacting to what's happening around you. It's choosing your reaction. So creating space between something that's happened and your reaction. Creating space in there, deliberately choosing how you want to react rather than instantly flying off the handle and reacting.

Because those reactions, they can also be physical reactions that you feel in your own body, right? So not only might you be putting out harmful energy into the world - you might also be harming your own body if you have high blood pressure, you've got a knot in your stomach, you clench your fists, you're sweating. The typical road rage. You picture someone on the crazy freeways that I visited a couple months ago in California. You've got that crazy road rage. That could also be harming your own body.

Slade:

Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you mention right there, I think that that's actually... I've gotten much better, you know, than I was, say, in my 20s. I'm almost a completely different person in my ability to not react immediately and to take my time and really process my thoughts.

For anyone who struggles with firing off a text or whatever it is, one of the things that I do is, I write it in a separate application first. I rehearse and edit. Anything that I send that I feel like might be provocative or... I'm just very, very careful. Go through and look for warning signs of, don't use 'always', don't use 'never', talk about your feelings as opposed to accusing the person of their actions and all this kind of basic 'don't blow people up' kind of tools that we...

They're pretty popular! Most of us have heard these lectures before.

Even still, one of the things that I noticed when I have one of those interactions where I'm like, Okay, I've got to respond to this but I need to do it in a way that's not gonna escalate and all that good stuff.

I had one of those happen recently with a family member and the thing that I noticed and immediately was so regretful of is how it made me feel, physically, for the rest of the day. You know what I mean? I was like, That really sucked. It was not worth it. To have that interaction at all.

I used to be able to go in and out of that energy and sort of blow it off and fling it away. You brought such a good point up about the fact that when you do that, you're actually sort o

Melissa Bird, PhD, MSW is a passionate feminist whose education in social work has led to a career advocating for children, women, and their families. She is a fierce believer in social justice advocacy and preparing women for leadership roles in politics. As a writer, professor and fiery public speaker, Dr. Bird creates the genesis for a new brand of leadership. Her words awaken revolutionaries, trailblazers and powerful innovators in the quest for justice. When she’s not building her public speaking Empire, she can be found reading trashy novels, drinking fine whiskey, playing mom to three delicious humans, and loving her punk rock scientist James Thomas Kelly.

She’s a fierce believer in social justice advocacy and preparing women for leadership roles in politics. For women who want to be heard. Women who want their families to be respected. Women who believe they can make a difference in their communities and create lasting change, Dr. Bird is creating the genesis for a new brand of leadership she calls The Graceful Revolution.

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Melissa:

Well, I used to say that I was like a political badass. I'm more of a hellraiser than a trailblazer, and I help people tap into their passion to engage in advocacy in their communities. And so, for years, I was teaching at a college level and I worked as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood in Utah and I was really involved in politics in Utah.

I've kind of taken all of those years of working on the ground and in the Capitol, both at the state level and at the national level, and I decided that it's time to build the Bird girl Army, and really bring people to the place where they are super tapped-in to their passion and their jam and what lights them on fire so that they can go out and do the thing that lights them up.

That's become so apparently critical to me right now in 2018 because we are getting inundated constantly with SHIT, and it's coming down on us all the time. And so, every morning you wake up and you have 500 things on your phone talking about how the nation is exploding and people are freaking out. And they don't know what to do.

So what I do is, I give them the tools to go out and do the thing so they can get past the paralysis and into intentional action. Because it's going to take intentional action at a COMMUNITY level, not at a national level, at a community level, to build this back up. So that we can feel like we're not stuck not making a difference in our communities.

And so I've taken all these years of being a lobbyist, like, on the front lines and making changes in policy and politics and taking it to this really passionate, lit up, on fire... I had someone say that I was an igniter and I just light everyone on fire, which could be really dangerous.

That's a huge responsibility and really taking it to the next level so that people can have the tools to engage in action in their communities and engage in dialogue with people who are holding elected office at a local level, so at city county and state level.

Because, I tell this to my students all the time when I'm teaching in a classroom, but basically, the federal government is a wash at this point. You're not going to make a huge gigantic difference at a federal level, and I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's where we're at.

But now we have this huge opportunity to directly impact our local leaders, no matter what their party affiliation is.

We have stories to tell and we have... There are ways that these policies directly impact our lives and it is OUR time to be telling those stories to people. There's no bigger time to be doing that, so I teach people how to have the tools to scream their passionate dreams from the mountaintop and go out and do that thing.

Slade:

Wow.

You know what? Let's get into a big topic here.

I'm going to ask you a big old loaded controversial question. I believe in synchronicity and timing, and there is definitely a big beautiful Divine timing for me personally with you being here in this moment talking to me today. It's very significant because we've been talking about spirituality and politics in the Automatic Intuition community, the group of people that I mentor privately.

We've been talking about it this week for the first time, very civilly, I must say, so I'm very proud, but I think one of the reasons why we haven't touched it in so long is because it's such a hot potato kind of situation. But somebody went there in a really good way, in a kind of adjacent issue, and so... there is a big dissension among spiritual practitioners, right?

Some of us believe that it's really important to disconnect from the news in order to preserve your psychic hygiene and to protect your energy and your vibration, and that you just need to tune it all out.

And then some of us believe that part of being conscious for us is being plugged in and observant of all that stuff, and aware of the bad and the good.

So what are your thoughts about being spiritually conscious and politically conscious?

Dr. Bird:

So the first thing I want to say is, I have been wanting to email you for like, months and months about coming on the show to talk about this, and it was only in the last couple of weeks that I was like, You HAVE to do this right now.

So I was like, What?

And I was nervous! I was like, What am I going to say to Slade?? What if he thinks I'm this whackadoodle noodle, like, We're gonna talk about how to use your intuition to engage in politics!

And I was like, That's exactly what you're gonna say. You're gonna type it out. It's gonna be fine. He's not going to reject you and everything's going to be magic.

And so...

Slade:

Which it was.

Dr. Bird:

Which it was.

So the fact that you just barely had this conversation while I was like, I really need to talk to Slade, was really... You know, Divine intervention and all the magic.

So, I have to say that because I'm really excited to be having this conversation about using your intuition to engage in social justice work and politics. I call it 'social justice work' because no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it doesn't matter where you're at because everything that is happening has to do with how our society is going to thrive or just survive, moving forward, because of all of the policies that are being enacted at a federal level that are going to trickle down to the local level.

I can honestly say that, I feel that need to be completely disconnected from the toxicity of the media. And I also feel the need to be completely inundated with what's happening currently in our nation and in our world.

The way that I have sort of pulled that apart and teased that apart is that, I choose, and I'm really active on social media, I LOVE Twitter, I LOVE Facebook, I love Instagram. I love being online and connecting with other people in that way.

