Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Thea Sullivan | Awakening Your Intuition

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Interview with Thea Sullivan | Awakening Your Intuition · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Kay Eck, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, everybody.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited to be here today with my friend Thea Sullivan.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: And Thea and I have known each other for who knows, I don't know, years.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we've had a lot of, we've shared our path quite closely for a few years, which has been absolutely wonderful.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: I highly recommend having a friend like Thea to share this crazy journey with.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: So first of all, thank you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for being here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my pleasure.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: So before we get started today, I just want to usually I like to start with, you know, kind of going into a little bit of your background and talking a little bit about this concept of awakening.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that you and I have in common, I think, in our shared journey is that we um had a strong commitment to the academic and intellectual way of being.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I thought maybe we could jump in there because we're both writers and initially came at it from that academic and intellectual side.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then things kind of shifted for both of us.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: So let's start there.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a little bit about how you started out.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh started out as a human.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: As a yeah, as a as a human or as a writer in your okay.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, I'll just back up and say that um as a kid and as an adolescent, um, I was always sort of hungry for meaning.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a lot of uh existential angst as a young person that didn't make a lot of sense in the context of where I lived or how I grew up.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had questions that nobody seemed to be interested in, nothing against them, but they were they everybody around me seemed more content with things as they were, and I was always unsatisfied, I guess, or yearning for something more.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I liked to go to church as a kid, even though my family wasn't religious, um, because it just seemed to get at the bigger questions or gave me some kind of solace.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I found literature, and it was in English classes as a young person that finally we were having the conversations that began to approach my questions.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I idolized my English teachers because they talked about why are we here and what does it mean to be a human being and what's important.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, even I even remember reading books in high school like even like Dostoyevsky and the idea of like Christian existentialism.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I was it was the closest that I could come to the yearning that I felt.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I studied literature.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I did I studied some religious studies, but um, I often think that like what have I always been interested in what have been like, yeah, the what is the meaning of life, you know, um the idea of creativity, mysticism, um, spirituality, they were always there, but I didn't really have words for them.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, an academic path and a path of studying literature um came the closest that I could find.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Even though go ahead.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's so fascinating because I I actually I that's exactly how I would describe my youth.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was always like, you know, the one that was like moody and broody, excuse me, and like in the corner observing like what the hell when everybody else seemed to, I think everybody has those questions, but some people are able to sort of keep them at bay, and some people just absolutely have to drive forward toward them.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess I that would be that would characterize us both, have to drive toward them, yes, not turn away.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have a little story that pops to mind that I'll tell you.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I I loved reading as a kid, and I, you know, consumed all of the Laura Ingalls-Wilder books like many young girls do.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what I um I did with it was I remember sitting in the backseat of my parents' car as a probably a preteen and imagining that Laura was with me in the backseat, and we would be driving.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember particularly, we lived outside of New York City in Connecticut, and I remember sometimes we would drive on the um, well, I I can't remember it's called the Cross Bronx Expressway.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, at that time in the 70s, there was a lot of urban blight all around, you know, some burned-out buildings and things, and and things were, you know, a lot of there's a lot of urban decay.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking about the lives of the people who who lived in those neighborhoods, and I remember talking to Laura in my mind and trying to explain to her how we got here, like, yeah, because it seemed like the world she lived in made more sense to me in my imagination, you know, and and also the sense of the earth.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what have we done?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this is because I I could feel that she would be sad if she saw what I was seeing out the window.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did she speak back?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, we she just looked out the window.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so but there was a point at which I think literature wasn't enough.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I yeah, I I tried to go to church and church wasn't quite right either.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then well, and then there's a way that you know I love to write and I love to create, and then that became sort of something I got very driven about and very ambitious about, and that's another rabbit hole that one can go down.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: So this this, you know, kind of angsty period that you went through, or just your way of being in the world, which was very deep and thoughtful and yearning and seeking, how did that fit into your family structure?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Were were you different?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: What did that make things difficult for you?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, I was the sensitive one in my family.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I was uh I was sort of labeled oversensitive or um, you know, I thought too much.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think my family um wanted me to lighten up, you know.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was hard for them, I think.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't understand.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I also became sort of the uh what's the word for that?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I sort of became the emotional support person for both my parents as I got older.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Their marriage was not very happy, um, and they both sort of turned to me.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: My mom says, and who she's gone through her own spiritual journey and is an amazing woman at 79.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the time she was really struggling and depressed and um, you know, drinking too much, both my parents were drinking too much, and she used to say that I was the only one who was present in the family.