The intentional leader podcast

Have you ever comforted someone who came to you to share their problems and said words that you thought were wiser than you? You are not alone. It happened to me a lot, until I trained in mediumship and then I started to understand better what was happening.

I actually believe that some of my mosaics were channeled. In particular, one called maternity. I never learnt how to do mosaics. I just did. I admired a lot of the mosaic artists like Gaudi and wanted to give this medium a try. Funny that: the word "medium".

This needs not be spooky, although I would understand if you panicked a little. After all, we know so little about it. And religion would tell you that you were being possessed. The reality is very different but discernment is important.

How do you know these are not your thoughts? They feel novel. It's not the usual kind of thoughts that you have. They are usually inspiring, uplifting and positive without being cliched or invalidating. You might think to yourself, "I am not that clever", or "I am not that wise", or "I am not that talented". In fact this is precisely the thought I had when I created my mosaic called Maternity. I am not that talented.

Channeling is a lot more common than we think. It happens to regular people. All they need is an open mind, literally and metaphorically. What you need to understand though, is you can be channeling good spirit guides but also mischievous ones. If you don't know what you are doing it's like opening your front door for everyone to come in. Every possible stranger, and you can't trust that all of them are going to have the best intentions.

How does channeling work? We channel when our minds reach Theta waves and we are in a state of trance. That is a state that I have learnt to understand very well as a clinical hypnotherapist. In the podcast episode, I talk about the most common kinds of brain waves we experience. I also share where you should practice channeling and why.

There is a warning, though. As I wrote earlier in this blog, not every entity you will channel will be benevolent. There are such things as entities and I sometimes wonder if people who suffer with schizophrenia are not actually channeling dark entities, especially when the "voices" tell them to hurt themselves or others. I once met a shaman who worked in mental health hospitals to support people who were going through a spiritual crisis that disguised as a mental health crisis.

In the episode I shared what it feels like when I channel and my training in this modality, and the incredible benefits it can bring to public speaking. However, I do not recommend channeling on your own, without the guidance and supervision of a mentor experienced in that field. At the very least you should listen to my episodes about:

• clearing your space energetically
• the five things you need to know about energy and
• light and darkness

This is something I teach my VIPs, so if you are interested in channeling, why not book a discovery call with me with this link.

Answering this question can be particularly offensive to people who have had abusive childhoods or have been abandoned by their parents. If the question offends you, then move on. Ignore this blog post and the associated podcast episode. I am not writing it to offend or hurt you. And I respect that you find it offensive.

The reason I am asking it, though, is because as a teenager, in the middle of a heated argument with my sister, instead of telling her how awful she was (and she was, but so was I), I said to her "We chose each other, so why don't we try to get along." At the time I did not know where this came from. Now I have an idea and we will be discussing this in next week's episode.

If I chose my sister, then the next logical thing is that I chose my parents too. I do find it particularly interesting to try to suss out why we might have chosen them. And this episode is about this. Why would those of us who have had abusive childhood chosen our parents? Who in their right minds would choose abuse?

One of the explanations I have been shown is that there can be a difference between what our souls want and what we want after we incarnate. Our souls have access to the bigger picture and also, tend to be quite ambitious for us. Our souls want growth and resolution for us, so they sometimes plan ambitious blue prints for us, and abusive childhoods can be a stepping stone for greatness. Don't think for a minute that I command abuse. I don't. However, hardships and challenging life circumstances can, as long as we have the support of at least one caring adult, build our resilience.

This can also be the result of the soul thinking that the choices it is making for its next incarnation are a lot easier than they seem. In addition to this, souls have no ego, so they don't care about comfort, fame, riches, reputation, success or money. They care more about experience and growth. And at this state of evolution of humanity, we learn a lot better from hardships than we learn from ease and fun. This could change, but we are not there yet.

Generally speaking, it is more advanced souls (and by that I only mean souls with more experience, not superior souls) that are likely to choose childhood abuse or hardship. These souls know they can do and they also know that they will embrace these challenges and turn them into opportunities to be better persons but also help humanity. I am not saying however, that advanced souls do not suffer. I think they do, but they are not victims. They do not need your pity.

