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Passion Struck with John R. Miles
How to Stay Always Connected to Spirit – Even When Life Feels Hard or Overwhelming | Suzanne Giesemann - EP 788
01:07:10
Today’s episode with Suzanne Giesemann will change how you think about your connection to something greater and give you simple tools you can use the next time life feels uncertain, painful, or overwhelming.
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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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One of the things that gets in the way of mediumship is trying to connect and also not understanding how mediumship works. It's not like picking up a phone and having a conversation. This nervous system does act as a filter. There are certain kinds of information that can't get through because it's compressed so much by the nervous system that we can't get specific types of data. But we certainly get symbolic imagery. We do hear phrases and thoughts. We have feelings that reflect what those in spirit are trying to show us. We have a knowing that goes beyond data.
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Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Hello friends, and welcome Back to episode 788 of Passion Struck. This month we're exploring a simple but important flourishing. After spending June talking about disconnection, why we feel lonely, why we struggle to belong, and why so many people feel like they've lost their footing, we're asking a different what helps human beings become fully alive? Each week we're looking at that question from a different angle. This past Tuesday, Whitney Otto helped us begin with our relationship to ourselves and our bodies. She reminded us that flourishing isn't possible when we're at war with ourselves. Today, we're turning to something just as important. The practices, beliefs and experiences that help us stay connected to what what matters most, especially when life becomes difficult. And I'm thrilled to welcome Suzanne Giesemann back to Passion Struck. Suzanne is a former Navy commander, best selling author, spiritual teacher, and one of the most recognized voices in modern spirituality today. Before beginning this chapter of her life, she served as a commanding officer and an aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Today, she helps millions of people explore what it means to live with greater awareness, purpose and connection. Her newest book is called Always Connected, and that's the heart of today's conversation. We talk about how her own understanding of connection changed after a difficult year that included a serious back injury and a cancer diagnosis. We discuss why she believes so many of us live almost entirely from our heads, and what she learned about becoming more grounded and embodied, and why the practices that sustain us have to be more than the ideas we agree with intellectually. We'll also explore one of my favorite stories from the book, a moment she calls hey Siri to hey Spirit and what it means in a world where we're constantly looking outside ourselves for answers. Whether you're deeply spiritual, cautiously curious, or simply trying to make sense of life's harder seasons, I think you'll find something meaningful in this conversation. Because at the center of all of it is a question every one of us wrestles with what keeps us connected to ourselves into what matters most when life doesn't go according to plan. Before we begin, if these conversations are helping you, please share them with someone who might enjoy them. And if you haven't already, leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify helps more people discover the show. You can also download today's companion workbook and reflection guide at theignitedlife.net and now let's dive in with Suzanne Gieseman. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now let that journey begin. I am absolutely ecstatic to welcome Susannah Giesemann back on Passion Struck. It is so nice to see you again.
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Oh John, same here. Thanks for having me back again.
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Well, when we spoke in episode 621, we were exploring soul awareness. How has your own practice evolved since then and what inspired you to write your new book, Always Connected as the Next Step?
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So how my journey has evolved since then is I have discovered a big piece of embodied awareness that I was missing. My Guides in Spirit tried to bring it to my attention before you, and I talked and I applied what I'll share with you, but then I just let it go because I didn't make it part of my daily practice. So then they really got my attention in a way I couldn't deny now as part of my practice and part of my teaching. And what was missing was the focus on this energy center that I call the hara. That's a Japanese word in Eastern mysticism. Everybody knows about the hara. It's the belly. It's an energy center just like the heart, just like the head. In my movie and my book Wolf's Message, we talk about how important it is to get out of the head and into the heart. But I was completely ignoring the equally important Soul center awareness called the Hara. Like I said, in the east, they talk about these three centers. They call them the Dantians and martial artists are familiar with. If you put your focus on the Hara, you become strong and powerful. So what does that have to do with connecting with spirits? Turns out a lot. So I was used to just getting out of the head and going into the heart. I'd sit in meditation and I'd sway, and I thought that energy was awesome. And my energy's going out like this. But my guides showed me, you're not grounding that energy in the very center of you, the hara, and grounding it down into the earth. Now, other mediumship teachers talk about grounding, and I always pictured maybe dropping roots from my feet, but. But when you ground right there in the belly, all of a sudden in my meditation, I stopped swaying. And that connection is solid and remains solid. And I realized it's not important to go out here and get all spacey. It's important to be embodied as a soul, because that soul is already connected to all that is out here. So when we shift our focus from the head, connect in the heart and in the hora, it's a game changer. And that came about because last August, this is why I asked the question. I herniated a disc. I'd never felt such physical pain, and it lasted for three months. It's. I still get twinges, but the worst of it was three months of agony. So I've learned that every challenge, be it physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, is connected to all those layers. So when I had a physical challenge, my first question was to my guides, what's going on here? What does this have to teach me? And they said, you're ignoring this section of your body, and we'll show you why your physical challenge is there. But it led to all these other things that improved in my life and the Hara teaching. That was a long answer to a very short question.
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Well, it's not the only thing that has transpired since we last spoke. I follow you on the socials, and I saw you went through quite a health scare earlier this year in 2026.
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That's true.