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: She said it was like I how does she put it?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was it was the only I was the only one the where the light was on or something.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so she would turn to me to get her emotional needs met.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I remember genuinely wanting to help my parents, you know, like I could feel their unhappiness, and I just wanted to make them happy.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I became very unhappy, you know.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how much I took on of their suffering.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that went on for years where I was, I just felt energetically felt their their suffering.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: That that early um that your early period really reminds me also of my youth, in that I think that when a when a child is deep and and seeking, that that gets mislabeled as sad and depressed.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's it it it it's not the same thing, you know.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's like a searching for something that's missing.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you're missing you're searching for your wholeness, and that's like really hard to do.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that mislabeling it doesn't help because then you start to think there's something wrong with you.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I absolutely thought there was something wrong with me.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I became what they call in psychology, I was sort of the identified patient, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was the one who was depressed or the one who, you know, um something was wrong with me.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was the feeling, and I it's funny because I just remembered, um, and I know this is normal developmentally, but all that started, I think, more like right around the time of hitting puberty, because before that I was a super joyful kid.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I look back at this and I find this so interesting.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: I convinced my parents to decorate my room when I was in elementary school, all in rainbows.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I had literally multicolored rainbow wallpaper, I had a rainbow bed spread, I had rainbow everything.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, and I was really, really joyful.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I still think I'm trying to get back to that girl, like because it was, yeah, I was just pr I also used to write.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is funny.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I used to write like a lot of little girls, I used to write on my binder, Thea is great.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, still trying to get back to to that girl.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: She's you know, she's still with me, but yeah, yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I kind of feel like I've just gotten back to my second grade self.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I have like, I feel like there's finally a match.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it feels amazing.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: It honestly feels amazing.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and not only to just like be in that space of second greaterness, but also to know that who I was then was real and authentic, yes, and and valid and just right.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you know, yeah, that's been amazing, amazing thing.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sure natural joy and and sort of sense of well-being.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I and that's I mean, we're this is like maybe getting off topic a little bit, but I think we have ideas about what joy is that might be a little bit distorted.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we think it means like happy and laughing and dancing, and of course that's wonderful, and who doesn't want to do that?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: But there's also but to me, it's like that unwavering sense of rightness.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no matter what happens around you, you're right.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and true, yes, you know, and that I feel like that I've got that I've got, and that's been the gift of the last, I don't know, I want to say the five years or so.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that sense of unwavering peace, no matter what is going on, yeah, yeah.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, joy is like a little quieter, and I feel it like an upwelling of like warmth and well-being.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've got like the goosebumps.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, good.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: So going back to your trajectory, you started to become really ambitious about your writing.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: What did that look like?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know, I took a lot of creative writing uh workshops in college, I published a story in the graduate literary magazine at my university.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, um I looked into graduate school for creative writing.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I thought about going to New York to do freelance writing.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to make my name as a writer, basically.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I um I thought I'd be a fiction writer.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's ironically, looking back now, and now I, you know, teach intuition and I'm obsessed with uh inner knowing and how do we know what we know.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was a fiction writer, but I realize now the reason I thought that is because the first course I got into it was by lottery in my university, was fiction, beginning fiction writing, and I did well and I got a lot of praise.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, okay, I'm a fiction writer.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I went on for another five years thinking I was a fiction writer, even though I've always been more of a poet, more of an essayist, but it took me a long time to come back to that because I had heard other people tell me that I was I was good at it.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and plus being a fiction writer was cool and I wanted to be cool.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I always um though this isn't really supposed to be about me.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead, Kay.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I I never saw myself as a fiction writer.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I cannot make up stories, but I can tell you like what's going on like right now.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's funny, but and and that's funny that you mentioned poetry because poetry is actually more nonfiction than fiction, isn't it?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I wrote poetry since I was a young teenager, and that was actually uh another one of those like finding a path was when I wrote poetry, and it's kind of cliche to say I was an angsty adolescent who wrote poetry, but really that was a container for my questions for you know the meaning that I was looking for, and it it it worked kind of to talk to the page through poetry, it could contain how I was feeling and what I was you know wondering about in a way that nothing else in my life could.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that's you know, um writing that's been the through line really for writing for me is that it's been uh even though it's changed the way the way that I use it and the way that I think about it, it it has been the most reliable outlet and container and path for me on my journey.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: So when you were following that ambition to become a writer, yeah, um, where did that lead you?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um there were some interesting U-turns.