But I have figured out how to use my intuition to lead me into places where I am going to be connecting with people who aren't just like me, but who appreciate my differences of opinion.

And this is, I think, where people are getting stuck and later on today, for example, I do Facebook live on Mondays and Fridays, I have Monday Mayhem and Fuck Shit Up Friday. And at noon my time, Pacific time, and I have been having conversations with my darling friend Amy Wolf, who I consider a dear friend who's completely the polar opposite of me politically. She's a conservative, Christian Methodist in a really small conservative town in Oregon.

But she and I have connected on this level that is just unbelievable. And we have people from my friends and her friends and people in the community who keep sending us messages thanking us for having honest conversations about politics, about fundamentalism, about abortion, about really tough conversations about justice and social justice and what that means to each of us.

And we do it in a way that is so respectful that you can't not get something out of that.

You know, and I come from a conservative place - I was born and raised in Utah. And what I learned when I was walking the hills of that Capitol is, elected officials just put their pants on one leg at a time. We're all people. We all get up in the morning and think, How am I going to make a difference in my world today? What do I want to do to really make a difference in my world today?

And it may be the difference is, My god, I'm going to vacuum my house, and that's an accomplishment. It may be that you're going to write a bill and pass it into law like I did. Oh god, it's been 15 years since I wrote that bill. I'll talk about that in a second.

This idea that we have to be divisive about politics is a new idea. That is something that was created out of, I would say, 1980s during the Reagan administration. That was when the divisiveness of politics came along. Were there separation of parties? Totally. Were there Democrats and Republicans fighting against each other for power? Absolutely. For years and years and years.

But there was a discourse and a nuance to politics that has been lost as, I would say, really starting in the 80s and it got worse during the Clinton administration and now it's just all gone to shit.

And I believe that we have so much power to make a difference.

And I know it because I've done it. And I'm not saying - I don't do any of my work because I'm like, up on some high horse pedestal. I'm probably on a soapbox, let's be fucking real here. I love my soapbox. My husband, he even bought me a soapbox that says 'Fairy Soap' on it from the 1920s.

Slade:

I love that.

Dr. Bird:

So that I can have an... I love my fairy soapbox. And it says 'Fairy' so clearly. That makes me even happier. And so...

I can get on my soapbox all day but when I was getting my Masters degree in social work in 2003, I did the very first research in Utah about homeless LGBTQ youth so NOBODY had been, this was, you know, 2002, 2003.

Nobody was talking about homeless kids. Nobody was talking about homeless queer kids, and here I am, in Utah, trying to figure out how many of our youth identifies LGBTQ and I did this research for my Masters research class and Utah was no different so at the time, 35% of youth identified as LGBTQ, and I was like, We have to do something.

Our shelter law was so bad it said that you couldn't shelter a youth for longer than eight hours without parental consent or emancipation. And I knew that our kids, we didn't have an emancipation bill because I worked in child welfare, and I knew we didn't have an emancipation bill and I was like, Ohmygod, I've got to write one!

I sat at my dining room table listening to Ani DiFranco and Metallica and I took the 26 lines from 26 other states and wrote them out line by line and hashed out a lot... I picked the lines that I thought would work in Utah because Utah is a more conservative state and I knew that the parents' rights' folks were going to lose their minds about it.

And so, I wrote this law, and I threw everything in it and I called the woman who was an elected official and I said, Hey Roz, I think I just wrote a bill and I'm wondering if you'd sponsor it.

And she said, What's it about?

I said, Homeless youth.

And she was like, Great!

And I emailed it to her and she called me back like five minutes later. She goes, Missy Bird, you just wrote a law! People don't do that!

And I was like, Oh, they don't?

She's like, No, they come to you with an idea. We take it to leg. research, and then they figure it all out.

Oh! I wrote a law!

It's the only thing, Slade, I've given birth to for real. That bill is my baby.

I learned how to lobby. I taught myself how to lobby. I taught myself how to advocate, and I got it passed into law two years later, and that bill has helped hundreds of homeless youth get emancipated.

I learned how to stay away from talking about LGBTQ kids with certain people but I knew that that was part of the story for other people who were in power. I learned how to talk about polygamist kids that were being kicked out of their homes, as a way to sort of leverage this conversation up to a different space.

And I just listened to my gut the whole entire time.

So every single thing I do when I'm talking, whether it's a person in the community or an elected official is, I use my gut instinct to have conversations about what's happening in our communities. I have followed my intuition throughout my entire career as an advocate.

And so, I think as you're having this broader political conversation in your group, it's not just about politics the way we see it on Fox news and MSNBC. It's about, How do the things that are happening in our neighbourhoods and in our cities and in our counties and in our states directly impact what's happening, our ability to access safe and clean water, our ability to access safe and clean food, our ability to stay in the homes that we're building for ourselves and for the people around us and our families and our friends.

That's what policy is. That's what politics is.

Politics isn't this bullshit Mitch McConnell flipping Paul Ryan ridiculousness, Dianne Feinstein and all this national distraction. The national distraction keeps us from looking in our own backyards and seeing what we can do to help the little old lady who lives next door who might be having a hard time getting her newspaper every damn day.

That's politics!

Slade:

Yeah, what do you sa

Scott Vaughn is an intuitive healer, who specializes in helping others see through old belief systems that no longer serve them and empowering them to take charge of their own lives through recognition of their spiritual gifts.

Scott shares a supernatural event from his family history — the story of his great, great grandfather Parks, a preacher who floated to the ceiling of his church and stayed there.

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

www.scottdouglasvaughn.com

www.scottvaughnphotography.com

The Grandpa Story Scott's original post about the levitating preacher

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Scott:

I'm Scott Vaughn. You got that part right, I know that.

I'm a professional intuitive in Johnson City, Tennessee. I do a lot of work, a lot of readings.

When I first began my work, I was doing a lot of healing work. I'm sort of a, was a reiki practitioner who sort of woke up one day, and, not that all reiki practitioners need to wake up, that isn't what I'm trying to imply. I was going along about my married life and, this stuff has always been in the background for me. I was always, probably a little bit more claircognizant I would say, if I was putting a term on it, than I could have recognized at the time.

I always seemed to know some things that I was not supposed to know and it seemed to make people more uncomfortable, now that I think about it, than I was able to access at the time.

But somewhere around 2012, I think it's in the summer that I actually met you on the street side in Chattanooga, I ended up having a health issue and turns out I had had some elevated liver enzymes. I went to the doctor about it. That this is a theme. I've had elevated liver enzymes for a long time.

