Synergy to Synastry: Soul Rising Book Club Chapters 27-29 (BONUS) Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the Soul Rising Book Club!

Renee: Welcome back to Book Club, everybody.

Renee: Today, of course, we are continuing our read of Soul Rising, and we have another wonderful batch of chapters.

Renee: I can't believe we're almost done.

Renee: We really have very few chapters left to go in this book.

Renee: We're going to be talking about chapters through .

Renee: This is another batch of three really great chapters that were a delight to read, and I drew a lot of great quotes from them.

Chapter 27: Unlearning the Art of Playing Small: A Path from Burnout to Inner Peace by Charlotte Chipperfield

Renee: Charlotte, who's our book guru, shout out to her.

Renee: I really felt like it showed that she has writing experience.

Renee: The storytelling was really strong in her chapter, and I particularly enjoyed right at the beginning.

Renee: She had this old phone analogy.

Renee: This theme that she brought up, I'm going to talk about it more in each of the other chapters.

Renee: She was bringing up this idea of kind of when we know that we might be ready for a download or some sort of a spiritual up level or spiritual awakening, and the other two authors give their take on it as well.

Renee: So for her analogy, she was describing us as if we were an old phone.

Renee: You can only have it for so long.

Renee: Eventually you're going to need to do an upgrade.

Renee: And when you do, all of a sudden you're realizing, wait, I can't believe I've just been allowing my whole system to shut down and things to fall apart and I'm stretching it because I'm holding on to the past or what I thought was working.

Renee: And how different our life is when we have that up level.

Renee: And this was interesting for me because I've actually talked in a recent time about because I do have an old phone about maybe getting a new one, but I'm kind of trying to push it off to later in the fall before actually getting it.

Renee: I did also recently just have my car brakes replaced.

Renee: So this is something I think that really works well with her analogy where these brakes have been on watch for probably at least five years, where I go for my annual inspection and I'm like, oh, the brake pads are kind of getting thin.

Renee: And I knew when I went for my inspection this year, I'm driving over, I'm like, they're going to fail today.

Renee: I know they're going to fail.

Renee: Because I'm like, it's five times, five times too many.

Renee: So of course I went in, the guy comes out and he's like, it's metal on metal.

Renee: So I had to then bring them back a few days later and get everything all set up and replaced.

Renee: But it fits with what Charlotte was talking about.

Renee: Sometimes we just need to do the reset, move and transition and then go into that next era, because that upgrade is going to pay off.

Renee: Now, I can drive and not have a little thing in the back of my head going, I've had these inspectors telling me for years, what if my brakes just fail all of a sudden?

Renee: Now they have been upgraded and I don't have to worry about that.

Renee: In her chapter, Charlotte also talks about people pleasing due to social expectations, specifically on women to be small, taking up less space.

Renee: It's like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Renee: Man-spreading.

Renee: I watch videos all the time or reality TV.

Renee: So you're seeing a group of people lined up or interviews or just photos or whatever it is.

Renee: Especially if it's a co-ed group, you'll see women sitting next to men.

Renee: They just have their legs separated.

Renee: Then there'll be a woman who's just contorted and has her legs crossed and is leaning.

Renee: That is a really simple visual manifestation of this exact idea.

Renee: Again, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Renee: It is everywhere.

Renee: Similar to many of the other authors, Charlotte was also talking about how her spiritual awakening was impacting her relationship with work.

Renee: So I wanted to read this quote.

Renee: She said, my nervous system no longer felt safe at work, and this led to complete burnout.

Renee: Highly, highly resonant.

Renee: Again, lots of other authors mentioned having some sort of a burnout or reaching essentially a breaking point or a rock bottom, dark night of the soul, etc.

Renee: However, you want to put it.

Renee: Their body was, as Jan was talking about in a previous section, it's like this alert system, the mind-body spirit is in connection and telling you, hey, something is wrong.

Renee: So when we start feeling the physical manifestation, the wearing down, the idea here, which she wasn't explicitly saying in this quote, our nervous system being out of alignment, like our nervous system, this is a scientific biological phenomena, it's a thing that you can't see.