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How did that experience test or deepen your ability to. To stay always connected,
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knowing that we are always connected as souls in one field of consciousness that shares this one light of pure being consciousness. I know that help is always available. I know that anything that happens to me is an opportunity, that I will grow stronger from it. So when a dermatologist said, I think what's on your face is skin cancer. My reaction was what I teach everybody to say, isn't that interesting? It really was that it wasn't, oh, no, oh, no. Never even came in my mind. It was, oh, isn't that interesting? And back up a few months, my husband got a call from his primary care provider saying, your white blood cell town is through the roof. And I again went, oh, here we go, Meaning I knew that this was going to be serious. And it was, and it is. And yet I saw this as just another part of life that flows up and down. And if we don't resist it, the growth is phenomenal and we don't suffer as much while we go through that. So we're still dealing with that. I actually had surgery two months ago, and people all the time now are saying, you can't even see it. But there was a giant hole way over here, and they pulled it over and blended the scar in here. But John, I didn't realize how much of a toll something like that does take on your emotions and your whole body, because I was knocked off balance at every level with everything going on. But you recognize it faster and you can overcome it more easily when you remain aware of how connected we are.
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Skin cancer is no joke. And I got a major wake up call years ago when I was at Lowe's. One of my managers had this discoloration and he ignored it for a while and then finally went to deal with it. And it was on his nose and he had to have almost his entire nose removed and then re graft. And I remember just how, just sitting there saying, like, my worst nightmare.
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So, you know, public Persona. I'm thinking, well, wonder how we're going to handle this. And then, John, then I get an invitation to go back on Mayim Bialix Breakdown podcast, which she has a very large audience. I knew we get at least a half a million views and the only time she had to offer me was five days after the surgery. And I just looked at Spirit and I said, well, this is where we just set ego aside, because this is about getting the messages out. And I said, I'll do it. And I did it with a big old bandage right here, and it got over half a million views. But everything's a test of what really matters.
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Yeah, I happened to watch it earlier today, and I have to ask because I have thought about reaching out to her for a future book, but in the same lens, I'm worried about it too, because she's got a doctorate, I think, in behavior science. And so I know the first time you did an interview with her, she and her co host went really technical on you into science. How did you feel about that?
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As I mentioned on that interview the first time, I was like, whoa. She and Jonathan are coming at me like this with questions left and right. It wasn't this chatty conversation like you and I are having. It was the scientific frequency questions. But again, when you know you have a team of higher beings this accessible right here, I just always rely on them. Even if I think I know the answer, I'm going to say, what's the greatest answer? And I do that silently. And the answers just float. I found it fun. It was like playing tennis. And here comes another one. Okay, here comes another one. It just. They kept me on my toes. And the second time was much more relaxed because they understand more now. They weren't testing me. It was all new to them. They were testing you a little.
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Well, I love that they were that interested in it. And we're trying to understand more about it at a foundational level. To me, that earns a lot of my respect because a lot of people just go surface level on these things.
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Yes, I love going deep. In fact, my new book that's right here, always Connected, how to Find Comfort, Clarity, and Direction from the Spirit within is deep. I shared it with a friend to ask her to proofread it for another set of eyes before it went to print with Hay House. And she came back, she said, suzanne, this is much deeper than your other books. But she used the word I had to look up. She said, it's a requiem. It's an opera. It just makes your heart soar. And it's like, oh, I like that. She gets it. So going deeper into these concepts ignites the soul. The soul is deep. It's waiting to be discovered. And when we can do that, it just gets us out of this box that we're used to living in, which can be boring. Oh, wow. Life just got brighter and more exciting.
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Speaking about going deeper, let's talk about the book. Okay. So you open it up even before you get in the first chapter with this delightful moment with Patty Gift where you have this hey, Siri, to hey, Spirit napkin moment. Can you take us behind that story and why, why it felt like such pure, divine flow?
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Oh, it was just a total setup from spirit that I had been awakened one morning, and the guide said, write this down. And I keep paper by my bed. And I leaned over and I wrote down what they said. Hey, Siri, in Capital letters. And they said, now we want you to write down what's missing. The P and the T from Peace and Tranquility. So I wrote it where they said it. I inserted the P and the T in the word Siri. And it came out, hey, Spirit. And I just thought, oh, my God, I never saw that before. I've. Nobody else that I know has ever seen that before. And all of a sudden, this big download about how the challenge these days, and it's getting more so with AI every day, is that people turn to AI instead, realizing all the guidance we seek is right here within us. I'm tapping the heart, but the heart of the head is just this embodied right here. But we can access it if we turn to spirit first instead of our devices. So about not too much later than when I got that download, I happened to have my first trip to New York city in over 20 years. And somebody said, hey, your publisher, Hay House, the vice president, Patty Gifford, lives there. I'll bet she would love to go to lunch with you while you're there. So I reached out and was very pleased when she said, hey, love to meet you for brunch. So we got together and we were talking about my other Hay House books and just generally chatting. And I said, hey, Patty, because we really clicked. It was just this lovely, not so much a business talk. And I said, I gotta share with you the coolest thing that I just got the other day. And I wanted to write it down because it's so much more fun to write out the hey, Siri, and then add it in and watch people's reaction. So I grabbed the napkin. Then I didn't have anything to write with, so here comes the server. And I said, may I borrow your pen? Borrow his pen. And I wrote, hey, Siri. And then I said, watch this. And I wrote it in. Her eyes got big, and then I got enthusiastic. This show is passion struck, right? I got struck with my passion to talk about these things. And I went into this whole spiel about how important this is. And she looked at me, the vice president of Major publishing house, and she said, put that into four sentences and I'll draft a contract tomorrow. And I looked at her and I said, oh, my God, it is a book. I could see that I could make a whole book out of this. Turning to Spirit within instead of our devices. And the next thing out of my mouth was, oh, my poor husband, because this would be my seventh book. And every time I get a new book in me, it just has to come out. And every minute that I'm not with him or my dogs, I'm writing. It's just an obsession. It's got to come out. And she laughed. And I we finished the brunch, I went to the airport to fly home and I sat in the airport and I couldn't get it down to four sentences. It was four paragraphs. And true to her word, we had a signed contract by the next week, which is an absolute miracle because anybody that's ever gone to a big publishing house knows that the process of pitching a book and writing the 80 page proposal and going through committees till you get to the vice president and the president can take months. It's agonizing, rewriting, polishing. So to have her say, write it up and I'll give it to you this week was a God thing. Yeah, my guides just said a God thing so that I share that story because it's an example of how we're used all the time, how when we listen like I did that morning, we get in the flow. And like my guides have said from the beginning, when your heart's in the right place, things fall into place. So that's what I hope to do with this book, is show people to how to live that kind of a connected life and how to get in the habit of going within. In addition to using our devices. I show them both. I guide people. This, the second part of the book, is 25 essays on very common human challenges. And every one of those essays came from me asking my guides talk about this. They said, you didn't ask us. We said it's time for the next one. And they did. It was just given to me like this. But I show readers in the very first one the difference between one that's given to us within and when I ask the same question of AI. And it's palpable. The difference, the wisdom is tremendous in the one from AI but this sense of heart, openness and personal conversation, AI can't match that. It's an energy that the readers will feel and then hopefully get their own answers
