The C Word.

Of all the ways in which my higher/inner guidance likes to speak to me, my favorite is through song lyrics. 

How it works: I’ll be experiencing some sort of issue or a moment of not having clarity in my life. Whatever the current struggle is, I’ll ask my higher guidance a question intentionally or unintentionally. An intentional question would be one where I’m actively praying or asking for help, as in, “What can I know or do about _____?”. An unintentional question is one I ask merely through emotion, by virtue of experiencing enough pain or overwhelming frustration. (Cue to me hysterically crying under my coffee table). Once asked, either immediately or later on in the day when I’m distracted with other things, a song will make its way into my awareness. It could actually be playing on speakers somewhere around me, I can find myself singing certain lyrics out of the blue, a friend may “randomly” send me a music video, or the song might just float into my consciousness while in that hazy dream state in between sleep and awake. Whenever and however I receive it, the song is usually one I haven’t heard in years. I recognize that it’s a message for me when the intuitive sensors start going off in my body. *

*In the near future, I’ll teach a class on how to receive messages from your higher guidance. If you’re interested, sign up at the bottom of the page to stay updated on when it’s available!

For those that don’t know, last October I attracted a job working as an intuitive reader and spiritual teacher at a metaphysical shop in Los Angeles. And while I am no longer employed at this shop, I’m incredibly appreciative of what I gained there. Up until I was hired on staff, I’d only been offering about one or two energy readings every other day. And while I had been working my intuitive muscles for a bit, this particular job was like bootcamp. During my employment there, I read an average of 4 (and sometimes up to 8) people a day, 3 to 6 days a week. It was wonderful, exhilarating, and rewarding. And it was also exhausting, frustrating, and incredibly purposeful. Sometimes we can’t know what we do want until we recognize what we don’t want. In this way, life is always taking us where we need to go next. No matter what the situation is, we can let the pleasing and unpleasing aspects of it help us to refine our preferences, get clearer on our desires, and then move in our intended direction. We really are always being brought the perfect circumstances to facilitate a necessary expansion in awareness. Or in plainer terms: we live, we learn.  

Due to the many common misconceptions around what intuitives, psychics, and energy workers actually do, I was often expected to be some kind of fortune teller. And while some people who do this work may revel in that identity, I certainly didn’t like it for myself. Sure, I loved having those moments of “how did you know that?!?” psychic clarity. When someone would come back to me with a “you were so right about…” I found it to be incredible validation that we’re all connected in this mysterious universe, yet it’s only part of the picture. Just simply informing people about what might happen to them made me feel like I was under-serving them. It also made me feel like I was being under-used. I wanted to help people help themselves, not just dole out some likely prediction of events, as if I had any more power over their lives (or any more of a connection to their own intuition) than they did.

I recently found this wonderful quote by a leader in the field of intuitive research and education which literally made me shout “YES!!!” when I read it:
 
“Whenever I find myself or my colleagues getting excited about the latest way intuition can be used to predict or nail down the future, I cringe. I think we are missing the point. The point is to become comfortable with your inner knowing and let that knowing interface with a vast network of fluid, interlacing probabilities. It is not about making something “out there” happen as much as letting “something in here” participate in evolving a life story you enjoy.”    - Sharon Franquemont

Energy readings (atleast for those of us who are fortune-telling averse) are much more about getting to the root of a client’s patterns and blocks and then offering relevant suggestions to positively assist them on their path. Being able to pick up specific details or to sense future probabilities is cool, and can definitely be comforting and helpful, but reminding people of the part they play in creating that future  - that they have their own intuitive guidance already existing within them - started to become much more important to me.  

And so, as appreciative as I was for the job opportunity, eventually being marketed as a “Tarot Reader” or a “Clairvoyant," just didn’t feel quite right. Yes, sometimes I used tarot or oracle cards. Yes, I picked up intuitive information using my senses (or clairs). Yes, I knew the right clients would find me regardless of what I was called. And they did. I connected with a bunch of really awesome people while in my position. I still, however, felt conflicted. There are so many healers, mentors, and motivators marketing themselves as readers and psychics (some of which are my dearest friends and teachers) who are doing great work! And yet, after a handful of months of working professionally at the shop, my own intuition was telling me it was time to move on from what I was doing; that I was supposed to branch out in a new way, perhaps from a different tree. But what/where/how exactly? 

The answers will always present themselves when we are ready to hear them. Remember what I said about song lyrics? Well, one afternoon in April (not too long after I realized it was time for me to move on from my position) I was packing up my reading room when I suddenly heard a song playing in my head. It was John Fogerty’s Centerfield and specifically the lyrics, “Put me in coach, I’m ready to play.” As it’s not exactly a song I have on regular rotation (I actually don’t think I’d heard it in 20 years) I recognized this for what it was: a message finding its way into my surface mind through my higher guidance. 

But wait, “Put me in… COACH?”

To be honest, I’ve always had resistance to the C word. For years, even before I was doing this work, I had been told by friends, family, and strangers alike, “You should be a life coach!” And my usual response was a grimacing “Thanks, yeah I don’t think so.” 

It’s funny because the essence of what I’ve done in pretty much all of my work in the past 5 years as an artist, writer, and energy reader has been inspirational. Positive. Life-affirming. Healing. Motivating. It’s been… coaching.

Maybe my resistance to the term stemmed from mental associations with athletic coaches and team sports, which has never really been my thing. Besides that one time I was a sophomore on my high school’s FRESHMAN field hockey team. And the most fun thing about that was smoking pot with my friends before practice. 

Maybe it was that I didn’t want anyone else to tell me what I “should” do or be.

Maybe it was just that I wasn’t ready. And we’re not ready until we’re ready. Until all the necessary components line up. 

It’s hard to know when following the pull of our intuition, if we are just being led to another bridge or if we are to arrive at a more permanent destination. We can ask “is this the RIGHT ONE?” when referring to a new love interest, job title, or residence. Yet, does it even really matter? Perhaps it doesn’t matter as much when we remember our eternal nature. That we are constantly expanding and evolving souls having human experiences, and that our true power, value, security and identity doesn’t come from the other people in our lives or the situations in which we find ourselves. That true solace never comes from the temporary. And that Life is always taking us where we need to go next. When we come from this viewpoint, we can trust that it is always the “right one” for what we need “right now,” whether it lasts one day, one year, or for the rest of our lives. And the “right now” - this present moment - is all we’re ever really living anyway. 

*Card from Steven Farmer's Earth Magic oracle deck*

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​I think this is why I love the symbol of the dragonfly so much. To me, it indicates a willingness to change shape, to evolve, to allow for the natural evolution of our being. And to bring with us all of the knowledge of our former selves.  

And so, now when you check out my services, you’ll notice that I offer “coachings” instead of “readings.” Because that’s what they’ve always been! I’ll still be doing my channeled written readings because they’re continuing to feel in alignment for me. And that is really all I can do. It’s all any of us can do: honor what feels most interesting, exciting, and authentically in alignment; moving forward one intuitively guided step at a time. 
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