Since the new year, I’ve found myself revisiting all the readings I’ve gotten in the past few years. The palm reading I had in Bali. The angel reading I had just last year in Colorado. The medium readings I had a decade ago in California. The tarot reading I had when I first left Texas. There’s too many to list. One by one I’ve been digging through their messages and finding gems hidden right there in plain sight.
Sometimes people are surprised to learn that I get readings as much as I do. They ask, “Can’t you just channel the guidance for yourself like you do for others?” And the answer is, kind of.
My meditation practice is one continuous reading of my life. It’s an ongoing, day-by-day conversation between me and Spirit that helps me see past blocks, make sense of jumbled energy and know how to move forward in my life. It’s a practice I come to almost every single day, and it’s what I’m teaching my students to do in Semester With Spirit.
But as much as I teach about empowering each of us to open our own channel, I’ll admit that there’s something equally as magical about allowing someone to hold that space for you.
There’s power in being open to receive, and there’s magic when we allow ourselves to be truly seen.
In the same way that a hairstylist or a massage therapist could probably find a way to cut their own hair or massage at least most of their own body, there’s something about the experience of allowing yourself to be held by another that simply can’t be replicated. I cherish the perspective of others who aren’t so intimately ingrained in the emotion and specifics of my life, and I adore opening myself to trusted colleagues to help me see what I’ve been missing right there in front of my eyes.
I’m actually scheduled to receive a reading from someone I’ve never worked with next week, and as I prepare myself for that experience, I wanted to share with you the reasons why I get readings and why I think you would love them too.
Clarity
God, if we all had a dollar every time we asked for clarity in our lives, right? It’s actually our own emotions and our conditioned patterns that block us from seeing things clearly and objectively in our lives. When we live in the high-beta brainwaves of stress and anxiety, we literally cut our brain off from being able to coherently share information between the right and left hemispheres. When the brain is calmed into a more relaxed and productive state, we begin to discover our own genius and see things more clearly in our lives. This is what meditation does and why I continually preach meditation, meditation, meditation for opening our own channels of understanding and receiving in our lives.
But readings have their own place in this equation. When we receive readings, we basically ask someone (who is presumably in that relaxed, calm, connected state) to tap into our energy and help us see the things we’ve been blocking ourselves from noticing.
Our thoughts, our problems, our anxieties - they’re all energy! And in the same way that our cell phones send unseen information hurling through the air from phone to phone, our brains and bodies are emitting information into the field around us, even if we’re not clearly perceiving it with our own intuitive abilities. When we receive readings, we basically allow someone else to tap into that field and offer us perspective we previously couldn’t glean from our jumbled point of view. (Yes, please.)
Validation
Isn’t it nice to be told you’re on the right track? To get an at-a-girl or way-to-go? We all need to feel validated, and there’s something about readings especially for offering this vibration.
I’ve noticed both in readings I do for clients and readings that I’ve received for myself that the more centered and aligned I am in my own spiritual practice in that particular moment in life, the more the readings offer validation versus new insight. It isn’t to say that cool and enlightening messages don’t show up in the readings, it’s just to say that sometimes the beauty of the reading is confirming what you already knew versus throwing anything new into the mix.
One of the pieces of feedback I get again and again from my own clients is how loved they feel during and after readings. Spirit is pure love energy, and that is always the number one priority of our angels, spirits and guides…to let us know how immensely loved we are.
Possibility
Readings get us out of our habitual patterns and into a space of the unknown. When we see things differently, we interrupt the loop happening in our lives that creates more of the same day-in and day-out. We are always limited by our own sense of what’s possible (or isn’t possible) and our own experience of the world, and I always cherish the unencumbered messages of Spirit to help me broaden my view of what could be in my life.
I received a palm reading in Bali once by a man who told me I would publish lots and lots of books and be very well-known and successful. While it flattered my ego and made me feel excited, I remember having such a hard time wrapping my mind around that. I was with a group of women, and I literally asked every single person if he had said the same thing to them, thinking maybe he tells everyone they’re going to have fortune and success in their lives. Everyone said no, he had not told them that. And in fact one girl was even bummed because she had asked about love, and he had said she wouldn’t be partnered for many years. The point is that I couldn’t energetically get in alignment with that vision at that time, and so I doubted it. But the magic is that in the years since, I have watched my energy open wider and wider to leaning into such a grand vision.
