Today’s Guest

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I’m back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey!

Today, we talk about spirit guides, our higher self, and tapping into our intuition. We discuss whether or not it’s disempowering to get guidance from external sources, and whether we should just rely on our intuition and our higher self for everything. This was inspired by an email Holly received from a listener:

Spirit guides versus inner self! This has been on my mind for a while and has come to the foreground while I’ve been taking Lisa MW’s WooWoo101 course I’ve been wondering; if you rely on spirit guides for guidance, is that not… disempowering? Your inner self has all the answers, right? So is looking to spirit guides, or things like pendulums etc, not giving your power away? Is it trusting external factors rather than trusting your own inner guidance? Or are they simply all coming from the same place? I’d love to have more clarity on this, since it feels a little woolly in my head.

About Jo Casey

Jo Casey has over 20 years experience of working as a trainer and consultant in the corporate, public and third sectors. Her flashy clients and workplaces have included Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), The NHS, BT, Toyota Motors, Peugeot Business School, The Welsh Assembly Government, The Girl Guides UK, Vets4Pets/Companion Care, several Local Government Authorities, and The Department Of Work And Pensions. But she’s also worked with many no less wonderful smaller ventures, micro businesses and SMEs.

She’s a self-confessed nerd and has taught at college and university levels and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Chester. Jo has a Masters Degree in Coaching and Organizational Development and she’s an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI qualified professional certified Emotional Intelligence EQi 2.0 consultant.

She’s been coaching for over 15 years now – clocking up over 1000 hours of coaching experience. Basically, she carefully treads that line between being passionate and a tiny bit obsessive about what she does (obsession often wins). Jo runs accredited coach training programs and coaches people from all over the world via the power of the internet.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What are spirit guides, and why might you want to connect with them?
Do things like lineage and ancestors come into play?
Are angels, ghosts, and ancestors etc akin to spirit guides?
What are they trying to guide us to/from?
What is your higher self?
How do you know the difference? Do you hear voices? See things? How do you know you’re not just making it all up?
Is listening to guides abdicating responsibility to someone/something else?
Is it our ego that says we should primarily be led by our own intuition?
What kinds of things you can ask for help with in your life
How you can get started channeling your own guides

How to Get Started: Professional Channels

How to Get Started: Books

How to Get Started: Courses

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 290. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey.

Today, we are talking about a topic that was inspired by a listener. So, we are talking about spirit guides, or higher self, or tapping into our intuition and we discuss whether or not it is disempowering to get guidance from external sources and whether or not we should rely on our own intuition and our higher self for everything. Again, this was inspired by an email that I receive from a listener, she says:

“Spirit guides versus inner self! This has been on my mind for a while and has come to the foreground while I’ve been taking Lisa MW’s WooWoo101 course I’ve been wondering; if you rely on spirit guides for guidance, is that not… disempowering? Your inner self has all the answers, right? So is looking to spirit guides, or things like pendulums etc, not giving your power away? Is it trusting external factors rather than trusting your own inner guidance? Or are they simply all coming from the same place? I’d love to have more clarity on this, since it feels a little woolly in my head.”

I love this topic! The second the email came in I was like, this is it, I want to do it, I want to talk to Jo about this, I want to maybe talk to Joanna as well about this. I think this is a really juicy topic and I am really happy with how we explored it here. I may continue to think about this in coming weeks and perhaps maybe do a follow-up episode with Joanna Hennon about this, because obviously she is going to have a different perspective. So I think this is a super-juicy topic and really interesting and worth exploring. I look forward to hearing your feedback on this, what do you think about it?

What are you going to learn in today’s episode? We are going to talk about what are spirit guides and why you might want to connect with them. We are going to answer the question: do things like lineage and ancestors come into play? Are angels, ghosts and ancestors like spirit guides? What are they trying to guide us to or from? What kind of guidance can they give us? What is your higher self and how do you know the difference? How do you know if it is your guide speaking or if you are just making it up? Do you hear voices? Do you see things? How can you trust this guidance?