So I went to the doctor and she said, We're gonna send you and get you an ultrasound of this liver. So they did an ultrasound of my liver. She said, We didn't find anything. I'm going to send you to a gastroenterologist. And of course, I was a really great hypochondriac in those days so that just absolutely fed those wonderful impulses and urges that I had going on at the time.

So she sent me to a gastroenterologist and he said, We're going to do a CAT Scan of your liver. This was around, I think, maybe Memorial Day of 2012. That's 6 years ago now. Hard to believe.

But they call me back, the nurse, she says, Hello, we have found something on your liver and we're definitely going to need to take a look at it. We're going to have to schedule you in for an MRI.

And as you know, medical tests always... you don't get them the next day. It was like, 5 weeks out. So of course I was scared shitless.

What I had to do at that point, I was working a fairly rigorous spiritual program, and I had to really put myself back into that, because I had, not really thrown that out. I just wasn't as rigorous in my practice as I had wanted to be.

And as I began to do that, I don't know what happened. I began to wake up, and went to the local metaphysical shop, which was not really a place that I hung out, to be honest with you, at that point, and had a chakra alignment.

I don't exactly know what happened there but I began to... He put some sto... This is how I would have described it then. He put these rocks on me and he left the room. And then I started seeing all these dead people. So that's how I talked about it then, so that's how I'll talk about it now.

I started hearing, I mostly hear things, rather than see things, although I do see things in my mind's eye as well, but my mind's ear is, I think, more developed. I began to hear these conversations with people who had passed and favorite aunts were coming by, my grandfather was coming by, my father was, had not passed yet but he came by later. We can talk about that later.

And after that, just began to start having what I call.. just sort of mind-blowing awarenesses.

Began realizing that I needed to follow a slightly different path for my life, and I'd been working, and did until fairly recently, in higher education, in academic advising and higher education administration. I was at the point in my life where I was really ready to go very heavy into that conference-going world and writing articles and all that stuff that people do in the academic world.

It sort of just really called all that into question for me and... This is not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to do something else.

So... took a few classes here and there. I enrolled in a ministerial program that was being offered out of our local metaphysical shop that's named Atlantis here in Johnson City, and the teacher, my teacher, who was offering it, just... I happened to be in there one day, probably buying a stone because I was getting an interest in crystals and things like that.

And she said, Hey, I'm teaching this class. I don't know if you might be interested in it.

And for some reason, which was very seemingly out of character for me, I said, Yeah, I'm interested in doing this!

It was the Alliance of Divine Love, it's a metaphysical, ordinational ('ordinational' is not a word), but it's a metaphysical sect, it's not really a sect either, but it's a metaphysical type of ordination, with 3-years long course, and that was a really good experience for me.

And the only reason that I really want to mention that is if you had, if she had come to me a year before, maybe 2 years before:

It wasn't that I had anything against it from a religious standpoint. It's just that I thought, I thought people who are like who I've turned out to be were absolutely crazy.

Funny the way things shift over time for you, and...

So, went through that, and it became very apparent that I needed to... It was just time for me to start working with people and I kept hearing this strong message: You need to work with others.

And I'm like, Wow, I don't know, I'm like, Why?

I'd taken a reiki class several years before and that was a lot of fun. I did it, and work on, you know, put my hands on some people, did it for myself. Thought it was a real neat experience.

That summer I also felt the need to take that second level of reiki and... so I opened up the following year. Just started seeing folks in my house, in my living room, as a matter of fact. I put up a massage table in my living room and started working with folks.

One of my very first clients was a guy named Dennis (if you're listening Dennis, Hey!) turned out to be a very dear friend over time. I performed at his wedding last summer to his partner. I was working with Dennis and I was doing all the stuff.

And in those days, it was a very formal preparing the space and making sure everything was very quiet and very sacred and taking it with just the utmost seriousness. I had these agate wind chimes that were really pretty, but when the air conditioning would blow, it would sound, clink clink clink.

It was annoying.

I resist the word cacophonous because that's really pretentious, but they're... I had to call it out and say it was pretentious, but it was cacophonous. It was annoying.

And I remember saying, just looking up, Can't you do something about these horrible wind chimes? I can't focus on Dennis.

And I got a very, very clear message back, and I still laugh about it.

You don't need to worry about the wind chimes because you're not doing any of this anyway.

Slade:

Ooo...

Scott:

And I was like, Shit.

But that was a very strong message for me, very early in beginning to do my work.

And then, and just logically followed, I knew that I was also supposed to do readings as well but didn't know how that would work. But I knew that was coming for me. I remember one of the, the very first psychic fair I participated in, I didn't know what to call myself. I was more in the room with the healer folks, but towards the end, I was like, I'm really here to do readings.

I ended up doing a couple of readings for folks and it seemed to... I don't remember them very well, which I usually consider that a pretty good sign that something decent happened, if I'm staying out of the equation and not screwing it up with my conscious mind, and everything sort of logically followed after that.

I felt like I just needed to probably stop seeing people outside of my office or outside of my house, because I live in a condo and it was just... went and had to keep it clean all the time and I didn't like to do that, so decided it was probably a good idea to open up an office that was right over the hill from where I was living at the time, and began to do readings, mostly I used to be doing healing type work and it wasn't exactly reiki that I ultimately began to do that I am doing now.

I don't exactly know what I would call the methodology that I have but it's not a lot of hands on. It's a lot of chanting, it's a lot of frequency, and just sending energy back and forth for folks. It's a lot of Spirit Guides. It's a lot of calling in the Medicine People from other cultures, and allowing them to hold the space and allowing that work to continue. But began doing readings.

Primarily my work now consists mostly of doing readings instead of doing healing work. That's sort of not the focus as much now. It's just turned out more that I'm doing readings.

And, I was told very early on that, the people that I would end up working with were probably going to be people who were not necessarily always sold on the new age path, the whole metaphysical thing. That the person I was going to be working with, you know, anyone who seeks me out, I feel like I work with whomever I'm supposed to work with, but the majority of the people who come my way are folks who are disappointed in organized religion and in the church and things like that. But they haven't been able to find a way to replace that with anything that's meaningful.

These are folks who are sad sometimes and disillusioned about the way they've seen spiritual matters handled. And folks who really want to... They know there's something more but they may have been taught all their lives it was not okay to seek those things. Because that was not allowed. There's a strong threat of that, especially here in this culture in east Tennessee.

So that tends to be a lot of the people who come my way.

One of the things that I feel very strongly that I'm supposed to do is sort of, the Hermit card in the tarot is one that I sort of embody. Just sort of holding the light up for folks.

Slade:

Mmm...