But I also don't want you to feel any pressure to be a hero if you have experienced childhood abuse. The priority should always be your own healing first. You don't have to help others or turn your pain into gain. What is most important, though, it to let go of the shame. We all know that children and victims tend to take the shame of their abusers on and think that there is something wrong with them. Let go of that right away.

To book a discovery call with me, click here.

Kayla Subica is an artist, singer, writer and director. She is just back from the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh with a show called Happy Medium where she brings all of herself on stage. She is all about presence and flow, yet for her to come out as a medium in her singing career took a little bit of work.

Happy Medium is a musical about a quirky psychic medium in 1970's New York. She was meant to be a singer-when life derailed and handed her the gift of mediumship. Her dream isn't dead, even if her chosen company is. This interactive dark comedy includes live audience tarot readings; both comedic, and sincere!

Kayla was very religious as a child. Although she wasn't necessarily psychic she knew things and voiced them. But it's not until she reached the age of seventeen and had a palm reading that she felt that she could do what the reader did for her and felt seen for the first time. As things turned out, when she did theatre school, she was asked to play a witch which led her to immerse herself in the culture of local witches where she learnt a lot. She shares much wisdom during the interview, including how important it is to take what resonates with you but not all that a mentor teaches, especially if does not feel right.

Kayla has managed to carve herself a unique space on stage where she brings her mediumship skills and her tarot reading skills into an interactive play with her audience, that is for entertainment but with that respect for the messages that come through.

At the end of the interview, she shared her magic with us by doing a mini reading for me, as she would do in her show, by pretending I was in a telephone booth and me asking a question. If you would like to find out more about Kayla, go to her Instagram account, her Facebook page, or her website. She also has a YouTube channel.

When I was younger and something bad happened to me, my default mode was to say "Why me?" It came from my religious conditioning, but deep down I probably thought I deserved it because my entire life I had been told I was a bad person, so naturally bad things should happen to me. And yet, I thought it was so unfair. I was a good person. I was generous, kind and generally compliant. So why me?

I was pretty young when I observed around me that bad things happened to good people. They happened all the time. When I embraced my spiritual journey, though, I started to realise that asking why was not helpful. It was actually a bad question. How was a much better kind of question.

So how do good people cope when bad things happen to them?

First by reminding themselves that it is not a punishment. I have been watching Kaos on Netflix this past week and it's all about vengeful Gods that punish humans, or sometimes not even punish but play with them to increase their power. There is nothing like that going on in real life, no matter what your religion tells you. So if we are not going to ask why and try to find answers, what are we going to do?

First, we are going to challenge the good and bad spectrum. Good is only something we desire or approve of. Bad is the opposite. It's entirely subjective. Sometimes if we take the label out of the situation, it can actually make it easier. Not always, but sometimes. It is what it is. In the episode, I also discuss that when we often get what we need not what we desire (the good) and it is actually for our highest good.

Second, sometimes, bad situations have hidden blessings. There is an art in harvesting these, but first we need to tend to our emotions around what is happening by honouring them and sugar coating things is actually counterproductive and can even be harmful. No matter what your emotions are, they are valid. They need to be experienced to the full before you can get to the other side. This being said, sometimes we have emotions that are triggered by unhelpful thoughts. I used to think I was cursed, and that served no purpose whatever other than make me feel miserable. I had to get rid of that limiting belief. I actually recommend the work of Byron Katie for that. It's powerful.

When facing a crisis, I have four tips for you:

Tip #1: Accept the situation

Tip #2: Trust that you have what it takes to face it

Tip #3: Reach out for help from the right kind of people

Tip #4: Realise that you are not alone

Joseph Campbell gave us a remarkable framework to help us cope with challenges, called the hero's journey. I have talked about it in Episode 56, so if you have not yet listened to it, I encourage you to do so.

Challenges transform us and can make us better persons. I know I am a better person for the challenges that I have been through in my life. And you are probably too. But they can make us better or they can make us bitter. It's always our choice.

Make sure you sign up for my webinar called Why bad things happen to good people so that I can show you the process more in depth and you get a chance to ask me questions about this. It's on the 28th of October, at 7 pm UK time in zoom. To receive the link, sign up for my author newsletter with this link.