Renee: There is a connection there with what our intuition is doing.

Renee: When we are energetically out of alignment, it often can present in our nervous system being a little awry and vice versa.

Renee: If your nervous system is out of alignment, impacting your intuition.

Renee: If you're not settled, if you are not centered and clearing and taking care of yourself in certain ways, it ripples out this feeling of safety I'm getting drawn to talk about because when we're talking about intuition, we feel an openness, a trust, a connection, a relaxation rather than a lack of safety is when we have the anxiety, the fear.

Renee: I think she is hitting on that without having spoken about that so explicitly in this section.

Renee: In reading this quote, it really was making me think about over the last several years since I had my actual spiritual awakening, or the point that I consider my spiritual awakening I talked about in my chapter.

Renee: What have I learned versus think I've learned?

Renee: Because constantly I feel like I'm having to learn and unlearn what makes me feel connected and aligned or safe and especially repeatedly when it comes to my relationship with work, boundaries around work, giving versus receiving in work, outside of work.

Renee: So some good food for thought for people I think.

Renee: She goes on to say, the hardest part wasn't letting go.

Renee: It was facing how much of myself I'd already let go of along the way.

Renee: Mic drop, whatever it is in the layers that we're shedding, the releasing that's happening and the connection to our authenticity, trying to become more of ourselves.

Renee: Is that more of ourselves, an older version of ourselves?

Renee: Or is it something new that builds on that foundation?

Renee: A return to ourself, but then as someone new, we are the new phone, the upgrade.

Renee: One quick note I wanted to highlight from her podcast interview on Divine Flow.

Values Alignment Exercise

Renee: Charlotte was talking about the value, and so I wanted to mention this as a potential inspired action in case you feel so called, of revisiting your beliefs to sort out who you want to be.

Renee: When we can outline, these are the things that I believe in.

Renee: These are the things that I believe about myself, who I am, who I can be.

Renee: However detailed you want to get with this exercise, it's like you have a column of your beliefs, and then you have a column of what is true or not true, or what it's bringing up within you.

Renee: Does this indicate an area for growth?

Renee: It's like you're flagging, is this a belief that is supporting me on my growth journey?

Renee: Then they have the other column of who is it that you want to be, and trying to draw the connection between all the above.

Renee: Fourth column, what are the steps that you want to take to get there?

Renee: Maybe you go all the way across and you're like, okay, this one's in alignment, this is a belief, this is how I'm living it, great.

Renee: Give myself some pats on the back.

Renee: And then for the few other areas where things are not in alignment, what can I do?

Renee: What specific actions can I take?

Renee: And maybe the action is all mental.

Renee: Maybe it's just a reframe or more release work or manifestation work or mantras and affirmations.

Renee: Maybe it's way more specific on learning a certain skill set or shifting a relationship that you have with somebody else or who is in your circle that is then contributing and reinforcing the belief that you are holding about yourself.

Chapter 28: The Universe is Only Removing What Isn’t for You by Vanessa Grace

Renee: Chapter 18 is with Vanessa.

Renee: Hey Queen, shout out.

Renee: Season 2 Synergy to Synastry guest Vanessa Grace.

Renee: I was so tickled in reading this chapter.

Renee: I was only a couple of sentences in and I was like, this sounds exactly like Vanessa.

Renee: I could just hear her voice in my head, which was just so well done.

Renee: Obviously, it's really different than some of the other chapters because I have had full-blown multiple conversations with her.

Renee: I have messaged with her, but we've had shared real-time virtually, obviously because we're across the country, to be able to know her enough to then hear as I'm reading the chapter.

Renee: Oh my gosh, that's exactly how she speaks.

Renee: It's perfect.

Renee: It's amazing.

Renee: In some ways, I knew a little bit of what to expect in this chapter just from following Vanessa and working with her and talking with her, and interviewing and being interviewed by her to know some of her background.

Renee: I figured that codependence would come up, the Divine Feminine, anything about menstruation or the womb.

Renee: So she had all of her greatest hits that she was discussing.

Renee: It was all of the other connective tissue in between that, of course, was going to be brand new to me.

