Shift Your Spirits

On episode 11, I’m sharing a conversation with Lori Ference.

Lori is a professional intuitive who guides leaders and visionaries through transformational change. She supports those venturing into unknown territory in their lives and businesses as an advisor and strategic project director.

She’s also the producer and host of Leaders' Call to Adventure, which features the inspiring stories of those who have taken the road less traveled. As an athlete, she embraces this spirit of adventure through running — she’s currently training for a one-hundred mile ultra marathon.

MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:

On this show we talk about ESP, past lives, shamanism, think tanks, fractal theory, intrinsic time, predicting the future, the birth of the spiritual internet, visionaries, leadership, adventure, and, of course, intuition.

Books by Sanaya Roman:

Personal Power Through Awareness

Living with Joy

Opening to Channel

Spiritual Growth

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

Mosaic

GUEST LINKS - Lori Ference

www.loriference.com

www.leaderscalltoadventure.com

Leaders' Call to Adventure - Facebook

Leaders' Call to Adventure - Podcast

HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON

Slade's Books & Courses

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support this Show

On SYS episode 10, I’m sharing a conversation with Licia Berry about The Black Madonna.

Licia’s an artist, mentor, speaker, and author of the International #1 bestseller I Am Her Daughter — which we’ll talk about on the show — along with the story of how Licia took a solo pilgrimage to southern France to photograph the elusive Black Madonnas, only to find that in France the Black Madonna is not so elusive after all, and contributed to several mystical experiences that changed her life.

MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:

On this show we also talk about vision quests, the Holy Grail, Lourdes, shamanism, ancestral memory, Dia de los Muertos, White Buffalo Calf Woman, the many faces of the Goddess — Sibyle, Isis, Amaterasu, Brigid, and Great Mother, the archetypal mothering intelligence in the universe.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Camino de Santiago

Lourdes

Please see the corresponding post on my blog sladeroberson.com for photographs and artwork Licia promised to share:

Our Lady in Stone - Lourdes Sighting, photograph © Licia Berry 2016

Mary White Buffalo Calf Woman, mixed media © Licia Berry 2016

Prints available at http://juicysacredliving.com/fine-art

GUEST LINKS - Licia Berry

liciaberry.com

I Am Her Daughter book

http://juicysacredliving.com/current-project/

HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON

Slade's Books & Courses

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support this Show

Jesse was the first person to suggest to me that some of the benevolent strangers we encounter are not even human, but incarnated guardians. Corporeal angels.

This is a continuation of Stranger Angels: Part 1. If you haven’t heard the story about my weird European stalker who looked like a mannequin, then hit pause and go listen to Episode 08.

It will make this sequel a lot more satisfying...

I met Jesse in 2002, exactly ten years after that trip to Europe. I was thirty-two years old. I had lived through a really shitty Saturn Return that nuked all the structure in my world and left me in a ditch that I would spend most of my thirties crawling out of. At the time, I was recovering from a serious illness and working on rebuilding the basics of third-dimensional existence — you know: job, place to live — I had no way of knowing that I was about a year away from a major Trip Down the Rabbit Hole that would deliver me to some different level of identity and I suppose a reorientation to my spiritual path — events that climaxed with an intervention by my guides, an ultimatum regarding my sense of purpose, and ultimately the creation of Shift Your Spirits and the work for which you know me.

Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential by Barbara Marx Hubbard

The Ones Who Glow by Slade Roberson

Angels 101 by Doreen Virtue

A Book of Angels by Sophy Burnham

An Angel for Every Day by Angela McGerr

Sylvia Browne's Book of Angels

Angel of the Revelation by William Blake

phylum/ phyla — the different types or levels of angels: Thrones and Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Carrions, Powers, Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, Angels

asher — your personal guardian angel (body guard)

silver cord technician — the angel who manages your silver cord connection to spirit

The Books of Enoch

Mother Mary Speaks to Us by Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger

Quantum Spirituality — this is not the book I remember. I may have the title wrong...

Quantum Theology by Diarmuid O'Murchu

Jesse : Stranger Angels - Part 3

Jesse : Stranger Angels - Part 4

The Paranormal Memoirs

Are you new to podcasts?

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Download a free ebook and meditation

Automatic Intuition

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Okay, so this episode is a part 2 - it’s a continuation of last week's episode called - you guessed it - Stranger Angels part one. If you haven’t heard the story about my weird European stalker who looked like a mannequin, then go ahead and hit pause right now

I promise it will make this sequel a lot more satisfying if you go listen to that episode first.

Part one is Episode 8.

Jesse was the first person to suggest to me that some of these benevolent strangers we encounter are not even human, but incarnated guardians.

Although I had experiences as a kid that involved angel sightings, spirit guides, spirit animals, ghosts, elementals ... I would never have included that man John, who had followed me around on my trip to Europe, in a similar kind of paranormal category. Over the years, I even found myself relating the story of the almost-mugging — and, for some reason, excluding the part about John entirely.

Until my conversations with Jesse, I would have lumped these strangers into quirky, environmental synchronicities.

Let me explain what I mean by environmental synchronicity — I’m talking about these patterns I observe that seem to emerge from random chaos, and feel somehow “less personal” — just glitches or glimpses of cosmic machinery at work that don’t feel “targeted” toward me in a significant, meaningful way.

