Synergy to Synastry: Soul Rising Book Club Chapters 30-33 (BONUS) Podcast Transcript

Oct 10

29 min read

Welcome to the Soul Rising Book Club!

Renee: It's the final book club.

Renee: I feel like this is such a milestone.

Renee: Yeah, I finished reading this book yesterday around midday.

Renee: I started reading this actually in December of 2025.

Renee: So I'm recording now in September 2026.

Renee: So that's a lot of months to be reading, not a very long book.

Renee: I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Renee: I'll talk a little bit more about what the experience has been like.

Renee: Before I do the full recap, let's go into the remaining four chapters.

Chapter 30: Finding the Will to Live Beneath the Draconic Wings of Chronic Illness by Kristen Girard

Renee: Content warning for Kristen's chapter.

Renee: There is discussion of depression and suicidal ideation.

Renee: The main backdrop for Kristen's story is that she has diabetes.

Renee: I was about to say she is diabetic.

Renee: She has a reframe in the chapter about de-identifying from chronic illness.

Renee: Really so many facets of our life.

Renee: It came up in other stories, and I know I've dealt with this myself, where you're identifying as the student or the worker, whatever your job is and how that has a whole trickle-down effect, and it makes it harder to evolve and change.

Renee: But just putting a pin in that for a moment, I wanted to talk about just the writing style here.

Renee: Very poetic, dramatic storytelling.

Renee: It really stood out from the previous sections and again, most of the book.

Renee: There was a few in here, I was like, okay, everyone has this.

Renee: I wouldn't say it's whimsical tone, but it's a really well-crafted story, like vivid imagery, just the phrasing was less regular person speech.

Renee: She starts out with raising what I think is a pretty valid critique of the spiritual community in some corners can be a hyper-focus on love and alignment in a way that's like, just love yourself and love other people and just focus on being aligned.

Renee: It gets back to that conversation that I had recently about balance.

Renee: What even is balance?

Renee: What even is alignment?

Renee: In a lot of ways, you can see that definition-wise, they might have a bit of an overlap.

Renee: And what it does is it puts us in a position where yet again, having to achieve something, and all we're gonna think about is, I'm doing this wrong or I'm doing that wrong, or that energy fixes everything and it's just % mind over matter.

Renee: Hopefully, we know by now that personal evolution, spiritual growth and development, following our purpose, manifesting whatever it is that we want in our life, it's more complex than just one single fix or change.

Renee: We don't want to put so much pressure on ourself to be living a certain way, because again, that ends up being more restricting.

Renee: And that's why listening to your intuition and allowing it to guide you in ebbing and flowing and not always having to do things one certain way all the time can be so crucial.

Renee: And naturally, Kristen was sharing something that many other authors, including myself, had mentioned, this concern about being othered.

Renee: It's the witch wound, which we've talked about many times.

Renee: And I wanted to read this quote.

Renee: She said, I had been so convinced over the years that it didn't matter, that for me to value anything at all meant nothing good would come of it.

Renee: So this is really just an indicator of her state of mind, her perspective.

Renee: This is very much like a dark night of the soul situation.

Renee: Some of the authors use this specific term when talking about the ascension path.

Renee: So there's like this dip.

Renee: We talked about this a lot in the last book club.

Renee: What does the up level look like?

Renee: And everyone has a little bit of a different experience, but there are some common themes.

Renee: So it sounds like Kristen was having one of those words.

Renee: There's the weightiness, there's the heaviness, there's the darkness.

Renee: And in her situation, she was really contemplating ending her life, not wanting to be here anymore.

Renee: And she had a spiritual awakening through the lens of her higher self, contacting her, stepping forward, receiving this intuitive insight, and ultimately walking away with the message that she's worthy of being alive.

Renee: So very similar to Amanda in Chapter 25, she made the pivot going in the art direction.

Renee: So art as therapy, as the channel through which she can translate the information coming in and to process and express her emotional landscape, her thoughts, etc.

Renee: So it's at this point that she was really starting to de-identify from her dragons, as she calls it, or ailments, and reframing those elements as being messages and guides.

Renee: She also was talking about this pressure of like, then you get on this path.

Renee: Let me explore this and you're curious and you're trying to understand yourself and you're trying new things and you're experimenting.

Renee: You get either internal conditioned or external pushback of like, oh, I have to get a real job or I have to do something that's stable.

Renee: Like we've all had it.