Is listening to guides abdicating responsibility to someone or something else? Is it our ego that says we should primarily be led by our own intuition while ignoring other possible sources of guidance? What kinds of things can you ask for help with in your life? And how can you get started channeling your own guides, should you choose to do more with this? I have some links in the show notes with how to get started in terms of hiring someone else to make first contact, books you can read, courses you can take, and it is all affordable stuff. These are net the high-end, super- expensive courses, these are all $100 or 100 or less, and they include ways that I learned how to channel my own guides, because I was not born doing this, I only started doing it maybe four or five years ago. It is absolutely something that you can learn to do, it is not something that you are born doing.

So, without further ado, I will turn you over to this episode which I think is super interesting and again, I really look forward to hearing feedback from you.

Jo: Hi, everybody, this is Jo Casey. I am here with Holly Worton, hi Holly!

Holly: Hi!

Jo: We are doing our monthly tapping into your woo, let’s talk about all things woo episode, which I have to say I am enjoying so much, I am learning so much, I am getting to ask the 70 bazillion questions that are in my head about all of this stuff. I hope it is as fun for you Holly?

Holly: It is! It is helping me to formulate my perspective on this stuff. It is the stuff that I live and experience, but I don’t necessarily talk about in this way with other people. So, it is really helping me get clear on how I see this stuff, so it is very, very, useful and it is very fun.

Jo: Good, so long as it is not some self-indulgent thing that I am forcing you to do {laughing} and others to listen. So, I am really intrigued by today’s topic, really intrigued, because this is an area where I am really curious but clueless. The idea came from an email that you had, do you mind reading it out?

Holly: No, alright, so this is from a listener and she has a question regarding spirit guides vs. inner self. She says:

The second I saw that email come in I realised that I was dying to talk about that with someone and not necessarily do this episode on my own but do it with someone else so that we can bounce ideas off each other and share them with each other. I think this is a really, really, juicy topic.

Jo: It is, because, when you suggested it, I thought: Oh, I have so many questions, I have so many questions here! My experience is that I think I have become much more aligned and in tune with my own sense of intuition. {Holly: Yes} And knowing the difference between what is actual intuition and what is say fear talking, or old patterns, or things like that. It is a very different kind of, I think we have to be aware of, in fact I think it is really important to be aware of those, because you can be led in a wrong direction if you are not truly tapped into that kind of flow of intuition. However, I have no experience, that I am consciously aware of right now, {laughing} with spirit guides, I am saying that just in case you are about to say: But, Jo, you do, you have them all the time, you are just not listening to them.

The whole idea of spirit guides to me is…we talked about how I am a seeker and I am kind of expanding the edges of my woo, this is kind of beyond my edge at the moment, {Holly: laughing} this is right on the edge and beyond. It is not that I have any roll-y eyes feelings about it, it is just that I am clueless; I know so many people who are very aligned and very tuned in to and will talk about spirit guides and will talk about listening to angels and ancestors. I know this concept is really familiar and at the heart of many spiritual beliefs across the world and across history, but I have no conscious experience of it, so I have, like I said, 70 billion questions about this.

Holly: Yay!

Jo: I know you do have experience – so would you mind sharing that, a little bit?

Holly: Yes, so much like most of the stuff I am doing in my life, today, this is fairly new to me. I think it was about six years ago that the concept of spirit guides first came into my awareness. I had done a reading, a psychic reading with my friend Suneet, who is very, very psychic, and very tapped into this stuff. And we sat down, and she kind of opens up and she says: Ah, well the first thing your guides are saying is: finally, finally you are listening to us, finally you are tapping into us. I was like: Ah okay. And she talked about the spirit guides and how they have been waiting for me to finally open the channel of communication, and I was really kind of, I didn’t really understand what spirit guides were at the time and I was like: is that, I have a spiritual teacher, but he is like a human being, so what is this? I was really confused about it for a while, I think it has taken me the last few years to really build a relationship with my guides and understand what they are.

