Synergy to Synastry: Soul Rising Book Club Chapters 15-19 (BONUS) Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the Soul Rising Book Club!

Renee: Welcome.

Renee: How have you been?

Renee: It's episode five of our Soul Rising Book Club mini-series.

Renee: I would love to hear from you.

Renee: How are you enjoying book club?

Renee: Have you read ahead?

Renee: Are you behind?

Renee: It's okay if you are.

Renee: And also how you enjoyed the Roman lore mini-series that just wrapped up.

Renee: We are going to be doing a couple book club sessions in a row here before we get to the third and final culture of season 3.

Renee: So just think of it as a little summer break and who doesn't love to read over the summer?

Chapter 15: The Shift: From Barely Surviving to Embracing Soulful Wellbeing by Marie-Christine Laroche

Renee: In Marie-Christine's chapter, she emphasized that there's societal pressures to succeed and know your path.

Renee: Yes.

Renee: And when she really got to that point of feeling like she was succeeding and having what she needed to, that she was totally burnt out.

Renee: As everybody knows, we've talked about this.

Renee: I don't even know how many times this season discussing burnout.

Renee: So, of course, every time I am exposed to yet another reminder of this, including in reading this chapter, like, okay, I'm seeing myself in this story.

Renee: This is very helpful.

Renee: Something I loved as a little connection is she described having the first hour of her day being an opportunity to really set and establish her energy and go inward.

Renee: And I was like, oh, my gosh, these are the spirit hours, which I was doing.

Renee: I'm currently not doing, but clearly I need to get back to it.

Renee: This was my reminder.

Renee: But what I was doing for quite some time is my first hour of the day when I woke up, I wouldn't check my email or go on social media or listen to podcasts or anything.

Renee: I just would write my dreams down, which I do on my phone and then otherwise.

Renee: Do some stretches or yoga, go make a full breakfast, pull my cards for the day, and then I could go into whatever technology or starting work or whatever it is.

Renee: It was really, really helpful to get myself to not rush.

Renee: I actually just read a whole book yesterday.

Renee: It was a pretty short audiobook talking about not hurrying, basically, like how can we live slower.

Renee: I think it's part of this larger conversation that we're so stuck on thinking that we only have so much time.

Renee: I talked about this in the last one, about how we're operating off of a 24-hour cycle.

Renee: So it gets us stuck in, oh, I only have so many hours in the day, how am I going to do this?

Renee: But there's so much in our society that is built around us being on a certain timeline, whether that's what Marie Christine was talking about, with our life as a certain timeline, having certain milestones or certain achievements, or with your to-do list.

Renee: And if we're always living, as I constantly do, on a schedule in a to-do list, then how can we relax?

Renee: How can we just completely step away or compulsively checking our email?

Renee: Things like that, where we're keeping ourselves hyper-activated, hyper-connected.

Renee: And we really find some of the greatest wisdom if we just sit in quiet.

Renee: It doesn't have to be a really in-depth meditation.

Renee: It could be a few minutes with a journal, a few moments with your breath, visualization.

Renee: I can't tell you how many times I have even just like going for a drive and not listening to anything.

Renee: I have somewhere to be.

Renee: I have an appointment.

Renee: I have a meetup with somebody.

Renee: But doing that in silence rather than listening to something, I will often have just information drop in.

Renee: So finding the silence wherever we can get it and being open to not judge what comes through because it actually could be really useful.

Renee: It's either a seed of an idea that gets us to the other point of inspiration, or it's something that just feels uncomfortable because it's a little new and a little bit different.

Renee: But it could be the best idea, the best next step.

Renee: So in this chapter, she really was talking about trying to live life slower.

Renee: Again, couldn't be more topical.

Renee: I read this probably weeks ago at this point, and then coincidentally I read this book yesterday that's talking about a very similar concept to this chapter.

Renee: So talk about divine timing.

Renee: She really started having these aha moments when she started delving into different modalities.

Renee: So human design and then eventually astrology and she did hypnotherapy.

Renee: It was interesting for me to read that because I found that my awakening was almost the opposite of hers where she kept researching and kept experimenting and kept trying new things.

Renee: And then felt like, oh wow, I feel like I'm getting somewhere, I'm connecting.

Renee: Then she went to her intuition after all of the more like research side and introspection.

Renee: And I've definitely done the opposite because I started with intuition.

Renee: That was my gateway in.

Renee: Once I started dabbling there, I felt like I then had permission to study astrology because I felt like there was a taboo around it, which it still is.

Renee: You talk to some people and they're just like, I don't believe that.

Renee: I'm like, well, I don't believe it either.

Renee: It's just the tool I practice.

Renee: I don't view it as a belief system.

Renee: Some people do.

Renee: I needed the first level of experience, which was the most connected to myself, my intuition before looking into other modalities.

Renee: And I continued to do work in those other spaces.

Renee: And I would love to do more, but it's a one day, one project, one research initiative at a time.

Renee: And I wanted to read a quote from her chapter.

Renee: She writes, I stopped pushing and trying to control, and instead learned to allow the story to unfold.

Renee: Most of the time.

Renee: And I love the honesty there.

Renee: And yes, self-awareness that, because I know for me, I've received this same message through so many readings and lots of experiences about releasing control.

Renee: You know, we have a two-fold situation here where that has to do with what's in my natal chart.

Renee: And for the collective, we do have the south node over the last year and a half in Virgo.

Renee: And it's the same type of a lesson.