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before we continue. Thank you for supporting Passion struck and for helping us bring these conversations to people around the world. One thing I've come to appreciate is that growth rarely happens when life is easy. It's usually the difficult seasons that force us to ask better questions. Who am I when things I depend on change? What really matters? Where do I find meaning, purpose and connection when life doesn't go according to plan? Those questions sit at the heart of my upcoming book the mattering effect. Because the people who navigate adversity well aren't the ones who never struggle. They're the people who remain connected to their values, to their relationships, and to the understanding that their worth was never dependent on circumstances in the first place. If you'd like to explore today's ideas more deeply, every episode includes a free companion workbook with reflection, questions and practical exercises@theignitedlife.net and now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now let's get back to the conversation. Yeah, I love it. I'm going to comment on a couple of things. One, to me, to be a Hay House author would be a dream come true. So it is to be in your shoes and to just be sitting there and not having to go through that whole pressure of the proposal process and her just wanting the book like that would be. Man, I can't even imagine.
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I did stream the nap. It. The napkin is framed. It's on my bookshelf.
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The next time I get to New York, I have to try to get her to do a lunch with me.
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Okay, I'll ask.
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I want to talk about an interesting topic, especially for us here in Florida, and that is sunglasses. Here you have to wear sunglasses all the time because the sun is so bright. And I love in books when objects that we use on a regular basis become metaphors. What do you think are the sunglasses most people are wearing today that are keeping them from. From seeing? They're always connected.
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Number one is the reliance on the physical senses only for our inner truth. Number two is fear of how I will look to others. What if others don't like me? What if I show people what I'm really feeling inside? What if I take a risk and do what my heart says? These are all lenses that cause us to filter how we project our inner self to the world. And if you realize it's just a little lens that's not only changing how you see the world, but changing how others see you, you'd rip those lenses off in a heartbeat. And then other people would need lenses because your light shining so brightly, you'd be blinding them. Truly. Yeah.
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Why do you think we end up wearing those sunglasses? Is it something that we just do subconsciously and we're not raising our system one instead of our system two? Or what do you think it is?
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Well, we do it mostly subconsciously, but it's because we've learned to be that way. And most of it starts in very normal interactions. Whether you had loving parents or not, you learn very quickly that certain behaviors as a very small child elicited certain behaviors from our parents that caused us to feel unloved, to sometimes cause us emotional pain and sometimes physical pain in the form of abusive parents and then others. And you learn then how important the group is and you go to school, and it's all just compounds, compounds until we become these robotic beings that act in a way that, that we think will guarantee us acceptance and happiness. And it's quite the opposite.
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So, Suzanne, someone I have always wished I could have met when he was alive was Wayne Dyer. And I just reading about him and watching his videos and his talks and everything else just tells you how powerful a person he was. And it's amazing the influence that he had and that he still has. And so in chapter one, where you talk about your remarkable visitation with him, it was just something that I thought we needed to talk about. So can you share that story with the audience and why this was such a powerful visitation?
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I'm not going to share the punchline of the story because I don't want to give away one of the most powerful stories in the book, but it was. It was an unexpected experience when I was in bed in the middle of the night when Wayne Dyer dropped in on me in awareness. And we interacted in such a way that I heard things from him. He told me certain things. And I looked up what he told me online and it was absolutely accurate. I had no doubt he was there now. I met him personally. He came to my house and I did a session for him, connecting with his loved ones who had passed and channeling some information about his work. And from that day on, we would exchange an occasional email. We didn't become best friends or anything, but he knew of me and I certainly knew him and had followed his work for years. He was just such a wonderful teacher to so many of us and passed very suddenly at age 75. And when he passed, many people said, are you going to connect with Wayne Dyer? And I said, well, I hope to. And he dropped in on me the first time before the story that I tell in the book. And the very first thing I did was put him to the test. I could hear his V voice. It was him. I sensed his presence so clearly. And I said, wayne, I don't know how you died. Maybe it's in the news, but I never read it, so tell me what happened. And he said, infarked, which I had to look up later, it means a sudden, acute heart attack. And that was what happened. And he told me other things that I validated with his family members. So that story that I tell in the book was. Is very good as an example to people of how connected we all are and that death is not the end. But I'd actually like to bring you up to speed with one that's not in the book. And that is. Was it the last one? I've led three Awakened Way cruises where we take a large group, and I share all of this teaching and have fun on a cruise. And I think it was. Oh, it was definitely the last one I did, because I'm doing one this September as well. But the last one I did, I was embedded in my stateroom. And here's Wayne Dyer, and he gave me some really cool teaching. And he said, I want you to teach this when you go on stage tomorrow. And I was like, really change things up, okay? And it was really good teaching. So I'm backstage getting ready to go on the next day, and I created some quick. Some slides to update everything, and. And there he was backstage. And I said, oh, you're going to teach this lesson with me. To anybody that's new to this kind of work, this might sound ridiculous, but with my background, maybe commander and aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I'd be like, people trust me when I talk, but I trust the spirits because I put them to the test to share with others. I had no doubt he was there, But I said, wayne, how am I going to show people this is you? And he said, well, your cruise producer, whose name is Ibis, I missed the bird, but pronounced Ibis.