Renee: So this is really a tale as old as time.

Renee: It's like that phase of the awakening requires us to build up our level of self-trust.

Renee: So trusting that intuition is what I am doing, quote, right for me.

Renee: What I'm meant to be doing or frankly, just what I am called to do right now.

Renee: Maybe it's just following that current inspiration because it just guides you somewhere.

Renee: And then that next pivot happens, that fork in the road is at that location, that place, that encounter that wouldn't have come up if you had gone another route.

Renee: Over in the podcast interview, she goes a little bit more in-depth about the highest self self-portraits.

Renee: So that was part of her awakening.

Renee: She was drawing and then was realizing one day, oh my gosh, I actually drew my highest self.

Renee: So she has this as a service, an offering, so people can commission those images, which I think is super interesting just as a concept.

Renee: The timing, of course, of me reading this chapter is never a coincidence, because I have been receiving some intuitive messages more recently, just independently myself, as well as in a reading I just did with some of my psychic friends.

Renee: When I came through, one of them was talking about doing something more creative with my readings.

Renee: Rather, I enjoy the process of creating that thing that is really personalized to my readee.

North Node & South Node Interpretations

Renee: Now when it came to Kristen's workshop, she has such a sweet, tender, really earnest energy about her, like she would be easy to connect with.

Renee: In her workshop, she was going through, it was an astrology workshop, so I went, okay, I am sat, and she was discussing some different interpretations of the South Node and the North Node.

Renee: That is something that I do talk about in my classes.

Renee: We talk about it in all of the Eclipse episodes in this podcast.

Renee: The North Node and the South Node have their own signatures attached to them.

Renee: As she was explaining at the top of the workshop, there are a lot of different interpretations.

Renee: And she was offering one where the South Node is the dedication, the hard work you're putting in, whereas the North Node is the peak of actualization and flow.

Renee: So what she did was she covered each of the pairing breakdowns as well as looked at all of the house numbers.

Renee: I just jotted down a few notes on what she said about my placement.

Renee: My North Node is in Scorpio, and she said this is quote, getting into the magic and mystery of who you are.

Renee: There's magic coming up again.

Renee: And that stars shine brightest on the darkest nights.

Renee: I really like that one.

Renee: And for myself node in Taurus, quote, the world is more than material things.

Renee: There's a really important lesson to learn self-embodiment, which I think we've talked about some version of that enough.

Renee: I'm discussing breath work.

Renee: I know that's air versus body, but it's grounding, it's centering, it's coming back to myself and being present.

Renee: If you haven't looked at the nodes in your natal chart, I actually do have a video on my YouTube channel about eclipses in general, but explaining Lunar Nodes .

Renee: That gives you some visuals and an overview of what each of them represent.

Renee: And then it was factoring into the eclipse series that's wrapped up borderline at this point of episode release.

Renee: But nice overall for a retrospective and really just understanding this concept.

Renee: And if you would like more of a deep dive on your North Node and South Node, I do cover that in one of my intro natal trio astrology readings.

Chapter 31: Stillness in the Storm by Viviana Arbor

Renee: Chapter 31 from Viviana.

Renee: Again, very poetic visuals as well as like we've entered a new era in this book.

Renee: We're like landing the ship.

Renee: And it's really just reminded me of the books that I'm reading in my regular day to day.

Renee: Important content warnings here.

Renee: She discusses death, child loss, as well as natural disasters and the recovery process from that.

Renee: So she spoke about a hurricane coming in, completely destroying her hometown.

Renee: This was a catalyst to completely start over, literally, metaphorically, and of course spiritually.

Renee: So she went up to the mountains to recoup.

Renee: What's she going to do now?

Renee: She talks about getting a tattoo, which of course was an incredibly perfect tie-in as this season is coming to a close because it was a Greek lore-coded tattoo as an inscription from the entrance of Delphi, which is the temple which we've talked about.

Renee: Luce translation is to know thyself, but then she has this addendum about that part of who the self is, is the soul.

Renee: She goes on to say, quote, instead of analyzing my way through life, I began feeling, sensing, listening and responding.

Renee: Similar to Vanessa in Chapter 28, she's developing her heart space.

Renee: And really the rest of the chapter is her going through a bunch of different activities.

Renee: So these are great practices if you want to experiment.

Renee: The first one, creating a somatic map of your body.