Renee: On the codependence side, if you are interested in learning about how to heal your codependency, Vanessa has a lot of really great resources.

Renee: I'll include a link in the episode description here to a list of tips directly on her website, but I also recommend checking out her Soul Amplified podcast.

Renee: If you want to learn more about that and really anything else that she talks about in her chapter because she has really positioned herself as such an expert in this space.

Renee: Going back to that thread I mentioned starting in Charlotte's chapter, Vanessa was talking about the up level as a situation where we are raising our vibration that might actually present as a dip.

Renee: So we could have illness like symptoms or have some sort of stagnant energy buildup that's like waiting to be released.

Renee: And I've actually been wondering about this a lot recently because over the last couple months I would say I've been like especially tired and just kind of feeling like things are a little bit off and trying to sort out in my head, okay, is this like growing pains thing or as in like moving towards an up level, am I preparing for something like that?

Renee: Or is it a regression?

Renee: Does this mean that I am overworking or that I'm out of alignment?

Renee: And I think that's the part that's really tricky.

Renee: It's almost like the next question.

Renee: The most common question that I'll get is, is it intuition or anxiety?

Renee: And I feel like this question here is, is it regression or is it an up level?

Renee: And I actually think it's kind of hard to know, especially when you've already had one.

Renee: I definitely and I think other authors have expressed a similar sentiment and opinion on this.

Renee: We can have several rounds.

Renee: I'm just like, oh, you have your awakening and you're awake.

Renee: Great.

Renee: We continue to have these layers that get peeled back, additional steps that we take to evolve.

Renee: And I don't want to say improve because that sounds a little too Virgo harsh, but to grow, to expand.

Renee: We don't always know when they're happening, but to Vanessa's point, it could be presenting for you as if you're just feeling really, really worn down.

Renee: And that's where I think it's tricky.

Renee: Maybe we just have to use our intuition in that situation, or doing even like an exercise I was just describing with Charlotte.

Renee: Checking in with ourselves, maybe through intuition, maybe through journaling, therapy, et cetera, to really take inventory of our life.

Renee: Where are we in alignment?

Renee: Where are we out of alignment?

Renee: What are the different iterations of ourselves or the people that we have lived?

Renee: Who do we think or know ourselves to be now?

Renee: Where do we think we're going?

Renee: Where do we want to go?

Renee: Where do we feel called to go?

Renee: Having all of those laid out in front of us, to help sort out whether we are on the upward or downward, or I should say maybe flat-lined trajectory, are we in a dip, preparing to launch?

Renee: Because sometimes, like Vanessa was talking about, it's like you have this little curve downwards, then you can get momentum and then shoot upward.

Renee: Maybe doing exercises like this could help sort that out a little bit.

Renee: So I'm probably due for something like that.

Renee: While I was actually taking notes on this section, I of course had channeled information just dropping right in, because I was wondering, is this growth or is this regression or whatever?

Renee: Then what came through was both because it's sugar with the medicine.

Renee: Then I received encouragement to keep using my intuition and specifically creativity for quote, waste deposit and sleep helps too.

Renee: So I have, oh gosh.

Renee: So I have my marching orders.

Renee: I'll go from there.

Renee: I wanted to mention a few different points of connection and references with Vanessa's chapter to the podcast and also previous sections within this book.

Renee: So I would definitely recommend if you haven't listened to it or watched it or you want the refresher, the book club I did on chapters 12 through 14, because I did this very extensive Divine Energy.

Renee: So Divine Feminine versus Divine Masculine sidebar.

Renee: And this is a big topic that Vanessa is into, specifically the Divine Feminine side and we talked about on our podcast.

Renee: I'll also link the podcast interviews with Vanessa in the show notes here, because I had asked her in the discussion, well, what do you think about the Divine Masculine?

Renee: And she said on the very high level, like, well, that's not my area.

Renee: I really care less about that.

Renee: This is my mission.

Renee: I'm supposed to be focusing on Divine Feminine.

Renee: I knew from that conversation that I wanted to do research on the Divine Masculine, and I didn't do it until I started recording this book club.