So, what the heck are spirit guides? They are non-physical entities, energies, beings who, according to this book I have by Sonia Choquette called Ask Your Guides, according to her, they have had at least one experience here in physical reality. So, they are spirits who have incarnated at least once, and they are in the spirit world helping us from that higher place. So, that’s how I understand them to be, so spirit guides, might be someone you know, they might be a family member who has passed, they might someone you don’t know, they might just be spirits, I think they might be spirits that you have chosen to work with, when you were in between physical incarnations, to help you in your next experience of physical reality. So, I think also we engage the help of some spirit guides to help us from the spirit world when we are down here, if that makes sense.

Jo: It does. Are they there all the time? Do we have to ask: How did your guides know that you were finally listening to them?

Holly: I think they were just waiting around tapping their feet {laughing} I don’t know. I don’t know because I think some guides are with us, for a long time, for years; some guides are with us for just certain things, to help us with something very specific and then they move on. I think also as we grow, as people, and as we grow in terms of our ability and our ways of working with spirit guides, I think we need different levels of guides.

So, my friend Cara Wilde who teaches a course on how to channel your guides, always says when you sit down to make contact with your guides, always ask for what she calls the crème de la crème of the spirit guides. Always ask for the best and highest possible guide that you are able to connect with at this point in your life, because you obviously want the highest energy possible for you. So, apparently, there are kind of all different levels of guides and they all want to help us, but we need to connect with the highest possible ones.

Jo: So, it is almost like there is a little army of guides, a little bureaucracy of guides almost, a hierarchy. {laughing}

Holly: Yes, and I found that interesting, because I had never thought about that before, that there might be different levels and apparently another thing is that guides really want to help us because they are in the spirit world and they are in the physical world and they want to have contact with people who are experiencing physical reality, because it is exciting for them and they can learn things.

Jo: So, can we get a crappy guide then? {laughing} Can one of the lower ones come through if we are not careful?

Holly: I guess so! I mean I have never had a bad experience with a guide, but I guess, I don’t know, I am so stuck on this one, are there crappy guides or are there just basic guides? {Jo: laughing} There must be, because Cara is very insistent that you must always ask for the crème de la crème of the spirit guides. I don’t know, I have had many guides come and go over the years. When I first connected with guides, the first one, her name was Leila, and I worked with her not very much, she was just kind of my first touching point and from there I moved on to different ones. And, interestingly, one of the guide groups that I worked with in 2016, when I walked the Ridgeway, and I got in touch with them thanks to Lisa Wechtenhiser, we were having a session and this group of guides came through that called themselves ‘The Richards’, and I was supposed to connect with them every day on this walk and get guidance from them and I included that in my book On the Ridgway. Then, they kind of stuck around and then they left, and then the guides that brought me the HEW® and they allied themselves Orion and they kind of left –they kind of come and go.

Jo: This is a really basic question but how do you know when they are there?

Holly: Well, when I tap into them.

Jo: What does that feel like: do you see them? Do you hear voices? Do you…? It is an energy?

Holly: So everyone is different with this. Despite the fact that in physical reality I am a very visual person, I am not clairvoyant, I don’t see things that aren’t here in physical reality. I don’t see the spirit guides and I know people that do. I have friends who channel their guides who have seen them show up in their living room…I don’t. I hear voices in my head, but only when I want them to be there {laughing} …I am aware of how this sounds, but when I want guidance I will tap in and ask them to come in and I will either write down the guidance or I will hear the voice in my head, and I will channel the guidance.

Jo: So you have to open the channel? So it is not like they are kind of going: hey Holly when you are trying to sleep or anything like that?

Holly: No, however, I do know people who have been woken up in the night by their guides, because that was something that they needed to know. That has never happened to me, it is kind of like they are always there hanging out in the background and when I am ready to connect with them, they are ready. I have never been interrupted in my daily life by guides.