Renee: So you're tapping into different sensations of awareness, coding them as positive, neutral or negative, and then looking to explore them a little bit more.

Renee: This is something that you could opt to track over time to identify patterns.

Renee: She also talked about this exercise, which we did a very, very similar one through Nuurvana, of picturing like an elevator at your center.

Renee: So you have yourself getting on the elevator up in your mind, going down the elevator into your heart space.

Renee: This term that we'll use of you're dropping in.

Renee: You could take the elevator to each of the chakras.

Renee: You go down to your throat, go down to your heart, so on and so forth.

Renee: It's a simple visualization tool to get you to access those places.

Renee: If it feels like harder to say, I'm just going to focus on my heart space, you could just picture dropping in.

Renee: It's the movement of energy from where it may most often reside, appear in the mental space, to bring down to the less tended to area.

Renee: So Viviana also says, Spirit speaks when we're not expecting it, because it is then that our resistance is lower.

Renee: I thought this was a really important point to make, because even for all of these Spiritual Awakening stories when we're talking about that drop-off, our guard is down.

Renee: We are totally raw and therefore open.

Renee: The expect the unexpected type of situation, that happens all the time, even not for a Spiritual Awakening, but just for a message coming in.

Renee: When we are trying to force something, like the example that I'm thinking of now, is, oh you're trying to remember something, oh who's that actor in that thing, and you can't remember if you just stop thinking about it, then you're gonna remember like six hours later while doing something completely unrelated.

Renee: It's almost like that with intuition, when we are trying to force the answer and we keep asking, well what do I do here and when is this gonna happen?

Renee: We're not in a space of receiving, so we're not going to get the answer.

Renee: We can't really get that attached to timing.

Renee: Sometimes we'll get some information on timing, maybe it's a range or a certain month or something like that.

Renee: If we're just given, oh this is gonna happen on this day, okay great, well then what are you gonna do between now and then?

Renee: Probably nothing.

Renee: Depending on your specific journey, you could lose all the momentum.

Renee: There's understanding to happen, connections to be made.

Renee: So if we're just given that type of an answer, we could get stagnant and not do anything.

Renee: So it almost acts as more of a motivation or push, even if it can feel frustrating, because we just want to know this thing, we want to know when.

Renee: I think one of the most important lessons or reframes, in addition to my relationship with change, which I've talked about before, is the flexibility of trying to be less bound to time.

Renee: And again, I'm someone who is a planner, and so I still struggle with certain aspects of it.

Renee: But from that standpoint, things are gonna happen when they're gonna happen.

Renee: I can only focus on what's in front of me, plan certain things, know that I can't control the outcome.

Renee: So it's also like a releasing control situation as well.

Renee: Time is just one factor in the equation.

Renee: And another activity that Viviana had in her chapter was writing down an intention.

Renee: How does it feel to read that intention back?

Renee: Especially gauging any spiritual messages that come through and inquiring about, I'll use the word again, alignment with any of what you've written down and the intention itself, and then noting which statements feel true or safe.

Renee: So I had the note as I was reading this, to not complete this exercise in real time, but to do it live while I'm recording here.

Renee: Over what period of time are we talking about?

Renee: Through the end of the year, just keep it simple.

Renee: Okay, so through the end of the year, first word that came in right away was just peace.

Renee: Oh my gosh, I'm laughing.

Renee: I totally forgot that my mantra that I've had taped around my room forever, I find peace in ease.

Renee: Okay, so no wonder this is the theme.

Renee: How it feels to read it back, honestly, it sounds nice.

Renee: It's like, oh, like I'm brought into visuals of what does the piece look like for me.

Renee: I can read, have some tea, have a blanket, get cozy, crafty again.

Renee: I never pulled my guitar out of my closet even after all this time.

Renee: Maybe doing that, yes, doing that.

Renee: Connection with other people, gatherings and things that aren't forced, small group situations, light chatter, nothing that feels super structured, excitement from a lack of excitement, peace from the simplicity.

Renee: I have that Hygga book, setting up your environment, making things feel really cozy, like trying to elicit that calm and joy.

Renee: I should just put it on my list to reread my little Hygga book.

Chapter 32: The Great Awakening within is HERE! by Emily Moon

Renee: Chapter 32 with Emily Moon.

Renee: I was really looking forward to reading this chapter.

Renee: Simply because of her name.

Renee: The whole time, I saw it when we first had the list of authors, and I was like, Emily Moon, who is this?