The Akashic Records is an expression that was first used by C. W. Leadbeater in a book called Clairvoyance in 1899. However, the concept is not new, and has been called the Book of Life in nearly all religious traditions, albeit with a slightly different understanding.

It is defined by Theosophists as a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions and intents ever to have occurred in the past, present and future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just humans.

C.W. Leadbeater claims that all clairvoyants can read them, but I disagree.

In this podcast episode, I share with you the difference between a psychic reading and an akashic records reading and help you understand what is best for you between the two. I also share information that will help you understand if you are ready to learn how to access your own akashic records. I refer back to an episode of the Intuitive Revolution in Business podcast that went into this topic, which is also available here on YouTube. If you are on Android, you will need to scroll down on your app to find the episode, so look for episode 12. If you have an iPhone, just click this link.

For thousands of years, these records were only known to initiates within traditional religions. The reason is that knowledge is power and one had to be trained and tested extensively before being given access to this information. It's not just that the information could be misused, it is also that if you are given it without being ready, it can actually be detrimental to you.

In the episode, I give you the things to look for that will prove that you are in the records.

If you want to learn more, I recommend Linda Howe's book, called the Akashic Records.

I share guidelines of the dos and donts in the records but I think more importantly I share tips that will help you find out as a client if someone is really reading your records.

If you would like an akashic records reading with me, head over to my shop here on this website. Either check the menu above or click this link. If you would like to discuss me teaching you how to read the records, for yourself or others, book a discovery call to discuss my VIP package with this link.

I mentioned on the podcast that I would be doing Black Friday deals for the first time in my business in years, but only to people signed up to my mailing lists. I have several but the three you want to check out are:

1. My general list
2. My author list
3. My publishing list

Joseph Campbell changed my life and I realised recently that I probably ought to dedicate my entire podcast to him because he gave me a non religious framework to explain my spiritual experiences.

Who was Joseph Campbell and why should his work matter to you? Joseph Campbell was an American professor of literature and is the author of multiple books; his most famous being the Hero with a Thousand Faces. He was made famous notably by his influence on George Lucas, the director of Star Wars.

Why should you care? Because we are all the heroes of our own lives and knowing the twelve steps of the hero's journey can give us a road map to guide us and give us comfort. One of the biggest negative beliefs when we face challenges is the belief that we are alone. In truth, it is very likely that someone has been through something similar to you and could be a great mentor to help you through the ordeal.

In the episode I illustrate the twelve steps of the hero's journey with my own experience of losing my job as a corporate lawyer, which I am going to list briefly here. If you would like to hear me talk about these steps and ask me any questions you may have about spirituality in person, sign up for my webinar by joining my author mailing list with this link. I will be running them regularly so if you have missed the date of the 28th of October (2024), or if you can't make the time, don't worry. I will be running plenty more.

The twelve steps of the hero's journey are the following:

1. The call to adventure
2. The refusal of the call
3. Meeting the mentor
4. Crossing the threshold
5. Tests, allies and enemies
6. The approach to the inmost cave
7. The ordeal
8. The reward
9. The road back
10. The resurrection
11. The return
12. The freedom to live

This framework is so famous now that even Grammarly has a blog post about it. There is a reason for this. Joseph Campbell has become the golden standard to write Hollywood film stories thanks to the popularisation of his framework by Christopher Volger in his best seller The Writer's Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers.

The biggest insight that Joseph Campbell gifts us is that the biggest dragon we have to slay on our spiritual journey is not the enemies of this world but our own ego. And in a way, this is incredibly empowering because it brings us back in control. It's not a popular path, as I mentioned already in Episode 48 of the podcast called Dancing in the Light and Playing with the Shadows. It is so much more glorious to slay dragons or enemies of the public. But this illustrates that the spiritual journey is rarely an outer adventure but an inner one.

We need to descend into our own darkness and free ourselves from our fear, guilt, shame and other negative emotions because for as long as we live our lives by them, they are our masters and they drive our behaviours in very powerful ways.