Renee: I finally got around to doing it after all that time in between.

Renee: Also, something that Vanessa does, and she talks about a little bit in the chapter, is that she's a Radiance Coach, which is similar, but from my take of seeing some of the work and materials a little bit different, than Rebecca, who again was in chapter of that same book club I am talking about.

Renee: So there is a little bit of an intersection.

Renee: I'd be really curious to know, I don't know if either of them have interviewed each other or if they have connected, but the fact that they were drawn to Radiance as a concept, at least in their definitions of it, it seems like they're not a total one-to-one.

Renee: During Vanessa's chapter, she mentioned the emotion code, and I saw that it was all capitalized.

Renee: I immediately went and looked it up, what is this?

Renee: I saw it was a book, and you know that I instantly added it to my TBR.

Renee: This is a thing that you definitely should know about Vanessa.

Renee: She always has great book references.

Renee: Vanessa, if you are watching this, what are you reading right now?

Renee: We'd love to know, we'd love more book recs, but I'm going to be reading this one, it is on my list now officially.

Renee: In Vanessa's Divine Flow podcast interview, she was encouraging listeners to find gratitude in and from the challenging times.

Renee: We shouldn't be judging our feelings, rather embracing them to move through them.

Renee: A lot of this comes back to presence and expansion.

Renee: We're not in resistance mode, we're not running away from what we're feeling, what's coming up, what's making us uncomfortable or scared or anxious.

Renee: We are appreciative, very Scorpio Resilience, facing that discomfort head on.

Renee: Be grateful that we've been presented with something that's going to give us an opportunity to grow.

Renee: I feel like I have evolved in this way because I was very, very averse to change for a long time.

Renee: Now in a lot of ways, I'm just like, oh great, something is changing.

Renee: That means that something will be different afterwards and it might be better.

Renee: Or we're going to learn something through that process.

Renee: That's awesome.

Renee: I resist stagnancy way more than I had previously.

Renee: I think it's because I've embraced and appreciated change.

Renee: Even if it's something difficult, seemingly life falling apart or things falling away or challenges coming up or frustrations or oh my gosh, just too many flashbacks of things.

Renee: But then knowing, okay, I'm supposed to be learning something from this.

Renee: What am I missing?

Renee: Then when you get to the other side, however you got there, it all clicks into place.

Renee: That makes a lot of sense, hindsight's .

Renee: Rather than saving all of that good stuff and that joy and relief for the afterward, trying to bring some of that into all of our present moments.

Menstrual Cycle Syncing & The Divine Feminine

Renee: Vanessa, who is so Virgo, there's something that we bonded over when we talked.

Renee: A major change that she implemented in her lifestyle, where previously she only rested after completing her to-do list.

Renee: Now, her rest syncs up with the menstrual seasons.

Renee: She was acknowledging in this podcast interview that we're taught that the womb is gross, and therefore, we don't look to it as a source of wisdom or for our power, and that's probably something as a society that we should change.

Renee: Talking about Vanessa's workshop, Virgo Energy Strikes Again, she also did a PowerPoint.

Renee: Of course, she did.

Renee: I laughed the second I saw it.

Renee: So she was discussing masculine versus feminine energies in the world and within the US.

Renee: Again, a little bit more on that in the podcast interview when we had her on.

Renee: In her workshop, she talked about the seasons of the menstrual cycle.

Renee: She did discuss this general framework on our podcast, but we had asked her to frame it around intuition.

Renee: So how is your intuition ebbing and flowing?

Renee: How do you work with it during each of these phases?

Renee: So this workshop had all that stuff taken out.

Renee: It was more of what does each of them represent?

Renee: What are general things that you can do?

Renee: What is happening with your energy?

Renee: On the super high level, she was talking about how we can plan during the follicular phase, socialize or produce during the ovulation phase, integrate and reflect during luteal and how the second half is where we have our PMS, and then releasing and resting during menstruation.

Renee: She included a really great tip here, which as someone who hasn't worked with the womb space at all, I feel like it would be really easy to do a starting point during the menstrual phase.

Renee: You could intention set, you're creating space.