Scott:

You know? Standing there, along the path. The nice thing about that card is, you don't know what's in front, you don't know what's behind. But there he is, holding the light. And that's sort of what I've been feeling lately, that I'm supposed to embody. Is holding the light up for people and interpreting the things that are given to me to offer to them as insights for them along their path.

Slade:

You're a Lantern Bearer, Scott!

Scott:

A Lantern Bearer - that's cute. I love that.

Slade:

I actually have an episode about the Hermit tarot and how I re-named it the Lantern Bearer, because... yeah..

Scott:

You know what? I may have stolen that. That may be where I've heard that. I may be stealing from you and I don't -

Slade:

I stole it from someone else.

Scott:

Okay.

Slade:

There was a, I don't know if there's one of those decks floating around out there where the Hermit card is actually called the Lantern Bearer, or someone somewhere has used that term, and I was like, Ooo, I like that!

Scott:

I'm sure Hay House has put it out somewhere, you know?

Slade:

Right. Yes. Copyright whoever said it!

But I do have an episode about it and the episode's mine.

I want to talk to the audience for just a second and let them know that, for those of you listening to this conversation, Scott is a friend of mine and he's an honorary member of the Automatic Intuition community because he was sort of teaching himself while being friends with me, but yet I still needed him to be a part of that group.

I've wanted to interview him since day one of this podcast but here's the thing with interviewing your friends. We could talk for hours about anything, and it may or may not necessarily be fun or interesting to anyone listening. So far I think you're doing pretty good, but...

So the challenge was to find the right focus topic, and with so many of the guests on the show being intuitives and healers and peers, Scott and I were kind of brainstorm texting about this for months, like, What should we do an episode about??

And then I see this post on Scott's Facebook wall titled, "Concerning The Time My Great-Great Grandfather Floated to the Ceiling of the Church—And Lingered.” I read the story and I lost my mind over it.

I told Scott “THIS” this is what I want to talk to you about. Nobody else has this story.

This was months ago.

Scott:

Great!

Slade:

Go ahead and say something while I clear my throat.

Scott:

One of the things about the story is that, a lot of times I'll re-run myself on Facebook. You know. Nobody really notices that much about tha

In this week’s segment, a manifesto about clairaudience and communicating with spirit — communicating with the higher self, with divine wisdom, with inner guidance, with guides — through the concept of Voices.

Star Trek

Star Trek: Discovery

The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Who are You Talking to When You Talk to Yourself

Dissociative Identity Disorder

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You know how I talk about starting the blog Shift Your Spirits back in 2006 with a dozen or so essays … This was one of those original pieces. Originally published in September 2006, about a month after I started blogging, under the title “Who are you talking to when you talk to yourself?”

It’s buried in the archives, about as deep as it can be, but it still enjoys pretty decent traffic. And oddly, or interestingly, in the past week, three different fans of this show mentioned it by name and called it as one of their favorite posts.

It was a foundational post. A kind of manifesto of how I approached the concept of communicating with spirit. Before I ever did a reading or started blogging with your questions and emails requests as prompts, I thought this was the topic I would focus on. The concept of Voices was something Seth and I had explored at length only a few years before I started all this work, and it was so life-changing for me, I really thought a deep dive into Voices was going to be the whole point.

It’s disparaged in our society — hearing voices, listening to the voices in your head, doing what the voices tell you to do … talking to yourself. It’s the punchline to a lot of lazy jokes.

And yet it’s something we all experience. It’s a psychic channel we all have access to.

The one thing that has evolved for me the most since I first wrote about this is that Voices are less about external voices, or proof of entities outside yourself, and more an awareness of archetypal programs and partitions in the mind.

The idea of programming has come full circle — Seth and I were philosophizing about this in 1999, I took the principles deeper into new age space, and then more recently I’ve found myself using smart phone metaphors when I’m attempting to explain how I wrap my head around it all—that the archetypes, the higher self, the still small voice within, the collective unconscious, the hive mind are like apps on a handheld mobile device—they can be downloaded from the cloud, they can be accessed, opened up and run…

I’m going to leave my original vocabulary as it is, but just know, even if communicating with angels or talking to ascended masters or channeling spirits makes you uncomfortable because it’s a little too woo woo, it also works from a purely psychological angle. There are mansions of the mind that can be explored in this way…

Once you begin paying closer attention to the Messages of Guidance you receive every day, what the Voices of these Messengers sound like, where they’re coming from, when they pop in, and what their original Source may be, you can begin to Identify them, carry on intentional conversations with them, start building a better relationship with them... You may also want to tell some of them to sit down and shut the hell up.

You carry on conversations with yourself all the time. Some of the things you say you literally speak out loud.

And you talk about talking to yourself. You acknowledge this to other people and nobody assumes you're crazy.

Think about the last time you muttered something under your breath when there was someone else in the room and you apologized:

"I'm just talking to myself."

Or

"Don't pay any attention to me, I'm just thinking out loud…"

Think about the times you've said to another person:

"I try to tell myself everything will work out for the best…"

"Part of me wants to believe…"

"Something tells me…"

"I just can't trust myself on this…"

"My heart says one thing, but my head says another…"

Ring any bells? You clearly talk to yourself. You acknowledge that there are interior dialogues taking place and most people regard this as perfectly normal.

Of course, I am not speaking to you as a psychiatrist, and my musings on this subject are just that — musings, thoughts, opinions — listening to me on a podcast is not a substitute for a real mental health diagnosis. 

But talking to yourself is not mental illness. It’s not schizophrenia or multiple-personality disorder.

Here's a simple way to tell the difference:

Multiple personality disorders are defined by a lack of conscious awareness, there is no dialogue taking place, the different personalities coming through are all taking turns in the driver's seat of consciousness and they are usually unaware of one another.

They may be aware that there are others, but they don't know necessarily connect anymore or even know how to contact each other. They don't have relationships -- they don't communicate with one another.

Multiplicity or dissociative identity disorder is even considered by some psychologists to be more a survival mechanism than a disorder or disease. The ability of the different parts of oneself to scatter, split up, when the self comes under attack. Like covering the eyes of a child you’re with so that they can't see the gruesome details of the car crash on the side of the road.

Or mouthing or spelling out certain words so that young children in the room won't know what you're talking about.

Multiple Personality Disorder is a kind of protection -- a hardcore survival mechanism.

Multiplicity is an advanced form of the impulse to scatter the flock so that the Whole can't be taken out with one shot. This splintering of the Self is a superhuman ability like the burst of adrenaline or physical strength or courage we experience under extreme conditions.