Don't forget to sign up for my author's newsletter so that you can be informed of when my memoir about my own hero's journey of going from corporate lawyer to spiritual lawyer will be available for sale. Here is the link to do so.

To listen to the episode, click here.

Shireen Khanum is a paediatrician, who grew up in Austria, England and Pakistan and who now lives in the United Arab Emirates. Raised by a mother who was a Roman Catholic and a father who was a Muslim, Shireen turned to Islam more because at the time it was the dominant religion where she lived, although most of her education was done with Irish nuns. Luckily, Shireen has never experienced islamophobia in her life.

I invited her on the show because I feel that in the West, and I am producing this podcast in the UK, there is an underrepresentation of islam but also a vilification. Stereotypes are rife and what better way to combat stereotypes than to meet and get to know real people.

Shireen is actually a dear friend of mine and I wanted her to have an opportunity to share about her religion and debunk some myths. Shireen shares the fact that both her grandfather and her father were very enlightened and did not put any pressure on Shireen's mum to convert.

But Shireen is also unusual inasmuch as she can see through her patients' bodies and is often able to diagnosed them before they have a chance to share what is troubling them, and for her to examine them. By night, Shireen writes novels. She has just published her fourth one about the Indus Valley, with a bit of a science fiction angle. To listen to the episode, click here. To find out more about Shireen and her books, head over to her Facebook profile where she uses her mother's maiden name, Magedin. She has a website and all her books are available on Amazon.

I believe that rather than God having created humans in "his" image as claims Genesis in the Bible (we will talk about God's gender in a minute), it is the opposite. Humans have created God in their image. And my best bet is that they have done so to soothe themselves from the disturbing thought that the world has no rhyme or reason. But before we go any further, I want to highlight how much wrong there is in the sentence "God created man in his image". For one, why the male gender for both? The answer comes from the fact that most religions have been invented by men for men. Words matter, my friends. So please try to change the pronouns you use when referring to God: they, them.

In today's podcast episode, I explore the difference between monotheism and polytheism.

On the one hand we have the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that all worship a single God. On the other hand, you have Indian religions, Iranian religions and East Asian religions, that worship multiple Gods. If you look at all these religions from my premise that humans have invented God in their image, the fact that a religion worships one God or more, doesn't really matter. In my opinion, the only difference is that in one case the single God will reflect the complexity of the human personality whereas if we worship multiple Gods, each one is likely to reflect one aspect. No offence meant to religious people. But I guess the point I am making is that I don't see any valid reason for the monotheist to look down upon the polytheists as less evolved, because it's the same. What is rather disturbing is that the monotheists usually claim that if you don't follow their god, you will go to hell. I am not aware that polytheists threaten people in the same way.

In the episode, I talked about the main twelve Gods of the Greek Pantheon, and observed that the roles assigned to these gendered Gods and Goddesses reinforced the social roles of their time, be it in a divine feminine and masculine way, which resonates with the episode I did about why I do not use the terms divine feminine and masculine. To me it's nothing more than a patriarchal model, that has been handed down through the centuries and sadly espoused by the New Age movement, thereby continuing the bias.

Emile Durkeim seems to agree with my theory that humans have invented God as an extension of human life. Matt Rossano adds an interesting dimension to this debate. He believes that humans have invented God to enforce moral values. He claims that whilst humans lived in small groups of people, morality was easier to establish due to social pressures like gossip and reputation, but that the larger the groups, the more difficult that was to maintain. As a lawyer, I am hoping that law does this better than religion, although arguably, laws do not deal with morals as much as religion does.

To receive the first three chapters of my new memoir, Spiritual Lawyer, click here.

I chose quite a dramatic topic for this week's episode and wondered if I chose more than I can chew. But it's just a start. This episode is part of a series that is helping you decide if a religious or spiritual concept resonates with you, or aligns with your values and if it doesn't, I give you permission to get rid of it. Personally, Heaven and Hell do not form part of my spiritual blueprint.

If you would like to download the PDF I created to help you create that spiritual blueprint for yourself, sign up for my True Spirituality newsletter with this link. I have several newsletter so don't assumed that because you signed up for one of them, you are on my main one.