I’ll give you a couple of recent examples:

A few months ago, just before Christmas, I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket behind some random stranger. Nothing noteworthy about that, except that, the very next day, in a completely different part of the city, I was waiting to place an order at the cafe, and the same person got in line behind me. Never saw him before; never saw him again after…

Another example of this kind of environmental synchronicity...

Last month, I was out running errands. I stopped to get gas and a car pulled up at the pump next to mine. I noticed it because it was the exact same make, model, year, and color as my own car. (You always notice when you see “your” car on the road, right?) So, I went all over town that day — the bank, the post office, the bookstore, the cafe, and eventually, a few hours later, criss-crossed my way to an enormous shopping mall in an area of the burbs I generally avoid and only visit about once a year if I absolutely have to — I needed to exchange a gift. I found a group of empty parking spaces and pulled into one. As I was getting my bag out of the trunk, a car pulled into the space next to mine — same make, model, year, and color - AND - it was that same exact car and driver from earlier in the day.

In that asphalt sea of parking options, not to mention in a medium-size city — we’re talking about a quarter of a million people -- what are the chances?

So, these are not Big Deal experiences, right? — just things that make you go “Hmm… What was that all about it?” Never saw them before; never saw them after. I suppose it’s some fairly irrelevant mathematical remainder in the clockwork of divine timing.

Anyway, that’s the kind of compartment in my mind where I might have placed the story about John the European mannequin stalker, just tagged with a greater-than-average significance and a Big Mystery stamp…

At least, that’s how I thought of it before I met Jesse.

…My name is Slade Roberson

For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather.

I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition.

Before we go any further, just a quick FYI — I’ve added a new feature to the show.

For years now, before I send out a blog post, I try to tune in and listen for something that will speak directly to you, that will serve as a message. Like an oracle.

And I get email replies, every week, with tons of you saying that the post was a direct answer to a question you had.

It’s really cool, and I want to bring that phenomenon to the podcast…

At the very end of this episode, after my final links and credits, I have a channeled message for you.

Be thinking about a question or concern you have. It might be answered by the show itself. But hold it in your mind and I’ll come back on at the end and leave you with something extra…

Back to the story...

I met Jesse in 2002, exactly ten years after that trip to Europe. I was thirty-two years old. I had lived through a really shitty (shittier-than-most) Saturn Return that nuked all the structure in my world and left me in a ditch that I would spend most of my thirties crawling out of. At the time, I was recovering from a serious illness and working on rebuilding the basics of third-dimensional existence — you know: job, place to live — I had no way of knowing that I was about a year away from a major Trip Down the Rabbit Hole that would deliver me to some different level of identity and I suppose a reorientation to my spiritual path — events that climaxed with an intervention by my guides, an ultimatum regarding my sense of purpose, and ultimately the creation of Shift Your Spirits and the work for which you know me.

Back in 2002, I was not operating from even so much as the intention of a “higher vibration” — I was just surviving. (Barely.)

I was working in Chattanooga (where I grew up) at a temporary, low-paying job while searching for a full-time position with benefits, preferably in a counseling environment, where I could also work toward my Master’s degree. I decided I wanted to move back out of state, to Atlanta, a larger city where I had lived before and where there were more opportunities. Fortunately, my temporary job gave me Mondays off, so I could arrange to do interviews on at least that one weekday, and travel down on the Sundays before.

All the back-and-forth was expensive; gas eating up most of my funds. The weeks of job hunting were turning into months. Many of my friends and contacts in Atlanta had moved away; even more of them were estranged. I had one friend from college who was generous with her hospitality, who I felt I could impose on to some degree, but I was going to rely on her heavily for a place to stay at a longer duration of time once I’d actually secured a position and could then start that second stage of relocating to a place of my own.

I’d already worn out my welcome with more than one person. I told everyone, including my parents, that I was spending those Sunday nights in motels; more often than not, armed with pre-ironed interview clothes, a lint-roller, resumes, and my cell phone, I slept in my car so I’d have enough gas money to return home. (I could sometimes simply get up before dawn in Chattanooga and drive down but the morning rush hours and unpredictable gridlock of getting into Atlanta on Monday mornings was way more stressful and difficult to effectively schedule.)

I passed most of those earlier Sunday evening hours killing time hanging out in cafes. I tend to haunt cafes — I’ve discovered more than one magical vortex in a favorite cafe. If I decided to plot them on a map I wouldn’t be surprised to discover evidence of ley lines or some personal power nexus.

I met Jesse at the Starbucks in Ansley. He politely asked if I minded if he sat in a leather armchair next to mine that shared the small table between them. He was dressed in scrubs; maybe a surgeon, probably a nurse. He was handsome in a bland, super clean-cut way — he obviously had some seriously Nordic DNA that results in superior height, blond hair, blue eyes, and an airbrushed complexion. I remember thinking he looked less like a nurse than a model for a medical uniforms catalogue, or maybe an extra in a hospital scene on a TV show.

I don’t remember how we initially began chatting, but the conversation started over the books we were reading. I was reading Jung and Tarot; he was reading Conscious Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard.

(Which I just realized saying that, I told Amy Oscar, who I interviewed in episode 4 of this podcast, that listening to her reminded me of listening to Barbara Marx Hubbard.