Renee: So if you're feeling that you do relate by and large, you're feeling like you have to let things go, not have things be perfect or on the path or trajectory of growth that you might have wanted.

Renee: Less ordered, less organized.

Renee: That's a big reflection and something that you've been experiencing in recent years.

Renee: You probably also relate to this idea as well.

Renee: And it's just the most of the time piece.

Renee: We're just trying.

Renee: We're trying.

Renee: And it isn't even about like trying our best.

Renee: It's just we're, we're being.

Renee: It's about being rather than trying, rather than doing.

Renee: And as much as we can continuously remind ourselves and I feel like all book long, keep getting reminded of some version or extension of this same lesson.

How to Find Balance Using Your Natal Chart

Renee: Now, wouldn't be Book Club if I didn't go off and do some side research.

Renee: I know I did a lot last episode, but I did a little research here as I was inspired by this chapter.

Renee: So it had dropped in to look up how to find balance using your natal chart.

Renee: So I wanted to give everybody a little bit of a how-to if you want to do this yourself.

Renee: Of course, if you have questions or want some guidance or a perspective from me, feel free to write in.

Renee: But number one thing that you would want to look at is the full distribution of your chart.

Renee: I'm pulling a count, specifically looking at the planets.

Renee: If you have a tie, then you could start bringing in the North and South node, Chiron or other asteroids that you might work with if you're trying to tip it a little bit over the edge to go one way or the other.

Renee: But you want to gather counts for your natal placements based on yin energy, and that is divine feminine that we've been talking about.

Renee: That's going to be Earth and water placements.

Renee: For Earth signs, that's going to be Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn.

Renee: For water, it's going to be Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.

Renee: In contrast, you'll also want to gather the counts for the yang energy.

Renee: This is divine masculine, and that's fire and air signs.

Renee: On the fire side, that's Aries, Leo, Sagittarius, and then air, that's Libra, Aquarius, Gemini.

Renee: Once you have these two counts, you want to see where you shake out, which one is higher than the other.

Renee: I, of course, did this and I had a good laugh.

Renee: I had eight in the yin category, and it went up to thirteen if I included the lines, the nodes, and Chiron just so I had the reference point.

Renee: For Yang, I only had two planets, but it was seven if I included the lines Lilith, Pallas Athena, Vesta.

Renee: Of course, of note there, six of those seven are all in Aries.

Renee: So pretty much all of the fire energy that I have is just straight up in Aries.

Renee: So it's very Aries concentrated.

Renee: When you start bringing in all these other celestial bodies.

Renee: But by and large, if we strictly look at the planets, we're talking an eight and two situation, which tells you that my chart is super yin heavy, which should be hilarious to everyone.

Renee: Because to a degree, I do get a lot of comments from people that I come across more in the earthy, watery way when I am just talking or teaching or working with people.

Renee: But how I feel in my head and how I am operating and living my life, I don't think presents that way at all.

Renee: Like I wouldn't describe constantly getting into burnout situations or being mentally fried is reflecting that I am really living out and aligning with all of that eight to two yin energy.

Renee: Ultimately, the question that you want to ask yourself and that I have to sit and ask myself, is what could I do in my daily life or just in those pulling case of emergency situations to try and align more with those placements?

Renee: How can I nurture?

Renee: Look at those, in my case, eight placements.

Renee: Where are they?

Renee: Which houses are they in?

Renee: Which signs in particular are they in?

Renee: What are the needs of those life areas for the houses and the needs of those signs?

Renee: How can I be on the high vibrational energy of those signs?

Chapter 16: Surrendering to the Sacred Chaos of Saturn by Jennifer Birge

Renee: Next up, we have Jennifer, who started off her story discussing really how being out of alignment, specifically not using her voice in a very toxic relationship, manifested physically, which is such a classic situation.

Renee: This has happened to all of us.

Renee: And so she was having throat issues.

Renee: And if you think about it, through the energetics, it's like her throat chakra is closed up.

Renee: And when she's not speaking her truth, when she's not self-advocating, standing up for herself, then all of a sudden, her attention is being brought here, having different health issues in this area.

Renee: She also mentioned a bit of Locational Astrology, Astro-Cartography.

Renee: This sent me off on another little side tangent.

Renee: She was talking about how she moved and she was living on her Saturn line.

Renee: So for anyone who's not familiar with Astro-Cartography, it basically looks like a big map of the world, flattened out, and you put your chart on top of it.

Renee: So Astro-C programs like that, do that for you.

Renee: So you just see these waves that go across the globe, and they represent lines for each of the planets that you have, as well as the IC/MC and they have some different versions of them labeled.

Renee: It's a whole thing.

Renee: It is a little confusing to look at, just because this is such a new study and practice and lens through which to use your natal chart.

Renee: But the general concept, which we have talked about this in the podcast before, because I had a locational reading done a few years ago now, that it gives you signatures and understanding if you live certain places, what's being activated within your chart.

Renee: That's why when we go to certain countries or cities or states, that we may feel really tired or like, oh gosh, I don't know why, just like heavy here, I don't like it here.

Renee: Or I love it, I felt so energized, I felt so inspired or certain things happen because it's activating a certain planet in a certain house because you do a locational chart.

Renee: So there's all of these ways to make your natal chart more living and breathing because it doesn't actually stay exactly as it is if you go somewhere else.

Renee: Your chart moves as you go to different places.

Renee: So as an example, I had lived abroad.