Renee: And so I just was waiting the whole book.

Renee: I'm like, when am I getting to Emily's chapter?

Renee: I've got to learn about her.

Renee: So then I was realizing as I kept going, I'm like, oh my gosh, her chapter's at the end.

Renee: I'm gonna have to wait the whole book.

Renee: Content warning here, depression.

Renee: Now getting into the actual section, I was hit with a dose of reality right at the top.

Renee: So of course, I was drawn to her chapter for a reason I did not understand until I actually started it.

Renee: She set the table by explaining how she was 32 back in 2016, that she was married, she owned a house, and that she wasn't happy.

Renee: So this was a really notable parallel for me because I am 32, I am not married, I don't own a house.

Renee: Obviously, I'm in a very different place in life than she was, we're years apart age-wise, and to have that as like the snapshot of where was she at that point in time, I had my spiritual awakening earlier than some people.

Renee: Like for me, it felt like, oh, the signs were there like I should have known, I should have looked into this earlier and I totally could have.

Renee: There were some women who were much more aware explicitly of their gifts at a younger age.

Renee: I'm not being as a competition, just more like it's a marker in time that at least I had the understanding about myself and the growth path started when it did.

Renee: Because as far as timing for the rest of the world and how much has happened and the people I've been able to meet along the way, if this has happened earlier, I might not have met these people.

Renee: Or if it happened later, I might have missed so much of my path and the experiences that I've had if the timing was different.

Renee: Classic, trust in the divine timing.

Renee: So back to Emily's story, in 2016, she decided to take herself off her antidepressants and started asking herself more really deep questions about her purpose, her identity, like, who am I, why am I here, what should I be doing?

Renee: And she started receiving messages and no longer running away from her feelings and her sensitivity.

Renee: So this is another theme that has come up in other chapters, being a highly sensitive person.

Renee: So she found a spiritual guide, always important to find at least one person, just somebody that you can share your experiences with, ask questions, try to figure out what's good for you at the given time, how to approach conversations with people who are not in this world.

Renee: That becomes really, really important.

Renee: Even if you were basically on the same exact timeline and you're like only a few months apart, oh, that just happened to me two weeks ago.

Renee: It's just having that bouncing board.

Renee: If I had read this chapter five months ago, I don't think I would have interpreted this in the same way at all.

Renee: But as I mentioned before, I recently had a psychic reading and I also have had intuitive nudges about the same exact concept.

Renee: First, it was incorporating creativity into my business in a way that's a little bit more loose and playful and just feels fun.

Renee: The other thing that has come up is this idea of doing a solo trip, dreaming that I'm somewhere and I'm by myself, like I'm abroad and I'm somewhere by myself.

Renee: Again, intuitive drop-ins as I've been out and about, like much more recently, it's just dropping in rather than through my dreams.

Renee: In the same channeling session, I was just talking about with some of my psychic friends in our little round robin situation, it just came in through like ask them something about travel.

Renee: I'm like, okay, well, I don't know what they're going to say.

Renee: For context here, I read this chapter after this whole thing happened.

Renee: The first thing that came out of all of their mouths was booking a trip, especially booking solo trips, like multiple.

Renee: Get some solo trips on the calendar.

Renee: It doesn't matter if you are local or you go far away, but just start doing those because there's going to be something really freeing and informative about it.

Renee: Also, it was coming up in a few of them, that it'll help me break out of certain patterns and shell in a certain way, but also that I could meet someone, which is something that has come up intuitively for me in my dreams and in messages and just channeling also over the last several years.

Renee: So then I have some other people completely unsolicited.

Renee: It was not even the intention of my question.

Renee: All I had thrown at them was a topic and they went in and pulled all of this stuff that has been coming up for me.

Renee: And that's really a great example of how intuitive readings can offer validation.

Renee: I didn't even know that this was stuff that I've been thinking about because it intuitively came in so many times over the last several years.

Renee: The relationship between travel and spiritual awakenings.

Renee: This has come up in a ton of stories in this book.

Renee: And this in some ways, I think, gets back to the whole idea of astro-cartography which we've discussed a few times on this podcast that there's energy in certain places.

Renee: Whether you're connecting it to your natal chart or not, which of course is what astro-cartography is doing, that there are activations that happen when you go to different places.

Renee: It's not just the change of scenery.