Jo: That would be annoying, I would imagine! Or, really useful I guess, I am kind of imagining you are doing your Asda shop or something {laughing} and the guides are kind of saying (joking): No, get those tomatoes, not those ones! I guess they have more important things to share and I guess this might be a difficult one to pin down, but how would somebody know, how do you know that it is not just one of those inner voices that we have, you know, like our inner wise one, or our inner critic, you know all the various parts that we are carrying around in our head. What is the difference, how do you know the difference?

Holly: That is an excellent question and I think that’s something that everyone who channels spirit guides, or who communicates with sprit guides, struggles with at the beginning. How do I know that I am not making this up? How do I know that it is not just a part of myself that is inventing stuff? And I asked this question of Lisa in a session with her years ago and she said: When I first channeling my guides they used really weird language, they didn’t talk how I talk, they would say really kind of lofty sounding stuff, or use words that I don’t normally use, and I would say really lofty sounding stuff and they would use words that I don’t normally use, and I would say that’s been absolutely my experience as well. So, when I hear the voices in my head, they are not speaking like how I speak, their language is slightly different, of course they are speaking English, but the way they express themselves is different to how I would speak. Now my friend Cara, who again is a very, very, experienced channel, she channels verbally and her voice changes. She has an accent when she channels her spirit guides and she always has, as long as I have known her. When I started channeling The Richards they mentioned this, they know that I wanted that, they knew that I wanted a really clear sign that it was them and not me, and they specifically said to me: We are not going to give you a funny voice, we are not going to give you a weird accent, because you need to trust.

Jo: Wow, that’s also a bit of: We are not this novelty group that has come to entertain you, we are going to talk how we are going to talk.

Holly: Yes, and you are going to learn what you need to learn, and you are going to learn how you need to learn it. I think that’s another good point, they are here to lift us up and help us grow, and that will often take us out of our comfort zone.

Jo: I like that, I imagine, I quite like the fact that there is a strength there, do you know what I mean? It is kind of they are going to tell me exactly what I need to hear and not tell me what I want to hear, that kind of thing. There seems to be a more independent agency there, which kind of makes it more believable.

Holly: Yes, it kind of makes it more obvious that it is not just stuff that you are making up.

Jo: That is really interesting, I have seen people, Louis Theroux and people like that have done TV shows of people who are channeling, and they will change voices, but it is usually presented in a kind of semi-mocking way, which has always made me super-uncomfortable, I would be really interested in just experiencing that from a much more kind of reverent way I think.

Holly: Yes, because it is something…obviously if you don’t believe in this stuff and you think people are making up, yeah, I understand how people would mock it, but I would love to see kind of a documentary, or something, that really respects the process of channeling and connecting to spirit guides and connecting to angels and that kind of thing; because I think it is a really fascinating topic. I think that if more people tapped into the guidance from their higher self, or their spirit guides, or their angels, life would improve for everyone. There are here to lift us up, they are not going to drag us down, they are helping us be more spiritual in whatever that means to each of us.

Jo: There are a couple of really interesting directions that I want to go with this, this concept of guides, whether it be Angels or spirits or ancestors, this has been around as long as humans have been around, yeah?

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Jo: So, this isn’t a new thing, so this again strikes me as what the whole mocking and the eye-rolling and the, ‘we don’t understand it’, strikes me as, again, one of those very modern fear-based: Oh we are the most sophisticated humans that have ever existed. That is just so dismissive of thousands of years of human experience, for a start.

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Jo: The other thing you mentioned spirit guides and Angels, is there a difference?

