The intentional leader podcast

Emma is one of our featured speakers for the True Spirituality Summit, which was held in July 2023, and which is still available for free. http://spirituallawyer.thinkific.com/

She is a yoga teacher, a medium, a tantra teacher and a sexologist. Emma was raised a Catholic, and nearly became a nun, but she felt the need to depart from that religious tradition, due to the wars and deaths that had been waged in its name. It broke her faith, but also clashed with her values.

She feels that yoga has replaced the sanctity of mass, so she feels no grief.

As a young person, she remembers having had a book about auras and energy, that she borrowed from the library, and did the instructions on her hand and saw the energy. It resonated so much. But because she did not have the space to discuss this with her family, she slammed the book shut and took it back to the library. She had to wait until her first born baby turned four months old for that to come back.

Emma studied anatomy because she wanted to be a doctor, then psychology. But she could not get work because she learnt was not applied knowledge. She managed a youth centre, which highlighted how much trauma some people have.

After her first baby, she trained in yoga because she did not want to work a nine to five. Then after her second child, she started coaching but also mediumship. Then in 2016, she started a dark night of the soul period and she came across the book Pussy, a Reclamation by Regina Thomashauer, mamagenas.com/books/?fbclid=IwAR2ha0PY-A2o499vEYqop3dF3tvLoaFebG_Kk5_Bv4p4K-lrZwBStSUmFRI and it was like a revelation. She realised that pleasure was the missing link in her work. She also realised how much shame she carried about enjoying sex with her husband, and she decided she wasn't going to put up with it anymore. She embraced Burlesque and somehow tantra also made it into her world.

People have a very limited view of what tantra really is but I can't blame them because if you do an internet search, all you are going to find is the sex aspect of it. But it's a bit like if you were searching for a recipe on google and all it came up with was spaghetti bolognese. Tantra is 6,000 years old and in a way, it has suffered in similar ways to yoga when it was brought to the West. Tantra is the way of the heart through the body. Tantra can be practised alone, but also with our friends and our children, because there is a social aspect of tantra that is about connection and presence. Pleasure can be something purely hedonistic, or it can be mindful and intuitive. We have a bath for self-care, or we can take it to the enxt level and have a bath because it feels good, and it's a mindful and intuitive action; it;s the cream on top: pleasure.

To bring pleasure into consensual sexual intercourse, women, in particular, have to bring self knowledge and have the courage to voice what they need and what they want. But that can come with guilt and feeling selfish. And intimacy can only happen if we have the courage to be vulnerable.

I also asked Emma if she experienced sexual intercourse as a spiritual experience and I will let you listen to the show to hear what she shared about this. You can find Emma on Instagram instagram.com/emma.pleasure/ and Facebook facebook.com/emmamccanncoach. Her website is www.emma-mccann.com.

I believe that the concept of Twin Flames and Soul Mates is vastly misunderstood. It is also dangerous, if we approach it from the space of feeling that we are not complete without that other person.

On the 6th of October, here in the UK, Netflix released a documentary on an organisation that says that they connect you to your twin flame. I encourage you to go back to my episode on how to cult proof your spiritual journey (episode 2) in order to make sure that you don't fall into the trap of similar kinds of organisations who pray on people's desire to feel complete and their naivety around how to go about it.

Before we dive deeper into the topic of Twin Flames and Soul Mates, I want to debunk three myths around Twin Flames:

• The myth that you are not complete until you are in a romantic relationship with your Twin Flame
• The myth that when you find your Twin Flame/Soul Mate, it will be this ideal relationship that fairy tales tell us about
• The myth that your Twin Flame is your only true love

This is magical thinking at best and dysfunctional at worse and it can lead you to putting yourself at danger of being exploited by a narcissist or a cult. And if you have listened to episode 2, you know that there are a lot of parallels between the behaviours of these two groups. I am passionate about keeping you safe on your spiritual journey, so take care.