Anyway

Jesse talked at great length about the concepts of Hubbard’s work — he was a bit dull and emotionless in his delivery, professorial, but the information itself was interesting and he seemed intent on instructing me about it.

He eventually asked me what “my story” was, and I told him about my process of finding work and relocating.

Pointing to my book he said : “You’re inhabiting the Wanderer archetype.”

I was like “Ah, yes, or you could just call me a Fool, as the Tarot would.”

He shrugged and kindly said “It's the beginning of all Journeys."

When the baristas began to make the obvious motions of closing the cafe, Jesse asked me where I was staying. I told him truthfully that I wasn’t sure yet, but I lied and said I was going to go find a cheap motel — and I mentioned a notoriously shady possibility nearby.

He looked troubled by this and was like. “No, no no. I live alone, really close to here, just blocks from the University where you’re going for your interview. I have a guest room, I’m not working tomorrow, and I insist you come stay with me.”

I was not looking forward to finding a safe place to sleep in my car, and after going through the motions of being assured that the invitation was sincere, not just a friendly but empty offer, I accepted with grateful relief.

JESSE’S HOUSE

So, I was supposed to follow his car to his place, but he also gave me back-up directions in case we were separated, not an address but like simplified landmark-syle — The house was on Woodland Hills, the first driveway on the left after the last speed bump as you approach the traffic light at the end of the street.

Jesse drove some vaguely forgettable car — something white, fairly late model, like a Ford Taurus — it looked like a rental.

I’d probably driven past his house thousands of times over the years.

When he stooped to go in through the back door into his kitchen, I realized for the first time just freaking how tall he was.

The strangest thing about Jesse’s house was that it was almost entirely empty — there were no appliances except a coffee maker, nothing but water and milk and a bag of coffee in the refrigerator, paper plates and plastic cups in the cabinets; there was nothing but a lonely chandelier in the dining room; two leather armchairs, a large television and a lamp, both sitting on the floor in the living room; there was no art work on the walls; blinds were the only window treatments; in one bedroom there was a mattress and an alarm clock on the floor, an open closet with a row of scrubs and a few pairs of jeans and t-shirts; the bathroom had a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo in the shower…

It looked like

Have you ever found yourself in a stressful or dangerous situation and had a complete stranger offer assistance? As if they’d been placed there, by fate, or impossible coincidence, miraculously timed to step in and help … And then, just as mysteriously, disappeared?

Maybe looking back it seems like the Universe was using this ordinary person as a divine messenger for you — an ordinary vessel, but with a supernatural role and unbelievable timing.

But have you ever experienced this phenomenon in such a way it left you wondering if these helpful strangers were even human beings at all?

Stranger Angels - Part 1

Stranger Angels - Part 2

The Paranormal Memoirs

Are you new to podcasts?

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Download a free ebook and meditation

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support this Show

Have you ever found yourself in a stressful or dangerous situation and had a complete stranger offer assistance? 

As if they’d been placed there, by fate, or impossible coincidence, miraculously timed to step in and help…And then, just as mysteriously, disappear?

Maybe looking back it seems like the Universe was using this ordinary person as a divine messenger for you. An ordinary vessel, but with a supernatural role and unbelievable timing.

But have you ever experienced this phenomenon in such a way it left you wondering if these helpful strangers were even human beings at all?

My name is Slade Roberson. 

For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive counselor and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather. 

I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition.

Now a quick FYI before we go further — I’ve added a new feature to the show.

For years now, before I send out a blog post, I try to tune in and listen for something that will speak directly to you, that will serve as a message. Like an oracle.

And I get email replies, every week, with tons of you saying the post was a direct answer to a question you had.

This is a really popular phenomenon -  for both of us - and I want to bring that to the podcast…

So

At the very end of this episode, after my final links and credits, I have a channeled message for you. 

Be thinking about a question or concern you have. It may be answered by the show itself. But hold it in your mind and I’ll come back on at the end and leave you with something extra…

OK

So, 

Back to the show. 

Today, I want to share one of my own experiences with what I call stranger angels… (although I would never have used that terminology at the time…)

In January 1992, when I was twenty-two years old, I traveled to Europe. 

I flew to London with a small group of friends and stayed for a few days before splitting off from them to go meet up with another friend Allison who was waiting for me in Paris. We had arranged to connect at a specific hotel between the Latin Quarter of the 5th Arrondissement and the 13th Arrondissement on a Saturday morning — but the only trains I could take required that I arrive either half a day early or half a day late. So, I opted to travel in the wee hours of Friday night/ really early Saturday morning which would put me in Paris at 1 am.

We were going to share a room, but I figured I could splurge and check into my own room for one night at the same hotel and sleep for awhile until Allison woke up.

I only had a little bit of British cash when I left London, but I wasn’t concerned — all the train stations I’d ever been to in large cities like New York and London were always bustling with activity at all hours, even in the middle of the night. So I figured I could go to a money exchange when I arrived in Paris and turn in some American traveler’s checks for francs. 

After the Channel boat crossing, which was actually pretty crowded, there were only four other people in the car on the train with me — two girls from New Jersey, Joanna and Julie, an Australian guy who eventually introduced himself as James, and a nondescript man in a khaki-colored trench coat who remained several rows away, never joined in our conversation, but nevertheless seemed to always be staring and closely watching us whenever I glanced over at him.