Holly: Yes, again, I was just thumbing through Sonia Choquette’s book Ask Your Guides when we were preparing the notes for this, according to her, angels never had a physical incarnation, as opposed to spirit guides who have had at least one, so angels are apparently different from spirit guides, she goes through a lot of different kinds of angels in her book. One thing that I started doing, and she says they are all, there are angels for everything, like there are parking angels, there are timing angels, there are fitness angels, whatever. So I got into the habit and this was something that I started doing after I read her book, just asking for help, simple help, whenever I needed it. So, I am pulling into a parking lot, I say: Parking angels, would you please help me to find the best parking spot quickly and easily, closest to wherever I need to go, thank you, thank you, thank you. So, you always thank them in advance. Then when it comes true, when I get the help, I will thank them again, but you always thank them from the start. So this is how she recommends doing it, just asking them for stuff that you need help with. Like I said, ridiculous stuff like parking, I use it all the time and stuff works out really well for me {laughing} when I remember to do it, and I don’t always remember to do it, but I love it, just asking for help with the tiniest things.

Jo: Okay, so this is wild, so there are parking angels, there are fitness angels?

Holly: Whatever you experience in life, there are angels, gardening angels to help you with the plants…

Jo: Again, I am wrestling with this very kind of “modern western” upbringing that I have had, which is like: surely angels should be onto higher things than parking! {laughing}

Holly: But if they are here to help us and make our lives easier.

Jo: True, yes.

Holly: If more people asked for help from the parking angels then everything would flow, and everything would be easier. So, she talks about these sprit guides called runners (I think it is the runners and helpers, one of those are the angels or guides that are able to help you with this kind of stuff and their existence is helping us with the little stuff in life.

Jo: Okay, my mind is exploding into a thousand little pieces. So, this question then that you had from the listener about is it then abdicating some of our responsibility to tune in and ask for help from our spirit guides or the angels or the ancestors? Should we be more kind of taking agency over our spirituality, I think that is a really interesting question.

Holly: I love this question, it is a question that has come up with friends, because I remember also during a master-gut call, one time, I was talking about how I asked the angels for everything. I was talking about how I really struggle with the concept of how we all create our physical reality, I understand the concept, but, sometimes, a lot of times I feel like I am not consciously creating my reality, I am unconsciously creating it and that means I don’t always get what I want. I mentioned how I always ask the angels for help with this stuff, and one of my friends said: Well they say, when you ask for help from an outside source for something, that is like you saying: I don’t believe that I can do this myself because theoretically, instead of asking the parking angels for help for finding a good parking spot, I could be creating my own reality and saying: I with my energy and my power as a person will send out the energy that I am going to create my perfect parking spot. So, I think it is all up to what works for us, what we feel comfortable with and what we feel capable of doing. So, if someone, for example like me, feels like I am going to get better results by asking the angels for help because I don’t believe that I can consciously create my physical reality, or I feel like I am not good at it, then do what works for you. I think it depends partly on what you are comfortable with, what you feel works for you, also the more you do this, the more you… I don’t know it depends, because it can be disempowering in the sense that you are asking for help and guidance from these invisible sources, when really, yeah, we can do it all ourselves. I think getting any kind of help, from whether it is your higher self or the spirit guides or the angels, that is still lifting you up above the vast majority of people who just do what they can in life.

Jo: Well, this may be a bit of a tangent, but I also remember, I was raised Catholic and I went to a Catholic School, but my dad is an atheist {laughing} so I was a really annoying kid in class, I would always have all these questions. I can remember the concept that many Christians believe that people won’t go to heaven, if they have not been saved, if they not been raised by Jesus. I remember saying: That is really unfair, that makes Jesus sound a bit vengeful, I don’t think it is really that black and white, if he is about love. I think there is a tendency as human beings to be quite binary about things: it is one or the other, it is individualism, or it is collectivism. Maybe this concept of self-agency or tapping into a higher power, maybe it isn’t as simple as one or the other.

Holly: It could be both.

Jo: It could be both. yeah

Holly: I do both. There are times that I consciously tap into my higher self and I tap into the wisdom of my higher self, that is something that I do often. So I think it is a little bit of both. It is finding the mix that works for you and knowing that even if you choose to tap into spirit guides, angels, or whatever, knowing that ultimately you could do the same stuff yourself. I think that is an important thing to know, even if you choose to work with spirit guides and angels.

