The intentional leader podcast

Kathryn Rickert lives in Canada and has been a primary school teacher for twenty years but there is another side of her that most of her pupils know nothing about: her psychic abilities. Kathryn could see and hear spirit from very young. They opened up when her grandmother died and she used to see her uncle all the time, even though she had never heard of him because he died when Kathryn's mum was sixteen. Luckily Kathryn's mum was not dismissive of her experience but sadly a lot of parents are. And that can create more harm than good.

There was a long period of time when Kathryn ignored and suppressed her gifts because her friends mocked her, but they all came back running when she became a mum and a primary school teacher. During a mediumship training course, she called upon her uncle and he explained to her that the little girl he often brought with him was her sister. Kathryn didn't know that her mum had a miscarriage. And from that moment on, she was hooked.

It started off with burnout, sadly, and the need for her to look after herself when the demands of her job, particularly as she was heavily involved with special needs kids, whom she loves, started to impact her health. This coincided with the birth of her second child. She describes that period as both a break down but also as a breakthrough as in her own words "it brought me back to me".

She did a lot of different trainings relating to psychic abilities that led her to build her business around the time of the pandemic but is now back in the classroom and what she learnt has been invaluable to her as a teacher.

Kathryn and I discussed how parents can best support their children when they mention unusual things such as imaginary friends or maybe have instant likes or dislikes of people around them. This was a fascinating conversation. And the first thing that came up was how important it was to ask children about their experience. They might be experiencing all sorts of psychic phenomenon or visits from spirit beings but they assume that everyone has these experiences so they are not likely to share with you automatically.

But also, as important if not more, is to believe them when they share with you even if you don't quite understand what is happening. We also talked about the fact that it's often around the age of four to five that kids share memories about past lives or talk about imaginary friends. Often times, as they progress through the schooling system, these experiences either fade away or the kids don't talk about them anymore because they are mocked for it. But it's important that this age group gets the right support so they don't get scared.

If you would like to know when Kathryn is launching her course for parents of kindergarden kids, sign up with this link.

When I started exploring spirituality outside of religion, everybody seemed to talk about the divine feminine and masculine. There were circles for women, and circles for men. It was made very clear that we both have the divine masculine and feminine within us, whether we are male or female, but everything was labelled as feminine or masculine. Intuition was feminine. Leadership was masculine. And I tagged along, because I didn't know any better.

It took me to go on a journey with people that are close to me who are non binary and transgender to realise that the binary model is everywhere and that it is quite toxic. Why should being sensitive be a feminine quality? I knew plenty of exquisitely sensitive men. And why should taking action be a masculine quality? I am an action taker myself.

I started to read more content written by queer people and even though I was disconcerted at first - I was after all unlearning from years of binary thinking - I truly felt like I was seeing the world afresh. And it felt exciting. I am not queer but I know a lot of queer people now and if you have listened to any of my podcasts before, you know I am a passionate ally. Naturally, this led me to question this whole divine masculine and feminine mumble jumble.

When I was a child, I had more male friends than female friends. But here is the thing: I did not see them as male or female. They were just my mates. It's only when growing up and particularly when reaching adolescence that the whole feminine and masculine debate started to kick in. Back then, I did not know that gender was a social construct designed to control people. And that it had been used by missionaries all over the world to oppress indigenous cultures.

A man only acts like a man because he is conditioned to do so from a very young age. This was made very clear when I gave birth to a child that was assigned as male at birth. I remember my child, as a toddler, picking up some of my earrings and trying them on. I thought it was delightful. However, his dad rushed to his side and took the earrings off his ears at light speed and confiscated them. How interesting? This was one of the millions of micro actions that his father and all the adults around me took to reaffirm his gender. The same happens to girls.

Schools continue to reinforce these models if only by pushing heteronormative literature and addressing pupils as boys and girls. That is not even necessary. And yet they pretend that talking about gender is an ideology. They are obviously blind to the fact that the binary gender model is an ideology in itself and that they are perpetuating it.

Women should be aware that issues around gender fluidity affect them even if they feel strong in their own gender, because gender roles have been used to oppress women and non binary folks for centuries. By men.

Science has actually established that there are more similarities between genders than difference, so this whole gender binary model is based on social construct exclusively. It also varies between cultures. Dresses are routinely worn by men in certain cultures. As well as jewellery.

Even the World Health Organisation has stated in 2023 that gender is hierarchical and that it produces inequalities that intersect with other social and economical inequalities.