The Jersey girls made entertaining companions, they were chatty and easy to be with; James from Australia was shy and although he moved closer to sit near us, he mostly just listened to the conversation.

I was unprepared when I arrived at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris to find it an absolute ghost town — every kiosk, cafe, ticket booth, and bank was dark, locked up with those roll-down gates like you see on the front of mall stores when they’re closed. This was a Friday night in Paris; I thought there would be people everywhere.

The Jersey girls yelled a cheery goodbye and snatched one of the only waiting taxis, and James melted away into the streets with the small crowd who exited our train from other cars.

I wandered around in an awkward circle, looking for signs of activity, and quickly realizing I was not going to find any. This was a really ill-planned arrival. I had been so comfortable in London — I was traveling with friends from the US; staying in the apartment of British nationals; there was no language barrier; not to mention a kind of “past-life” familiarity that was at least partially supported by recognizable landmarks from years of studying English literature.

Now I was alone in an abandoned metropolis with just enough high school French to read signs and grunt nouns and adjectives and to possibly butcher a verb conjugation or two, in a pinch. I was an obvious tourist carrying everything I had in an enormous pack; an easy target for a mugging.

I was actually thankful there was a freezing fog everywhere to ensure the streets were emptier than they might otherwise have been. There was only one other person anywhere nearby that I could appeal to for directions.

And he was watching me.

The man in the khaki-colored trench coat, who had been staring at me on the train, was lingering, lurking at a casual distance.

At least he was a familiar face, and if he had just arrived from England then chances were good he spoke my language.

Feeling like a child who’d lost his mom in the mall, I walked up to him and began babbling about my circumstances — where I was trying to get to in the city, where I might find a money exchange… Why was Paris of all places shut down like this on a Friday night?

I felt no sense of danger from him. Honestly, I suspected he might be cruising me, and I was more than willing to play along with that a little bit in exchange for crucial information. I was confident I could politely fend off any sexual advances, if that was his motive.

As I talked to him, I realized there was something vaguely off about him. In the back of my mind I was cataloguing the details of his manner and appearance.

He introduced himself simply as “Uh… John” and something about the way he said it sounded like a lie made up on the spot.

When he spoke, his voice was soft and polite, yet he made no facial expressions. He was absolutely emotionless. He spoke English, yet I could detect no traceable accent — it wasn’t British, or American, or Australian.

I can picture his face clearly and I would immediately recognize him if he walked into the room right now— but I can’t really describe much about him that would be identifiable or unique.

His eyes were an unusual icy blue, but other than that…

He could have been thirty… or he could have been forty or even fifty.

His hair might have been a dirty blond… or maybe a light brown, or even silvery-gray.

He was dressed from head to toe in monochrome — his pants and shirt were the same colorless beige. Only his shoes were a different color (and I noticed that, despite the cold, he wasn't wearing any socks).

His clothes had creases in them, as if they had been taken directly out of packages. I felt like if I could have checked inside his collar I’d find price tags still attached. It reminded me of when I’d worked in retail stores, the way the body forms we dressed for the window displays appeared before the clothes had been steamed.

That was it — he looked like a living mannequin.

He looked too new, too perfect — yet totally unremarkable.

He had absolutely no body hair — zero -  no stubble, no shadow, no hair on his wrists — not even the faint down that a woman or a child might have.

He gave off an anonymous perfume that smelled exactly like… unscented dryer sheets. Even his breath was like a warm load of clean towels.

John was… supernaturally ordinary.

He offered to informally exchange the small handful of British pocket money I had on me — I handed him what amounted to less than five bucks, and turning away from me for a moment (probably to keep me from seeing into his wallet, I suppose) he produced a bill that, although still a modest amount, was at least quadruple the value of what I’d given him.

“But it’s not enough for a taxi all the way from here,” he said. “You’ll need to walk quite a way first, as far as you can.”

Using a rail map posted on a wall for reference, he showed me where I was and where I was headed. “Once you are in view of Notre Dame, or come to the Seine, you should be close enough to hail a driver to take you the rest of the way to your exact destination” 

He hesitated for a second and then offered to walk with me.

I told him that wouldn’t be necessary — I appreciated his kindness but I anticipated it might be more difficult to get rid of him later if I needed to. Before we parted ways outside the station he also warned me about the dangers of walking through this part of Paris in the middle of the night.

He ominously advised me to “Be invisible,” 

As far as ensuring that my path was relatively deserted, the weather was probably a blessing; but the grace of the cover it provided me came at a price — it was miserably freezing cold. The moisture in the air was just light enough to remain a dense fog, but it soaked me as well as any steady drizzle might have…

It was a long, harrowing (shitty) night.

I would need another thousand words here to itemize the petty trials of that night’s walk. My feet were blistered and swollen for days… I could not get warm the entire week that I spent in Paris… But to simplify the story, I can’t recall many times that I have felt that physically vulnerable.

Had I been a crow, I could’ve kept moving directly south, but the streets were a crooked, uncooperative labyrinth that required constant course correction.

I expended a lot of energy “being invisible” as I had been instructed. I encountered very few people — a handful of prostitutes propositioned me from the caves of doorways and shopfront awnings; I constantly crossed and recrossed streets to avoid anyone on the sidewalk; I ducked into phone booths from time to time to collect myself and maintain my bubble of cloaked energy.