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So when I graduated from college, I um, you know, I had published some fiction and I I wanted to, like as I say, I wanted to become a writer, but I was also scared.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what that would look like.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I also wanted to be a teacher.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I wanted to be an English teacher, like the English teachers that I so admired as a young person.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I also met a guy who oh, I don't know, was kind of an insecure guy and really into teaching, and I think a little threatened by my writing ability or something.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I did one of those sort of U-turns where I was like, oh, I'm not gonna write, I'm just gonna teach.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I sort of I sort of gave away my power for a while, um, and then reclaimed it, and then uh I mean, I taught English and I taught in in high school, middle school, and high school in my 20s, and I taught poetry, and I shared poems with kids, and I got them writing poems, and I, you know, hopefully I tried to be the English teacher that I loved having.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then, but but I guess I would say that I was too afraid to really pursue the writing path the way that I wanted to.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a conflict.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But by the time I was 28, uh 27, I quit being a English teacher.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: I moved to a cabin in the woods, I spent like a year writing, and then I applied to graduate school in creative writing.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought I have to do this before I'm 30.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have to, and by at and during that time, that was one of those times.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when you talk about spiritual awakening, there have been these junctures in my life where I sort of threw everything up in the air because I didn't know I knew what I was doing wasn't quite working for me, and I didn't know what I needed to be doing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was privileged enough to be able to take this time and to live in this cabin that my family owned and to not work for a little while and to just try to see what was next for me.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that wasn't the first time that I had carved out time in my life to um to work on my writing, and it kind of turned into something different.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'll tell you about this other time when I was about 26 years old and I was working as a high school teacher, and I decided to go part-time at my job so that I could have some hours every day to write.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was excited about this and ambitious about it, and I had this whole plan about how many stories I was gonna write.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And day after day, what happened as I sat down on my desk is that I was really struggling with this fiction writing, and I was feeling all this emotional stuff come up, which turned out to be a lot of grief from childhood and stuff that had just not there'd not been room for it in my life, and I really felt like I was failing, and um, I was beating myself up about it, and then I'd go back to the fiction and try to make it work and just suffer, and finally one day, and I was beginning to have more of a sense of my own spirituality at that time too, reading books and um it was 1993 in San Francisco, and the city is alive with spiritual things happening, so that was in my consciousness too, and in my sense of self too.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was this one day in March of 1993.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was sitting at my desk and I was trying to write fiction, it wasn't working.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was tired of crying, I felt just completely emptied out, and I just prayed for help.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I literally looked up and said, help.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to do.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was so unhappy and and felt like I was failing.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to hear words in my head, not audibly, but it was like thoughts appearing in my head, but they weren't my thoughts.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And this, I hadn't had this experience before, so I just wrote them down.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I kept they kept coming and I kept writing them down, and they kept coming and I kept writing them down.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I um I also felt a tingling at the top of my head, like on my crown.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I felt a little like, whoa.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I didn't really know what this was.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was making it up, but I I always say like I was just so happy to be putting words on the page that were flowing easily that I was like, whatever, I'm just gonna write this stuff down.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when I looked back at it, well, two, a couple interesting things happened.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, I realized it didn't sound like me.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: The words were more um succinct and eloquent than I would write.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Also, that it was addressing me.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: There were actually these kind of declarative statements addressing me.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized, oh, that's the answer to my prayer.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I thought I was making it up and I was questioning myself, and but then a few days later I would go back and read it again and have no memory of having written it.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been true ever since.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now I, you know, I channel for clients and I I channel, I have manuscripts of channel material, and when I go back, I usually don't remember any of it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, um, yeah, and when clients will say, Oh, the guide said this thing to me, and I'll be like, uh, let me refresh my memory because I have no idea.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that helped me um know that this was a different kind of writing than I had done before.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: So then did you go through a period of denying that because you ended up back in the cabin?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, writing fiction.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the thing that was interesting.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So um I I thought that was very cool that that I was getting that kind of help, basically.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's part of me who was super uncomfortable with it and thought it was too weird.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if I even if I said, Oh, this is channeling, that would be way too grandiose.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it I found the advice very helpful.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was a basically the theme was listen and let go, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let go of your agenda, like let things come to you.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was a lot of surrender, trust, listen, let go.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and to the extent that I applied that to my writing, it was actually really helping.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, on a and and I gradually stopped trying to write fiction and I gradually started to write poetry.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And essays.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually in a few years after that, I'm jumping ahead, but I um I began teach teaching creative writing using the principles that were given to me who I would later understand to be the guides from the higher aspects.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I sort of put it, I sort of compartmentalized it.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I sort of put it in a box.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this kind of writing.