Before I start on the meat of this episode, I want to list all the episodes of the podcast that are relevant to your spiritual blueprint:

• EP 6 talks about Prayer
• EP 10 talks about Twin Flames
• EP 11 talks about Tantra and Pleasure
• EP 18 talks about Angels and EP 47 shares how to work with them
• EP 23 talks about Signs from the Universe
• EP 27 talks about Meditation
• EP 30 talks about Feng Shui
• EP 32 talks about Manifesting
• EP 34, 35 and 36 talk about the Tarot
• EP 49 talks about the Spirit World
• EP 50 talks about the Divine feminine
• EP 52 talks about Reincarnation

The definition of Heaven by the Oxford Dictionary says "Heaven is a place regarded in various religions as the abode of God and the angels and the good after death". Right away this rings alarm bells for me: the "good". What does that even mean?

Asking about heaven leads to ask about God, which is going to be expanded on in our next episode but suffice to say there are two camps, to simplify matters: monotheists and polytheists. Sadly the monotheists look down upon the polytheists and have been, at least that's the case for Christianity, involved in many atrocities including colonialism.

A great person to learn about myths and gods, is Joseph Campbell and I particularly recommend his interview series with Bill Moyers called the Power of Myth. Sometimes I wish religious people were more transparent about what is myth and what is fact. There are a lot of myths presented as facts in religion, such as for example, the Virgin Mary. And I suppose that requiring that you buy into the myth blindly could be part of the enrolment strategy, so that you don't question other tenants of that religion.

Heaven is also used metaphorically to describe a place of bliss where people are happy and there is an absence of conflict. I want to mention here the Vortex, often talked about by Abraham-Hicks, as I believe that it refers to the same space as heaven. My personal experience is that the energy of the akashic records is similar.

As someone who has experienced both Heaven and Hell on Earth, I would say that Heaven is a place where we feel that everything is going to be ok, that there is nothing going wrong, where it feels that the Universe has our back and where we feel loved unconditionally. Overall, not very common experiences. I would add that I believe Heaven is a place where you are able to see the bigger picture.

Now, Hell. Jean-Paul Sartre defined Hell as Other People. War is definitely one flavour of Hell. As is pain, but also, in my opinion, mental illness. In the TV Series called Lucifer, Hell has one special room for each of us where we are confronted with a situation in a loop until we can free ourselves from our own mental hell. And Dan, one of the characters, is only able to escape his own prison cell in Hell, when he lets go of the belief that he was a bad father.

In a way I agree with Sartre, but I think that Hell can also be something we create for ourselves through guilt, regret, shame and fear. Sadly it can also be domestic abuse. So let's not blame a hypothetical God in heaven for our problems on Earth, or the Devil aka Lucifer Morningstar, and aim at creating more pockets of Heaven on Earth.

The ultimate question, though, is: Do you resonate with the concept and would like to include it in your spiritual blueprint or not? My personal vote is a no. Please share yours in the comments below or on my Facebook page.

I have a special announcement: I will be launching my second memoir this year and would like to invite you to join my launch crew. If that is something that interests you, Click on this link to join the pop up facebook community where all my supporters are gathered for this event. There will be games and competitions. You can find out in the Facebook community or on my author newsletter by subscribing with this link.

Reincarnation is an interesting topics that has a mixed bag of beliefs attached to it. Although traditionally pertaining to religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, it has now become a lot more mainstream. It wasn't part of my original religious background, but it is a concept that I have been interested in for several decades.

In this episode, I explore the beliefs around it and debunk some concepts that do not resonate with me.

I share about the work of psychiatrists that have explore and written about past life regression, which have enabled them to describe their clients' experiences not just around past lives but also in between lives.

But this only remained theoretical until my own children shared about their own past lives at around the four-year old mark.

Then a few years later, when I trained in reiki, I had my first spontaneous past life recall. What I saw threw a very interesting light on the relationship dynamics I had with my mother and my first husband, that helped me get closure.

I have had the privilege of seeing clients' past lives in sessions and the information has always been useful and brought a new level of healing to their lives. So my conclusion about reincarnation is that it does not matter what the religious background says about it, it has a therapeutic value that I encourage people to explore in safe hands and at the right time.