Renee: So I was in London for a whole month.

Renee: Actually, you would need to reorient my chart, which would put all my planets and everything in different houses.

Renee: Because of that, it meant that different life areas were being activated.

Renee: As an example, this happened when I had gone to Croatia with my siblings a few years ago.

Renee: We were there during an eclipse.

Renee: But because I was in Croatia, it was activating a different life area than if I was at home.

Renee: Pisces is in my ninth house, great, but you go somewhere else and all of a sudden it's in your seventh.

Renee: You're going to have different lessons and information coming through.

Renee: So all this to say, she's talking about the Saturn line.

Renee: I was like, where's my Saturn line?

Renee: I haven't looked at my chart in a long time and I don't know this information.

Renee: I don't have it kept in my brain.

Renee: I know my houses and where all my planets are in a few degree points, but not really.

Renee: I don't have that memorized.

Renee: But the astro-chartography piece was like, I don't have this down at all.

Renee: So let me go back and look.

Renee: I saw that my Saturn line goes through central time zone in the US, the Dakotas in Texas.

Renee: It goes through Northwest Africa, so Senegal, Sierra Leone, and then India, and then otherwise it's just in a whole lot of ocean.

Renee: So it actually doesn't hit a lot.

Renee: I was like, oh great, it's going to be pretty hard for me to go on this line, which sounds like it's a terror.

Renee: This will be easy enough for me to avoid.

Renee: I have been to Texas before, but it wasn't for very long.

Renee: It was just like a little family trip and I don't know which side of the line I was on, so it's possible that I was on the right side of it rather than the left, and therefore I wasn't actually in the activation field.

Renee: So back to Jennifer, very similar to Marie.

Renee: She really was raised and grew up with a lot of these control issues.

Renee: So she threw herself into studying everything, also very similar to Marie, and it was about a journey of self-acceptance.

Renee: She used this mantra, and I want to thank Jennifer for this, because she mentioned this mantra, Let it Be Easy, and that inspired me to go around my room, which I do every once in a while, and I have on some washi tape a channeled mantra.

Renee: So then, every time I look at it, I'll read it.

Renee: I don't see it or process it every single day, but it's still there.

Renee: I have it in several spots around the room, but I read that and went, oh, I'm supposed to change my mantra now.

Renee: So I didn't use that exact mantra, but what I have is I find peace in ease.

Renee: So every once in a while, given all the lessons we've been talking about, I sit there, I pause, I'm like, okay, I have to try to remember this, because I don't always live like this.

Renee: But I think it works pretty well with what we've been talking about, that the ease could be living slower, not trying to control, not trying to create order.

Renee: Overall, that's a message that has been coming in.

Renee: It came in through the Roman practices, reading that I did for myself, stop trying to make order out of things.

Renee: This has been recurring, I would say over the last few months in particular.

Renee: I am hoping that this new mantra will help me to realign more with that energy and frequency.

Renee: And just to close out here for Jennifer, I wanted to land on a quote.

Renee: She said, "healing demands patience, the process unfolds as we're ready."

Renee: And I think it's so true because, you know, we may think that healing should look a certain way, or we want it to look a certain way.

Renee: We want it to feel different.

Renee: We want it to go faster.

Renee: Again, that's getting us back to perceptions of time, hitting milestones, what should things be or not be.

Renee: It's really a process of letting that go and just being present in observing it and experiencing it and not looking away if it feels uncomfortable or feels confusing.

Renee: I don't even understand why this is happening, what is going on.

Renee: We might only get through certain layers and then feel like, why am I dealing with this issue again?

Renee: I thought that I healed from this five years ago.

Renee: It's because we weren't ready to go to the next level deeper.

Chapter 17: A Crack is Where the Light Comes In by Erika Anderson

Renee: Next up, we have Erika, who was talking about being a highly sensitive person who had intuitive mediumship abilities at a very young age.

Renee: For anyone who is not familiar with this highly sensitive person, there's actually some books on this.

Renee: I did read one of them, but it's like a series of highly sensitive person, but then they put it in categories.

Renee: I don't know if some of them are work or career or certain areas of life.

Renee: I forget, but I did read one of them.

Renee: If you were interested in learning more about it, again, there are books on the topic.

Renee: Erika writes, quote, I became a high-functioning anxious person, finding areas I could control to channel my anxiety.

Renee: There's that theme again.

Renee: It's been in every single chapter and this is why I laugh because of course I channel which chapters I'm going to talk about, and the fact that I just happened to catch a batch with three in a row so far talking about dealing with control issues.

Renee: I'm sitting right in the pocket of this and like okay this is perfect because I'm able to integrate really what is going on with all these very different people from all over the world and how for Erika her persistent anxiety and fear was ultimately taking the front seat for many many years and that means when you are just living in the fear-based mindset you can't hear or feel your intuition so it's not that it was turned off but it was dialed so far down it became harder for her to work with and she's meditation like we were talking about before having that quiet time whatever that might be to help her sort out what was her energy and emotions versus other people's and this is very key and crucial especially astrologically if you are somebody who has a lot of Pisces energy in your chart and it's a little bit hard because you are connected to everything to know where you begin and where you end and where others begin and others end.

Renee: There's that blurred gray area where sometimes it's like you're overcome.

Renee: I don't even know why I'm mad and angry all of a sudden.