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: I sort of saw it as my personal like spiritual writing coach, not as I mean, I did ask questions about issues in my life, and I think I may have told a roommate that I'm doing this thing, but yeah, I was pretty tight-lipped about it because I was pretty ambivalent about it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was a lot of fear about grandiosity or um who did I think I was to think that I maybe was channeling.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that was 93, and I did not go public until 2016.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: So was there also a part of you that had to let go of thinking that your writing came from your mind and that that was your craft?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I still think of them as sort of two different things.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um how do I put this?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's writing is channeling on one side, and when I do that, it's just straight, like comes straight out.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I don't do crap, I don't craft it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I might change, I don't know, I don't even really change any words at this point.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I still think of sort of my creative writing, because I have written and published personal essays and poetry and stuff.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um the difference is that I don't, I mean, ironically, how do I put this?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Most of my adult life has been spent thinking about creativity and where it comes from and what to do with it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: So now I work more specifically with spirituality, with people and their paths, with get getting them guidance, um, talking about intuition.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But for most of my adult life, I took the principles that I was getting through the guides and I applied them to my own creativity and to other people's creativity.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So where and I do think within that, and just like in life in general, the mind has a role.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: The mind just has to come in much, much later in the process.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like what the guides have taught me is that you know, um, it's kind of like inspiration comes first, and then what you do with it comes next.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than the problem that I was having earlier was I was driving with my mind, right?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was deciding which direction I should go in, what I should do, how it should look, all with my mind.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And my spirit wasn't cooperating, like my heart was not on board.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I suffered.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was in an intense inner turmoil, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And now I understand that the the surrender is about like we have to lead from our intuition and our heart and our spirit, and then we can use our mind to help us navigate in the in the world.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: But um I mean, the the guides talk about it as like if our if our our spirit, our intuition, our heart, our even you know, our soul's agenda, that's she that's sort of the the divine feminine knowing queen who makes the decisions about what's gonna happen.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then our masculine doing active principle is sort of the knight who goes out and executes.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean to suggest that the soul is not, I mean, that the soul is there masculine and feminine are obviously um in balance and married on a spiritual level, but that that that the the receptive has to come before the active, yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you've talked about how your spiritual path has manifest in your professional life.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Has it also changed how you're in the world in a personal way, in your relationships?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, definitely, definitely.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to go back to what we talked about when I was a kid and I was picking up on people's emotions and trying to um, you know, be a support person for both my parents, and um so in some ways dealing with that kind of sensitivity or the ability to pick up on other people's feelings um has been something I've had to learn to work with.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um because what came along with that, with the the yearning to go back to that, the yearning that I felt was also about yearning to connect with people on a deep level.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the um dangers of that for me was always finding other people wanting.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why aren't they present like I want to be present?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why aren't they being sensitive like I want to be sensitive or something?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: So part of my spiritual journey um and my journey of personal growth has been to also let go of who I what I expect from other people, and really realizing that my work is my work, like I need to um own my own emotional journey and let other people be as they are, and so that has meant having relationships that are based on um me not trying to change the other person, uh me not making other people wrong for being different than I am, and also me um accepting that I need a lot of space to do emotional work and to be as sensitive as I am, and nobody else has to fix that for me, but that becomes something that it's like it's kind of a journey of self-love, really, and realizing that the yearning part of it is to turn that yearning back into inward and to find what I'm looking for within.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in that way, becoming, I guess they say self-sourcing, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been um that's taken me a long time to get to that point where I I don't just believe it, I feel it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that when I need something, it's not that I'm not gonna ask for support from friends and you know, my loved ones, but ultimately my support is within and from the divine through myself.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then the guides have taught me that, and that then they the guides say that when we become self-sourcing, we become both the lover and the beloved, or actually the beloved and then the lover.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I have learned to feel beloved, to know myself as beloved, and then nobody else has to kind of meet my checklist of how they need to be for me.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I'm in a situation that's untenable, I can say this isn't working for me.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: But but beyond that, I mean, within the context of healthy relationships, it's nobody's job to make me feel loved.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's my job to know I'm loved, and then it's my job to radiate out that love in a uh just naturally, right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and I hope that that has that has taken a lot of pressure off the people who love me.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um wow, that's really powerful.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So and I'll say one more thing about that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's also about realizing we're all you know, we're all souls on our journey.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not here to judge anybody because I don't know what they're up to.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just like I didn't know what I was up to for a long time.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: You learned to, I mean, I think it's kind of like incredible and awesome that you literally have a life coach inside your head.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like very lucky, or like somewhere over your shoulder.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's like kind of sounds crazy to me.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: But the truth is that we all have that.