This is called a disorder because once the multiple parts of the Self get lost they may not be so easy to regroup. They separate for the sake of survival, and they run so far, in such extreme emotional terror, they can't find the Others again in order to integrate. The different selves divide the traumatic information and carry only pieces of the puzzle, because to put all the pieces back together and see the Whole Story -- and identify with it, to become the trauma, at a deeply personal level -- is just too much for any one mind to bear and go on...

By becoming consciously aware of who's talking -- what part of your Self is coming through -- you clearly don't fit this general description of mental illness or multiple- personality disorder. Eckart Tolle in The Power of Now talks about "watching the thinker." There's a part of your mind that can stand back, as a director, and watch all the Voices performing on your inner stage.

You know how you have that "professional phone voice" you use at work? You may have accidentally answered your personal cell phone like that before - once or twice - but you don't slip up and allow the "wrong" voice to grab the microphone very often...

You don't have to think about all this -- much of it is on autopilot.

What I'm leading you toward is the practice of monitoring and micro-managing the Voices you've been taking for granted and not paying so much attention to...

On some level, there's a Director Self, a Managing Consciousness, that is always running - it's the Boss - it's the Big Self you refer to when you say Me. It manages, directs, and prompts the various sub-Voices you use in everyday situations.

The Thinker decides which of your Voices should pop in and do their thing, given the context.

Actors and Singers and Writers will quickly identify with this phenomenon -- they have consciously developed their acute sense of Who- says- what- when- and- how.

This is how someone can direct and star in a film simultaneously.

You are the director and star and producer of your life. This is your greatest project. It's being written by you, for you, you're playing the lead, casting the other players... Most of it is improvisational.

You have a Voice that tells jokes... Some of us have a more talented inner-comedian than others. Sometimes he's performing live at a party or a table of friends and he's on fire, cracking everybody up.

That’s just one example of the internal species of Voices. Are you always aware of choosing them, or do many of them just "know" when it's their line?

When you start identifying them, you find them all over the place. I used to call them my Chorus... (back during a time when my life felt a little too much like a Greek Tragedy : )

Or maybe an Orchestral metaphor would work here: when you're listening to a piece of music you're familiar with, you start to pick out "that killer bass-line" or wonder "who's that on the back-up vocal?"

Would you call your ability to do this Psychic with a capital P? Probably not.

But you see where I'm going with all this… You can think of a ton more examples I haven't named.

Start listening for the different instruments in what you call your Head — there are different sounds coming in, taking over for solos, at different times, in different contexts... All together, they are kind of a Piece of Music, right?

Now you're getting warmer. You are in the general vicinity of the Place you will go to when you want to listen for Voices of Spirit, or your Higher Self, or Divine Guidance...

You've got to identify who everybody is in that head of yours, what solo they play, what keeps refraining… And by everybody, I mean Voices.

Which voices are the "loops" that play over and over?

The hateful, self-critical voices are the ones that creep into the background, like a grinding, low sample that's been repeating behind everything else.

It undermines your more conscious, intentional solo efforts...

You're belting "I will survive" but there's a loop on this remix version of your affirmation, and it's back there, softly chanting "I suck... I always... I'll never..."

That’s what’s killing your ability to manifest your intentions by the way.

You hear it now — how could you have missed it? Of course!

Now you're on your way to cleaning up that Master Mix and getting rid of the noise that you didn't consciously ask to be there.

You also channel external voices. In a very real, third-dimensional, everyday experience, you can hear and express the voices of individuals, living or dead, with whom you've had a relationship.

You can also channel the Voices of people you've never met before — authors or singers from other times and places whose personas, wisdoms, and messages, have been preserved in media. This could even be considered the most obvious form of immortality.

What are Ghosts, if they are not the memories that continue in the minds of the living?

When you and a buddy are planning some delicious, wicked mischief like sneaking out after curfew, or skipping school, or borrowing your dad's car without telling him… Or maybe you're considering a course of action that you know your parents or your boss or your boyfriend will disapprove of...

You say things like:

"I know exactly what he's going to say…"

"She is going to be livid!"

"I can hear my mother now, saying…"

"My grandpa is rolling over in his grave right now…"

Impersonations are a form of channeling. You might even imitate the Voice of your Dad: "How many times have I told you kids…” 

And your sister shrieks with laughter because she recognizes that Voice. She’s amused and delighted by your ability to "bring that Voice through" with so much truth and accuracy, she might even cover her ears in mock-horror and squeal:

"Stop it! You're freaking me out!"

Consider the phrase: What would Jesus do? This was a large-scale social meme several years ago. Kind of like the equivalent of the "Got milk?" campaign for Christian marketing…

This Question is meant to [re]activate the voice of Jesus that you carry within. Christians believe that if you experienced some form of being saved and/or baptized that Jesus has come into your heart and resides there, eternally, whether you pay attention to his presence or not.

The idea is that once you've become aware of the Christ Consciousness within and invited Him to be with you, work through you, speak through you, guide you, you can then say "God is my co-pilot."

You have free will — you're doing the driving, but when you're lost, you have a presence there you can call on to be your soul compass, your navigator — a voice you can trust to check the map and tell you which way to turn to get yourself back on track.

When someone is Born Again or rededicates his life, he has become consciously aware of the fact that he has access to a Higher Power, but he may have failed to make use of it as he could... Or maybe he's heard it and willfully ignored it.

At some point he strayed from his path or began shutting that voice down or muting it; he sees the error in this and chooses to change the behavior and begin listening again.

Let’s talk about: Talking about Yourself in the Third Person 

You've overheard parents programming these voices in their children, speaking about the Voice as if it is clearly meant to be something the children have already received and should "know better" — which is to understand how to access these Parental Guidance Voices on their own.

The Parents quiz their children, inviting them to call up, or call in, or channel that Voice: T

In this week’s segment, the conclusion of the paranormal memoir Waking Spirits.

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POLTERGEIST

The story of my time at Daniel was significant to my becoming an intuitive by profession not only because of the actual phenomena or experiences that took place there, but because of the relationships, the associations, the pieces of awareness that began to come together (and fall apart) for me while living in that house. You’ve heard me talk about my stroke and my being housebound, teaching myself to write code — this is the house where that all happened.

There are almost circular story arcs over the course of my lifetime, an inward spiraling that becomes tighter and close enough to qualify as simply overlapping.

The happenings began with my brother when we were kids. They came back when we lived together again as grown men. He was the one who remembered the most.

At first, I suspected that the activity I witnessed at the Daniel house was the work of a poltergeist, and many contemporary parapsychologists theorize that poltergeists are projected by adolescents -- that they are darker spiritual energies manifested by, and external to, a specific individual.