Renee: Even for me, I find, because I do have a Pisces Stellium, is if I'm interacting with a ton of people throughout the day, it's almost like you have your battery where you're like, okay, I have now energetically been connected, interfaced with way too many people and I need to go away.

Renee: I need to clear everything that was of them, so that I can just return to my center.

Renee: I have that a lot and what will happen for me is, I'll just get really upset and frustrated or my fuse gets short.

Renee: I just feel really emotionally out of balance when I haven't had an opportunity to just not be quote bothered by everybody because everyone's coming to me with questions, help with this and do that and then I'm fixing stuff and that's the Virgo side, because I'm like, I want to fix, I want to help, but then when it feels like there's too much coming at me and for a sustained period of time, like I've had a bunch of meetings all day long, like I just want to go eat and go sit by myself for five minutes.

Renee: If you are a sensitive, intuitive person and you connect to other people, it's very easy to have that type of system overwhelm.

Renee: Really what she was getting at in this chapter is the foundation of that anxiety or intuition episode that we had in season one, which is one of the most common student questions that I get teaching on Insight Timer, and I regularly plug this episode because people are always wondering, well, how do I know if it's my anxiety or if it's my intuition, or how do I know if it's just because I'm afraid or nervous or it's my intuition?

Renee: I think Erika made a really great point here, is that because we are conditioned, our society is structured as such, that we are asked to operate from our minds.

Renee: That's where some of the anxiety lives.

Renee: If we are only up here, and we're not either just in our full body or in our gut or other seats of intuition, if you will, we get spiritually disconnected, not accessing our gifts, not working the muscle consistently to be able to identify when it is intuition, because I've said this before, anxiety screams and intuition whispers.

Renee: If everything is just screaming, it's literally hard to hear the whisper.

Renee: And another point that Erika made, just for anybody that's intuitive out there or looking to do this work or provide readings, I loved her reframe of being too sensitive because it's actually just that we're translators.

Renee: When you are so highly sensitive and connected to other people, it actually, I mean, it's a superpower.

Renee: It's a gift.

Renee: It's an ability.

Renee: It's about wielding it.

Renee: With great power comes great responsibility.

Renee: And to translate, it means, like I'm just seeing the visual of, it's almost like an energetic funnel or like a prism.

Renee: It's like a prism.

Renee: So you have all of the light coming in and we're clarifying it.

Renee: So it's kind of like the opposite of what normally happens where normally you have like a single beam of light and then it gets spread out into a rainbow.

Renee: We're kind of doing the reverse, where we are connected to the full rainbow.

Renee: We can see and experience, feel colors, if you will, that not everybody else can.

Renee: And we're having to isolate that down into a message, figuring out in some ways with our mind, but some ways just trying to be unfiltered as a translator, how to convey that to somebody, how to have that make sense and be clear, so that the message can be received.

Chapter 18: The Sacred Cage and Key to Freedom by Ashley Mondor

Renee: I had many, many thoughts on this section, but also Ashley, not only did she do the podcast interview, but she also did a workshop, so I literally just had more content to respond to for her section.

Renee: But Ashley and I had messaged at one point in the months after the book came out, and we bonded because we both have Virgo Moons, and we've been battling a lot with the relationship between or dynamic between productivity and inspiration, which again, of course, is still on theme with a little bit of what we've been talking about.

Renee: She already had her own business that was in more of this spiritual space.

Renee: She was finding that it was stalling and she wasn't having as much engagement and sales, and it wasn't sufficient enough.

Renee: And she ended up having an opportunity arise to actually go back to corporate.

Renee: This to me felt incredibly topical.

Renee: I have talked to so many intuitives who had a spiritual awakening the same time I did, like 2020 to 2021.

Renee: We all went off, started our own businesses, and then 2025 into definitely 2026, pretty much everybody that I know in my circle have then, quote, gone back to corporate or added in some sort of muggle job, if you will, while still trying to nurture the business on the side.

Renee: But just the dynamic isn't the same because now we're having to put more energy into that regular job and avenue and not that the spiritual business is entirely taking a backseat, but the amount of time and energy has really shrunk because we're having to refocus.

Renee: So I don't quite know how this shift in the collective is going to shake out.

Renee: It's just something I've observed.

Renee: I have talked to so many people who've had the same exact thing.

Renee: And I wanted to read a quote from Ashley about this idea, because again, she had this many, many years ago.

Renee: And she said, quote, "Experiencing what it's like to love every single Monday and only working in ways that make you feel alive, going back to doing work that isn't deeply meaningful felt like a punishment."

Renee: So I can relate to the Mondays piece because I was able to shift my relationship with Mondays because I made them per the etymology episode and the lessons that I got from Christine about the energetics of each day of the week.

Renee: I started turning my Mondays into a day where I would do a meditation every single Monday.

Renee: I would maybe do certain things for my business, channel either through an inside time or class or on my own, and have those days intentionally be slower, calling my energy back.

Renee: It became a day that I then looked forward to.

Renee: But I have noticed over the last several months, because my other calendar days fill up with so many meetings, I get into situations like this coming Monday, where I have to book some work meetings on Mondays.

Renee: And so suddenly, my Monday calendar is a bunch of to-do's.

Renee: And that meditation that I would do every single Monday has pretty much disappeared.

Renee: Now it's like every month or so I go, oh yeah, I should probably do one of those.

Renee: So it does feel like a backslide.

Renee: And one of the questions of the many, many questions that Ashley was raising in this section is like, okay, well, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing?

Renee: Is that just what's supposed to happen?