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: And this is your work, is now is to teach people how to connect with the teacher within, the guide within.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: So talk a little bit about um how you went from teaching writing to teaching intuition.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think in a funny way, when I taught creative writing, my my course at my course that I taught for 15 years was called the intuitive voice, which is kind of funny.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I was teaching writers how to connect to that natural voice that wanted to come through them and to accept it as you know naturally unique and to stop comparing themselves to other people, but really and and to stop to kind of get the mind out of the way, just like I had to learn to do myself.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I did we did meditation and you know, we did a lot of sort of connect to your intuition as a writer in my course.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, in in a way, I was already teaching that and I didn't quite realize it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, then I took a break from that teaching, had a child, and was quite sort of um absorbed in in that.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it was kind of time for me to pick up my career again, um I just sort of felt this sea change that I didn't want to teach writing anymore.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I kind of just wanted to connect more with the guides, and actually, when I sat down to write more and more, I just didn't feel compelled to create as much as I felt compelled to just listen and let what wanted to come through come through.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it ended up being the guides sort of started to almost write essays through me about big questions.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and actually, I think I backed into teaching about intuition and even backed into working with clients because I had a manuscript of channeled material that I was shopping around, and I happen to have an agent who you know hasn't we haven't sold anything together, but she's committed to working with me when I have something.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I showed her this manuscript and she said, This is all great stuff, but we kind of need to know who you are in this field.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you might want to, and every writer has heard this, right?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where's your promotional platform?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: And who are you anyway?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that made me think, well, let me try giving readings for clients for friends, and I gave them for free to friends to see how that went.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it went great.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: It blew my mind, actually.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I was able to bring through guidance for them in a way I'd only ever brought through for myself and for my husband.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I guess the way that that got me to teaching intuition is because the guides are teachers, like the what I the energy I bring through is really a very much of a teaching energy.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily a here are the answers to all your questions.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more like here's the next lesson for you to work on so that you can know your own answers.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um I and and I feel this very clearly when I tune in to the guides, um, is that they they really want us to come up to the level where they are.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a hierarchical energy at all, it's actually a very like empowering energy.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um they sort of see us as friends and peers.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're just on a different level of consciousness than they are, partly because we incarnated on the earth where it's dense and you know there's a lot that and they have so much love and respect for the choice to incarnate as a human, like they're really quite in awe of us, which is a really cool feeling.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but they really want us to learn to know what we know, and so that sort of energy of um instruction kind of coming through gave me all this material and also just made me really feel like I want to share that with more people, and I want to translate it into more of our language.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and here's another interesting thing.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I resisted the guides as what they were or what work I was doing for many years, obviously, like 20 years.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then I resisted being a collaborator with them.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: They can I kept wanting to be the kind of channel who just puts everything on paper and walks away, like this is theirs, not mine, and I'm just the vessel.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: They actually call me the vessel, which is funny, but they I have gotten the message over and over again that I'm also the translator and I'm the collaborator.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: They said they want to be consultants with me.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: They want me to go ahead and like take the reins and like you know, um, bring this down to earth.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I guess that's I just felt like the need and the desire to empower people to know their own answers and to hear their own inner wisdom.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because really I think it's it's it's kind of similar to teaching writing.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: What I was doing when I was teaching writing is to say, forget everything that everybody else has told you or all the comparisons you're doing.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and like uh it's almost like you can't see yourself because you're you but it's all already there, and I think this is true about inner knowing.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we just haven't been taught to know what we know.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these layers on top, like socialization and comparison and what we've been taught as.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what to go back to the idea of you and I both having kind of intellectual training and valuing academia, I mean, all that stuff's pretty cool, but it also can really screw us up in terms of what we think is real or true or respectable or necessary.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, a lot of it are valued.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it's about unlearning.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, part of what I had to do to get where I am now is also decide that it I could let go of what anyone else thought of me.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a big one, isn't it?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really big one.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, especially when you seek you were seeking to be respected in an intellectual and academic way.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: That I just find that really hard to let go of.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: I I found it hard to let go of.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: I st I'm still struggling with that some days, you know.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like sometimes I don't bring out all the guns, you know, like I bring out a water pistol.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and the fear of being weird or different or um or the fear of um being um what's the word I want?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Dismissed or um okay, so I um I would say like the culture that I grew up in, like stuff that would be considered spiritual or you know, new agey, it would be laughed at, it would be seen as silly, yeah, minimized, minimized, marginalized, yeah.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, and oh, that's something that like kooky people do, right?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I think that's why it took me so many years to be out, yeah.