When I researched where the concept of Twin Flames originated, I found out that it came from Plato and Greek Mythology. The idea is that Zeus split an androgynous human being into male and female. The reason he did this was because he was scared of the power of androgynous human beings and wanted to weaken them, by dividing their strength and making them pine for each other, thus distracting them from the important things they would have otherwise done, which Zeus felt threatened by. If there is a cautionary tale about our politicians and the people who rule the world, I can't see a better one, but I am not here to talk about conspiracy theories.

As you can see, this story is only slightly better than the Adam and Eve story from the Bible. At least, in that version, men and women are created equal, but the motive for creating Twin Flames is really flaky. I think the myth comes with its own warning: don't let the pursuit of your Twin Flame distract you from more important things, specifically owning your power and realising that you are whole.

I would like at this point to talk about a definition of Twin Flames: two souls who were once one and have the same energy consciousness. If we retain this definition, we have to wonder why these Twin Flames would need to reattach themselves at the hip in a close romantic relationship. They are whole. They have the same energy consciousness. They don't need each other. They have different soul paths and akashic records at that point. I want to posit the theory that they might not want to spend earth lives together. But they might choose to anyway. If they do, it's because they have a soul contract together, which then makes them soul mates.

Before I go any further, I want to say that every single person on this earth is whole without the need of someone else to complete them. It's important to say it because the music industry, the entertainment industry and the dating industry, who each represent billions of revenues, want us to think otherwise. And we push that myth that we need someone else to complete us onto our kids from a very young age. There is a really toxic narrative in western culture that actually grooms us for narcissistic abuse. If we don't feel complete, we leave ourselves vulnerable to love bombing, but also to us obsessing about our object of desire.

So what is the different between Twin Flames and Soul Mates? With soul mates, what links them is not the same soul essence or the fact they might have been one soul at one point, what links them is a soul contract. A soul contract is an agreement that souls enter before they incarnate. And that agreement describes the kind of relationship they will have on earth and what they will "do" for each other. Think of the earth as a giant stage and you being two actors in a play.

Soul mates are not necessarily romantic partners. They can be siblings, parents, friends, colleagues and even our own businesses. Yes, businesses. Businesses have souls. You can check my podcast episode about this by clicking on this link and scrolling down to episode dated 14th June 2021 "What if businesses had souls?" Also, sometimes soul mates feel like enemies. They make our lives difficult and can even be our "petty tyrants" to use an expression used by Carlos Castaneda. And the reason is that, sadly, at this point of our evolution, we learn much more from conflict and pain than we do from sunshine and rainbows. To understand better the concept of soul mates and soul plans, I invite you to read Michael Newton's book called Journey of Souls.

In conclusion, yes I do believe in the idea of Twin Flames and Soul Mates but I urge you not to let the pursuit of that "true" love from distract you from how important your own life path and purpose is on this earth. If you would like to find out how to work with me and receive special offers and musings, why not sign up for my newsletter? I always offer a freebie for people who sign up and the freebie at the moment of release of this episode is a PDF that includes a process to help you start forgiving yourself and others. http://eepurl.com/gdEEJX

I discovered Astronomy at the tender age of eleven and was immediately won. So much so that I became an Astronomy instructor in summer camps when I was old enough to do so. What Astronomy brought me is awe and help in putting things in perspective. When I lied at night watching the stars, I was able to see that my problems weren't necessarily as big as I made them to be, and I found that incredibly helpful.

So in 2001, when I had to decide whether to accept a job offer in London and move with my children who were five and one at the time, I wanted to have a peek into the bigger picture. This was no longer only about me and I wanted to make a decision that would be not just for my highest good but also for the highest good of my children. I went to see a psychic medium and she told me that it was, and so I did.

We make better decisions when we see the bigger picture.

How can we though? How do psychics do? Psychics can do so in three different ways. By reading the energy of your body, by asking their spirit guides and by reading the akashic records. In this episode I explain what akashic records are, briefly. Traditionally, they were only accessed by mystics with the most stringent of training because knowledge is power and the akashic records are sacred. It is also a knowledge that can be misused.

Accessing the akashic records unable you to see your entire life from a bird's eye view. Imagine flying over the valley of your entire life. This is what happened to me during my first reiki atunement. I share more in the episode but I was shown a past life I had with both my mother and my ex husband, and what I was shown made so much sense, it enabled me to complete the soul contract I had with them.