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He.
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She's out front right now. I gave her a necklace when I led one of these cruises. She loves that necklace and wears it to this day. So Ibis comes backstage to say, ready to go on? And I said, I'm ready to go on. And so is Wayne. He's right here. She goes, really? That's great. And I said, yeah. And he tells me that he gave you a necklace on one of these cruises, and you love it and wear it to this day. John, she was so stunned. She dropped an F bomb right there. It was so great. It was a moment. It was a moment. And that was all the validation she or anybody needed. And I went out on stage and I shared this expanded teaching that I need to probably do a video on YouTube about, because it. Yeah, I will. Because it was really a cool teaching
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and a wonderful moment when you have experiences like that? Does the temperature of the room, does anything change about it? Or how do these sessions happen?
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That would be different if people were present when that happened with me. Other people might feel the shift in energy patterns. For me, I don't change. I don't feel the change in temperature. But often I'll get lightheaded. It's often like, whoa, I'm dizzy. But it's such a lightness and I haven't moved. Not like I bent over and stood up. It's just all of a sudden it's here. I've learned to say, oh, somebody just came into resonance with me with a pattern that I can feel. And then I just tune in and I often, I don't say, who's here? It was just in that moment. Oh, it's Wayne Dyer. That kind of thing. Pretty cool.
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In chapter two, you share a beautiful story of Patti and Dave Hart connecting with their daughter Lauren. If I have this correct, and what did that case illustrate about the healing power of direct connection? That we can have?
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The medium James Van Praagh said to me, suzanne, you need to show people how real mediumship is. Evidence based mediumship can change people instantly. You need to put some of your readings online. Well, readings are very personal things and a lot of intimate issues come up because they have to do with healing, like forgiveness and things that people didn't get to say. But shortly thereafter, I did this reading for this couple that was clearly a setup from their daughter in spirit, Patty and Dave Hart. The James Van Prague thing came just after that because I didn't, I wouldn't want to go into a reading thinking, oh, let's put this online if it's good. That changes the whole tone of why we're doing this. I had just done the one for Patty and Dave and I said, you know what? Your reading would be so helpful for people to see what evidence based mediumship is. It will show people the healing effects of this. And they agreed to let me do it. And it's now been viewed by over 60,000 people. What's phenomenal about that video? It's the full video unedited. And then when you watch mediums on tv, they're going to show you the highlights. They're not going to show you when the medium's wrong. And I honestly don't know any medium that's 100. Correct. There's usually because of the mode of communication, there's a little bit of filtering from spirit. It's like the lenses. We just can't help it this body is a filter. But in that reading I left in the nose, It's a full 45 minute reading. What's so phenomenal about it is you can feel and see the gray Paul over Patty and Dave when we start. They, their daughter Lauren had passed from after horrendous battle with cancer. Their beautiful daughter dies and they just thought that's it, she's dead and gone. And in the space of 45 minutes they couldn't deny Lauren was right there. The evidence she brought through, I got goosebumps as I remember it. The evidence just their jaws were dropping. It was so clear. It was le Lauren, things coming through that I couldn't possibly know. And then things came up later that they didn't realize at the moment. And we put that into that video. And you see them when I interview them afterwards, bright, smiling, it's like night and day as a result of one reading. And to this day they are upbeat, positive. Of course they miss Lauren, but they are just totally transformed. That video is available just on YouTube. Look up actual evidence of the afterlife. It's why I do this work.
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So because you're on the show, a lot of people are coming in because they, they know who you are and they know what you do. But some of my listeners may be tuning in to mediumship for the first time. And in chapter three you talk about common resistance. What are some of the biggest forms of resistance in people who are trying to connect with spirit or who don't believe in spirit or haven't been educated about spirit? And how do you help them to understand this and how it works?
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I try to lighten things up by first of all saying we need to examine our own bs and that stands for belief system, all right? Not what everybody thinks. Well, it's actually true, but what we've been told by people is that mediumship isn't real or it's somehow wrong or people everybody who does it is a fake. And that's this is learned from other people. But when you have the personal experience of either connecting with spirit yourself or sitting with an evidence based medium who is ethical, has high integrity, you'll see that it like we talked about with Patty and Dave, it has the potential to change lives in an instant. It has the potential to rock your worldview because you cannot be on the receiving end of a very evidential reading when you didn't quite believe there was an afterlife and not start to question how this world really works and not begin to question if this is the only world right here. It'll blow your world wide open and your belief system. One of the things that gets in the way of mediumship is trying to connect and also not understanding how mediumship works. It's not like picking up a phone and having a conversation. This nervous system does act as a filter. There are certain kinds of information that can't get through because it's compressed so much by the nervous system that we can't get specific types of data. But we certainly get symbolic imagery. We do hear phrases and thoughts. We have feelings that reflect what those in spirit are trying to show us. We have a knowing that goes beyond data. And this all translates into the recipient of that experience saying, oh, my God, that's my loved one. Ultimately, it's all frequency and patterns that anybody can learn to tune into. I had no idea I could do this before. I was not a born medium. I never saw spirits until my stepdaughter died. And I said, she has to still exist. I'm going to connect with her. And once you get the BS out of the way and learn how to bypass the filters in the nervous system, you're on your way.