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, I uh this is kind of sad to say, but my my dad died in 2016 and I launched my business in 2017, and I adored my dad, but he was very much a product of the you know, I guess he was a benevolent patriarch, basically.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he was one of the people who would laugh uncomfortably about spiritual things.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's and I wouldn't, I would have probably still launched my work publicly, but I would never have told him.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would have kept it from him because I didn't want to be laughed at, and I his opinion mattered so much to me.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I still I still feel that way, honestly.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like yeah, yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: But it's getting better, isn't it?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it is, and and for me, it's also like the way I like to work and the language I like to use, like part of my what feels like my calling.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of you know, letting my intuition speak.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so part of what I think my role is is to normalize this stuff.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because and I think that you know, in one of our first conversations, Kay, you talked about the idea of being a bridge tender and uh the idea of creating a bridge between ordinary consciousness and sort of the new consciousness, right?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm if I'm putting that the right way, and I really feel that like I really want to be a welcoming gateway for people to say, um, no, you're not weird.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's okay to listen to um you know, signs, synchronicities, dreams, um, these urges um to believe that there's much more going on here.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my favorite things to do when I teach intuition is we have a class where I give everyone like a checklist, and and it's kind of that game like, have you ever?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And on the checklist are all sort of have you ever felt like a deceased loved one was around?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen something and known it meant something more?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had an encounter with an animal that just was just gave you goosebumps for some reason?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a whole I have a whole list of them, and people check off as many as apply, and then we go around the circle and everyone tells a story.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And by the end, and some of these are things they've never said out loud, they've never admitted this because they dismissed it, or because they just it would be too weird to mention it, but everybody has these stories.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say the great majority of human beings have these stories.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we don't share them, yeah.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And by and I'll tell you, the energy in the room when we're done is fantastic, it's like champagne.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: People are laughing and they're so relieved, and people will have these incredible aha's during that class.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my god, that time that I saw that whatever it's called, murmuration of swallows out my window on my mother's birthday 10 years after she died.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was my mom.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that was something, or you know, and and that sense of mutual discovery and safety, yeah, and magic.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, yeah.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I yeah, I think of um living the way that I I was brought up to live, that we were all brought up to live, is like it's good and it's like right here.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like in an it's in a narrow lane, yes, and letting go of the barriers, the borders, and in embracing all the rest of it is like living like this.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you know, it's like it's just it's it's so much better.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's like no way to put it, it's just so much better.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, it's I really want to thank you for being here and talking about that because I have so much respect for you and I love and I you're you know, I love your journey because it's just like mine.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: So um thank you.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I'll and then one thing I'll say about this is the other thing about this for me is is that there's not room for the deep feelings, you know, the harder stuff, the denser stuff that that needs to that we need to work through and release to make space for the for the joy or the higher awareness or whatever.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of constraining us on both sides.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and it does take a certain kind of courage.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it does.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: To to let that um to trust ourselves, to trust what wants to come through, good and bad, right?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: To kind of ride those waves.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I have to say, I think that's the been the greatest source of that peace that we talked about before is like.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm realizing I'm not wrong.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not like there's not something wrong with me.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm I all the things that I where I thought I was off track, I was right on track.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's been a huge gift.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I can look back and go, oh Thea, you did a good job.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I kept listening to myself, even though I thought I was crazy or wrong or failing or yeah, just not succeeding at life because my inner journey took up so much space in my life.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now I now I'm reaping the rewards of it and able to give so much to other people without you know uh as a benefit to myself too, because I did all that.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's so beautiful.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: I love that so much.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm grateful, you know.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now I get to have friends like you, K.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's incredible.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, all right.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that sounds like this is a good time to maybe slip into our lightning round.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, fun.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, are you ready?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right, the uh, what's your favorite holiday?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Christmas.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't expecting myself to say that.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh it just popped out.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that it the hope, I think the hope of Christmas, like even though I don't really identify particularly as Christian, I think the uh the beauty of the Christmas story and the idea of like Christ incarnating to be with us is still a very moving idea to me.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: I said to me, it's all about the sprink the the um twinkly lights and the candles.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: I like the lights too.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I like the tree too.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I also love Jesus.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: I love the Jesus story too.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I I say that I had to uh for a I broke up with Jesus a while ago and I just started thinking about getting back together with him, so we'll see how that goes.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's cool either way, yeah, he is, yeah.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um do you feel infinite?