Your akashic records contain the entire blueprint you chose for yourself for this lifetime. It has the soul mates you chose for yourself (soul mates are not what people think, but this will be the topic of another episode), the main destiny points and your purpose. It's like a map of your life. But just like a map, you can choose to follow the plan or not, because we all have free will. And also, you still have to do the work to make it happen.

As my birthday was last Monday, I am offering a birthday special 50% discount that expires on the 12th of November on half hour akashic records sessions. Click this link and use the coupon BIRTHDAY. If you are reading these show notes after the 12th of November 2023, and would like to receive updates on my content and special offers, sign up for my newsletter with this link.

In this episode, I talk about all things spooky in the spiritual world, because it's Halloween! I saw a connection of mine post a photo of a graveyard with orbs on LinkedIn over the weekend end it reminded me of my connection to both graveyards and orbs, so here we are.

I grew near the Cimetiere Montparnasse in Paris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_Cemetery Growing up as a child, my bedroom window overlooked it. As if this was not enough, my grandmother took us playing hide and seek in the Cemetery whenever she came to look after us on Wednesdays, weather permitting. I also remember the first time I was tipsy walking through the Cemetery with my sister as a chaperone on the way back from a friend who served me a pretty strong of Rhum, as he was originally from the West Indies. And the one thing I did whilst walking in the middle of the night was do a speech to the dead.

I don't believe dead people hover over their graves nor that their new homes are cemeteries. They might visit when you do, say for example on the 1st of November for All Saints Day, but only because you are there and they care. Most of the rest of the time, they live in another dimension (a higher one).

My grandmother, who is now in that dimension, used to take my sister, my brother and I to play hide and seek in the Montparnasse Cemetery. When I went to see a psychic medium for the first time in 2005, my grandmother high jacked the session. Yet when I told my mother about it, she accused me of disturbing the peace my grandmother was having. Since then, and thanks to Abraham Hicks, I have come to believe that when we die, we continue to be interested in the same things we were interested in when we walked the earth. I guess that means my grandmother is in that cemetery most of the time. Joke apart: lawyers would gather around law firms, piano players around pianos... etc.

I want to explain the difference between our departed loved ones and ghosts, as this is a Halloween podcast. Our loved ones, when they come to see us, are only visiting. They don't come to haunt us. They are not attached to a specific venue and they know that they are "dead". They usually are now able to see the bigger picture and are slightly wiser than when they walked the earth. Ghosts, on the other hand, are trapped in between the Earth plane and the spirit world. They usually haunt places because they don't realise they are dead. So for example, they continue to live in the house that was theirs when they lived and disturb the new occupants. Think of the film the Others, with Nicole Kidman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Others_(2001_film) It's pretty accurate. But ghosts are not necessarily humans trapped in an in-between world. They can also be energy imprints or entities. I go into more details about the difference in the episode. They often hover around pubs, places where massacres have happened and generally dark spots on the Earth.

Orbs are the opposite of entities. They are beings of light. In March 2014, a day after my father died, I captured an orb on my phone camera as I was walking in the XVIth arrondissement, in Paris, which is precisely where my dad grew up as a boy. Two days later, I captured two orbs on either side of the Church where his funeral was going to be conducted, just before I met my cousin to hand him the speech I wanted him to read for me. Both photos are included in my memoir, My Father Who Art in Heaven which you can purchase in the online shop. www.theintuitiverevolution.co.uk/shop

Energy vampires: my grandmother was one. What are energy vampires? People who drain you. You recognise them because before you see or interact with them you feel great. Whereas after you have, you feel exhausted, drained or simply awful. They can be friends, relatives, people you work with or even complete strangers. They can be trolls on social media. How does it work? They come into your energy field, if it is open or compromised, and hook into you then syphon your energy. They do not need to know how energy works in order to do this. You, on the other hand, need to learn about energy in order to protect yourself. Personally, I thought I was the one with a mood problem until I trained as a reiki master and learnt more about energy. Energy vampires hook you in by making you feel sorry for them, by complaining or by creating arguments. This enables them to wedge an opening into your energy field, et voila. I explain a little more about the mechanics of how that happens in the audio of the episode.