To me, being spiritual means doing everything in my power not to harm others. And then learning more to do better. I feel that the gender debate should be brought to the spiritual world and for us to question it. After all, spirit beings - which I have covered in my last episode - do not have gender. Angels are not male or female. Even spirit guides are not, even though they might have preferred to incarnate as a certain gender over their various lifetimes.

So on the back of this week's episode I invite you to question what you hear in spiritual circles and ask yourself if this is not rehashing toxic gender stereotypes. Listen to the words you use when referring to God. Do you use pronouns? Why? Do you really think God is male or female and can you take a moment to question if this really makes sense? Next time someone tells you that intuition is a feminine attribute, stop and pause. I am not even going to go down the path of entertaining statements like men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But also ask yourself, am I being inclusive in my spiritual practice?

As a final note, I just wanted to add that the University of Birmingham published an article stating that there is no evidence that creating gender neutral spaces increases levels of sexual violence against women and children. So when someone uses that argument to justify having women circles only, think about what hidden agenda might behind this.

PS: I am not denying that it is important for victims of sexual abuse to have safe spaces, which might involve it being female only spaces. That is an entirely different topic that I care about tremendously.

In this episode, I attempt to define the various spiritual beings that you might come across when you reach out to the spiritual world. I have listed eight of them, in no particular order. They are often confused even by some of the most famous spiritual teachers.

1. Spirit guides
2. Elementals
3. Ascended Masters
4. Celestial beings
5. Power animals
6. Entities
7. Ancestors
8. Our higher selves

I just realised that I forgot to talk about magical beings so I may talk about them in a separate episode or bring someone in who specialises in them. I think that is why I haven't covered them in this episode. But also this is just an introduction to the spiritual world.

What is important to realise is that all these beings, save perhaps Ascended Masters are not necessarily of the highest of intents, so you should always be discerning about who you team up with or work with. As you listen to the episode, I also want you to know that what I am talking about is my understanding of these beings, but that this might not feel right for you. So by all means, follow what feels right for you and understand that this could be because you are not ready for what I am teaching, but also that we may never fully agree and that's ok too.

How do you work with these beings? The same way you work with angels, so go back and listen to episode 47 if you have not listened to it already. There is a difference though: these beings have free will of their own.

One of the dangers of working with spiritual beings is the natural tendency to hand our power over to them because they are wiser. This is dangerous for two reasons. First, you have a wisdom of your own that you can access through your intuition and your higher self. Second, you are the one living your life on earth and you chose to live this life so you can make your own decisions. A CEO does not delegate all decisions to experts and consultants, he/she asks them for guidance then they make their own decisions.

I also want you to know that you don't need to be psychic to work with guides and spiritual beings. I explain how this can happen without you even knowing that it is happening and it's nothing to be scared about. They might show you signs or plant ideas in your mind directly. It's really fascinating. I personally don't think I have any truly genius ideas of my own. I know my guides plant a lot of them in my mind and I am so grateful for that.

I also want you to know that just because someone is dead does not mean they are wise, so be discerning when you work with guides or your own loved ones in heaven. They might have access to higher wisdom but they might still have limiting beliefs and unhelpful ways to look at the world. Always be discerning.

If you would like me to help you connect to your guides or know who they are, why not work with me. Find out on my website www.angedelumiere.biz what services I have available and feel free to book a discovery call with me to discuss the options.

Dancing in the light and playing with the shadows used to be my catch phrase for years at the start of my spiritual journey. I was well aware that we all want to think that we are these luminous and loving being, but sadly, as humans, we have a shadow. You cannot have light without shadow on Earth. It's a fact.

A fact that a lot of spiritual folks deny or hide, because having a shadow is "unspiritual". However, in my opinion embracing your spirituality requires you to embrace your shadow. So what exactly is the shadow and who coined the term?

Carl Jung defined it as "the part of us that contains what lies dormant beneath the light of our awareness and contains unacceptable traits and feelings, but also our hidden gifts and talents." The man did not invent the concept, he just made it popular in the white western world, and probably borrowed it from shamanic communities that he came in contact with.

As Joanna Penn mentions in her book Writing from the Shadow, it is not unnecessarily evil, illegal or immoral, although it can certainly be. But the truth is that we all have one. Even Gandhi often mentioned how imperfect he was and resisted the tendency of portraying him as a saint.

That part is also sometimes labelled as the ego in spiritual circles, which is a different definition to the one espoused in psychology circles. Some spiritual people even claim that the death of the ego is the goal. I personally believe this to be a dangerous goal, as it is virtually impossible and when you do that, there is a risk that you start hiding parts of you that don't conform with this unrealistic ideal. Two things can then happen: you project it onto other people or it erupts like a volcano after being repressed for too long and you go into a rage.