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if so, how does that feel?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I feel infinite in the sense that I am unafraid of dying.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I worry uh occasionally about like, well, I don't want to be in pain or whatever, but I have no doubt that I will go on after this life.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of excited to see what's next.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that gives me such comfort.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely feel bigger than this human.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes in my, you know, more 3D life, I thought when I thought about being infinite, I was like, oh my god, are you kidding me?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds exhausting.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, true, right?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: But like where I am now, it feels like, oh, that would be awesome.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just gonna continue to get bigger and better, you know, like that's gonna be amazing.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and the guides talk a lot about there being no time, and I I don't my human mind doesn't get it, but I kind of I kind of have a vague memory of what that might be like.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think of um that time there there may not be linear time, but there'll always be expansion.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a movement of a sort, it's just a movement of a different sort.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's not static.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, what do you feel hopeful about?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, I think I'm gonna say young people.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like on this planet, I'm hopeful about young people.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a whole new generation of beings coming in that are just knocking our socks off and they're gonna keep knocking our socks off.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so they make me hopeful.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then I feel hopeful in another way about um, can I give two answers?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, just expansion and and awakening.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I can feel it's not always something I can see with my eyes, but I can feel it um with my clients, and I just think there's a hunger for for awakening, and I uh that excites me.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: That that makes me hopeful.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: What's the difference between prayer and manifestation?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good question.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do you mind if I pause?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for me, prayer is has become a sense of beingness.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't pray for things as much anymore.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just prayer is coming into presence for me and connecting like with higher the higher reality.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: And manifestation for me is starting to feel like play.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm still, I would say I'm still um new at it in some ways, but like I uh I manifest parking spots all the time.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I yeah, I know I'm not alone in this, but uh to me that's become delightful play.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've really learned to do it, like it really works, and I have fun with it.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you know, now I'm expanding that out to to more.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I guess the difference for me is that prayer feels for me, prayer is like sacred, the sacredness of now, and manifestation is like play.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, oh that's so interesting.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: To me, when I wrote this question down, I thought, oh, prayer to me is the knowing of what I'm not responsible for, and manifestation is the knowing of what I am responsible for.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's nice.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, interesting.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, do you prefer dusk or dawn?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Dusk.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a morning person.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, so that is like a no-brainer for you.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's a biological thing for me.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I used I used to be um such a dawn person, but I've kind of turned into a dusk person.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: And at dusk, pretty much every day, I uh receive this incredible wave of peace.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: At dawn?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: At dusk.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: At dusk, yeah, like unbelievable, like full body, you know, it just like peaceful excitement, you know, like just oh yeah, it's really awesome.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then finally, did you go to camp as a kid?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: And what was that like?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I have a fantastic camp story.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um, is it okay if I give a longer answer here?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um my parents kept trying to, I I grew up on the East Coast and camp was a thing, right?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so they sent me to Girl Scout camp and horse riding camp and um tennis camp.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't like any of the sailing camp.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, I almost flunked out of that one.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a sailor, but he couldn't convert me.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and I I so I was unhappy at all these camps.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: So out of exasperation, my mom found a camp consultant, and she brought me to a camp consultant and they interviewed me to find out what kind of camp I would like, which is kind of a good metaphor for my childhood, right?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: They needed to, I mean, bless my mom's heart for doing this, right?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like she knew she didn't know me well enough to know what I would like.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: So she found somebody, and and she didn't know about all these different camps.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they interviewed me, and based on my answers, they recommended this camp called Apple Farm Arts and Music Center in southern New Jersey, coolest place on the planet.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: I went uh so this was um an arts and music camp.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I went for the first time in 1977, and I always like to say the 60s were still alive and well at Apple Farm Arts and Music Center.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: There were many bearded men playing guitars, there were like people from counselors from all around the world, there were gay kids, there were just it was just a bohemian like smorgasbord of wonderful things art, music, drama, and I found my people there for the first time in my life.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: So at 11 years old, I was like finally dropped into an environment that felt right.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, I cried my eyes out when it was time to leave.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I went back every summer for I don't know, five years, and then I became a counselor there for a year when I was in college.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and it was because it was a place where people were free to be whoever they were, and it was very joyful and funny and creative, and there was even a counselor who taught transcendental meditation.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, yeah.