My brother was a bit too old to qualify as a "youth" but he did still maintain youthful qualities in his lifestyle -- nothing too raucous by any means, just a little bit rock n roll -- the hours and some of the company he kept, the buzzes they enjoyed, his sleeping patterns, the way he disappeared into the cave of his bedroom, uncommunicative, to surf the Web and play video games....

I really believed either something was attached to him and he had brought it with him, or else there was something already present in the house that had taken an interest in him.

I thought of it and referred to it as his poltergeist.

Until he left to go on tour, and the energy I expected to leave with him stayed behind.

The first night after he left, the noises started up again, just like they always did.

I remember the exact moment when it dawned on me -- (and, by the way, who was I to judge his lifestyle? Wasn't I just riding out the clock of my twenties that began in college, the one that was losing steam as I lost my way?)

It wasn't about him -- it was about ME.

And, as if in response, as affirmation, I saw shadows behind me shift and move.

I discovered that the powered-off desktop monitor acted as a darkened mirror.

I watched the reflection of movement in the dim, shut-down computer screen in front of me.

I began to sit at my desk for great lengths of time before logging on, just observing the gray columns of air that waved like seaweed or drapery pleats along the hallway behind me, waiting for those few fleeting moments when facial features emerged, leaning in as if to read over my shoulder.

(Yes, of course I felt a chill of their breath on the back of my neck, just as you may have in sympathy hearing about it. You too may have experienced this; countless times.)

Only a few weeks after we moved into Daniel, my brother's girlfriend stayed over and woke up talking about what she'd been hearing in the night. I overheard her conversation and immediately engaged her, so she'd feel affirmed. So I would too.

My brother swore he hadn't seen or heard anything (which is what first made me suspicious that it might be connected with him in some way) but he shocked me by telling her stories of the haunted Green House. We had not talked about it in years. I wasn't sure until that moment just how much he witnessed and remembered. He drew me in to participate in the narration, but he supplied most of the details.

Together we told her the stories I related in the Vortex memoirs.

In order to tell you about how I came to separate out the messages from spirit guides from the petty noise-making of ghosts, to discern angels from apparitions, and to be aware that there are those who walk among us guiding us who are not human, I had to tell you about Jesse, who basically announced to me that they were about to re-enter my life in a whole new way.

So, hopefully you can begin to see how these rambling tales are not "random spooky moments" from my life, but all the back story I wanted to share with you that leads up to the Ultimatum from my guides.

How Shift Your Spirits came to be. How everything you know of me (which is only a little bit) who I have so recently become in this world -- a professional intuitive, an anti guru, an author slash teacher of woo woo, a spiritual entrepreneur -- was not some tidy straight shot of towing the line and being a really well-behaved person.

Who I have become emerged from the great wreckage of my earlier life -- you have met me having crawled out of a ditch I first fell into while living at Daniel.

It's a pretty cliche spiritual transformation biography, really -- I'm not just "special" in some way that other people aren't. I'm one of billions, all with a story to tell and a lesson to be had from it. I'm not metaphysical royalty -- I fucked it All Up royally. It all went to Hell, and I'm sure I was either navigating or driving at least some of the time.

The worst life you could possibly live and the one you would most like to create for yourself -- they have remarkably similar ingredients.

LIFE UNRAVELED

I came to resemble That Person that's always in each episode of the re-enactment show A Haunting, the one who seems to be losing his mind, as either a precursor to -- or the direct result of -- losing everything else.

I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I even stopped reading books.

I either unconsciously withdrew from my friends or else they abandoned me. I've never been sure if it was my fault, theirs, or all of the above... but the results were the same -- devastating. Isolating.

The job that seemed to be so perfect for me, that I had moved from another state to pursue, was a disaster -- my immediate supervisor who had "clicked" with me so well during the interview process was a monster behind closed doors. When no witnesses were around, I was cruelly bullied. With a degree of viciousness that no one in that office would believe.

About six months in, I woke up one morning partially paralyzed.

The left side of my face, my left shoulder and extending into my left arm and hand. The doctors said maybe Bell's Palsy, although there was no infection present; maybe a minor stroke, brought on by stress (which has always been the diagnosis that felt most likely to me). A few spiritual healer types have suggested "shamanic sickness" -- yeah, that sounds a bit more glamorous than the truth of my beaten-down mind-body-spirit connection....

I was forced to resign from that perfect job (after they insisted I come by the office before going to the emergency room to "prove" that I was really paralyzed). I was laid off from two more positions in quick succession.

I was working with an agent who secured me a book publishing deal which soon imploded. It's a long story for another time and place. I barely escaped with my content and copyrights intact.

GUIDES ARE NOT GHOSTS

I have never admitted it to anyone, but I feared at the time that I might be experiencing a possession. I've never said so because I don't want anyone to confuse communicating with spirit guides with possession -- they are NOT the same thing.

Later, looking back, there's no confusion about that -- there were two distinctly different kinds of phenomena happening. I straddled two worlds.

The house was filled with basically two groups of spirit entities:

---One kind threw pennies at me from the shadows in the attic, rattled cabinet doors, made the lights dim and the computer screen flip, and manifested as a coil of dark smoke in a corner of my bedroom. They contacted me just to get my attention, to distract me, or to be noticed just for the sake of being noticed. They weren't children so much as they were child-like. They punked me like teenagers in search of adrenalin ringing doorbells and then running.

They were active in the night.

---The other group wanted desperately to tell me things. They were persistent, but gentle. They offered advice, commenting on practical circumstances. Their insights were inspiring and proved to be not only true but truly useful.

Those voices came in the morning.

You know that transitional dream state, where you are just beginning to wink back into waking awareness, but still clinging to the threads of your interior astral reality?

I would come to in the midst of Conversations with People. For the next few years I would immediately lurch to the computer to record the topics of these dialogues.

There was an emotional urgency that accompanied the messages. The voices. They were actual words -- clues -- most often fragmented and minimal in the word count department, but very specific.

I experimented with the most low-impact, low-risk instructions -- things that involved no one else, that, if they led to nothing, nobody need ever know about but me.

Strange, eccentric little tidbits of information that seemed so random when they first came through, but proved to be powerful road signs.

One example that stands out to this day, that still makes me whisper How else could that be possible?:

I ran across some letters in a box from a friend I had not spoken to in over ten years. I felt so much guilt and grief, realizing how I had dissolved the connection.

For years I had allowed him to believe he had wronged me. Actually, it was worse, I gave him no reason, only sudden silence. I left him to wonder, as my more recently estranged friends were now torturing me.

I felt all the pain of that action return to me, with the accumulated interest of its years. It was the first time I directly asked the spirits to do something for me.

"Find a way for me to get in touch with him. Just so I can apologize and let him know he did not do anything wrong."