Of course this comes from the misunderstanding of what the ego is. Most people think the ego is that propensity that some people display to boast about themselves in an exaggerated manner. But the ego can pretend to be humble. It can make you manipulative. And it will usually try to convince you that the thing that you are doing that clashes with your values is justified because... fill in the gap. The ego is incredibly clever and persuasive. And if you don't understand how it works, it will play you.

Even Jung defined enlightenment in relation to making the darkness conscious rather than imagining figures of light. But to paraphrase him, making the darkness conscious is vastly unpopular as it requires looking at things we do not want to look at and doing hard work.

Feel free to head over to the show notes on my website www.angedelumiere.biz/podcast if you want to comment with your thoughts and experience so we can start a conversation going.

You know my love of definitions. For me, the definition that suits best for angels is a spiritual being being believed to act as an agent, attendant or messenger of God (Source, the Universe, Universal intelligence, or whatever word you use instead). They are traditionally represented wearing long robes and with wings.

In the episode, I also share what angels are not and debunk a couple of myths around guardian angels and archangels. You know how I like to debunk myths. I share the one rule angels have to abide by, which I compare to the laws of robotics that Asimov described in his books. I like introducing humour in spirituality too, in case you are new to me.

I share about how I came across the works of Doreen Virtue and Diana Cooper and how this led me to experiment working with angels, without ever attending any workshop around angels specifically. This is important because I believe anyone and everyone can work with angels. Everyone can ask the angels for help. You don't need to be special in order for them to answer your prayer.

There is also no prayer too small. And your prayer will never deprive someone else of the help they need so don't be shy and ask anyway. Angels have triage centres and they can prioritise if needed. Don't hold back on asking for help because what you consider unimportant might actually be very important to them. I share a story that illustrates that truth. In 2009, I battled with incredibly poor body image and asked the angels for help. Not only did they help instantly, they showed me why it mattered to them.

The help they send might look very different from what you expect, so keep and open mind. But also, you need to accept the help, which for a lot of us is far easier than said. I used to think that asking for help was a sign of weakness, so that took me time to unpack too.

This episode is a follow up on the episode about creating your spiritual blueprint, so make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can download the PDF and work through it. Angels was one of the topics mentioned in it. Also, you only have a couple of days to take part in my competition to win a half hour akashic records reading with me (the deadline is the 4th of August 8 pm UK time). To find out more about it click here. If you don't know what akashic records readings are, watch my YouTube video on the topic. To listen to the episode, click here.

Maria Shiyko, PhD, MMetaph, is a spiritual business and life mentor and the author of three books.

Her first book, "From Russia to Love, a journey of spiritual awakening", is a memoir about her journey of un-conditioning from her culture as she made the move from her native Smolensk, in Russia, to the USA. From a scientific background, she dived into spirituality whilst in a deeply unhappy marriage. In an effort to help herself, she met her first meditation teacher who helped her transcend the mind and realised that she was not her thoughts only. Which, for someone with a PhD, was remarkable. That's when she started questioning everything.

It took her five years to write her memoir, and at one point she threw away her manuscript and deleted the file, but the book kept on calling her. And it's within weeks of it being published that she met her current life partner. She speaks about being Russian in a world where Russia is the enemy and how she wishes to be the inspiration to wake her people from their state of victimhood. We discussed what spiritual leadership means to her.

Her second book is about money, as she realised that pursuing spiritual studies meant somehow negating being human. Mariya left academia, and felt angry and thinking to herself that "There has to be a way for do what I love and make money". She was determined to break the cycle of being spiritual and being broke.

She followed a writing process that she called channeling, where she connected to the universal energies of Love/God/the Universe and received guidance on how to break that paradigm. She then collaborated with a friend to help her edit the book, and became a co-author of "My brilliant money book: for joyful and creative living".

Her third book is a collection of 31 stories on "Gifts from Pain" in which she contributed a chapter called from suicide to joyful leadership. This book brings hope to anyone going through hard times and shares tools of inspiration.

To find out about Mariya's course about Money Mastery, head over to her website www.mariyashiyko.love or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mariyashiyko/

I had a couple of transformative experiences that led me to want to train in energy as a lawyer. The first of these experiences was when I went to a shiatsu masseuse back in my Paris days and saw blues and greens inside my head as she worked the knots in my shoulders and neck. I wanted to understand what this was all about and found a book called Hands of Light that started to explain energy for me.

Fast forward a couple of years and I lived in London and what do you know, the author of that book was doing a talk in a theatre near me. As I sat in an audience of 1,000 people, I saw this woman's energy expand and fill the entire theatre. It was mind-blowing.