Renee: What is it you want to call in?

Renee: You could just do that maybe every single day of your period during that part of the cycle.

Renee: Every day that you're bleeding, you could do that.

Renee: She also was noting that the more that you are resting and the more that you are leaning into that release, the greater the energy surge.

Renee: Again, think about as you're going lower and then you have the upswing in the ovulation phase.

Renee: And this is where if we are judging ourselves for what we're producing or not producing, it's going to be completely counterproductive.

Renee: We know that our bodies require rest regardless of whether you menstruate or not.

Renee: You may be on a different cycle, but we're all on cycles.

Renee: We have daily cycles, monthly cycles, yearly cycles, hourly cycles, sleeping cycles.

Renee: It's important for us to find reconnection to those innate to our body and try to work with them as best as we can.

Renee: It makes a huge, huge difference.

Renee: Rounding out Vanessa's section, she did a Heart Womb Golden Thread visualization.

Renee: And this felt for me like a really centering reset.

Renee: And I like the idea of also doing something like this, maybe step number two, doing some connection work, visualization work, a few moments of this type of intuitive practice throughout my cycle and at the different stages, given that I am pretty disconnected otherwise.

Chapter 29: My Dance with Awakening by Catherine Galardo

Renee: For our third and final chapter, we have Catherine.

Renee: I did want to give a content warning up front.

Renee: Miscarriage is discussed during this section.

Renee: For Catherine's take on this conversation we've been having around how our up level is presenting, she actually brought up what I thought was an interesting point, that she believes that the timing of that awakening is predestined.

Renee: I've discussed it with a few other chapters.

Renee: It's not like I didn't have a flag going up in my head that there was something going on.

Renee: I just didn't get to the point of the real awakening until later.

Renee: And I had the thought to actually look at the natal chart for the day and hour, that I had that psychic reading where I got confirmation from another intuitive telling me, you have an intuition, you should be working on this.

Renee: What I was drawn to looking at specifically, Transiting Mars and Gemini, squaring my natal Mars, and really what that's doing based on my house placements in my chart, it's making the unconscious conscious and it's a call to action to learn.

Renee: And I'm like, I literally had that.

Renee: It's this thing that I kind of knew, but I didn't know something that was underneath the surface that I'm then being asked to pursue.

Renee: He literally was telling me, you need to go sign up for a class.

Renee: And that's exactly what I did.

Renee: And further to this general conversation we've had about what an awakening looks like, Catherine posed the following.

Renee: It's, quote, massive chaos, confusion, disorientation, and dysregulation.

Renee: She is definitely highlighting what Vanessa was talking about of the dip.

Renee: I think mentioning the disorientation and dysregulation, which gets back to the nervous system, is really important because we're going to look around like, I don't know what's going on, I don't understand this.

Renee: And it's because we are the caterpillar in the cocoon and it's growing and changing and we don't really know what's happening.

Renee: Intuitively, instinctively, we know we need to push out of the cocoon, but we don't know what's going on.

Renee: And then we get out there and it's like, oh my gosh, I am different.

Renee: Now what do I do?

Renee: Wait, you have to realize that you can fly, that you function differently.

Renee: Your body, your being is different.

Renee: And that is kind of a shock to the system.

Renee: And there is an adjustment period, the same as for me, when I was realizing, when I was doing the Nuurvana course, wait, I can read people?

Renee: What?

Renee: This, it's like, it was mind blowing, but then it kept happening.

Renee: And then I wanted to keep practicing it.

Renee: And obviously I have.

Renee: Yeah, it's like when people have like the buffering symbol over your head, it kind of is like that sensation.

Renee: That's why it's important to have community and resources or a mentor, just somebody that you can talk to about it.

Renee: So it's a fellow butterfly who's like, oh yeah, I remember when that happened to me.

Renee: And that's another thing I think really is just great about this book, because it's people telling you, hey, here's what happened.

Renee: And a lot of the chapters have really great advice.

Renee: Catherine spoke about similar to Charlotte at the top.

Renee: I was living a life that wasn't mine.

Renee: So she was out of alignment.