It didn't take me long to realize that John was following me. He remained a block or two behind me, and stopped when I stopped.

Who has nowhere to be and nothing better to do than to follow me through the streets of Paris at 3 am in the middle of January? A serial killer? But I have to admit maybe I was a little comforted by his strange yet at least somewhat familiar presence over the alternative of being completely alone.

Hours later — after walking and walking for hours — I spotted the recognizable architecture of Notre Dame. Soon after that, I was across the Seine and in the Latin Quarter. Thinking surely I was close enough to afford a cab the rest of the way, I stopped a driver and spluttered my destination. 

He laughed at me and pointed — to the street I was seeking, which was about a few hundred feet away.

I walked up and down that street for another hour — not only was the hotel not there, the very street number itself did not exist. After pacing back and forth and carefully tracking the building numbers to convince myself I wasn’t hallucinating, I was literally in tears. In frustration, I sat on a bench and surrendered to having arrived at being finally and totally lost.

That’s when I saw John again, across a square formed by a jumbled intersection of streets. I was just pissed off enough and desperate enough at this point to walk right up to him and demand to know why in the Hell he was stalking me.

He disappeared down a side street that looked like an alley and I followed him. But it wasn’t an alley at all — It was an improbable, completely eccentric continuation of the street I had been pacing up and down. The numbers picked up and continued.

No sign of John, but there was the hotel.

That Monday, a few days later, I was with my traveling companion Allison and her friend Natalie. We were walking from the Champs-Elysees headed to the Eiffel Tower when someone waved at me from the window of a restaurant.

It was Jersey Joanna and Julie, smiling and waving excitedly at me. it was such an unexpected joy, the unlikely synchronicity of seeing these familiar faces.There were two men sitting with the girls who turned around to see who they were waving at. One of them was James the Australian guy — and I thought Wow! They ran into him again too? That’s kind of cool. What are the chances? And then I made eye contact with the Other guy.

It was John.

Why would he be with them? They never even spoke on the train…

Allison was like “Do you know those people?” She was looking at me like — How is it even possible that you would just run into someone Here?

I was kind of too overwhelmed in the moment just trying to process the coincidence to explain how huge it actually was, so I just said. “Yeah. They came over with me on the train from

On SYS episode 07, I’m sharing a conversation with Diana Frajman.

Diana’s a wisdom blogger committed to inspiring older women to recognize and own that they're the most powerful brand females come in.

One of the most challenging questions many women face when they reach the time in life when they are no longer prioritizing partners and spouses and children in the same way is “What am I going to do next?”

Diana focuses on this unique stage of personal development and empowerment on her site Crone Confidence.

On this show we also talk about creativity, goal setting, productivity and making action plans truly achievable with Diana’s experiment The 3x3 Project.

MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:

Change Your Life in 3 Months

The 3x3 Project

Automatic Author - (organizing your book ideas)

GUEST LINKS - DIANA FRAJMAN

Crone Confidence

Get an intuitive reading with Diana

Crone Confidence Facebook Community

HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON

Slade's Books & Courses

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support This Show

On SYS episode 06, I share the paranormal experiences surrounding the recording of episode 02.

After recording the Magic Mother Mary Prayer Bowl show, there was a spirit visitation and amazing synchronicity, all culminating in a message from the beyond.

frisson - a sudden, passing sensation of excitement, a shudder of emotion or a shiver caused by stimuli other than cold, such as an epic moment in a song, or the climax of a movie.

Full notes and links

Are you new to podcasts?

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Download a free ebook and meditation

Automatic Intuition

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On SYS episode 05, I’m sharing my conversation with a Soul Caller.

Author of Sea of Miracles, Amy Oscar is a highly sensitive intuitive healer and spiritual guide who has devoted the past 20 years to helping thousands of people come home to the gifts of self-love and their own true nature.

Like a spiritual systems analyst, Amy is able to read the energetic architecture of the heart to detect (and help us break through) the psycho-spiritual patterns which bind us.

She sees us as multi-dimensional beings on soul-led paths, and she offers tools and training – and the mirror of illuminated conversation – to help us live heart-centered lives in a time of turbulence.

GUEST LINKS - AMY OSCAR

amyoscar.com

One-on-One Illumination Sessions

Sanctuary for Soul Callers: a free Facebook group

One Circle: Weekly live calls and discussion

Sea of Miracles: An Invitation Into the Light by Amy Oscar

The Soul Caller Training

HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON

Slade's Books & Courses

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support this Show

On SYS episode 04, I’m sharing my conversation with intuitive healer Jenny Mannion.

Jenny is an author, mind/body mentor, and energetic catalyst.

She helps people tap into their own greatness and self-love to facilitate fast and lasting change, as she did when she healed herself of seven years of chronic illness in three weeks.

[email protected]

607-437-7867

A Short Path to Change (book)

"Aligned and Inspired Mondays"

The Secret (movie)

The Artist's Way

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Download a free ebook and meditation

Automatic Intuition

Patreon.com Support this Show

On SYS episode 03, I talk about how your ego spins messages like a DJ spins songs.

Carl Jung believed that a precise diagnosis could, in and of itself, spontaneously launch the healing process.

So, learning how to identify these messages is the first step in consciously separating from the Voices that are not you — were never you — and no longer serve you.