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Yeah. I was doing another interview, and I can't remember if it was with Gabby Bernstein or maybe it was Amy Lee McCree, but one of them was telling me that they had also spoken to Wayne and they were saying that sometimes it's easier for. For a spirit who has fulfilled more of their life destiny in Earth School on Earth to communicate with you than it is for someone who might be earlier in their journey. Does that resonate with you?
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It does. It definitely does. There's a spiral to the growth of the how much gets through to human awareness. And even across the veil, certain spirits might still cling to their earthly story without realizing it is all just an overlay on this pure being that we all are. So, yeah, that rings true to me.
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What guidance do you give people for how they can recognize genuine guidance versus people's wishful thinking or imagination or searching for a clue, you know, where I'm going.
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This goes right back to speaking of going around and circling back. It goes right back to speaking about the horror like I did at the beginning when we move our awareness into the belly and just say, here I am, like, present. I'm present. My mind's not wandering to the past, the future, or doubts. I'm out of my head and I'm present. That's like when I used to sail around in my boat and we drop the anchor. When that anchor digs in, you feel It. That connection is solid. So if you're holding awareness in the heart, trusting this is the center of my soul awareness, I'm receiving some guidance. Can I trust this? It lands with this solidness instead of. I'm not sure about that. There is a feeling that one can learn to differentiate between what's my imagination or something coming from within my individual pattern and something that's coming from the. A greater version of the self.
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You open up something called. I think it's sit in presence of the Divine practice. Do I have that right? Sip.
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I call it sit in peace. But sit in presence, that works for me. The sip of the divine. Yeah.
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For people who aren't familiar with the sip of the divine, what is it? And how does it open the door to being always connected?
- [36:39]
B
It is so perfect for people who say, number one, I can't meditate. That's the number one excuse, because I can't quiet my mind and I don't have time to meditate. This sip of the divine takes away all those excuses. And because it only takes three minutes, once you start doing it regularly, you may want to actually spend a little more time in stillness because you set the intention that I'm gonna just stop what I'm doing, I'm gonna slow down with a nice relaxing breath. I'm gonna drop my awareness out of this busy head that's causing me so much discord, and I'm just gonna stay centered here, present for three minutes. And I'm just going to observe what I'm experiencing. So not just observe the thoughts, but I'm going to be like the blue sky and observe all the weather that floats through. And that could be a thought that you notice and let it go. That could be an itch that you scratch and let it go. That could be sound outside of a lawnmower that you say, oh, this is bothering my piece. Oh, let that go. And so for three minutes, you just notice how consciousness arises in awareness. And after you do this just a few times, even the very first time, you have this realization. Wait. This awareness, this pure awareness without the weather patterns is my truest state. And without the weather, there's no disturbance at all. There's just this, and it's peace. So you sit in peace as awareness, watching the clouds go by and the weather pass and the patterns. And you start to say, there are two aspects of me, this base, the pure being, the pure awareness, and everything else is an overlay. And it doesn't mean the weather's bad and it doesn't Mean, the overlay is bad. It's just the way we are designed. But when you realize, you can step back and sit in peace. Now you're creating spaciousness in your field and in your life. You're creating openness. The reason my back went out was an entire lifetime, decades of guarding my energy field. Guarding, physically tensing from past traumas, from people are. People can be mean, People can say things. I have to protect myself. We all do it, which is why so many people have lower back issues and digestive issues. We're guarding, we're not open. But when you sit in peace every day for a few minutes, you can be open things, relax. And now higher consciousness can drop in as one of those clouds and say, you are so very loved. And you might go, where'd that come from? Because I sure don't feel it. And now you can engage that, or you can use that time to say, what do I need to know right now? And just go back to being the pure sky. And this cloud might come in that says, do you know how much you're tensing during the day? Try being open. This is where the guidance that I speak of comes from. The pure awareness state. And three minutes a day will get you intimately familiar with it.
- [40:17]
A
I love it. So, obviously being an alternative health podcast, I have a lot of guests who talk about the gut brain access. But you were just talking about the gut and gut ailments to more of a spiritual nature. Can you go a little bit deeper into how that works?
- [40:35]
B
My dear friend, Brenda Bowman Baker, who passed in 2018, I believe. Yeah. When she first came to me, she came to watch one of my presentations in a venue, a public venue. I didn't know her, she didn't know me. She didn't know what she was getting into. But when she felt the energy in that presentation and heard what I shared, something in her cracked wide open. She ran from that place. She didn't know what this feeling was. It was her own light finally saying, hey, you've hated me your whole life. I'm right here. It's love. So she reached out to me later and I ended up doing a channeling session for her from my guides. I don't do that very often, spontaneously, but I recorded it and it was. The guide said, you have spent a lifetime of self loathing and you have seen it act up in sickness in your gut area. And it's not through any fault of your own. It's through not recognizing your beautiful inner light. And it turns out she had had cancer Three times in the gut area, and she ultimately got it again, even though she came to love herself and realize who she is. I believe I talk about Brenda in this book. If I don't, I definitely talked about Brenda in my other two Hay House books, the Awakened Way and Making the Afterlife Connection. But by the time she crossed the veil, she wasn't cured physically, but she was totally cured emotionally and spiritually, and began talking with me from across the veil immediately. But that's just an example. Not that everybody's going to get cancer if they don't love themselves. But the body reflects where this dense energy is, and the gut is the seat of our personal power, and she was giving it all away to other people. That said, you're ugly, you're overweight, you don't like your lifestyle changes. She believed them instead of finding that truth within.
- [42:33]
A
Do you believe the same is true for someone who might be suffering from something like colitis, that there's a link here?