Healing
A miracle is simply a shift in perspective, and when we see things in a new way, we open the door to deep, lasting healing. Oftentimes the pain points in our lives are old, programmed loops we play over and over without any notice to whether or not they are true or are serving us. Readings offer new perspective on old patterns, and allow the tiniest (or sometimes the largest) cracks for new light to be shed on old situations.
The birth of my daughter was one of the hardest experiences of my life. While medically it was healthy and “couldn’t have gone better” according to the midwives, it left me with deep emotional wounds I didn’t know how to process. In readings I’ve had since then, I’ve been told several different times and in many different ways about birth trauma I either suffered in past lives or that is connected to the very nature of my energy. While that insight didn’t change the past and the experience I had in this life, the understanding of the depth and reoccurring nature of that wound gave me perspective that has allowed me to offer myself tremendous amounts of grace I wasn’t capable of finding before.
Attention
We’re all the leading lady and the leading guy in our own lives, and you have to admit that it’s nice to have someone focus just on you! Where we place our attention, we place our energy, and why not shamelessly pay for a little energy attention in the name of your health, happiness and alignment? I will say, though, that this is why the payment piece of the equation is so important. Money is energy, and when we pay for people’s time, we are offering an exchange for the energy and attention that person is going to place on us. I joyously hand over my money every time someone agrees to read for me, and I have paid lots and lots (and lots) of money in the name of my energetic health.
Energy
There’s a palpable boost that comes during and after readings, and the ripples can last for years into your life. I have had clients email me up to three years after readings and tell me that the messages have carried them and supported them for months and months beyond our interaction. When we call on Spirit to intervene on our behalf, we invite the energy that creates worlds into our lives. We open ourselves to the belief and reality that we have access to unseen wells of power, and subsequently we feel it! Even scheduling readings for myself gets me so jazzed that I feel like a whole new person. It’s that delicious feeling of knowing you’re stepping on a new path and that you truly can’t and won’t ever be the same.
Tuning
I have long told my sister Lacy that I don’t think people realize how much is going on “behind the scenes” so-to-speak when I conduct readings for them. Yes, the messages are amazing, and the feeling of being seen and heard is healing in and of itself, but there is a tremendous amount of energetic tuning that happens just in our spending time together either face-to-face or remotely.
We all have a rod of energy within us that carries a certain frequency tied to our purpose here on earth. And no matter what we choose to “do” career- or otherwise on this planet, just by carrying that frequency, we are doing the work we agreed to come here and do. Of course it’s up to us to manage and balance that frequency though our health and wellness, but regardless, we are emanating energy that is always affecting those around us. When I meet with people for sessions or remotely channel for them, they too are being affected by the frequency of my energy and what I’m here to do. It’s like a little spiritual tune-up, and we’re all doing it for each other all the time in our own way.
Release
Do you know that feeling of putting down a giant weight that’s been burdening you for freaking-ever? That’s how I feel every time I get a reading, and my clients report the same. Addressing things gives them permission to move on their way, and inevitably something always releases when we place loving attention into our energy body.
You know how massage therapists will apply pressure on a knot for an extended period of time until it eventually spasms and then dissipates? That’s what happens during readings. Energetic attention is placed on the knots and blocks in your energy body, and under the force of love, they simply disappear. People say again and again after readings that they don’t know why but they just feel better, that they feel like a weight has been lifted and something has shifted. It’s because when we allow someone to swim in our energy body with the intention of love and alignment, all that gunk gets skimmed right off the top of the water.
Fun
Following our curiosity and excitement and trying new things is fun! In my life readings always lead to amazingly delicious conversations with my favorite people when I share what I learned, and it sparks a sense of playfulness and possibility that wasn’t there before.
I once had a conversation with a girlfriend and we were pondering what if all this energy stuff turned out to not be real. We said what if we got to the end of life or the afterlife and found out it was all hooey made up of our own minds (which would mean it wasn’t fake if we could make it up with our minds…but that misses the point ;) )? My answer was that I wouldn’t care either way. Believing the things I believe and feeling the things I’ve felt have brought me tremendous amounts of joy and peace in my life, and I feel lighter when I am aligned with Spirit.
Why not?
I mean, honestly, why not? When I try to talk myself out of something I know my heart is calling for, I try to gain some perspective. I don’t know about you, but I know I’ve spent more on bar tabs than on some of the most profound readings of my life. And I know I’ve wasted more time down social media rabbit holes than I have carved out for true connection with Spirit. There’s always an excuse waiting just around the corner to keep us from what we know we crave and deserve. So why not? Why not just do it?