Psychic attacks are quite common. If you have been on the receiving of a psychic attack, you can feel off, on edge, anxious or nauseous. A psychic attack is when someone transfers their negative energy into your energy field. It can be deliberate, if they get angry, jealous or start hating you. This can happen for example with someone who knows you and is jealous of your success even if you don't actually know who they are. It can be accidental: someone who loves you who worries so much about you that they pour their worry energy into you. It can also be violent and feel almost like a physical slap when people attack when they are triggered. I share a story in the episode of a client who actually woke up in the middle of the night and who thought she was having a stroke.

You can open yourself to unwanted energies when you use tarot cards or Ouija boards. I am passionate about keeping people safe, so if you want to avoid the top three mistakes people make when using a tarot deck, head over to Julie Brown's podcast, This Sh*T works, where I was interviewed for a Halloween special. https://podfollow.com/1528595881/episode/5054aae6c39e2f1a168ad07800f5462ba4dd9d51/view

Mark Deeks calls himself an atheist. Can he be spiritual nevertheless?

First I asked him what kind of religious background he grew up in. And he shared that 90% of his family is from a Christian background. Starting with a Church of Scotland background and moving into an Evangelical. For those of you who don't know (I had to check this myself), Evangelical Christians are conservative protestants. Protestants being, Christians who are not under the authority of the Pope. Mark, however, does not related to the information I found about the Evangelical Church and simply refers to them as happy clappers and a more modern version of Christianity. His Dad's grandfather was a preacher as were his dad's dad and uncle.

Despite this, Mark describes himself as non religious, non spiritual and ultimately, an atheist and to him, it stems from just being practical as well as the experience of not being able to visualise, so if it's not here, then it does not exist. When Mark did his PhD in Heavy Metal Music, he had a chance to explore myths and culture and he became fascinated by how men, in all parts of the world, try to explain things they don't understand and can come to entirely different conclusions. And to Mark, religions are part of this search for meaning and he respects that. He has also had a chance to see first hand the extraordinary comfort that religion can bring to people. And despite that, Mark cannot accept that these experiences prove the existence of any god, be it Christian, Muslim or other. In a way, he wishes it did as it apparently brings a sense of belonging and meaning, but he just can't. He doesn't believe that God is the explanation. And therefore, Mark came to the conclusion he was atheist over time.

When I shared my definition of what spiritual means to me, which involves the desire to leave the earth a better place and to become a better person, Mark had some objections about that too. And the issues he has with always wanting to be better comes with his experience of the academic world. He was working in a college about ten years ago that had received several outstanding inspections in a row and instead of being satisfied with it, the college decided they were now aiming for "beyond outstanding". Why can't we just accept that some days we are great and other days we are average and simply accept our humanity.

Mark shared with us his belief that the need for religion or spirituality stems from a hole in us that yearns to explain everything that we are longing for and searching for. Personally, however, he does not feel he has a hole that needs to be filled. And it makes him uncomfortable around religious people or events because he does not want to be disrespectful, but the same time, he just can't buy into it.

In a similar vein, Mark stays away from what he calls woo, because he doesn't understand it at all and he tends to get the wrong end of the stick when he tries to get involved. We talked about how the spiritual community can get side tracked talking about concepts that are actually distractions from what is more important to our spiritual journeys, which are our values.

We then moved to the topic of meaning and leading a meaningful life. And Mark shared that he finds it really hard to acknowledge success in his life. However, part of what Mark does is to facilitate people's musical dreams, as an unorthodox piano teacher. He does this through playing the piano at events, creating bespoke piano meditations, being part of a band or teaching people how to play.

And this has led Mark to think about his legacy, which in turn led to him creating an album called Arð, entirely to his own specifications with absolutely no compromise. Within two weeks of completing this passion project, he got a record deal with one of his favourite record labels. Hence, his dream of combining his two loves of piano and metal finally came to light. All in low baritone chorals, because that's what he does. He does not scream like more mainstream metal singers do. And this project has given meaning to his life, more than the thousands of gigs that he has been to, or the choirs that he has run or even all the people he has taught piano to.