- [42:40]
B
I believe there's a link in almost every case. Even if we pick up something that's genetic, the soul chose to come into this body knowing there would be a genetic challenge in that area because it will focus us on certain issues, emotionally and spiritually, that are related to that area. Yeah.
- [43:00]
A
Interesting. Very interesting. Suzanne. I want to move into part two, but before we do, I think for those who are not familiar with your teaching, I'd like you to introduce who Joy is.
- [43:16]
B
Well, I remember when I had a conversation and meditation one morning years ago. I was leading a workshop, and my dear friend Lynette, who's in the new book, was. We were sharing a room in a house, and I went off to meditate. And at that time, I was talking daily with my guide, Sanaya. But I came out to Lynette and I said, I just had this conversation. I believe it was sourced. It's the highest aspect of pure being that expresses itself through words like Neil Donald Walsh's conversations with God. It was phenomenal. And I typed the conversation, and she read it. She said, wow, Suzanne. I said, I'm not sharing this with anybody. I can't share this with anybody. They'll think I'm crazy. She said, well, yeah, okay, fine. And it wasn't long before I shared it, probably in that workshop, that I was there to leave. Because why would we want to hold this back? It's the ego that says, what will people think if you make a claim like this? Well, the goal is for all of us to come to know we are direct expressions of that Voice that's within all of us. If we can access the highest expression of this awareness, that then has a voice. Take pure awareness that we touched in the sip of the divine. And if it just ripples enough to now be able to speak, it gets a little lonely talking to yourself. So it creates all of us. And so ultimately we are talking to ourselves as Source, but saying Source and God carries baggage for a lot of people. And I said to this voice, what do I call you? And I was told to call it Joy. And that's with a capital J. And that's not human joy that comes and goes. It is this underlying state of pure contentment because it knows that beneath all of the waves and the ripples and the stories, it can't be harmed. It simply is pure being and all is well at that level. That's Joy when you come to know that. And it's joyous for us when we come to know that we are ultimately that beneath these stories, beneath the costumes,
- [45:29]
A
you are spoken to by Joy when you seek guidance. Which topic in part two, forgiveness, grief, anger, disappointment, self worth, etc, do you find people struggle with the most right now?
- [45:45]
B
This is my first lip twitch of the interview. That's what my guides do when I drop really into a state of coherence and they want to talk. And they said, do not pigeonhole it into any one topic. For each person is unique and we tend to see other people and feel that their experiences are the same as ours and they're not. And they say that whole list was given because Joy came here to experience it all. One is not more important or better or worse than another. But people will be able to look at that list and just zero right in on the one that speaks to their heart. Where they say, man, I must have come here in this body to work on that, because that keeps coming up in my life.
- [46:27]
A
Wow.
- [46:28]
B
Yeah.
- [46:28]
A
Okay, I'm gonna go here then. One of the things you and I talked about in our last discussion was the power of self forgiveness. And you shared a mantra with me during that conversation. You said, forgive me forever thinking I was anything less than love. How has that mantra evolved in this book?
- [46:49]
B
I don't remember if we specifically discussed it in the book, but as I hear it now, it would be, it's love is the same as Joy. So we learn to realize and have realize that we are that joy, we are that love, and that we suffer when we forget that. So it's not asking Joy to forgive us. It's forgive me, myself, forever thinking I was anything less than joy and expression. And I hope people understand that by the end of the book. The first part of the book has these conversations between me and Joy trying to understand and help other people really understand that we are this. A lot of people are afraid to say that because it sounds blasphemous or egotistical, but it's the deepest understanding we can come to and it will change your life. So we, Joy and I dig at it, but it was all directed by Joy. I have to tell you that this book unfolded differently and it's why my friend Anne, who read it, said, this is deeper than your other books. All my other 16 books until this one, I would get an awareness of a book coming in and I would get all these ideas and I'd buy index cards and I would put one idea on every card. I would even say to my husband, I need index cards. Now I'm getting a book and one thought. And then I go and I'd find a bed, like if I was in my rv or I'd go to the guest bed and I didn't need to unmake that night. And I would lay all the cards out and I'd look at it and I'd say, spirit, help me organize this. And it would be like a computer. And those would be the chapters, writing it with spirit. So I got all these ideas for how this book would unfold. Once Patty Gift gave me the gift of the contract, put them all on cards, spread them out on the bed, said, okay, Spirit, how are we going to organize this one? Spirit is joy, but also my guides. That's why I say spirit in general, how are we going to organize this one? And I looked at them and I looked and nothing happened. And I went, what's going on? And I suddenly heard, this book is going to unfold differently. You won't need those cards. So I gathered them up and I put them in a stack to the side and went to the computer and the whole introduction just flowed. And you'll see the book itself models the trust that it took to write each chapter, because I referred to, hey, I haven't written for six weeks because it just wasn't here. And all of a sudden, here's Joy saying, now we're ready and you can see why. And so the whole book serves as an example of how spirit shows up in our lives in the perfect way for each of us.
- [49:33]
A
Suzanne, in this season, I have been spending a lot of energy with my audience on self worth and acceptance. And you said something A few minutes ago about wearing the masks and the costumes that so many of us put on throughout most of our lives. And I often talk about Tom Gilovich, who, I'm not sure if you know of his work, but he's a professor at Cornell who's been studying people's regrets for decades. And he has found that 76% of all people have the same regret, which is not becoming our ideal self or not becoming the person we were born to become. Which I think goes right to this whole thing about us wearing a costume for the majority of our lives. What does spirit say is the fastest way for us to remember our inherent value?