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, that's like almost that is such a metaphor for where we're headed.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when you drop into who you really are, it's super fun.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's awesome.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was so much fun, yeah.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: That sense of me, the difference.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm so grateful for to my parents for letting me go there because it was like going from thinking that something was wrong with me because I didn't feel like I fit, even though I looked like I fit, to suddenly fitting and knowing what that felt like and feeling embraced and valued and seen.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I felt seen there.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, and it was such a gift to me, it was a huge gift to me.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, so yeah, thanks, Om Dad.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so do you have a question for me?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would like to know how intuition works for you.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: So um how do you know what you know?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, does it feel like?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I I feel that um I have somewhat of an unusual connection to my intuition in that I have never experienced it being outside of my body.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: It it's always um within, like deeply in my body.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I've never felt like it was someone else's voice, like it was it was me, but it was um like a wisdom that rises from like the solar plexus into the heart.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: And my intellect, I could distinguish it between my intellect because the the thoughts of the mind traveled from the mind down to like the mouth or the or the throat, and um so I've always just been super connected to it.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's never been separate from me.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I I find that maybe is a slightly different experience.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that feeling intuition in the body is um, yeah, I would say, I mean, it sounds like the strength of yours, like you're you feel it really concretely in a way.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that is one of the big ways that we tend to feel, like the yeses and the no's in the body.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you get a no on something.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: What does it feel like in your body?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: One of the other before I get into that, one of the other experiences that I have is that I can't really ask myself questions because the answers come before I can even formulate the question.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes if I'm not like in a super quiet place where I'm super tuned in, I'll miss it.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that that happens so often that I just stopped asking the questions and whatever I need to know rises, and I assume that there's nothing that I need to know that I don't know.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's I do know.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um the so in in that way I don't really ask myself yes and no questions.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's more just like I'm doing this now, I'm doing that now.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I I also um allow myself to make mistakes.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't hold myself to some impossibly high standard where I can't make mistakes.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's so important.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it gives a certain kind of freedom.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the other thing you're talking about, I think what you've talked what you're talking about is just closing the gap, right, between the question and the answer.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like there doesn't need to be a question because you the answer is just there and then you just flow with it.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's how long has it been like that?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like um well, I want to say it's always been like that.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: I tried to impose questions on myself, you know, probably five years ago or something like that.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and I that was always the guidance that I was receiving from you know, mentors or spiritual teachers or people I had sessions with, or you know, all that stuff, you know, like ask yourself this, ask yourself that.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that just never worked for me.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: So um I kind of feel like it was just that's just the way it was for me.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: I just I also um have the experience of rarely being outside of my body.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that because I was I was always really physical kit, I was a tomboy, I was an athlete, I um loved experiencing life through my body, you know, laying on the wet grass and the hot sun and the steam, and you know, I just that was just my way of being in the world.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't have that experience of being outside of my body very often.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes, you know, I I do.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: I can like get to daydreaming and that kind of thing, but yeah, so yeah, that's just it.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and the reason I like to I want to ask that is because um I continue to learn from my students about different ways that people experience intuition, talk about it, you know, conceptualize it.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think that um anytime we try to make ourselves fit into some mold or some, you know, I'm really not trying to make anybody do it like I do it.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want each person to find their way, yeah, which probably is already there.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like my experience of like trying to ask the questions that people were telling me to ask, yeah, you know, I probably wasted a lot of time on that.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and also like I had to just come to the realization that if I don't know the answer, then I don't know the answer.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I just totally whatever, you know, that's just it.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_02: I might know some other stuff, but I don't know that.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't have to know everything, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's not time to know something, yeah, like it'll show up.
• 1:00:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Thea, I have just loved our time together, and I hope that you have too.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, before we go, I just want to mention that if people are interested, you have a group on Facebook called uh what's it called?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's called The Intuitive Way with Thea and the Guides.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: The Intuitive Way with Thea and the Guides.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's open to the public and it's really beautiful community, it's beautiful information that's coming through.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um anybody can just find you on Facebook and send you a message or yes, they can just uh ask to join.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um the other way that people can find me is at my website, which is bigpictureguidance.com, and it'll also it's going to be switched over in uh the next month or two to theasullivan.com.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Although if you use bigpicturguidance.com, it'll redirect you there anyway.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you can't and we'll also put that in the notes below for the podcast.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I want to thank you for being with me today and see you soon.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.