Jo: Do the guides ever come back and say: You are on your own on this one, this is something you have to do by yourself?

Holly: That’s a good question! I used to work with a pendulum a lot and the way I have changed, or the way I work with the pendulum has changed over the years. So, now I kind of see using something like a pendulum as tapping into my higher self, using my inner wisdom in that way. For years I didn’t see it that way, I kind of thought that the pendulum was tapping into I guess the spirit world or getting help from an outside source. There were times when it wouldn’t answer me, there were times when I would ask a question and it would sit there and it wouldn’t move and I get very, clear yes and no answers from the pendulum, so when it just sits there, I know that I have asked the wrong question. So, I imagine the same would happen with spirit guides.

Jo: So many questions. So spirit guides have had an earthly experience, a human experience, but angels haven’t?

Holly: According to Sonia Choquette, yes, and that is something that I never really thought about or asked myself before reading that book.

Jo: Do you know anything about ancestors, are they our spirit guides can they come through as our spirit guides?

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Jo: Okay. So what can we use this for then? Let’s look at the benefits. Why should somebody like me, or somebody listening to this, who is like: that is like way on the edge of my woo experience, what are the benefits of exploring working with spirit guides and angels? I suppose it is two parts, what are the first steps? Let’s do the first one, why? What are the benefits, what benefits have you had from tapping into this resource, this experience?

Holly: It is like it gives me access to a wealth of information that I don’t normally have access to. It gives me access to a higher perspective that I don’t normally have access to. So it is like you think normal life, you are kind of walking through the valley, you are surrounded by hills and mountains and things; but when you are tapping into your higher self or your spirit guides, or your angels, it is like you are at the top of the mountain and you can see a broader perspective of what is going on in your life, how to deal with situations, what goals to set, what you are capable of. It lifts you up and it gives you a broader perspective of everything in your life.

Jo: Okay, so I am forming these questions and I am kind of answering them in my own head and then I have got a really strong voice going: You don’t need to know all the answers to this! {laughing}

Holly: I have learned through experience, so I learned through, I read Sonia Choquette’s book Ask Your Guides I think that is an excellent place to start. I took my friend’s, Cara Wilde’s, Channel Your Guides course. There are were these two really well-known channels in the United States, who channel these guides called Orin and DaBen and their website is www.orindaben.com. They do channelled music, channelled guided meditations, they have written books, and they have done a course on how to channel your guides. Sanaya Roman is the woman. So I did their course as well. You know, pick one, do all, I think there are many different ways to learn how to channel your guides and how to connect with your guides. There are different ways of getting the guidance, like I said, you could channel verbally and record yourself, you can write, as the words come into your head – there are so many different ways of doing it.

Jo: I am kind of thinking, I am not sure that I am ready to sign up for a course, I could see myself reading a book, but are there any ways to even just take a few steps towards, I keep thinking, is it meditation, or is there a way of kind of tuning in, just to explore on the edges of it?

Holly: Yes, so one way to do it would be to hire someone that you trust that channels your guides, and they can channel your guides for you, and that can be kind of an easy way of getting the assistance of tapping into your guides and kind of making that first contact.

Jo: So a bit like that kind of somebody can kind of do that distance energy thing.

Holly: Exactly.

Jo: Okay, so that can kind of help open up the conduit if you like.

Holly: Exactly, so you could hop on a Skype call, tell them that your goal is to make first contact with your guides and ask then to help you bring through the best guide for you right now in your life. And then, you can ask the questions, they can tell you what you need to know, in terms of your next steps. You can also ask them, especially if you are going to a professional for this: what are my next steps for channeling you? How should I be building a relationship? This is a relationship, and this is something I have not been as good at as other friends of mine who are channels; the more you connect with them, the more you communicate with them, the more you are going to build the relationship. So, I have friends that have guides that are like best friends, almost, they know each other really well, they have a really strong connection. I have not been as good at doing that, so it also depends on what kind of relationship you want with them, do you want someone who is going to be there to help you out all the time, with everything, they are going to be there anyway, do you want to be tapping into them every day? You have also got to know what you want.