The second part of our interview focused on how music and art can be vehicles to feed the soul, whether we are spiritual or not and the importance of changing the mainstream approach to art as a way to excel. Mark is a mental health first aider, like me, and he is passionate about using art and music as a way to support our mental health.

Mark had a little rant about how classical music still dominates the teaching of music when it is not encouraging creativity, but rather perfectionism on a prescription. You can't change the notes or the speed. It is just what it is. And that's what is often presented as the only way to people who want to pursue music as a creative outlet. It also encourages perfectionism which can actually be detrimental to mental health.

Mark wants to teach a fun way to play the piano that actually supports mental health. A way that puts a smile on your face. Improvisation can bring that fun into the playing.

You can find out about his music on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/ardnorthumbria. And about his business on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/MarkDeeksMusic.

Before we explore the topic of prayer, particularly non denominational (non religious) prayer, I want to say that my research into this topic has lead me to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence that prayer has any measurable effect on the health of the person being prayed for. Prayer has been studied since at leat 1872, supported by various religious groups. All the studies on prayer that claim that there is a correlation between prayer and health improvement had problems with self selection, selection bias and other aspects that discount them from the scientific method.

At the same time, there has never been any funding from the scientific community because prayer lacks biological plausibility. So it looks like we will never have scientific proof.

Prayer has its place in True Spirituality, however, especially non denominational prayer. I have created a non denominational prayer group on Facebook called the Sacred Heart Prayers, which you can join by clicking this link. Make sure you answer the three questions, though, as I won't let you in unless you do. There are some rules to post that you can find in the about section.

This being said, I want to explore here magical thinking and delusion. I have been watching the TV series Manifest and one of the characters, Angelina, loses her grip with reality and tips into fanaticism. In it, she believes that a baby she is looking after is her guardian angel and when she sets the baby's room on fire by accident, she does nothing to get herself and the baby into safety because she relies on the magical properties of the baby to protect them both.

I am a promoter of grounded spirituality. This is not ok. Nothing, and least of all prayer, justifies taking undue risks with your life or someone else's. Nothing, and least of all prayer, justifies making bad decisions because you believe you are chosen so you won't suffer the consequences. Prayer should enhance our lives, not take from them or bypass our responsibilities.

What is prayer? The Oxford dictionary defines it as a "Solemn request for help addressed to God or another deity". True Spirituality is inclusive, so my own definition of prayer does include God or other deities. I replace that by "something bigger than us". I know that a lot of people have suffered at the hands of religious people, and continue to, to this day, so I understand if some of the people who listen to the podcast do not want to hear the word God. Besides, many atrocities have been committed in the name of God. Most religions have blood on their hands.

We also want to avoid tipping into superstition, which is the credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural. We don't need fancy words to pray. We don't need to repeat a specific formula. We don't need to repeat prayers three times. However, if you want to create a ritual around your prayers, feel free to do so but do it out of choice, not because you think you need to.

My approach to prayer is that it can't hurt. Although having said that, I do not recommend that you ask for an outcome and I advice people not to pray when they are upset.

To me, a prayer is asking for help. But if we ask for help, we also need to ask ourselves how good are we to receive help? Gracefully? Most of us are reluctant to ask for help. I want to mention here one of the spiritual teachers that has most influenced me: Abraham-Hicks. Their book Ask and it is given, separates the process in three steps: Step 1 is us asking for help, Step 2 is the Universe answering our prayer and Step 3 is us allowing the answer to come to us. Basically accepting the help. Part of this is accepting that help might look very different to what you think it will.

So how do we pray? We can use a very simple phrase that says: Please help with (insert the thing you need help with). Who do you pray to? If you are not comfortable with the concept of God, you can use words such as Source, Infinite Intelligence, Life, the Universe, the Big U and whoever the fuck is in charge. Let's not get hung up on words. When should we pray? Whenever we want. And we can pray for past events, current events and even future events. Once I explain to you how energy works (in a future episode), you will understand that energy is not bound by the concepts of time and space.