Full notes and links

The Money Shift

Get an intuitive reading with Slade

Download a free ebook and meditation

Automatic Intuition

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Carl Jung believed that a precise diagnosis could, in and of itself, spontaneously launch the healing process. Your mind and your spirit, your psycho-spiritual wellness is very much dependent on the messages playing in your interior monologues, your imaginary dialogues, and the messages that get communicated through your relationships with other people.

My name is Slade Roberson. For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition.

Today, I want to talk about how your ego spins messages like a DJ.

The whole point of psychoanalysis and talk-therapy is to identify, to become conscious of what messages are playing within you: how they got there, who authored them, where they came from and when you either chose to adopt them or had them forced on you. You were not born with any of the messages that are currently playing in your mind. Absolutely everything you say to yourself, about yourself, was written by someone else. Your words are not original. They’re always repeated. Even if you have an original thought, it must be expressed or translated into language, and language can be broken down into basic parts which you did not invent.

Even if your ordering of words, or unique literary device, has never been expressed in quite the same way before by anyone else on earth, the building blocks of the language itself, the vocabulary, the words, the letters, the full names, are inherited from an enormous collective culture that has travelled to you across thousands of generations of humanity. You downloaded these messages. You absorb them. You parrot them. You either consciously hear them and take them within you, or you unconsciously become infected with them as mind viruses.

These messages and fragments of everyone else’s opinions and beliefs become a part of your own mental database. Your own interior library. Your own sound collection. These messages have the capacity to organize around archetypal energy patterns and become Voices with a capital “V”. Personae with whom you develop ongoing persistent relationships. Now if you’ve worked with my book ‘The Money Shift’, then you’re already familiar with how this phenomenon plays out regarding the voice of your abundance archetype. Similar relationships are taking place with any number of archetypes, beliefs, issues, your self-esteem, your inner child, your saboteur, your rebel, your artist. You can investigate absolutely any relationship you have with any template or archetypal energetic pattern within your psyche and begin to make conscious choices about the conversations you are allowing to play.

Think of the music or mp3 library on your computer or your smartphone. Although you call these songs yours, and they’re very representative of who you are as a person, on some level, of course, you’re aware you did not write, sing, play, or record any of these songs. You have the capacity to identify these songs and their artists as separate from you, even as you employ them to assist you in expressing your thoughts and emotions. When you listen to your music collection, you have no problem behaving as an active director, even a tyrant, in choosing what you want to hear in that moment. You repeat your favorites obsessively. You will skip a song you don’t want to hear. You may even delete one you never want to hear again. You make choices according to present energetic requirements to chill out, to get yourself revved up and moving, to have a good cry, to dance around the room. You adjust the volume to appropriate circumstances. You can even shut the whole thing off. It’s relatively easy for you to identify the songs, messages, voices you love in the context of your literal music collection. You know who’s singing, you know the lyrics by heart, you know when the song was released, you can recall the time you heard it, where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. You can do the same thing with the songs that get on your nerves and drive you nuts. Yet you have no problem avoiding them or ignoring them when you want to.

Now, approach this metaphor as it relates to your self-talk. The inner monologues and dialogues of voices, messages, and beliefs that you allow to play in your mind every day of your life. It’s interesting how you unconsciously assume you don’t have the same power of choice. Notice how the negative voices seem to get so much more airplay as opposed to being shut down or avoided. Why is that? You were not born hearing, and believing, and identifying with these words: asshole, bitch, fag, fat, lazy, slut, stupid, ugly. Every single one of those came from somewhere outside of you.

So here’s what I want you to think about. What are some of the messages, the voices, you have downloaded that cause you pain or hold you back? Who are the original authors? Who introduced you to these messages? Where were you when you first heard them? Your internal mind chatter feels much more like some god-awful music channel you were forced to listen to and have no control over. The gentle, supportive, loving voices of your spirit are out-numbered. They’re drowned out. Are you just waiting and hoping one of those nice songs will come on sooner or later? Who says you can’t delete the ones that aren’t serving you? Or at least skip over them when you hear their opening strings and just jump to one that brings you power and joy?

Your ego is an obnoxious DJ.

It has taken over the playlist endlessly spinning a heavy rotation of fear-based tunes. Observe this station carefully. Consciously. Diagnose where these voices and their messages came from. Acknowledge that they were never started as yours. They came from somewhere externally. And you internalized them. This kind of identification is the first step in consciously separating from the Voices that are not you — were never you — and no longer serve you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Shift Your Spirits. You can subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever app you use to access podcasts. If you’re new to podcasts, it’s probably that purple button on your iPhone. Click it, search ‘Shift Your Spirits’, and hit subscribe. Also, since this is a new podcast, it would really help me out if you would rate the show on iTunes and leave me a review. Share it on social media, tell your friends about it. It would make a huge difference in my efforts here and I would be extremely grateful.

If you’d like to get an intuitive reading with me, or download a free guided meditation to help you connect with your guides, please go to https://sladeroberson.com/. And if you’re interested in my professional intuitive training program, you can start the course for free by downloading the attunement at https://automaticintuition.com/.

For show notes and links, visit ShiftYourSpirits.com

On SYS episode 02, I share some grandmother magic -- one of the magical ritual prayer spells that I practice, how it came to be, and how you can develop one of your own.