- [50:31]
B
You may need to remind me of that question, because what I'm being told to talk about first is that when I hear you describe that regret, my human mind acknowledges that almost everybody listening to you say that is going to feel that there was one certain path for us to that we have to fulfill before we go back. So somebody on the other side might greet us and say, well, you were supposed to become a doctor and instead you did this and that wasn't good enough and you didn't fulfill your purpose. When actually the one shared purpose that all of us came into human form to fulfill is to be joy and expression. Which does not mean to be joyous all the time, but to live life fully following that inner nudge and expressing this awareness of connection which often leads to some kind of service. Maybe it's not your vocation, but just a smile to somebody just when they need it, A listening ear without a smile. When somebody needs that, that is living on purpose. Leaving here with more of our light shining than it did halfway through our life. When we finally fulfilled our human tasks of raising a family, having a job, that kind of thing. Realizing all along the way we're here to help each other, let our lives shine, and treat others the same way we would like to be treated. There's a reason the Golden Rule is in just about every religion on Earth. Because there's an inner part of us that's joy, that realizes that's why we're here, to be in relationship with others, with kindness and compassion. That's living life on purpose. If you go to your grave and you were a curmudgeon, completely self focused and didn't care about others at all, you may have missed a giant opportunity. So now I don't know what the second part of your question was, but that's such a huge relief, hopefully for people that you are living your life on purpose. If you can Go through your life review after you pass and say, look at the difference I made in all those little moments. Not that I accrued abundance or titles or possessions.
- [52:51]
A
I have really come to believe. And I'll get to the question here in a second. I have been like, trying to explore this whole topic for. For years now. And there are a couple interviews that I've done. One was with a gentleman named Andreas Widmer. And Andreas, at one point in his life was completely listless. He had no purpose. And he became a Swiss Guard. And he found himself being mentored by Pope John Paul ii and the Pope. I gave him this guidance that Andreas, what you are put on here on Earth to do is we're all given superpowers. And right now you're fighting ears. You need to do is you need to be leaning into them. And then you need to figure out how do you use them to make humanity a better place.
- [53:42]
B
Yeah.
- [53:43]
A
And then I always talk about my conversation with Dak or Keltner where we really went and explored moral beauty. Because people most feel alive, feel the most awe when they're doing simple acts of kindness to others or observing others do the same. So the more I unpack this and the more discussions I have, to me, there's something to this that too many of us never get back to. The superpowers we're given and we're not using them to help bring about moral beauty in the world. I don't know if any of that resonates to you.
- [54:18]
B
It does. We are the hands and legs and lips and tongue of God. Use it wisely. Yeah.
- [54:29]
A
So that goes to the question I wanted to ask. What does spirit say is the way for us to remember our inherent value? Like, how do we get back there? How do we get it to click?
- [54:43]
B
Notice that difference between your pure state of awareness and everything else that covers it up. Just pure awareness of what you are projecting from that state of awareness. It's awareness. You could call it presence or mindfulness. Once you sit in peace for a while and you start to notice, you will notice throughout the day. Oh, what I just said. That was a little disharmonious. I was under stress and I snapped at my husband. That felt so different than that pure awareness that I feel in the morning. I'm going to go apologize. Everything stands out more when you experience peace. Pure awareness regularly. That's the point. So that the true nature of you, you feel it instantly when you're not in harmony with yourself and others.
- [55:34]
A
So you feel it the most when you're not in harmony with yourself or others.
- [55:40]
B
Yes, it's. This is the reason we come here. For life. Love in full expression. L I, F E for the fullness. So we don't say, oh, that was bad. I don't want to feel that.
- [55:49]
A
That.
- [55:50]
B
That was a. That contrasted so much that I'm going to pay attention to that. Wow. I know that experience didn't help hurt Joy, but it hurt my husband and it hurt me that I hurt him. I'm going to rectify that. And it just makes life. It's a dance. It's a dance. We're not here to be perfect. We never will be. The perfection is the base layer. Everything else is experience. So let's just take it all on. And may my lessons be as painless as possible. That's my daily prayer.
- [56:23]
A
So I know one of the things that affects a lot of people is disappointment. What is your advice for how a listener could better manage disappointment? Disappointment when they're faced with it.
- [56:35]
B
Notice that what leads to disappointment is expectations and assumptions. And disappointment will lead you to trust spirit more saying, oh, that didn't turn out the way I wanted, but there actually may be a better way. I'm going to trust that. I can't wait to see how this turns out instead. That was what I wanted, but I don't have the bigger picture right here. Okay, Spirit, show me what awesome thing is going to happen instead, and I'll try to get out of the way.
- [57:10]
A
And I know another one, Suzanne, that is big right now is. I think a lot of people see despair. All you have to do is turn on the TV and you see it all around you. What's your advice for helping people to find hope in the times that we live in?
- [57:29]
B
Recognize that despair and hopelessness is part of the programming that comes with your brain. We're programmed. The left hemisphere of the brain is programmed to focus us on what stands out. That could be a problem for us. We're programmed to look for the negative. When you say, oh, that's the program. Show me the bigger picture here. You've already stepped back from the story. You're acknowledging there may be something greater. You're asking for a different viewpoint, and it's here now. You can go to the heart and the gut, the hara, and say, what's my best action? Is there something I can do to alleviate suffering within myself and others? Then do it. And if not, I can at least realize that is one aspect of a story. Send peace. But underneath it all is peace already. That sounds Like a lot of work. And it actually is at first, until it becomes just a way of being. That becomes your natural reaction to say, oh, I'm suffering. When I read that headline. That is truth. That is suffering. I'm witnessing it. And at the same time, I can step back and say, I really can't do anything personally about that news, but I can find the peace within myself. I can send prayers, and I can work on turning up my light and not giving my full attention to the brain and the way it acts. It's the program.
- [59:01]
A
Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I read books a little bit differently than many people do. I typically start from the back and then come back to the front.