In the episode I shared to lived experiences of help being given after I prayed for help. From a reiki master's perspective, prayer makes sense, because we are all interconnected to all the people we know energetically. And in turn these people are connected to the ones they know. It's a bit like the internet but without computers, wifi, electricity and cables. When you send a prayer out, it's like a message sent out to this incredible web of light and the Universe locates where help is available and sends it over. It can send it to you as an idea or an impulse.

However, not every prayer is useful. I don't recommend asking for an outcome, because the Universe is vastly more clever than you are. It has access to far more intelligence than you do. So it will find of a solution you might not possibly even think of. Also, if you are full of anxiety, don't pray for someone else, as you are more likely to send them negative energy than actually help them.

Please make sure you rate the podcast and write a review. Share with people you know. Thank you. If you would like to receive the link to book a free fifteen minute session with me, sign up for my newsletter here.

I have been studying intuition for eighteen years and teaching it for over four years. I ran a powerful five day challenge from 2020 to 2022 that taught people how to trust their intuition. In June 2021, I launched a podcast called the Intuitive Revolution in Business that you can listen to with this link. And in November 2021, I launched a book called the Intuitive Revolution in Business that you can purchase in my online shop. You could say I am a little obsessed with intuition.

There is a reason. Intuition literally saved me from a bomb attempt in Paris in September 1986. You can read about the bomb attempt (In French) here on Wikipedia.

My biggest mission is to get intuition on the curriculum all the way from Primary Schools to Universities. The reason for this is that intuition saved my life, but also protected me from predators and who wouldn't want children to trust their gut feelings so that they can be protected.

Well, actually the way the school system as we know it was designed is not compatible with this dream of mine, yet. The reason is that it was designed with a heavy bias towards producing compliant beings. Two hundred years ago, when education was democratised, the agenda was pushed heavily by factory owners who needed employees who were both literate but also likely to follow orders. What better way to do that than by having children sit through classes, with heavy discipline and a huge emphasis on attendance.

Whilst we wait for the school system to be ready for intuition, let's see what you can do to trust your intuition more. First of all, you need to understand that we are all intuitive. Due to the fact that intuition is taught mostly by psychics, people confuse intuition with psychic gifts and as a consequence, think that only a few people are chosen (psychic) and the vast majority are not. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My definition of intuition is a form of intelligence that does not require thinking. And for most of us it's either a knowing or a feeling. How do you distinguish between your own thoughts and your intuition. Your thoughts come in a train. I call it the thought train. You have one thought, then another that links into the previous one, and then the third that links to the second and so on and so forth. The logic can sometimes be a little strange but there is a link. With intuition, it's more like a bubble that comes up. It's a single thought. And it's not attached to any train of thought. So you would be thinking about groceries and suddenly, a thought bubble pops up to call your Aunt Mazie. The difference can also be how the thought feels. Let's take the thought: "Don't trust her". If it comes from your own thoughts, it will probably feel yucky. If it is your intuition, it won't feel bad. At least not right away. It will make you feel calm instead. Your critical mind is going to kick in pretty quickly though, and will try to make you feel bad about it because intuition often takes you out of your comfort zone and your logical mind doesn't like that. It's dangerous.

Here are my top three tips to get started:

Tip #1: Be a detective

Tip #2: Don't attach expectations to your intuition

Tip #3: Learn about your own belief system and your "symbology"

If you would like to start to trust your intuition, my five day signature challenge is now available on Thinkific as a self study course. Head over here to sign up.

Before we even start, I need to highlight that meditation is not one of them. What? You might exclaim. No. It isn't and for a good reason. I don't actually believe that it is one of the essentials.

For one, meditation is not going to help you:

• know who to trust and who not to trust
• heal your wounds
• grow faith in yourself
• understand your ego
• with your anxiety

And in some cases, meditation can actually be not only counterproductive but harmful. So let's stop promoting as the be-all and end-all of spirituality. It can even be used as spiritual bypassing. If you can't seem to meditate and think that for this reason you can't be spiritual, I want you know that there are many other ways to become more mindful, more connected, calmer and more grounded. I will talk about that on this podcast.