Jo: It makes me think of, there was a phrase that you said on our very first call in this series, when you said you see woo is just something that science hasn’t explained yet. And I think of all the kind of people in history, so we know that some people with mental illness will hear voices. I am somebody who manages a couple of long-term – chronic – mental health conditions, I have never heard voices, I can imagine that that would be very distressing. There were also, other, you think of Joan of Arc or very saintly (again my Catholicism coming up) various saints in history who have spoken to the Virgin Mother or heard voices that they put down to being the voice of God, or the angels — think of children with imaginary friends — and we always put that down to, I think very often that is put down to: Oh that is overactive imagination in children and maybe it is not.

Holly: I don’t think it is. I have friends who channel Jesus, you can absolutely…

Jo: You see my Catholicism is going: Oh he is far too busy for that! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} That’s the thing, they are not! They can help many, many people, they are not limited by time and space in the way that we are.

Jo: Exactly {laughing} it is just my…

Holly: They are like multi-dimensional beings they can be wherever they need to be, whenever, so, yeah you can channel the saints, you can channel whatever it is that you want to connect with.

Jo: So, why aren’t they talking to us all the time then? Or, are they and we are not listening?

Holly: Well, that’s the thing, we really need to approach them. I feel like they are there waiting in the background for us to be ready to open the channel of communication. They are ready, willing and able, we just need to be the ones that say: All right, let’s talk.

Jo: I suppose a lot of our knowledge and our belief system, I was going to say isn’t advanced enough, but actually I think this is possibly one of those things that we have un-learned over the years?

Holly: Absolutely.

Jo: That the age of enlightenment, and science, I am big on science, I am not denying it, but also there is a whole swathe of things that I think has been dismissed, like shamanism, and ancestors.

Holly: Because science doesn’t have an explanation for it, so it is not valid.

Jo: Exactly, exactly. Whilst I don’t necessarily think we should take global laws and decisions based on non-science backed things, I also don’t think we should dismiss them at all. I think, I would hazard a guess, that most of us have experiences that we cannot explain scientifically, whether it be that feeling, that knowing that person was about to call you and then they did…so many things. Most people believe there is more out there than we can actually see and feel. I think it’s wild that we dismiss all of this stuff so readily, just because we don’t yet understand it. Maybe the guides are just sat there waiting for us to get over ourselves and talk to them a bit.

Holly: You know everything I read about this kind of stuff says they can’t help us, if we don’t ask for help. So, I have been working a lot with plant spirits, with my tree book, all of last year and I have recently been working with plant spirits, smaller plants, and doing shamanic journeys to meet plant spirits and talking to the plant spirits. Like, everything has a spirit, animals have a spirit, minerals have spirits, plants have spirits, so you can tap into those spirits as well.

Jo: For some reason that is an area where I feel like I am nearer to making that link and that connection, I wonder if, actually, my Catholic upbringing kind of does provide a bit of a barrier to the angels and, because I can remember a school assembly messages like: Well, the Virgin Mother would never come and talk to you. Because there has been sightings in various places of the world and one of the questions that was brought up was: Well, would the Virgin Mary just deign to come down and talk to these children…as if they were undeserving, there is a lot of guilt and stuff that goes on in Catholicism and that colours my view. Whereas the idea of plant spirits, and even animal spirits, I find much more relatable, it is a shorter distance for me to travel.

Holly: That makes absolute sense because we place a lot of value on physical reality, so it is easier to say that person has a spirit, that plant has a spirit, that animal has a spirit because we see those things, we can touch them! Whereas spirit guides or angels, most people don’t see them, can’t really touch them, unless they show up in some physical way, so it is so much more abstract. Whereas plant spirit, you see that plant, you can touch that plant.

Jo: That’s so true, and I suppose because then we have got that connection it is then easy to make that leap to, almost the proof of the energy being there.