A couple years after, I was living in Bristol and got an itch to see a psychic-medium, which led to me training with her in spiritual healing. Now that I have practiced energy medicine for now twenty years, here are the five things I think you should know:

1. We all have energy fields around us
2. This energy field sends strands of energy to make sure we are safe
3. Sometimes these strands turn into cords (they can be cut)
4. We have energy centres in our bodies
5. People do not need to know about energy in order to use it

To purchase my energy intelligence for sensitive entrepreneurs self study course, click here.

There were a lot of concepts and beliefs in the faith that I was brought up in that did not sit well with me. So at the age of twelve, I stopped going to church. My desire for spirituality was still there though. So what do you do?

I started exploring different religions, such as buddhism, and without giving it much thought, I started to pick and choose what felt right for me and what didn't. Now that I have been on this path for well over thirty years, I would like to invite you to do the same, regardless of whether you decide to stay in your religious tradition or not, as some of you value the communities that these religions have built and want to stay.

I am officially giving you permission to create your own spiritual blueprint. Especially if you are a woman or a member of the LGBT community because traditionally, religions have not treated our communities well, so it's up to us to create a new narrative. Before we dive in, I also want you to go through this exercise with cultural appropriation in mind so that you remain respectful of other people's cultures and religions, especially if they have been exploited or are marginalised. You can read more about what cultural appropriation is in this Wikipedia article.

With this caveat, let's dive in. I have selected three concepts from the PDF that I created to help you with this process, namely, heaven and hell, angels and karma. The PDF, that you will receive is you sign up for my newsletter with this link, has five pages of key words for you to explore.

1. Heaven and Hell

Heaven is traditionally regarded as the place where God and the angels reside and where the good go after death, and often depicted as above the clouds. Hell on the other hand is regarded as the place where the Devil and demons reside and where the wicked go after death and often depicted with perpetual fire and darkness.

Heaven and Hell rest on the dualistic model of good and bad. Personally, I think that good and bad are always relative as they can depend on our beliefs, our culture and our circumstances. It also rest on a model where people are judged. And if you have been raised in the Catholic faith as I am, you only get one chance.

When faced with a spiritual or religious concept, I want you to get into the habit of asking yourself: Does this support the life that I am creating? And if it doesn't, challenge it and replace it by something that feels better. You can use the four question process that Byron Katie has created, which is incredibly powerful. I describe the four questions in the episode but the most important one is number three which asks you to find out how that concept makes you feel. Personally that concept make me feel manipulated, as if I could not decide for myself what is right and what is right and I had to have the threat of hell to behave myself. Is heaven real? Who knows. Is hell real? Same answer.

What better belief can we replace them with? Personally I believe there is a material world populated with beings with bodies, humnan or animal, and a spirit world for beings without bodies. I believe that God lives in my heart (although I rarely use the word God because it has a connotation that makes me cringe). I don't believe in heaven and hell.

2. Angels

Does the concept of angels resonate with you? The definition of angels is spiritual beings believed to be messengers of God. Do we need to believe in God to believe in angels? I personally don't think so. For the record, I want to mention that religions have created hierarchy of angels that reflect the religious hierarchy and one has to wonder why, if not to support the oppressive religious model created by (mostly white) men. My own measuring stick for angelic presence is simplicity. So an angelic hierarchy feels like an oxymoron. You might also be interested in reading a piece I wrote for The Taoist Online on Medium recently that claims that guardian angels do not exist.

3. Karma

Although traditionally linked to Hinduism and Buddhism, karma has found its way in popular culture in the West, so I wanted to include it in this episode. It is the idea of a chain of cause and effect in morality. The most common example of karma I have heard being used is someone being ill because they did something wrong in a past life.

This ties into the concept of good and bad, with the added dimension of reincarnation, although it is not a necessary piece. I personally found it liberating when I came across it for the first time in my twenties. I had been raised by a very judgmental mother and tended to get very upset when people did the wrong thing. Of course, at the time, I could see no fault in my own behaviour but that's a topic for another discussion. The idea that karma took care of it all was freeing at first.

Not anymore. And that's another point I would like to make: Your blueprint is a living document. It might look a certain way today and be entirely different in a year's time, so revisit it regularly.

To share your piece of art regarding your new blueprint, DM me on my Facebook profile or my LinkedIn profile. To discuss this episode, head over to my FB page where you will find a post for this particular episode.

At the time of recording of the podcast, elections are under way in the UK, the US and in France. As I live in the UK, I thought his was a good time to broach the topic of politics and spirituality, although this episode is only touching the surface of this complex topic and I am sure I will get back to it at a later stage.