Gay Hendricks, the author of Corporate Mystics, says in his book: "if you want to find a genuine mystic, you are more likely to find one in a boardroom than in a monastery or a cathedral." So if you work in corporate, you can be spiritual too. It's not reserved to those who call themselves spiritual. I know some dangerous narcissists who have meditation podcasts. Be warned. Rant over.

So here is what I believe are the six essentials that you should pack with you on your spiritual journey:

#1 essential: Understand how your intuition works

#2 essential: Therapy

#3 essential: Willingness to embrace uncertainty, aka the Fog

#4 essential: Keep your journey close to your chest

#5 essential: Never put anyone on a pedestal

#6 essential: A solid knowledge of how the mind works

I go into much more detail in the episode, especially the importance of #1 as it is the safeguarding tool that will protect you from predators, narcissists and cults. We are all intuitive. If you don't trust your intuition, it is because you don't understand it and you have heard too many people diss it or call it weird. Also we ignored our intuition when we believe someone knows something better than we do. You will come across people who compensate their lack of substance by an over confident attitude in the spiritual world. Don't be fooled into thinking they are experts. Just because they say they are, doesn't mean that they are. Take my word for it.

Intuition could be the tool that saves you from the nets of a cult. I saw that happen to a friend. It's scary. That's also why I made episode two of this podcast about cult proofing your journey. I invite you, my friend to put learning about your intuition and trusting it a priority.

Jose Pereira was looking forward to a well-earned retirement from his position of executive of an oil and gas company when he received a phone call to make one last business trip to Venezuela. It was a routine trip and he was looking forward to have it done and dealt with. Never in a million years did he imagine that it would lead to him being held captive as hostage by the government in a politic row between Venezuela and the USA.

When Jose finally came back from those five years of hell, he became aware that his case was actually not that unusual and that there was a community of people in the US whose loved ones were held captive in various parts of the world like Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, China, Syria and Cuba to name a few. He felt the urge to connect with these families and they created a Bring Our Family Home Campaign. Within a month, he was invited to Washington where a big mural with his picture was created. This was the start of his advocating career.

It's not just US citizens, though. Citizens from all over the world are held hostages in countries that use them as bargaining chips in their diplomatic relationships with Western countries. How they become hostages vary. Sometimes they go to someone's wedding, or on holidays, or on a business trip like Jose. Journalists, of course. Environmentalists. Human rights advocates. None of them ever imagined that it would end this way. Nothing prepares you for this. And most people think it's never going to happen to them. And sadly, these people have become a global family around these terrible events. What did they do to deserve that? They held the wrong passport at the wrong place.

So why have I invited Jose to my podcast about spirituality? Because I wanted to find out if his extreme experience had deepened his spirituality but above all, I wanted to understand how he kept the faith, regardless of whether he considered himself spiritual or religious. I also wanted Jose to share whatever nuggets of wisdom that he had, as I felt his experience could help people in different circumstances.

As Jose's wife so pertinently said to him a few weeks ago: "Adversity always comes with a phone call." You receive a phone call from the doctor that you have cancer. In my case, I received a phone call that my father died. Or you receive a phone call that your son has had a car crash. Nothing prepares you for this. First, you deny this. Then you begin to accept the situation. And then you need to make a decision. You decide how you are going to overcome it.

Jose had always been a positive guy and although the first year was horrid, after that first year, he began to make a choice about how he would experience the ordeal. Leaning back into his positive mindset is what Jose believe saved him. Jose believes that in life, if you have a positive mindset, you cope with challenges a lot better.

Before he was held hostage, Jose wasn't particularly religious. And as mentioned before, in the first year, he questioned why this was happening to him. He wondered what he had done wrong. He even wondered if he had called this situation to himself because a week before the trip, he was in a car on his way to work and he reflected on what a wonderful life he had had, and said to himself the only thing you need in life is something bad happening to you.

There was a turning point for Jose when he realised that he had to find a meaning for this experience. And luckily at that point, he and his inmates were allowed access to books. And the book that changed everything for Jose was Man's Search for Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust by Viktor Frankl. This book boosted Jose' faith to the point that at the first opportunity, he started a Bible study group with the other hostages. This was kind of ironic, as Jose had driven many times past churches in Texas, where he lives, and looked at these churches and wondered why people attended Bible studies. To him, back then, it sounded ridiculous. So this whole experience, instead of making Jose bitter, deepened his faith. And when he read the Bible with the other hostages, he really felt that God was besides him.