Renee: Like maybe it is a realignment.

Renee: Maybe I shouldn't be viewing it as a regression or it's a problem.

Renee: Maybe that's just what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

Renee: There was just language to recontextualize it and reframe it so that I could understand maybe I'm just being a little bit hard on myself and I should be dialing it back because it's not like stuff is wrong.

Renee: It's just the variables have changed.

Renee: The circumstances are a little bit different and how can I adjust?

Renee: Going back to that first chapter, how can I focus on that yin energy and lean into that more to ground me even when everything else has shifted?

Renee: Truly Ashley was dropping bars because there were so many quotes I wrote down.

Renee: I was like, oh my gosh, this is so good.

Renee: One of them was, "I realized that I was the creator of this cage."

Renee: She's recognizing I'm making this a problem.

Renee: I've in some ways done this to myself because I'm thinking I should be operating a certain way.

Renee: She goes on further to say "the obstacles are my path."

Renee: We are coming to terms with, I guess in my life, I'm just always supposed to be dealing with and navigating things.

Renee: For me as an example, I'm a 3/5 manifesting generator, which represents having trial and error.

Renee: I'm always supposed to be testing this out and testing that out.

Renee: Does this work and does that work and constantly re-adjusting?

Renee: Then I can share what I know with other people.

Renee: That's literally what my human design chart says I'm supposed to be doing.

Renee: If I can just keep remembering that, then I cannot be hard on myself to say, well, why isn't this working?

Renee: Why isn't that working?

Renee: It's because I'm never supposed to be doing the same thing honestly for that long.

Renee: I am constantly supposed to be experiencing the shifts of the tectonic plates under my feet and having to re-adjust.

Renee: In general, my relationship with change has significantly improved.

Renee: Oftentimes, I'm looking forward or like, can things change?

Renee: I'm ready for things to change and enjoying the wave of that shift of energy and making the adjustment.

Renee: I find it more invigorating and less of a frustration and disrupter than I have in years past.

Renee: But this thing popped up, that thing popped up, that doesn't feel like change.

Renee: That just feels like problems we have to deal with.

Renee: And if I can do more and maybe relate to this, to just check myself in those moments, wait, this is part of the work I'm supposed to be doing in my life.

Renee: And I know that is true based on my chart as well, which I forget.

Renee: Having Chiron in Taurus like having to deal with the fixing of things with the control situation as well.

Renee: I didn't mention that earlier, but okay, how can I master this relationship with wanting to fix and wanting to do things, but then knowing I need to ground, knowing I need to slow down so that I can effectively teach other people whatever the way is, this is the way.

Renee: And still working on that, still have not mastered it.

Renee: With Chiron Returns, you have those in your 50s, so I got some time before I get there, so I know I have to keep learning this lesson.

Renee: Last quote I had from Ashley's chapter before I switch over to my podcast notes.

Renee: "To free yourself, you must accept where you are right now."

Renee: And I felt like I really needed to hear this, and it's something that I know I need to embody more, because it's that thought or that message that we can repeat to ourselves when we're feeling we're behind.

Renee: We have hit the milestones.

Renee: We don't have enough time.

Renee: We don't like the situation around us.

Renee: It feels uncomfortable.

Renee: It feels wrong.

Renee: It feels like we've taken steps back.

Renee: Maybe we are where we're supposed to be right now and we're just not seeing it.

Renee: As life progresses, we'll understand a little bit more why.

Renee: Just trying to embrace the tools that we have.

Renee: Like the visual I'm getting is a kid and they have a paperclip.

Renee: This is for whatever reason the visual.

Renee: So it's like they have a paperclip.

Renee: It's like, okay, what am I supposed to do with this?

Renee: I don't want to use a paperclip.

Renee: I want to have a tablet.

Renee: I want to play and do something different.

Renee: But all we have right now is a paperclip and that may not thrill us.

Renee: That might not be very exciting.

Renee: But if we actually look at the paperclip, we can realize we can bend it.

Renee: We can move it.

Renee: We can contort it.

Renee: We can do something with it.

Renee: If we're just so focused on where we think we should be, rather than where we are with this paperclip, then we can actually do something about it, either to change our circumstances or to, I don't know, for lack of a better word, capitalize.

Renee: I don't want to say optimize, but really make something significant and valuable out of them.

Renee: First thing I had to mention for the podcast, Ashley was talking about how she has the significance of owl symbolism.

Renee: I was like, oh my gosh, that's me.

Renee: Because if you remember, in season one, I had talked about in our signs and symbols episode, how I had received this purple owl and also now coming into this season, like this whole owl thing has come up again where we talked about Athena's owl, and I have it's actually across the room, so I can't hold it up and show it now.

Renee: When she said that, I was like, oh my gosh, why do you have so many connections?

Renee: For her, it means seeing with new eyes, which is not what it has been for me.

Renee: It's more that it's a validation of the path that I'm on and knowing I am in alignment, and specifically, I have linked it to career and purpose.

Renee: It's like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing when I see it.

Renee: To that point, she was talking about how it's important, and not uncommon, to have an ego death when it comes to that attachment of what we think it means to be a successful entrepreneur.

Renee: Again, I feel like this is a version of what I'm going through as well.

Renee: My business isn't doing what I want it to be doing.

Renee: I just had to make the choice.

Renee: I don't have the time, mental capacity, nor energy, nor just general structure of my calendar to do events.