Renee: Maybe it was her nervous system that was off.

Renee: Maybe it was burnout, breakdown, which Vanessa was talking about as well.

Renee: Like things just weren't clicking, things weren't working out.

Renee: So all three of them had a similar pattern, presented in different ways.

Renee: And Catherine goes on to talk about people pleasing, standards, relationship imbalance.

Renee: So really a lot of overlap with the other two chapters in what was coming up in her life, what was not working and what needed some healing.

Renee: Her journey to heal was centered on somatic work, moving energy through her body, and she did that through dance.

Renee: Ultimately what she was finding is when she was allowing that release, what was coming out of it was years and years of suppressed emotions.

Renee: Again, she was talking about these cycles of finding and losing ourselves.

Renee: So we create this practice, shedding, we're releasing, we're becoming something different.

Renee: We have to shed more, there's more and more layers.

Renee: Rediscovery, the ebb and the flow.

Renee: Maybe you have this somatic practice, you fall out of it, you pick it up again.

Renee: I mean, I have that with yoga all the time.

Renee: I'm talking about that for years.

Renee: You go in and out in certain waves, but the tools that are going to work for you, you're going to keep coming back to them.

Renee: I had a little practice drop-in that I actually just started a couple days ago.

Renee: While reading this section, I had a new practice for myself come in, which was to ask myself each morning for days, starting with the next Virgo Moon, which I think ended up being within a couple weeks after I had read this section, to ask myself in the morning, what will make me happy today?

Renee: Just write down that one simple thing, and then that can just become my only goal, regardless of what's on my to-do list or not.

Renee: If I can just do that one simple thing, and I'll give some examples of what I've written down the last few days.

Renee: I just had a reading, I had finishing a book, and then resting.

Renee: So far, I am three for three.

Renee: I have done those things.

Renee: I'm really, really curious to see where I land after the full days, and how this just shifts my mind to perspective.

Renee: Maybe I don't need to then write it down, but I just start rewiring my brain and how I think about encountering my day, like a little bit of that learning and unlearning, and Vanessa knows this as well.

Renee: Are we scheduling?

Renee: Are we over scheduling?

Renee: I know that's something I need to dial back on a bit.

Renee: As another great tip from Catherine, she was mentioning that even just trying new foods or trying a new thing is a great way to very quickly have an energetic shift to move the energy out of our body.

Renee: We try something different, it's engaging, it's breaking us out of this paradigm.

Renee: Whether you are a dancer or not, you could just throw some music on too, and I can speak to this as well.

Renee: You sit there, you're listening, maybe you haven't really listened to music for days, you put some on and it's like, oh yeah, like you're really lit up and feeling something different and all of those are great tools.

Renee: Even if you're choosing to listen to music that is going to make you cry or emote or feel something, the point is the release, it's the movement and flow of energy through and out of you.

Renee: This was a really great section, some awesome, really simple, practical tips from the full group here.

Renee: And I would love to know where you stand, maybe from all of the chapters in this book or your personal experience or other intuitives and people who've had any sort of a spiritual awakening.

Renee: What is your take on the up level versus regression balancing act here?

Renee: What it seems to look like for most people or what are tips that you have heard from other people for how to identify which end of that spectrum you are falling on.

Renee: I would love to know, please write in on socials or send me an email.

Renee: Let's have a talk.

Final Thoughts on These Chapters & Upcoming Podcast Schedule

Renee: Next episode in the feed will be the final collective reading and life updates episode of the season.

Renee: We only have a few episodes left.

Renee: So hopefully you have been enjoying season three.

Renee: If you're not totally caught up, no time like the present.

Renee: And as far as our book goes, we're coming to an end with that too.

Renee: So we're going to have in this final stretch here, the final book club.

Renee: So keep reading.

Renee: And I can't wait to talk more about it in a few weeks.

Outro

Renee: Did I do this one already?

Renee: Do I even know where I am?

Renee: Oh, gosh.

Renee: Oh, yeah, I definitely did.

Renee: Ay-yay-yay.

Renee: I'm sitting down to record a book club I already did.

Renee: I don't know where I am.