But it wasn't just faith in God. It was faith in life and faith in humanity.

This only happened because Jose was willing to look for the gold in the experience. And of course, it is not something you can do right away. But it is what people call a growth mindset.

Jose is launching his first memoir called From Hero to Villain on Publishizer. To support his crowdfunding campaign, Click here He already has the plan to write two more memoirs.

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I hate to rain on your parade, because I am generally a very positive and uplifting person, but today I need to tell you about the danger of being roped into a cult, as a spiritual seeker and of course, the lawyer in me immediately wants to give you tools to protect you from that. And this is what episode 2 of the True Spirituality Podcast is all about. Let's do this.

There is an incredibly high risk, on your spiritual journey, that you will come across people who are dishonest and who will try to enrol you into cults. I watched a documentary released on Netflix in the UK in July called How to Become a Cult Leader and believe me, it's blood-curdling. The documentary was very well made, but as is often the case, it did not give you the antidote. It just showed facts. I am all about antidotes so this episode is going to give you some serious tips on how to cult proof your spiritual journey.

In 2023 alone, the press reported ten cases of cult scandals, one of which, related to a coaching company called Inside Lighthouse in the UK, hit a particularly chord because self development is a noble activity. Who do you trust? There are so many genuine coaches, yoga teachers, meditation teachers and hypnotherapists out there who do good work but whose work has been tainted because of some unscrupulous individuals in their field.

I also want to add that I believe that religious dogma paves the way for cults in ways that need to be exposed. Most cults thrive on the ideas of there being evil in the world, that you are a sinner that somehow needs to be redeemed and purified, that the world will end soon and that they have superpowers (similar to those that Catholics attribute to Jesus). Dogma is not neutral. It is a form of manipulation. The oxford dictionary defines it as a belief that you are asked not to question. When you have been manipulated once, you are more inclined to be manipulated again because you have adopted a thought hole (a concept that we will explore in a further episode and that comes from the brilliant book Out of the Fog by Dana Morningstar). Basically a thought hole is a fault in thinking.

Before we go any further, I want to own that I have a vested interest in this episode. When I was a law student in the 80s, I did a gap year in England. I met a lovely American woman who became a very close friend. She was in all things spiritual and actually dragged me to see my first psychic medium whilst I visited her in New England. A few years later, she was roped into a cult. I stayed in touch and supported her when she left the cult, five kids later. It was bound to make a very strong impression on me and it created a passion for me to keep spiritual seekers safe.

We have argued over time, my friend and I, as I saw her situation as a domestic violence situation whereas she likes to label it as a cult experience. Over the years, I have come to realise that there was no need to argue as they are very similar experiences anyway. Cult leaders are narcissists.

There are five main types of cults: religious, self help, success, new age and personal. My friend's cult pretended to want to create a better world. There are lots of cults who pose as environmental movements. Many cults have a front as meditation centres. This reminds me of Alexis in Schitt's Creek when she joins that gym that sells health supplements. Yes, that's real. In fact, a very prominent cult in the US supplies sushi to restaurants. Cults are businesses and are into big money.

In case you think you are above mind control and manipulation, I want to draw your attention to an experiment done in the 60s, the results of which have been duplicated in 2006, called the Milgram experiment. This is part of research into the theory of conformism, which at the start, wanted to understand if what happened in Nazi Germany had a risk of happening in America. The answer is: yes. Non of us are immune to manipulation and mind control, no matter our level of education. The results of that study blindsided the scientific community.

Now, for the good part, how do you cult proof your spiritual journey?

Tip #1: Cultivate discernment

Tip #2: Learn about narcissism

Tip #3: Learn to identify dogma

Tip #4: Beware of the part of you that wants to believe in miracles or short cuts

Tip #5: Recognise red flags

Tip #6: Learn about mental manipulation and mind games

Tip #7: Understand your weaknesses

I go into more details of each of those tips in the actual episodes.

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