Renee: So normally, I would make a point of reaching out to different vendors, local businesses, sayers.

Renee: I did farmers markets last year, which were great, but I'm looking at my calendar going, I don't even have the brain power to do this right now, so I guess I'm just not going to do it.

Renee: And then that makes me feel bad, like, oh, am I not being a good business owner because I've just decided I'm not going to even attempt to do any events this year unless somebody reaches out and just asks me.

Renee: I don't want to push myself over the edge when I already feel like I'm at the edge, I'm dangling over the edge to do more of something that maybe again just isn't in alignment with me right now or in the short term.

Renee: And if I'm fixated on what this ideal is of what I think it should be, what are the things that a successful entrepreneur, just entrepreneur in general or spiritual entrepreneur should be doing, I'm not just being myself as someone who happens to own a business.

Renee: As a former corporate girlie, as we like to say in this podcast, you get comfortable being in a certain environment.

Renee: And I did appreciate how Ashley was mentioning that it actually gave her opportunities to go back.

Renee: You have a totally different mindset, you can network, you can use that network in a different way.

Renee: And ultimately that freedom and how we frame, what does it mean to be free?

Renee: Well, I'm going back to the office, I'm in a nine to five, I have to drive in, that feels not free when you could just do whatever you want, structure day however you want.

Renee: In some ways that is true.

Renee: We have these archaic structures that don't technically need to exist as they are anymore.

Renee: That's a whole other discussion.

Renee: Well, how can we still find freedom within that?

Renee: How we are approaching our work, how we are approaching working with other people, how we are creating balance to whatever degree we are able to do that.

Renee: It doesn't always come in the forms that we expect.

Renee: This really is an aha for me because I have had this idea of freedom and being free in my expression and playful and not too restricted coming up over and over and over again for many years in addition to abundance.

Renee: So we can also label being free, if you will, when we're going back into this more structured, maybe to a degree toxic environment, as now you have financial freedom.

Renee: You, in Ashley's case, she was able to pay off some debt that she had for school.

Renee: That gives you more freedom.

Renee: You gain some time back where you didn't have to do all that research to figure out your health plan, if you will, because you're getting it through your company.

Renee: Well, unless you live somewhere else and you don't have to get it from your company, but maybe one day that will be us.

Renee: And whatever it is, you can have freedom be defined in different ways.

Renee: And now talking about her workshop, this is gonna be the last thing for Ashley.

Renee: This was a HeartSpace workshop.

Renee: So of course I took notes to make note of what I was feeling during and after.

Renee: And what came up for me was it just felt warm and comforting.

Renee: She prompted us with this question, what is my heart inviting me to trust or surrender right now?

Renee: And what popped in right away for me was looking back is okay and safe.

Renee: And it's because there's really this healing power in one or two minutes of breath and stillness and surrender.

Renee: And there is this connotation and reputation for cancer placements to be dwelling in the past.

Renee: Like, oh my gosh, stop reliving it.

Renee: Some of that could be Virgo as well.

Renee: As well, I could have done that better.

Renee: That's the point of rumination or like, I can't even tell you, like I'm how many years out of that long term relationship that I was in.

Renee: And I will still randomly just be shot into a memory.

Renee: And maybe it's not random.

Renee: Again, maybe I should be paying more attention to my guides of why it's coming up.

Renee: But sometimes it is prompted.

Renee: And like something happened and it is just reminding me of it.

Renee: But when it's random, I'm saying it's different.

Renee: I have some conversation that I was having, or some conflict or something that was going on with this person.

Renee: And then I just get sucked into replaying it, of like what I have said differently or done differently.

Renee: And then it had to come back to reality and go, I don't even want to be thinking about that.

Renee: Why am I thinking about that?

Renee: And in some situations, there could be an answer, there could be a message that I'm supposed to be getting.

Renee: And I'm just like, I just don't even want to think about it.

Renee: We tend to, we're like the history and the record keepers.

Renee: So we are supposed to, to a degree, be looking back.

Renee: So this message was telling me it is okay to look back.

Renee: And there is some value and for whatever reason, safety and support when it comes to surrendering.

Renee: So I shouldn't be framing it as a negative.

Renee: I should be trying to harness it.

Renee: The main memory, which was a nice one, that came through during Ashley's meditation was this time that we were at my aunt and uncle's house, my uncle commented on how, because I was like rubbing my brother's back absentmindedly while we were talking.

Renee: And he commented on it like, wow, you like really get along well.

Renee: My kids wouldn't do that.

Renee: At that time, I hadn't studied astrology yet.

Renee: But my brother is a cancer moon.

Renee: Speaking of cancers, that kind of soothing for him.

Renee: Like I do that with him, but I don't do that with other family members.

Renee: But for whatever reason, I will do that with him.

Renee: And I do think that's interesting of like, okay, well, did I just know intuitively that type of physical touch is specific and really helpful for that moon type.

Renee: And that's where it just is so interesting when you have the intersection between these different modalities.

Renee: But I'm just reflecting on this.

Renee: So Ashley is still talking.

Renee: I had this memory come in during the meditation as was supposed to happen.

Renee: And then I'm thinking about it more and I'm writing more down.

Renee: And then as I am writing, I was thinking about this idea of the physical contact and hugs.

Renee: And she literally then mentioned hugs at the exact same time as I was writing something about hugs.

Renee: And I was like, okay, because it was coming through like maybe we should be giving ourself some hugs or like a self hug every once in a while because it's really stabilizing.