Holly: Yeah, exactly because plants are alive, everybody has killed a house plant and seen it go from beautiful and green, to crunchy and brown, we know they are alive and we know they can die, so it is not too much of a leap to say: Well, not only is it alive, it also has a spirit.

Jo: You are a wise woman Holly Worton!

Holly: Am I? {laughing}

Jo: You are, I have learned so much. You know that you said people can hire a professional to open this channel, do we have links, are there people you could recommend?

Holly: Yes, I can put them in the show notes. I would absolutely recommend my friend Cara Wilde, who is an excellent channel. Lisa Wechtenhiser who has not only channelled my spirit guides for me, she was my spirit guide business coach person for a long time {laughing} and my friend Joanna Hennon. They are the top three people who are excellent, excellent channels and my top three people, absolutely trustworthy, and super, super, clear.

Also I feel like I need to mention this, you can dictate what kind of information you want to get from your guides. Joanna Hennon for example has been very good at, I don’t want to say training, her guides over the years, to give her practical information that she can take action on. So she and I were hanging out late last year and she was channeling my guides and it was just pure gold, super-useful, actionable information and I said to them: This is really good stuff! They were like: Yeah, Joanna has trained us well, she has always made it very clear that she doesn’t want the woolly, airy-fairy stuff, it is all practical stuff. She even says that she has been very clear about what kind of information she wants, so if you want practical information about what to do about your life rather than: Ah, you will experience a light energy of sparkly-ness, you know? Be clear about what you want, and how you want to receive guidance, so that you can take action with it and not just kind of like: Oh that was lovely!

Jo: That’s fantastic!

Holly: Yes because you have built the information how you want it and if you end up connecting with spirit guides who are like: No, we want to give you the sparkly stuff, be like: Please let’s make this practical or I would rather connect with someone else {laughing}.

Jo: That’s fantastic, that has been such a fantastic discussion. Is there anything that we need to mention before we wrap up? Obviously, I don’t know what I don’t know.

Holly: Well, I think I would like to come back to the question that inspired this whole thing: is it disempowering or not? I just want to make it clear: Do what’s right for you at each stage of your life. I don’t think it is necessarily disempowering to connect with spirit guides and ask for help from angels and external spirits, because there is so much they can teach us and there is so much that we can learn from them. I mean I am learning so much from the tree spirits and the plant spirits or stuff that I wouldn’t have access to normally or I wouldn’t know what to ask. But also know that — I am going to contradict myself — we do have access to it, we just need to know what to tap into. So, yes, our higher self is multi-dimensional and has access to all the information in the world, but our conscious mind might not know what to ask our higher self with. Whereas I think external stuff like spirit guides and angels might be able to open us up more, that might be a limiting perspective, but that is kind of how I see it. I think there is a time and a place for both, so do what works for you.

Jo: That makes a lot of sense, that works for me, that makes a lot of sense! I found that fascinating and I am now very tempted to go and do some more reading around this. You expand my horizons every time I talk to you!

Holly: Excellent {laughing} I will put everything in the show notes so everyone will have access to this stuff.

Jo: Fantastic, thank you so much Holly!

Holly: Thank you!

Jo: And we will speak to you in a month’s time.

Holly: Well I hope you found that interesting and useful. Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email me at: [email protected] or can find me online and get in touch there.

I would also love for you to join me on Patreon, if you eat to: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to content I don’t share anywhere else, including a monthly Q & A where you can ask me all of your burning questions about anything you might think I know the answer to. I often think of extra stuff that I want to share, including journal prompts, which I have been adding for a lot of the podcast episodes, you will get those in there as well.

So thank you so much for listening. Next week I will be back with a solo episode which I don’t even know what I am talking about yet, because I have recorded this before going on holiday and I will be recording that episode when I get back.

So, thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/290 for the show notes on this episode, thank you so much.

290: Jo Casey + Holly ~ What’s Better: Spirit Guides or Tapping into Your Intuition?

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