I imagined I might run across a current address online, send an email.... At best, that is. I didn't believe (yet) they could assist me by "granting wishes."

The next day (the very freaking next day), I was pulled out of the house for an insignificant errand -- to buy toothpaste. This was the first time I was distinctly aware that the voices came along in the car with me, like a hushed and hard-to-hear GPS. They urged me past the closest grocery store, past a Walgreens, a CVS, and several others of their kind.... All the way across town, to a pharmacy at an interstate overpass.

He was there, in the dental aisle.

He didn't even live in Atlanta -- he was driving to Savannah, and had stopped at this random exit in the suburbs to buy a new toothbrush.

I couldn't even begin to make him know how I knew that serendipity had been arranged.

It was magic enough had it been unconscious and incidental.

We are friends again, and still in touch, to this day.

And every time I retrieve a message for someone during a reading, I recall how seemingly insignificant the packaging might appear to be. At first.

Clues, not necessarily "answers."

In regards to my book deal disaster, I was told over and over again to "View Source." I would hear a very distinct male voice lean in and murmur in my left ear when I was on the computer.

...View the source, the source code, the page source...

I knew nothing about computer programming. I thought "code" referred to some kind of math, and that computer science... well, it distinctly has the word "science" in it.

It's a language, his voice would insist.

Oh, I knew what I must have appeared like to external eyes -- an out-of-work insomniac whose phone rarely rang and whose friends no longer even replied to emails (his cat had even stopped sleeping with him); paralyzed in front of a screen, muttering to himself, perpetually nosing through the scrolls of HTML and Javascript and CSS that runs like an underground river of information just beneath the pages on the Web.

But it is a language.

And it began to make sense to me. And I looked for resources to teach me more. And it was this skill set that rescued me from financial destitution and gave me the ability to publish myself.

You wouldn't know jack about me -- you wouldn't be listening to any of this -- without that moment when I clicked the words "Page Source" because I kept hearing a voice say it over and over again.

God! And I never would have predicted -- or believed -- that I would be here a few years later admitting that I began to do "what the voices in my head" suggested.

P WORDS

...penny, pitch, poltergeist, presence, paralysis, page source, programming...

I have now learned that this kind of alliteration accompanies names or key words that are trying to come through.

You know how it feels when a word is right on the tip of your tongue? Your mind frantically feels around in the dark -- it finds the knob, but keeps fumbling for the key hole.

Clairaudience feels like a sustained version of that state -- instead of seconds that soon slip into place, it goes on for minutes. Entire mornings. Like waking up with the same song stuck in your head day after day.

Once the right word hits, it "lights" up, the ticker tape freezes and full sentences emerge.

Back then it was words that begin with p.

P-words, everywhere.

My brother's name begins with a P....

PAUL

Then there was my friend Paul, back in Chattanooga. He'd taken it really hard when I told him I was moving back to Atlanta.

Paul had been a really successful computer programmer, but then he started drinking a lot. Drinking in secret and alone.

His house was always lively with friends. He had a great deck and a garden and people congregated around his abundance. But even when neighbors stopped by in the morning for coffee, he'd be sneaking off into the kitchen pantry or the bathroom to have a little nip something. To pop or snort somethi

In this week’s segment, I'm sharing a paranormal memoir about a Penny Charm, a ritual of blessing you can do with the spirits in a new house.

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I like houses with ghosts. I prefer them. Where else does the largest chunk of all that "charm" and "character" come from if not from spirit energies?

But it seems a lot of people react to the presence of any spirit as a "negative" spirit, and, in my opinion, that's just not necessarily the case.

When I moved into the house I shared with my brother in 2003 (the house on Daniel) I had not yet begun to make the distinctions that you find me writing about now, like the differences between ghosts and spirit guides and angels....

I only observed that, among the population of the invisible, were those that came and went, those that came with the locations they inhabited, and those that came along with us, attached to us personally like parents or pets.

My awareness of these subjects had only just shifted to conscious -- the Daniel House is where I moved right after my encounters with Jesse, whom I told you about in the episodes called Stranger Angels. Daniel is where I took those first steps that led ultimately to my communicating and working with spirit guides. (And that’s the arc of my personal history I’m recounting in these paranormal memoirs.)

The Daniel House represents a bridge in memory and experience from the haunted Green House of my childhood. Living with my brother again as an adult seems to have either drawn new phenomena to me, or plugged me back in and turned up the volume.

Gray little black-shuttered Daniel came with great potential for ghosts and residual energy. It was built in the 1930s in a middle class inner-city neighborhood with the timid room dimensions of that pessimistic time. It wasn't the oldest house I've ever lived in, but it was the oldest house I spent a lot of nights in alone, listening... expecting.

Part of the promise of ghosts at Daniel came with the finished walk-up attic, an upper half-story with dormer windows and a permanent steep staircase behind a door at the back of the house. The ceiling height of the attic would have been irresistible to children -- and sure enough, the first time the leasing agent walked me through the house, he semi-apologized for the scribbles on the attic walls.

...Names printed in little kid scrawl; a few broken wax crayons, paper labels peeled off, stomped into the cracks between the floorboards; the murky window light like that of an abandoned terrarium....

How many spooky movies and horror novels begin with delicious little moments of foreshadowing just like this?

Since it was the last room he showed me, the realtor had no way of knowing how much more the possibility of a kid-haunted attic appealed to me than the refinished wood floors and the upgraded appliances, the new energy efficient water heater and the central heat and air.

And there was no telling what all that renovation might have awakened....

The plan was that, by sharing the house, my brother and I could both take advantage of the best of multiple worlds -- for my brother, who spent more time on the road touring with bands than at home, the arrangement would allow him to get rid of an expensive storage facility, and still have some place to come home to, without having to maintain an apartment on his own. For me, well into my thirties, beyond any lingering tolerance for collegiate roommate situations, yet not financially stable enough to live alone in a city as expensive as Atlanta, co-habitating with my mostly absent brother would mean quasi-living-alone. I could enjoy reduced expenses, the place mostly to myself, and yet have an actual family member I could count on not to screw me over in one of those many ways that roommates can.

I know he didn't love the arrangement or benefit from it quite as much I did, but the timing was right for both of us -- he needed to go off on tour again in a hurry; I was moving back to town and starting a new job within a matter of days. With windows of opportunity as small as our overlapping circumstances, Daniel was serendipitous.

The first time I showed the place to my brother, he wanted to investigate the shed out behind the house and compare it to the attic. The lawn had just been mowed by the realty company in anticipation of our move-in date. We noticed the large rectangular depression in the yard beyond the back patio slab.

"My theory is they used to have a carport or something back here," I said.