- [59:13]
B
I almost did that last night. It goes totally against the way I want to get linear, but I almost wanted to go right to the summary in this one book. And I may yet. But that's fun. Yeah.
- [59:24]
A
I like to read the acknowledgments because it gives me a sense of who the author is, who they're thanking, who was involved in the writing of the book. And then I. I typically like to read a conclusion of the book. And there was something that you wrote that. That just hit me. You write, imagine a life where peace and tranquility flow like water. Imagine a life where you don't panic when you can't find your phone because you know that you are already and always connected to a source of love and guidance that is eternally yours. And I just thought it was so beautiful. Is that the hope for listeners and readers when they finish the book?
- [60:04]
B
That's it. That's my whole mission right there, John. In a nutshell. And that imagining a life where peace and tranquility flow like water is taking a phrase from the final poem of a young man named Wolf. Michael Wolf Pasacarnas, who died by a lightning strike, just like my stepdaughter. I wrote a book about Wolf and the way he knew he would die that way and when and where it would happen and what he came back from across the field to teach all of us became my awakened way of living. Everything we've been talking about tonight goes back to living awakened way, realizing you're not only human and we're part of this big web that connects everything. Wolf's final poem. By the way, that book is available, but it's also now a documentary that's available free on the streaming platform. To be Wolf's message just summarizes all of this with a way that I dare anybody to watch it and not say wow. But Wolf's final poem said, spirit of great healer, that would be joy awaken within this heart. Peace and tranquility flow like water. That's a prayer. The time has come to allow the light of nature to free my soul. Those were his final words that he wrote down. And peace and tranquility flow like water is my goal for everyone reading that book. But look at. There's the P and the T that turns Siri into spirit. Kind of cool how that worked out that way, but that is absolutely available to all of us. Just went through this period with my husband's sickness and me, I jokingly said, getting my face carved up, but. And the herniated disc. We all have challenges, all of us, physical and otherwise. And the peace and the tranquility is not out there. It's already here. And it's just my greatest joy to give people practical tools to access that and notice when we are not in balance and in harmony with that.
- [62:14]
A
My last question, Suzanne, Is this the way people are feeling now with the world and the conditions we're living in? Are you finding that spirit is becoming more and more vocal to you? Are the spirit that are interfacing with you becoming more urgent in their guidance? Are you seeing any, Any change?
- [62:37]
B
I find spirit more accessible and open, available to me now simply because of the trajectory of my path. I committed to that every day and I work on finding that balance and it pays off in that. But I have not experienced urgency with them because at the higher levels, they know that all is in order. They see how we are unfolding. They don't get upset. They trust spirit. They're working like we are, but they don't have that sense of human, oh my God, we've got to change things now. That's when you feel that that's an overlay. That's a filter. That's your human side coming in saying, this is not good. We got to change this. Those in spirit are saying, okay, let's keep it going here. And more and more of you are getting it. That's good. Because as you drop the tension and restriction of this is should not be happening now. You can hear them. That's what we need to do. Open to the wonder of spirit that's right here.
- [63:40]
A
Suzanne, I always love having you on the show. For listeners who want to learn about you and your work, where's the best place for them to go?
- [63:48]
B
That will be my website, which is just my name, Suzanne giesman.com but also our free Awakened Way app. On iPhone or Android. Just type in their app store Awaken way. And it has daily inspirational messages from Spirit that I get every day right here in meditation. They're fresh. And then in the menu, free meditations, suggestions of videos, a button where you can push and say give me the message I need right now and see what wondrous answer comes back for you. It's a really great way to keep you committed to your own growth, to let your own light shine. And then my YouTube channel has over 600 videos and a weekly podcast that's live most Sundays. So I'm doing my best to help people find harmony. How's that? I love it.
- [64:41]
A
Well, thank you so much again. Always an honor to have you on the show.
- [64:44]
B
Well, it's been lovely. I love the questions. They led to some great discussions and hopefully got some people curious to want to know more.
- [64:52]
A
That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Suzanne Gieseman. One thing I kept thinking about while we were talking is how quickly life can change. A phone call, a diagnosis, a loss, a season we never expected to walk through. None of us are exempt from those moments. But what I appreciated about Suzanne's perspective is that she isn't asking us to deny pain or explain it away. She's talking about the practices that help us stay grounded when life feels uncertain and about finding a kind of connection that remains even when circumstances change. As we continue our flourishing series, next week, we'll move from awakening to rewiring. My guest will be Nick Ortner. Nick is the founder of Tapping Solution, one of the leading voices in the world on emotional healing and personal transformation, and the New York Times best selling author of his new book, Rewired. For more than two decades, he's helped millions of people understand how stress, old experiences, and deeply ingrained patterns shape the way we think, feel and behave. In our conversation, we explore why change is so difficult, why willpower alone rarely works, and how our brains and nervous systems can learn new patterns that support healthier, more intentional lives. Because most of us already know what we want to change, the harder question is how we create change that actually lasts. We have something called the negativity bias. We all know it. If someone says, john, I could say
- [66:11]
B
one mean thing to you today and you will remember it for three years
- [66:15]
A
and the next thousand people that talk to you could say nice things and it'll be gone and be like, well,
- [66:20]
B
Nick said that one thing.
- [66:22]
A
So our brain does latch on to these things. It's in order to keep us safe and I talk to a lot of authors and I joke that you haven't
- [66:31]
B
made it as an author until you
- [66:32]
A
get a one star review because it means your book hasn't gone out far enough. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need a reminder that they don't have to carry life's challenges alone. You can find today's companion workbook and additional resources@theignitedlife.net and until next time, remember this the practices we return to in difficult seasons often become the foundations for how we flourish in the years that follow. I'm John Miles, and you've been passion struck.