Renee: If you're an intuitive, the spirits, the messages that you can receive from the beings that are there, from the people that you encounter, you're putting yourself in a totally different environment and it allows you to reframe and reset.

Renee: Emily, in her story, she did a solo trip to Peru.

Renee: This really, really helped her unlock her intuition more.

Renee: So Emily comes home from Peru and decides to break up with her husband and then move back to Peru permanently.

Renee: So within a year, she has this, what she refers to as a rebirth.

Renee: And I did have kind of a long quote here, but I felt called to share, the greatest gift I have learned from my awakening is that loving oneself is a master key to everything.

Renee: This is foundational on the journey and leads to so much magic effortlessly unfolding for us.

Renee: It's not just the greatest gift to you, but also to humanity because when we truly love ourselves, appreciate who we are and rise above former versions of self, we are embodying higher vibrational states of consciousness.

Renee: This is what contributes to raising the vibration on our planet.

Renee: It's a ripple in the water situation and that ripple often comes from kindness.

Renee: It's like the kindness within.

Renee: It's when we're choosing to, in a lot of cases in this book and in my life, we're choosing to slow down, ground or be more intentional, be kinder to ourselves, to take care of ourselves in whatever form that presents.

Renee: When we are only putting energy into relationships that are also nurturing, that dynamic completely reorients what we allow.

Renee: When we're willing to treat ourselves with either the kindness we normally treat others or with just a quote healthier kindness, we can extend that out.

Renee: We can start to see other people, circumstances differently are of a service mindset in wanting to teach and support other people because we see, oh my gosh, I used to be exactly like that, I was struggling and this has been a huge help for me to get out of that cycle.

Renee: That's happened with all of my psychic friends and I where we started just looking at certain things in life, certain systems and how things operated and just run in the world, whether that is money, corporate versus small business, being an entrepreneur, creativity, travel, what does freedom mean, what do boundaries mean, working with time, allowance or flow, pretty big picture concepts that run, orchestrate or will our society to be a certain way, that all of that started with us because of the internal changes that we were making.

Renee: And to that point, Emily emphasizes the importance of choosing to live a life that aligns with that new version of you.

Renee: You're working your way, you're evolving, and you're just making decisions.

Renee: Like each choice is like a vote to be that person.

Renee: The choices that you're making, the conversations that you're having, the narratives within your own mind, all of that contributes to getting you to be that new person.

Renee: The up level and less of the spiritual Wu way and more of just the personal development way, like the totally everyday person growth.

Renee: This sounds a little bit more approachable than having to flip a switch and just transforming and being a new person overnight.

Renee: It's not linear.

Renee: And as long as we continue to make those choices following our intuition and what we feel is gonna put us at least pointed in the direction that we're meant to go, and maybe that direction shifts and maybe it changes, and something else comes up, but you're trying to be more fluid, then we can actually learn more of the lesson of going moment by moment.

Renee: If all I'm thinking about is just the next few decisions in front of me, rather than who I think that person is, it's so common to be asked the question, Oh, where do you see yourself in five years?

Renee: When I started to get asked that question when I had my spiritual awakening, I'm not gonna know that.

Renee: And like, I actually don't care.

Renee: Obviously, I'm a very goal-oriented person.

Renee: It's pointless for me to try to predict, put a pin on the map of like, this is who I want to be, and like, this is how it's gonna work out, and this is what I'm hoping is gonna happen.

Renee: Think about how much has changed in the last six years when we had the pandemic and where we are now.

Renee: It's like, oh my gosh, actually five years kind of is a long time if you're really active and growing.

Renee: Total sidebar here.

Renee: I did not plan this in my notes or anything.

Renee: I just kind of started wandering off.

Renee: I'm just curious how people feel about that question.

Renee: Like, where do you see yourself in five years or years?

Renee: And has your response to that changed at all, especially if you have gone through or are going through a spiritual awakening?

Renee: Wrapping up Emily's chapter, she has great and approachable tips just like in this list at the end of her chapter.

Renee: And one that really resonated for me was about recognizing that others are on their own journey.

Renee: And I know that, but it's just kind of taken on a new meaning these days.

Renee: Making sure that we spend less time putting energy towards that.

Renee: Like even just thinking about that these individuals are on a different path.

Renee: And maybe that means that we just end up having to spend less time with them than we would hope.

Renee: You're in different energetic frequencies, you have different approaches to life, or even lifestyles or beliefs.