There are simple but powerful rules for this kind of prayer magic.

The story involves a glass bowl that belonged to my maternal grandmother, and a painting of the Virgin Mary given to me by one of my readers, one of my first clients.

Full notes and links

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Automatic Intuition

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So this may be an odd piece to put so close to the beginning of a new podcast, but then that statement in itself says a lot about my complicated relationship with spirituality. Mother Mary is very much connected to how and why I started ‘Shift Your Spirits’ in 2006, and I’ve been promising, intending to tell my story about her this entire time, and I never seem to get around to it. I’m getting closer. Maybe it makes a kind of sense that I would start a podcast here.

My relationship with Mary is significant and complex. I’m one of the most unlikely people I can think of to be visited by the Virgin Mary, but I was, and that is a story in itself, which I will have to come back and tell you on another episode.

I’m not even sure how to think about her. I suppose she is an ascended master to me. No offence to anyone who believes she is the mother of their messiah. I certainly was not raised Catholic. I wasn’t raised to be a Christian. I was raised surrounded by Christianity, but I do not identify as a Christian.

I do believe in magic and miracles and spirits. I consider myself something of a witch. I’m known to be a psychic. I’m an eclectic, spiritual but not religious, as I imagine you probably are as well.

My name is Slade Roberson. For over ten years now, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’ where I write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than the leading new age blather. I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition.

Today, I want to tell you about some grandmother magic. One of the Magical Ritual Prayer Spells that I practice. It involves a glass bowl that belonged to my maternal grandmother and a painting of the Virgin Mary given to me by one of my readers, one of my first clients. Now, this glass bowl is actually an ashtray. It’s a beautiful, heavy, amber-colored glass ashtray with this pattern of rays in raised ridges on the bottom. It’s kind of a mid-century modern sunburst. It could be an antique from as far back as the 1930s to the 1960s. I was born in 1969 and this belonged to my grandmother who died in 1971. My maternal grandmother, Victoria, who was called by her middle name, as I am, her full name was actually Queen Victoria, she kept this ashtray as a prize knickknack on her coffee table for years, maybe decades. My aunt Vera assured me that no one was ever allowed to ash in it though.

Now, a little bit about Vera. She’s the oldest of 11 kids. She’s my mother’s sister. The first book I ever published was actually my aunt Vera’s autobiography. My mother edited the book and I formatted and published it. It’s called “Stop Over in Wilder”. It starts with this beautiful opening passage about the first time Vera saw a plane flying over her hometown as a little girl in the 1920s. Wilder, Tennessee was one of those little towns that literally disappeared. It doesn’t exist anymore. It makes me think of a few other films and books like “A Trip to Bountiful”, which started out as a play. And then, of course, “Fried Green Tomatoes” at the Whistle Stop Café, Fannie Flagg novel, that was also turned into a movie. Both of those works are kind of about this phenomenon of towns that, from, you know, the early 19th century, that, by the end of the 19th century just aren’t there anymore.

Before Vera passed, she gave this ashtray to me. And, for the record, I’ve never ashed in it either. Now the painting – it came to me from a woman named Debra Estep, who friends and family call “Debs”. Debra, several years ago my mom was undergoing a major surgery and I had posted about it online. Debs saw it and she sent my mom this little angel coin. This medallion for her to keep with her as a protection. So Debs is this really sweet soul. She’s a military mom, she – to be someone I’ve never met before, she has been very generous to me over the past decade. And to my mom, who she also doesn’t know, she’s just a really kind soul and a really cool person. And actually she told me that this painting is called a mezzotint, or metzotint. I’m not even sure how to pronounce it. She told me to Google it and, actually now that I’m here recording this I realize that I forgot to Google it. Some of you might want to look that up and see exactly what it means. I’m just looking at it, so that works for me.

Leaving the office, Debra thought, “Oh well, he seemed less than positive about that idea.” She was 27 years old at the time and she thought he probably wanted someone a little bit older. But the next day, he approached her when she arrived for work and he was very enthusiastic and friendly in a way that she’d never seen him be before. And he told her he wanted her to start working with his mom the very next week.

So Mrs. Mays was 86 years old at the time. She was sharp as a tack as they say. A brilliant woman. She’d graduated from college in 1918 with a degree in Pharmacology. And over the five years that Debra was her caretaker, there was no subject that they didn’t discuss. Mrs. Mays kept up with current issues and world news. With all that had happened in the century she’d lived through, listening to her was like a lesson in history. And Debra would often bring her young children to visit. Mrs. Mays adored them and they came to call her “Grandma Mays”.

After she passed in 1990, her family invited Debra to her apartment and generously offered her any of the woman’s possessions she wanted as mementos. So, the mezzotint of the Virgin Mary with Child was one of those three items Debra kept to remember her time with Mrs. Mays. 25 years later, Debra was reading my blog ‘Shift Your Spirits’ and I had written about this connection I have to Mother Mary, and she said she had the impulse to send the mezzotint to me. And as she was boxing it up, she sensed that Mrs. Mays was with her and wholeheartedly approved of giving it to me. So, needless to say, I was touched once again by Debra’s generosity towards me. It was a really sweet gesture. And it was also charged with so much history and sentiment, and, you know, that alone makes the image extremely powerful regardless of what the image is of. I had just purchased my first home and it was a first image I hung on the walls in the house. And I saw that as a blessing from Mary herself.