A lot of spiritual seekers feel that politics are too negative and that they are "unspiritual", thus disengaging from the whole topic. In this episode we explore why this is a cop out and why in the contrary, spiritual people, more than any other people should care about politics and engage with it.

Gandhi said that religion could never be separated from politics. They are interrelated. Politics must be guided by ethics. It's easy in the current world affair, to believe that all politics are corrupt and to want to disengage from it.

Politics concern any citizen of a particular country, and I would go further, they also concern people who live in that country without having the nationality of that country. There are a lot of us in that position. The modern world has made it easier to move and live abroad. Not to mention that there is also now a movement of people who live on the go called digital nomads.

There are many ways to engage in politics, from just casting our vote, to being engaged in charitable work, activism and of course being a candidate. Just before recording this episode, I saw a post from a FB friend who said that no engaging in politics comes from a place of enormous privilege. They shared a quote from Martha Gellhorn who said "People often say with pride, I am not interested in politics. They might as well say, I am not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future. If we mean to keep any control over our world or lives, we must be interested in politics."

So even if we are part of the privileged whose existence whose rights are considered valid by the government in place, we owe it to the people who aren't in that position, to use our privilege to fight for the rights of us less privileged than we are. This goes for all the minorities, that political parties usually consider not important enough to cater for and whose rights are often eroded if not denied all together.

Also democracy matters and if you are not interested in politics, you undermine democracy by taking it for granted. As spiritual seekers we should care more than others about these topics. Maybe having interviewed Jose Pereira for the 1,000 download celebrations brought this home even more. Jose's story of being taken as hostage by the Venezuelan government in 2017 for five years, illustrates the dangers of an undemocratic government known for the violation of human rights. And to me, this means we need to care about democracy and never taking it for granted.

As spiritual people we need to remain grounded and connected to reality. To listen to the episode, click here. To take part in the 1,000 download celebrations, head over to my FB page here. If you write a review for the podcast before the 4th of August at 8 bpm UK time, I will gift you with my Relax and Recharge hypnotherapy recording. So make sure you take a screen shot and send it to me by email (if you are on my mailing list) or by DM. If you do so, you will also be entered in a draw to win a half hour session with me worth £180 at the time of recording this episode.

When I met Ali online eight years ago, she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and had started a blog called Raw and Completely Beautiful. She now calls herself a Cancer Sage and has written a book called The Glorious Responsibility of Happiness.

Ali's experience with cancer did not start when she was diagnosed, though. She lost both her mum and grandmother in the same year, at the tender age of sixteen. In this episode, Ali shared how being the strong one (she had to be there for her younger sister) can sometimes be really hard because everyone counts on you to help others. And you end up comforting the people who don't know what to say to you. So Ali and I talked about what would have been helpful to do instead.

I mentioned the Susan Silk's Ring Theory which helps people understand how to behave when someone is in a crisis and some sort of guidelines of who it's ok to share your feelings with and who it's not ok to do so. You can check the principles of this theory here.

Ali had a spiritual experience after having her two boys. Her sister had gone to a psychic who told her she would have another child and that it would be a girl. That didn't seem likely to Ali, as she was in a difficult relationship. And yet not long after, she saw a light on a family photo and knew that what the psychic had said was true. Somehow, she fell back in love with her husband and had a baby girl. This piqued her curiosity and she started reading books about past lives.

Ali is trained as a coach and therapist, and recently finished her training as a reiki master, so we talked briefly about what reiki is.

We then talked about an emotional scale that Ali offers in her book.

Ali now help people understand that their levels of happiness do not depend on other people or circumstances but on themselves. This pursuit of happiness is not, however, about avoiding big feelings about challenges. It's about feeling all the feels and yet trusting, and understanding that nothing stays the same, not even hardships. Happiness relies on that little bit of faith. She curates a Facebook community to help people do that called The Self Love Project.

Our happiness relies on being able to harvest the smallest moments of joy: the glorious colours of a sunset, the sun on our face, the smell of oranges.

We also need to understand that when we are feeling overwhelmed, that reaching out to other people (the right kind of people) is a strength, not a weakness. And what also helps is to realise that we are not alone in our experience.

Ultimately, it is about choice. And knowing that we have that choice.

Ali shared that when she was diagnosed with cancer, she had a curious feeling that she was going to be ok. She believes that getting cancer freed her from the fear she was constantly living in before the cancer. Ali concluded our interview by sharing how she believes that cancer opened the door to her path to awakening. You can find Ali on IG here and on FB here. You can also find out more about what she does on her website www.alijwilliams.com