Renee: It was through this whole journey.

Renee: This was just a heart space exercise, but it got me to this recommendation at the end.

Renee: So it had to be woven through this memory of like, I don't know why I'm thinking about this.

Renee: It was just like a cute, random, tiny passing comment, basically.

Renee: Then I was able to land on, hey, maybe you should give yourself a hug every once in a while.

Chapter 19: Answering Your Soul Calling Even If You're Scared or Uncertain by Kim Coots

Renee: Last but not least, we have Kim.

Renee: And I must mention up front for anybody who was reading the book, in case you have not reached this chapter yet, lots of content warnings here, self-harm, substance abuse, death, suicidal ideation.

Renee: If you don't want to hear me discuss any of the above, I don't really go in depth, but I will talk about some of it a little bit.

Renee: If you don't want to hear any of that, please skip ahead.

Renee: Keep that in mind if you are reading this chapter in the book.

Renee: If any of those topics are especially upsetting and unsettling for you, then this could be one that you just want to skim or have somebody else read and relay for you.

Renee: My heart totally goes out to Kim because I could not believe it.

Renee: It was like a paragraph or two in.

Renee: I was like, whoa, she just got completely vulnerable, dove in head first immediately.

Renee: I was like, wow, this is how the story is starting.

Renee: Where is this going to go?

Renee: When she was talking about really the incredible, of course, sad, profound, divine timing of the loss of her daughter and mother a week apart, and simultaneously, she's on this journey to start developing mediumship skills, then allows her to bridge that gap.

Renee: I was like, wow, okay.

Renee: So this is a calling in that one way.

Renee: She kept trying to leave the corporate world and create her own business.

Renee: So it's almost like the inverse of what was happening with Ashley.

Renee: So she would create the spiritual side business, and then she would either not tell anybody and shut it down, and then go back to doing her, quote, regular work stuff, and then she would have some sort of a health issue, like we were talking about earlier with Jennifer.

Renee: Her spirit team being like, what are you doing?

Renee: Like you're supposed to be doing this.

Renee: You were following that inspired action when you went and created it.

Renee: But then when you keep hiding, if you will, there's going to be a consequence.

Renee: But ultimately, whenever she is having a rejection of that path, that if you will, she's meant to go down on, the health issue is becoming the redirect, fire alarm going off, telling her to go a different way.

Renee: But as is normal, we don't always make that connection.

Renee: We're just so focused on and we'll not have to fix the thing.

Renee: My health is an issue right now, and we're not connecting until, as she's doing in hindsight, that there is that invisible string between the two.

Renee: I had this quote which I thought really put a button on a lot of what we have been talking about today.

Renee: And Kim writes, "Spirit is my true source, not my job."

Renee: There's a lot to unpack here.

Renee: What does that mean that we never need to make that, the intuition or the spiritual work a business, or we shouldn't be commodifying it, if you will.

Renee: It should just be a gift that we have, that we use.

Renee: Some could make that argument, but it's also that we could view spirit as being a partner, as being a part of or an extension of ourselves.

Renee: And so if we are treating it like it's an appointment, like it's work, even what I was talking about, okay, every Monday I would do this.

Renee: Maybe the reason I have been shaken out of doing that is because I shouldn't just be relying on Mondays to do a meditation or journaling practice with my spirit team.

Renee: And that's a simple explanation.

Renee: Maybe the reason I have been dislodged from that routine that I had for many months is because I'm just supposed to do it when it comes up.

Renee: I shouldn't be treating it like it's something within my calendar.

Renee: I should just be feeling my way through the experience of life and knowing when I need it and when I need that guidance.

Renee: And that actually takes the weight off.

Renee: It makes it feel less like a job.

Renee: It just is, it's a choice, it's a knowing, it's a truth.

Renee: This is what I need to keep going, to reconnect to myself, to slow down, to center, to ground.

Renee: I do want to encourage people, especially for those of you who were thinking I should just skip reading this chapter because of the content warnings, there are a ton of journal prompts at the end of Kim's chapter.

Renee: If you can't read the story for whatever reason, still consider doing the journaling prompts so you can get something.

Renee: I was so excited for the page and I was like, oh my gosh, Kim wrote a bunch of journaling prompts.

Renee: I got to write these down.

Renee: During my next session, we're talking about with my spirit team, I sat down, I did a decent amount of the questions.

Renee: To recap a bit of what came through for me, what I was learning is ways that I'm disconnected for my purpose or misaligned is, quote, a burning rubber.

Renee: In other words, having that brain power be overexerted and needing a life of more peace and inspiration rather than obligation and overly structuring everything.

Renee: She had a question about, are you hiding your true self?

Renee: The answer I got was yes.

Renee: And the one right after that, what is your source of scarcity versus safety?

Renee: It felt like those were intrinsically linked to each other, that it's coming from fear rather than love, support, and structure.

Renee: And so this surprised me.

Renee: So I'm like, okay, I thought structure was the problem.

Renee: I thought that I should be having less structure and just more fluidity and inspiration in play.

Renee: But this is really just a straight up honest answer that having a certain degree or certain type of structure can help me feel safe and secure.

Renee: That's just true.

Renee: So if I were to throw all structure of all forms out the window, removing my foundation, it makes me feel completely unstable and ungrounded.

Renee: And as that earth energy, I need to feel grounded.