So I sent Debs a picture of the picture in my still-empty new house. So the glass ashtray, the magic prayer bowl, it sits on a low chest in my bedroom now with the mezzotint of Mother Mary hanging just above it. And so this ritual, or the rules of this ritual that I do, I’m not sure if it’s religious. It could be sacrilegious. To me, in my mind, it feels like a little old catholic lady meets a granny woman witch kind of ritual. So the thing about the request that I put in the prayer bowl – some of the kind of rules I have around this is that it’s gotta be something big. It can’t be petty stuff, it can’t be selfish or materialistic. It’s gotta be about someone other than just me. And more than anything, it has to be something that I can’t affect or control any further on my own. Usually it’s something I’ve already tried to affect or impact and I feel like it’s finally come to the point where it’s outside of my power. And at that point I’ve gotta surrender it. I’ve gotta let it go and give it to Mary. I actually say that a lot, “I’m gonna give this to Mary.”

And so the requests are written down on little pieces of paper and they’re also left open in the bowl while the request is, sort of, active. And if, in some way, the prayer gets answered, or the problem gets solved, or taken care of, or resolved in any way, when they’re done, so to speak, I fold them up and close them but I leave them inside the bowl.

Everything that I give to Mary in this way is taken care of. It’s really kind of miraculous and I don’t take it lightly and I don’t throw a lot of things in there because I don’t want to mess with this perfection that I’ve got going. So there’s a lot of reverence about where I draw the lines and what goes in there. But the stuff that goes in there – it gets taken care of. Some of the, you know, kinds of things that I put in there: I have some friends, for the past few years who have been trying to adopt a child and, that went into the bowl.

My own brother and sister-in-law were pregnant last year with the first and only grandbaby in our family. Their little son named Hayden, who was born on Christmas Eve. And obviously I did an ongoing kind of prayer bowl request. It started out with a little piece of paper just sort of announcing that they were pregnant and it just had their names and baby on it. And then when they had their gender reveal party and we found out that it was going to be a boy, there was this blue, tiny clothespin that you wore on your collar, on your shirt or whatever, at the party, to indicate the sex that you were predicting that the baby was going to be. So everyone had a little blue clothespin or a pink clothespin. I had a blue one because I correctly predicted that it was going to be a boy.

So when I got back from the gender reveal party, I added the little blue clothespin to the piece of paper that said “Parrish & Heather’s baby”. And then, later on, when they chose a name for him, I wrote his name, Hayden, on there as well. So I imagine that Hayden’s prayer request and his little slip of paper with the blue clothespin on it is likely to reside in this bowl the rest of my life. That’s one that I don’t see ever being closed up or put away.

There’ve been other things that I’ve put in there. You know, whenever someone comes to me with something really serious and heavy going on in their world, especially if they know about this prayer bowl thing, which now I’m probably going to get even more requests, but if someone makes a really specific request to me, or I see it as something that I can do on behalf of them, it often involves other people’s loved ones, I will put their name on a paper and put it in there. And, like I said, it always gets taken care of.

There’s only one time that it didn’t work. And that was with one of my pets - a cat named Cinco, and I’ll tell you that in just a second. First, I wanted to go back and mention that – I don’t know how this happened or it emerged or evolved, but there seems to be some significance to the color of ink that I write these prayer requests down in. So, red ink - I use Sharpies, by the way in case you’re wondering - red ink is usually for something that’s kind of a short-term, emergency situation, like maybe a health crisis or someone’s, you know, going in for surgery.

So, there’s this one time that the prayer bowl did not work, and that was with this cat, Cinco, that I was talking about. He was a feral cat that I spent over a year, kind of feeding and luring, closer and closer, to trusting and to being able to come inside during the winter and stay in the garage where it was a little warmer. It took months and months of putting out food and inching him closer and closer, to get him to a point where he would come into the garage during the winter and huddle near a heater.

At one point, he was badly hurt and he had something stuck in his eye. I was horrified. I knew he was going to die this really slow, agonizing death, or if be - he did survive, it would be after a lot of suffering and he was going to be impaired for the rest of his life. So I was able to trap him with a raccoon trap and took him to the vet and they were able to save him and save his eye. They fixed him, you know, neutered him, and I brought him home and returned him back out into the woods and he disappeared for several days. But he eventually started coming back again and, this was a really wild animal. He was the most timid animal that I’ve ever encountered and I don’t know that he ever would have been a pet. He was just to the point where he would let me, sort of, quickly brush my hand along his back, you know, when he walked around my feet, but that was as close as he got to being a pet.

He was a really, really, gentle, pretty, sweet little animal. He was solid grey and he was very hard to see in the woods. He looked like a shadow. So, long story short – I didn’t know this was going to be a story about Cinco, but maybe I need to eulogize him a little bit – he was attacked and killed by a coyote in broad daylight. And we heard it and it was really horrifying. And we didn’t know for sure if what we heard was him. It was more of a, kind of, suspect noise in the woods, but he didn’t show up to eat his appointed time that evening.

Spent weeks looking for him in the woods, looking for some sign of him. Hoping that maybe he had run away because of the coyotes that were back there and that, you know, maybe he might come back again. And there’s something, kind of, nothing worse than something disappearing, and not knowing what happened. And so