Renee: And it ends up being a situation where we want to be able to honor their path and not be, and honestly, this is applicable to so much in society, I'm just realizing this now, but letting go of this impulse to be fighting or altering that.

Renee: Because it's their soul's journey.

Renee: We're sitting there and we're like, oh my gosh, I could be helping them.

Renee: They could be doing this differently.

Renee: This is so obvious.

Renee: They're being taken advantage of, like whatever it is.

Renee: It's their journey to figure that out.

Renee: All you're doing is sitting and thinking about that.

Renee: Okay, we're making ourselves stagnant.

Renee: We're preventing our own growth.

Renee: Maybe that is a lesson in and of itself.

Renee: What do we do when we see that there's someone that we care about or that we want to help or that we want to stay connected to and it's just, it's not aligned.

Renee: Maybe that's going to change if they kind of do a reset, but they have to learn the things that they're supposed to learn.

Renee: And we have to learn the things that we're supposed to learn.

Renee: And the hope is that your past can converge and you can be at the same place in the same time.

Renee: I have examples of people in my life where that's true, where at some points we've been co-collaborators, been able to work together and now we just, we don't have that.

Renee: I have so many things that I could be doing, that I could be making it about me, putting your own oxygen mask on in that sense.

Renee: In Emily's podcast interview, she was talking about the importance of reclaiming your power and then she gave some examples specifically for her, like her tips.

Renee: The biggest catalyst for her has been connecting to nature and that has brought her some of the most significant and meaningful healing.

Renee: The workshop, she had a gentle movement, breath work, sound healing with the crystal bowls and I don't know, something, some chimes, some like wind chimes or something that sounded really nice, as well as visualization in a meditation practice, journal prompts, and channeled writing.

Renee: There was like a lot of pieces within her workshop.

Renee: One thing that she had mentioned at one point, you could have some sort of a morning practice of channel journaling and I, of course, I'm laughing again.

Renee: I'm like Emily's chapter is killing me because everything is completely relevant with what I have been thinking about and what has been coming up for me.

Renee: I actually have on my schedule starting, I think like next week, I'm going to be doing the dreaded morning pages again.

Renee: I think it's just morning page.

Renee: I hadn't really thought much about what that page was going to look like.

Renee: And now I'm recognizing I could just have it be channeling.

Renee: So I'm like, oh, thanks for the tip because I could do exactly what she is talking about.

Renee: And Emily also gave the tip for trying to get messages from Spirit, whether through this type of exercise or just otherwise, to lean on asking broader questions because if you ask something too specific or too narrow, what you're doing is you're actually limiting the information that could come through.

Renee: Think back to the example that I gave before.

Renee: I asked this question, tell me something about my relationship with travel.

Renee: That's super, super broad.

Renee: And then what came in was specific actions and explanations because we're trying to be receptive versus controlling or narrowing what information we're getting because guess what that's doing?

Renee: It's putting blinders on, which we don't want.

Renee: Emily had us answer the question, what energy do I need to receive today?

Renee: And what came through for me was life light, not life force.

Renee: So again, actually kind of a theme that we were talking about, not forcing things.

Renee: Being and creating for the sake of play, to try and disconnect ideas from an outcome or confining it to something monetary.

Renee: And that's that South node and Taurus situation we're talking about with Kristen's chapter.

Renee: I should just be able to create and come up with ideas and not have to immediately spin them into, should I add this into my business?

Renee: And I had this quote, home is being, which is why it can be found everywhere.

Renee: Again, relating to this idea of travel.

Renee: And on the last journal prompt, Emily was asking what message would like to be shared?

Renee: And what came in through was, you got it already.

Renee: Too fast for this.

Renee: It is a great thing, so keep up with it.

Renee: I've been experimenting with this podcast and trying different modalities, and that's probably helped with some expansion.

Renee: So that was like a nice, I don't know, note of reinforcement to end on from my spirit team.

Chapter 33: Ready for Takeoff: A Soul's Journey to New Heights by Gina Hansen

Renee: The time has finally come.

Renee: We are at chapter 33 of 33, very similar to a lot of the other authors here.

Renee: She had a lot of things that were kind of ending and changing all at the same time, kind of reminded me of like a Saturn return type situation.

Renee: She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, leaves her husband, so again, similar to Emily, and then also in and around the same time.

Renee: So she was working as a flight attendant for basically 20 years.