Renee: It's not necessarily low vibrational for me to have a to-do list, but over-scheduling, over, like as in filling my schedule, or spending hours every single week adjusting my calendar.

Renee: The scale tips.

Renee: So there is a fine line between, I'll say over-indulging, but doing something a little bit too much that could be made more neutral, the foundation rather than something to live by.

Renee: And another question was how we can release societal pressures.

Renee: And for me, the answer was very, very clear, which is getting off social media in the extremes of the day.

Renee: Now this, thank you very much Kim, because I almost immediately made a change after doing this journal prompt.

Renee: And this has been very, very helpful for me over the last few weeks now.

Renee: What I ended up doing was, in addition to my already existing sleep mode, I put on a downtime mode on top of it.

Renee: And it came through to do 8:30 at night and then 10 a.m.

Renee: in the morning, which I will tell you has provided a very significant amount of friction, which is what you need when you're trying to disrupt your tech usage.

Renee: It's not just that it impacts my phone, it impacts my computer.

Renee: So what will happen is if I am trying to do work at or after 8:30pm, all of my programs gray out and I have to click the turn off the time limit or whatever it's like.

Renee: Now I forget what it's called and I should know because I've seen it a bunch of times now, but like turn off the time limit or something.

Renee: I have to click the button like eight times before I can get it.

Renee: I still haven't been able to get it to work, but it makes it quote, very inconvenient to be working on my computer.

Renee: So it's like, okay, I can only open up these two tabs and then everything else.

Renee: So it gives me a really, really big visual cue.

Renee: It makes it so you have just that extra layer of disruption.

Renee: So it's like, are you really going to make this choice?

Renee: Are you going to do this right now?

Renee: Then I have to pause and remind myself, okay, well, if I am going to be doing something, I'm going to make sure that it's creative or writing or researching something that's interesting or it's more mindless.

Renee: All I'm doing is formatting the text and just putting it up.

Renee: If I am working after that time, then I am more intentional about what I'm doing because I also know my brain is going to get activated too much and then I am not going to be able to fall asleep and I'm going to be up.

Renee: So this has been working and been super helpful, but even just on my phone.

Renee: Let's say I wasn't on my computer, I can see the sheer volume of everything that is grayed out.

Renee: I know I'm supposed to be in this mode and I'm supposed to work on anything.

Renee: It also blocks contacts.

Renee: So I couldn't reply to a text if I wanted to.

Renee: I'd have to dig into the settings, make somebody exempt a certain contact so that you can, like it just won't even let you.

Renee: So that means that it is fully blocking me out a lot of types of communication to just keep me on my phone, which is good because I don't want to be in a situation where I'm working all day or I'm doing things on my phone for work, and then I'm sitting there and I'm just doing that revenge scrolling and catching up.

Renee: So that has been super, super helpful and that all stemmed from just doing this journal prompt.

Renee: It all dropped in and I was like, wow, okay.

Renee: The final question that I responded to from Kim's chapter was, what are simple ways to connect to the divine?

Renee: This is a really great note to end on because what came through was very simply, nature, breath work, the mudras that I've been doing that I talked about last time.

Renee: Remembering what is within me at all times, tapping into awe and the recognition of the fact that I am connected, that I have the ability at all.

Renee: I tend to forget, sometimes I do.

Renee: Sometimes I'm in readings and I'll flip a card over and go, oh my gosh, this is so cool and magical.

Renee: The fact that I basically intuited what was actually going to be on the card, but otherwise I don't really have that.

Renee: I'm just existing in this world doing the things that I'm doing and we don't want to take our intuition for granted because it is actually super cool that I can have a dream and then the dream happens.

Renee: Yeah, find the awe, find the wonder to recognize it, to honor it and challenge myself, keep trying new things.

Renee: That's what's been really great about the lore mini-series that I have been doing in season  because for the impractice episodes, I get to experiment, I get to try something new and see what it's like, see if I enjoy it, if I ever might want to do it again.

Renee: It's not an accident that that's come through to do this season and I'm just being encouraged by my guys to just keep doing that, do it more.

Renee: It doesn't have to be for the podcast, it can just be for me.

Renee: It's a way of not expressing but connecting through different expressions of those abilities.

Closing Thoughts

Renee: I know this episode is going to be a little bit longer than past book clubs because I talked about so many chapters.

Renee: This was the largest bunch.

Renee: Part of the reason that this worked out as such is because it's arrived.

Renee: My chapter, chapter 20, is going to be the first chapter that we talk about in the next book club.

Renee: Next time, we're going to be discussing chapters 20 through 23.

Renee: That's four chapters.

Renee: I haven't read it yet, but it will be coming out in the next few weeks.

Renee: But yeah, it's going to be interesting now that I have read 19 other stories to actually go into mine.

Renee: Not how mine holds up because this is not a competition.

Renee: But of course, I know what's in there because I had to write it, edit, record the audio for the audiobook.

Renee: Still pending, waiting for an update.

Renee: I can place myself back in time of when I wrote this, which is now like this book came out quite some time ago.

Renee: So my chapter is based on events that are five years ago, two years ago, 10, 20, 25 years ago.

Renee: It's covering a lot of my life.

Renee: So it'll be interesting to, I don't know, because I'm always flagging quotes from other people and I'm interested to see, well, do I have anything that I read that back and a line that stands out for me in thinking I view it differently now or I still totally agree or it feels particularly resonate like will I resonate with myself tune in next time.

Outro

Renee: Next time you see me it's gonna be all gone