Today we are thrilled to be joined by teacher Jeannie Zandi. Jeannie is a spiritual teacher who experienced a years long profound dark night of the soul, and here is what she says in her own words about her teaching, “I will use anything I find at my fingertips or that upwells within me to teach and hold space for those who are hungry to turn themselves inside out and live their essence. I will take you to the edge of the abyss and lovingly hold you there. I will tenderly call your name, sing to you, expose your funny spots, hold a radically protected space for your tenderest gooey center, and welcome you into the arms of the nourishing moment to shine as the living presence that you are. I’m fearless, fully engaged, and utterly reliant on the holy." And boy howdy, did we find that to be true. In this conversation we get into our own tender spots, as we always do, but this time with Jeannie holding space for them. We talk about inadequecy and unworthiness, fear, outright terror, and the desire to finally get it together and have it all tidied up. Trauma, the inner tendency to push and to eradicate all the “badness” in us, and our dominant culture of unhealthy yang which can barely even fathom healthy yin. We talk dark night, the creature of the body, and mercy, mercy, mercy for this whole human journey.

Today we’re talking about what can be called the “unseen worlds.” The unseen worlds can include everything that is outside of our everyday, rational-mind consciousness. Think- intuition, energy, auras, chakras, guardian angels… and other aspects of formless support. In reality, we’re all connected to vast amounts of wisdom and resources, yet so often we’re not consciously aware of it. Our discussion this week moves through two levels of this exploration; first, how it’s possible for us to miss the wisdom and support coming our way because we expect it to arrive differently than it does, and second how to adjust our frequency so we can better hear the languages reality speaks to us in. Naturally, much of this talk circles back to major themes such as learning to listen and trusting your life.

We all want more peacefulness but we can’t tranquilize ourselves into peacefulness. When we use our paths as an energetic lid on things we don’t want to face it’s not just a desire for peace- it is a fear mechanism. We talk about how the labor of facing the things that aren’t in alignment for us can indeed be painful, but as with any birth there is something else on the other side of all that labor. What if we said it is possible for all categories of your life to be in total fulfillment. Is that one of the most challenging and blasphemous things we can say? When we leave behind simplistic, and I would say harmful, bright-siding ideas that if we can just think happy thoughts we get a happy life, what is this process we are actually talking about? How do clarity and unconditional love for the self lead to an aligned life? What is an aligned life?

This week we’re talking about Awakening, or as Brooke lovingly refers to it, the A-word. A few episodes back we spoke on The Nervous System and Awakening. Afterwards we received several follow up questions such as What is awakening anyway? Should I be doing it? Am I missing out on something? Hence the playful episode title Awakening FOMO. Really though, in this episode we get into what our thoughts and personal experiences are on what awakening actually means, why we find it vulnerable to talk about, and of course how we support ourselves in what we believe is the path towards living our fullest human potential.