My brother squinted. His cheeks pulled back in a wince. "Looks like a bomb shelter to me." Standing over the concave depression, he looked like he felt queasy. "They've obviously buried the entrance though."

Now, I've already told you I believe he is one of the most psychically sensitive people people I know -- but also the most uncomfortable with it. He never talks about the paranormal in the present tense at all, although he will refer, matter-of-factly and with great detail, to our shared past experiences when we were kids.

He was a statue of second thoughts, staring down between his feet with a frown at the faint footprint of that forgotten underground room. I half-expected him to deliver an early-in-the-spooky-movie line like "I have a bad feeling about this..." or "Wait! Did you hear that?"

He muttered something fairly close: "No telling what's under this yard...."

My brother's reactions in reality will probably always be a disappointment compared to my magical world view -- still, I decided to downplay his first exploration of the attic. I lingered back on the stairs, not unlike how the realtor had positioned himself when he'd shown it to me, offering dismissive responses and body language that said "Whatever. Nothing to see here. Let's go back down."

I don't know if my brother spotted the children's drawings on the walls in the corner. He only pronounced the attic's security as a favorable place to store his expensive surplus sound equipment.

He left to go rent a Uhaul.

Before moving anything into the house, I performed a ritual walk-through to introduce myself to the ghosts, to map any active vortex or portal in etheric dimensions coinciding with the physical space. (I prefer to wait and call the archangels into their protective posts at the four corners of the property later -- after I'm all moved in. Like a lid or a seal or a deadbolt; a moat around me and mine.)

Once the keys are yours it's hard to resist bringing something in with you on that first visit to a new place. You think Why waste a trip over without throwing a few things in the trunk? Doesn't make any sense when you can easily predict just how sick you'll be in the next day or so of all that carrying boxes back and forth....

But an empty house is like that pause between breaths in yoga, the moment that is neither inhaling or exhaling, the midpoint of the swing free from gravity, neither kicking up toward the sky or dropping back to earth.

Some of the greatest sources of power can only be found in Between Things, and most people feel a need to hurry through that unnerving discomfort, as minor as a dash through the rain without an umbrella between the car and the front porch roof overhang. The stillness of the in between can be peaceful or its silence can be deafening, depending on your personal comfort with sustaining a sense of timelessness, of nowhere, of nothing, of namelessness.

This moment is rife with magic -- you only get one such moment per move. Once you bring in your pets, your thoughts and emotions, your friends and family, your personal belongings steeped in your energy... the spirits have already started shifting, ink dropped in water, smoke torn and curled by your breezing in.

When I first move into a house I don’t smudge right away (or sage, as in its verb form, to burn sage) because .... Well, because I have this theory ....

So let me interrupt here with an apologetic parenthetical aside/ slash/ disclaimer before I tell you my theory about smudging --

This is just a belief (or a behavior, really) based on personal observation. I know it's not The Norm and Most People may not agree with this and I would not doubt it for a second if you told me there's a traditional Native American shaman in a famous 1970s commercial somewhere with a big fat tear sliding down his cheek as he casts his gaze out over the way I have gutted and bent shamanic tools and techniques to my own eclectic 21st Century mixed Anglo-Cherokee Neo-Pagan Post-Modern Creato-Matic Magical Practice.

My theory is that smudging sedates spirits much like smoking subdues a hive of bees.

To clarify further: smudging clears energies; it does not necessarily clear entities.

It doesn't get rid of Anyone, it just might make them stoned, pliable, sleepy, unmotivated... (maybe they get the munchies; and so if you know it's not mice -- or really big cockroaches -- or a roommate/partner with an Ambien-induced sleep-eating problem -- then That's probably why you're hearing the rustle and ruckus in the kitchen cabinets late at night).

Who's to say the Things That Go Bump don't dig a fatty smudge bundle just as much as your deceased Aunt Clara, your childhood fairy companion Sarafina, or your Guardian Angel Fanciel?

You know, I'm pretty sure sage smudge is a Southwestern thing anyway (my life stories take place in either Tennessee or Georgia); we certainly don't use Southeastern tobacco in anything close to a traditionally reverent way....

My point is: it's all bastardization, cultural appropriation and customization.

Many of my theories and practices exist under a canopy of Personalization -- that your beliefs and your intentions literally create the power -- the force, the degree, the volume, and the outcome -- of any ritual.

Take it; tweak it; make it work for you.

A CONTRACT WITH THE SPIRITS

Someone may have loved this house before you did (obviously, this is especially true with an older house). The original owner may have also been its creator -- he may have designed and built it to very personal specifications. It may have represented the single largest financial investment in his entire life. His wife may have given birth to children in this house; at the very least it is the place where they were raised. Some members of the home's original family may have died in the house -- not tragically, but as they most wished.

There can be enormous positive emotional attachments between spirits, memories, and places.

When you first walk through the space as part of your introductory ritual, listen for that history -- sense those personal stories. Recognize those who have gone before you. Honor their lives and respect their experiences -- this should be the foundation on which your own life story will be overlaid.

You are a new layer — it's a palimpsest. In the eye-blink of the present, your breath, your thoughts, your emotions, your energy are scribbled on the walls of the past of all those who have walked here before you.

A GAME WITH THE GHOSTS

The basic gist of a penny charm is that, before you move any of your belongings into the home, you greet the spirits who dwell there, you introduce yourself, explain who you are, how you intend to share the space, how you wish to interact with them, ask for their blessing, and invite them to provide security for you and yours.

If the spirits accept you as a new member of the family and agree to let you reside in their house unmolested, they will leave a coin (or coins) on the floor. The coin -- usually a penny -- will appear close to a door or window (sometimes, it may appear on the actual window sill).

You should express your thanks to the spirits and place the penny on the top of the closest door- or window-frame. (The trim around a standard door or window will comfortably hold a small coin, disguising it from view.)

The protection’s not literal; it's not only active on a particular door as a physical lock or deadbolt might be; all physical and non-physical pathways into and through the space should be theoretically "covered.” I've observed that the penny's placement might have something to do with energetic or spiritual portals, more than physical openings. If you do find multiple coins as a result of the spell, just place them individually, according to the best/closest corresponding door or window.

Or spread them around the house. It's your ritual -- follow your instincts.

The penny acts as a symbolic charm of protection -- the coin itself has no power; it represents the signed contract that the spirits have agreed to provide protection, to the best of their abilities, in the dimensions which they can affect.

Fully expect the penny to (eventually) vanish.

(Shortly after placing it above a door or window, you may remember the charm and check to see if it's still there. At some point, you will forget about it... this is when it ultimately disappears. Then again, months or even years later, the coin may still be there. Who knows? Both situations have happened to me.)

What if you've already been living in your home for some length