Renee: As a result of the pandemic, they were offering people early retirement, and this was the thing she went back and forth on because she's like, I love my job, and I love this life, along her intuition and deciding to end that.

Renee: So she had all of these beginnings and endings and scary things and new chapters, and like, what do I do now?

Renee: Also similar to what Viviana was talking about.

Renee: And just like Emily, she travels to Mexico, not Peru, to look into different holistic treatments, does a lot of research, she's there for a few weeks, starts having some positive results, but in general, quote, I felt the loss of my wings and the freedom to fly.

Renee: She starts to discover that she has some clairsentience, meaning that her intuition can come through physical sensations or touch.

Renee: She's working with a shaman who advised her to spend some more time in solitude.

Renee: And just as we've talked about, and I think almost all of the chapters in this section, she was learning to recognize her heart space, her heart energy, nurturing and healing that.

Renee: The sheer volume of bird encounters that she had, the parallel is kind of crazy to me.

Renee: She worked at an airline, something that flies, and then she has all these bird encounters, finding different birds and healing them, or shielding them, or protecting them, or something.

Renee: So she just told a couple of stories, but it seemed like there was many more.

Renee: It's just so fascinating.

Renee: So I would be curious to know if she has had any other bird incidences, or has got a bird as a pet or anything like that, because it seemed like there's such a strong connection.

Renee: Someone recommends the emotion code, which still in my TBR from Vanessa's chapter have not read it yet.

Renee: But that really helped her learn about herself and be able to co-parent successfully with this genex husband.

Renee: Just process all of those challenges, the loss, the frustrations, the concerns.

Renee: And she said, quote, In the past, I made decisions based on logic, but now I follow my heart and it feels good.

Renee: As a really cute way, I thought, to end the chapter, she outlines a spiritual flight plan.

Renee: So the first one is control.

Renee: This is you are the pilot.

Renee: We have to drop baggage because, quote, you cannot fly if your wings are heavy.

Renee: The second piece of the flight plan is communication.

Renee: Our flight crew is comprised of our higher self, guys, inner child, and so many more willing to support us.

Renee: And then we have the conditions changing.

Renee: So any clouds, weather, patterns, turbulence, they are teaching us to, quote, rely on our instruments, like relying on ourselves, resourcefulness, knowledge, or, of course, trusting our intuition.

Renee: And Gina wraps everything up saying, quote, the sky isn't the limit, it's your infinite runway.

Renee: So overall, I mentioned a few themes in this section of chapters.

Renee: There was a lot of heart work, compassion, tending and caring to ourselves.

Renee: These were women who worked really hard and were trying to find their way to joy.

Renee: And for some of them, it was freedom through travel, complete and total reinvention.

Renee: For some of them, it was by choice.

Renee: And others, it was like, okay, it feels like my life is falling apart, but then choices were made.

Renee: How do I respond?

Renee: And how do I make sure that the choices that I make are allowing me to heal, to be empowered, to self-express, to process my emotions?

Renee: Again, some of that is bringing it back to the heart space as well.

Renee: So I thought this was a really great way to end the book.

Renee: And yeah, no pressure for Gina to have to carry everything here and be the last chapter.

Renee: It was nice imagery.

Renee: Again, lots of really great imagery in this section for these last few chapters.

Renee: Overall reflections on my entire journey of reading this book.

Renee: I mentioned a little bit at the top.

Renee: I have never read a book in such a long and interactive way, but it ended up, of course, working out.

Renee: Each month, I would have one reading block and usually be like an hour, sometimes it'd be an hour and a half because I'm like taking notes.

Renee: They ended up needing to be spread out that way so that I had the buffer time because was so hectic.

Renee: There was many chapters where I did additional research of something that came up.

Renee: I had to go look into it and I had to clean up all my notes and put all them together.

Renee: Also, for most of the chapters, there was a podcast interview and then a good chunk, but less.

Renee: They were the workshops that I was watching, completing, participating in, taking notes on those.

Renee: Compiling all of that together, making sure that I had enough time to also edit that episode before I even started reading the next section.

Renee: I didn't want to get confused, which jokes on me because that happened at the end of the last episode.

Renee: I wanted to fully close pun intended the chapter on each section, especially for identifying themes and patterns and what were the messages from each group of chapters, creating the graphics, scheduling the episode, putting it in the queue, and then I would do the next one.

Renee: That whole process would take me a month or less to do that, and so that gave me the wiggle room to keep doing that over and over and over again.

Initial Reflections on the Soul Rising Book Club

Renee: I am really looking forward to doing my season 3 relisten, which again, I didn't do this previous seasons.

Renee: Normally, I just would be maybe a couple of weeks behind, and I would listen to episodes of the podcast in real time.

Renee: But I realized pretty quickly this year that that wasn't going to happen.

Renee: And actually, it was more in my best interests for whatever reason, which I'll find out, to wait until I finished producing the entire season where I had recorded everything pretty much edited.

Renee: And through that process, I am sure I will have other thoughts on this book club and other connections that I'm making across the chapter.

Renee: So I do want to just have that caveat for now.

Renee: I am going to talk about book club again in that debrief episode.

Renee: But for now, it did seem like what jumped out overall for Soul Rising is creativity being a really great tool for processing and unlocking our intuition, community and connections to other people, to nature and our breath, living slower, and then travel being a tool for up-level shedding and inspiration.

Renee: So really the general takeaway, I also found, was the value of engaging with the other stories.

Renee: So this gave me, especially being so spread out, a platform, an excuse, a structure, which I need, to learn new things.

Renee: I had to look up so many things while reading this.

Renee: Okay, I've never heard of that modality before.

Renee: I haven't heard of that book.

Renee: What's that?

Renee: Doing this research, having journal prompts or inspiration or just channeling that came through while reading or that I did after, to have my own reflections, which supports my next up level and opportunity for growth.

Renee: Because another major takeaway I hope people have from this is the expectation is it's not just, oh, you have one spiritual awakening you're done.

Renee: Yeah, you have like the big one, recognizing what this is and what's happening, but we're always gonna have opportunities for additional up levels and layers of awakenings after like the big one.

Renee: I hope that you enjoyed this book club.

Renee: Big, big thank you to all of the amazing writers and the team at Divine Flow for putting this book together.

Renee: Of course, on Fable, I gave it five stars.

Renee: Am I biased?

Renee: No, because I only wrote one chapter.

Renee: So there was other chapters for me to read.

Renee: I just did but a small, small portion.

Renee: Yes, I kind of read this in a very unconventional way, but even if I hadn't, these were legitimately great stories and very thought provoking for me.

Renee: The summit was great with all of the workshops and the podcast interviews and getting to see the authors, not just as text on the page, but as people and personalities and picking up on their energy.

Renee: For any of the authors, if you would like to chat, just for networking purposes, but also for coming on the podcast or having me on your podcast and discussing this book or discussing chapters, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Renee: You can send an email to synergytosynastry@gmail.com

Renee: You can also contact me at my business email details on my website.

Renee: Some of them have left comments on my social media posts and just been really touched by my comments and the things that I said about their chapters, which has been so nice to get a little bit of feedback from the group.

Renee: But yeah, I would love to continue talking to the authors.

Renee: This doesn't have to be the end of Soul Rising as I mentioned before.

Renee: You don't just have one spiritual awakening, you continue to have them.

Renee: So I hope that I can keep building those connections with these women and many, many others to come.

Renee: Maybe you're someone who wasn't included in this book, but you have your own story and you just want to share it.

Renee: Totally open to having people on just talking about their spiritual awakenings.

Renee: That would be fun, honestly.

Renee: So please consider reaching out if that's something that you'd be interested in.

Renee: I haven't done any channeling for the future of this channel yet.

Renee: However, I have felt inspired and repeatedly nudged to do more book clubs and maybe even folding in a communal hub on Fable.

Renee: So I'll have more details on that after I actually look into it.

Renee: But it does feel like it would be fun.

Renee: And as we know, that's something I'm supposed to be pursuing.

Renee: So more updates on that later.

Renee: Next up in the feed will be the Season finale, which I mentioned before, that's going to be my big de-breathe episode.

Renee: So that's why I have to get right to listening to everything in this podcast.

Renee: So I'm going to listen to a few today, actually.

Renee: And then I have it spread out over the next like two weeks or so.

Renee: I have no idea what's going to emerge from that, but it's going to be a big old reflection, probably some other channeling that comes in through that too.

Renee: In this re-listen, I am going to go back to the forecast that Christine and I had channeled in December of last year.

Renee: I have no idea what we talked about.

Renee: I have not listened to it.

Renee: Super fascinating as well to fold in to my take on as well as Season .

Renee: So I will see you then.