YOU ARE STILL ALIVE, NOW ACT LIKE IT! EMPOWERING YOUR LIFE WITH AUTHOR & LIFE COACH RAY CATANIA

Welcome to Magic is Real, the podcast where we focus on spiritual journeys, near death experiences and all things metaphysical and spiritual. If this podcast resonates with you, it would mean the world if you could like subscribe and share with like minded friends. Thank you so much for being here with an open heart and mind. I wish you peace, light and love always. Hello and welcome to Magic is Real. I'm Shannon, I'm your host and I am here today with my friend Ray Catania. Welcome Ray.

Thank you Shannon. Thank you so much for having me back. I had such a great time with you last time. Yes, come back.

I had such a great time with you too. I'm going to explain to you why we're here again and what we're going to be talking about. So Ray was on my show before and he is a near death experiencer, but I'm also just going to tell you a little bit about him and and he's written a new book which you can see in the background is called you are Still Alive Now Act Like It. So Ray is a metaphysical teacher. He's a master certified life coach. He's an award winning author. He believes that modern day spirituality is best taught at the intersection of science and spirituality. He's passionate about helping others get unstuck, harness the power of their mind and create their own reality. So Ray wrote his first book which is called the Atheist and the Afterlife. I did do an interview with him previously if you'd like to check that out. Ray was an atheist. He had a near death experience. He had a spiritual awakening which led him to where we are now. So now. So after he had this experience he found out that he's also clairvoyant medium as I am. And he has written a second book which is called you are Still Alive Now Act like it in which he shares how he developed the ability to help others through his personal experiences and scientific theories. He shares techniques that anyone can use to replicate what he's learned. So I'm also going to tell you that Ray holds a degree in metaphysics from the University of Sedona, which is right near where I am now. And he's working toward. You're still working towards your PhD now?

Yes, I am.

Okay.

In metaphysics, never ending dissertation, I would.

Assume in metaphysical parapsychology. He's also a master certified life coach. So I wanted to start actually by saying that I am reading this book right now. I am fascinated by it. I am 20% into it because I have been reading it carefully. I'm not skimming it. So we're gonna start by. I just want to talk about kind of where I am in the book. And then we're going to expand because I'd like to know, for those who may not have already seen our interview before, kind of give us a little brief just bio on where you're coming from, what your experience was and what led you to being motivated to write this second book.

Sure, I would. The first book generally was something that I almost didn't control. If you remember the story the way it goes, things were happening to me that I was in denial that they were there, that they were real. Many of them began at an early age because of a life of trauma and violence and things of that nature. You know, we tend to, when we're in real bad situations, traumatic situations, we allow our mind to kind of float away and we try to leave the situation so that our body is there, but our mind is elsewhere. It's, it's a, it's a Copenhagen coping. So what I'm looking for.

Mechanism.

Mechanism, thank you. That allows us to get through that experience. So doing this over and over repeatedly, I began to be able to have out of body experiences. And I didn't know this at the time and I didn't think anything strange about it, but I had some imaginary friends that I could see and talk to and hear, so to speak. I'm using words because I have no other words to describe it. You know, you're a medium. And I just thought it was perfectly normal. So it wasn't until later on when I mentioned it to someone and I come from big Catholic upbringing, it was not accepted and to say the least, I was, you know, chastised and that's not real and you'll go to hell and etc. Etc. So I took that stuff and I put it in a box and I said, this is not real. This is not me. This is not real. I was told, this is not real, it can't be real. And it wasn't until later when I experienced my first death, my near death experience when there was a fire in my home and I had to be resuscitated. I had this next experience where I crossed over, saw the light. It was the most beautiful situation that one could ever experience. Euphoric, no pain took me by surprise, obviously, as it would anybody. I was hovering over my body. My father was holding my body and he was screaming for the paramedics. And even though we didn't have a wonderful relationship, I told the being at the End of a light that was telling me, come on, it's okay to come into the light to. I can't. I can't go any further than I am because I have to go back to him. He's destroyed. I need to go back with him. So I did. I woke up and the pain set in and oh my God, every little pain that you have, like, even if it's just a little ache or pain in your shoulder or your knee or whatever, it all comes back and it's like a bomb goes off inside your body because everything's magnified when you're outside your body. You feel nothing. It's just your energy and you're blending with other energy and it's just a. It's a euphoric experience and a feeling. So when you come back into this, this pain body, as Eckhart Tolle would call it, you immediately react and you feel every. You feel the air, you feel everything around you. Not in a good way.

Yeah.

So after that settles in and I realized that I had come back to this, I was upset with myself. I didn't want to make that choice. I wanted to do over. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to go back. I wanted another chance at the light. But that never happened. And I certainly wasn't going to make it happen. And I think I want to express here because I've heard that a lot of people talk about their near death experiences. And then folks, sometimes we say it in such a way we make it beautiful. And then other people, they start to think, well, if they're on the fence of suicide, never, ever, ever take this precious life that you are given and throw it away. Okay. Because you're. The day will come when you get to go into the light and that's the day you're supposed to be there. You're not supposed to go there before that. Okay. So I really want to stress that because I've heard through the grapevine that a lot of people are, you know, upset with bad, that we're making it sound beautiful, but it is beautiful. But that doesn't mean there's a rush to get there. Just enjoy life. There's so much to do here.

Thank you for saying that. I just, you know, I know. I think we all know a lot of people who struggle with, you know, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, especially because things have just gotten so stressful. And I've been hearing a lot of people really struggling. So I think the same thing where I sometimes feel a little bit of anxiety around. I Know that we're not glorifying it. But at the same time, I also don't want to say it's so great. You should just do that because we're here for a reason. So I really appreciate that. And it's really important for us to. Not that anything bad's going to happen to you, you know, it's. You're not going to go to hell, but there's a reason why you're here. Your soul has a purpose. It can be really difficult and painful and.

And I think that's why I returned, was to complete this mission, if you will. But I didn't. Again, I was only 20 years old. And when I tried to tell anybody what happened immediately, again from coming from Catholicism and whatnot, I was. It was shut down. And I told no one because in fear of being locked up for being crazy. So I put this away and I remained an atheist because atheism is easy, okay? Atheism is not something you have to work at. It's very simple. You live, you die, everything goes black. It's nice, it's easy, it's clean. Nothing to think about, right? And based upon the life that I had so far, I really found it hard to believe that there was any higher power anyway. And then of course, I put myself into difficult situations because since I grew up with chaos, chaos was my comfort zone. So in my 20s, I looked for chaos because that's my comfort zone. That's where I want to be. That's the. That's what's natural for me. And this is what's what happens. It's embedded in our subconscious and we are driven by to what we know. And it's not until you break free from the ego which is directing the show, and from your subconscious taking that information and sending you into these situations. Until you break free of that, you will continue to repeat the past. So here's where I'm going with this. This leads to book two. As I started to learn more about how the mind works and how we can make changes that are so simple, yet they will change the rest of your life. Your entire path can be changed literally, simply. I had to write the second book because when I figured it out, I was like, I don't care what my family thinks. I don't care what anybody thinks. The this is true. These are universal laws and principles. They're never going away. They're never going to change. People change. The laws don't.

Right. Yeah. Oh, go. Go ahead. I was going to ask you something, but keep Going if you have something.

No, no, it's okay. Please.

Well, I wanted to, actually, because I am reading the book and what I really enjoy about it is not only the spiritual stuff, but is also. Your life is so interesting. I mean, you. Your life could be a movie. There. There are a lot of. I'm also just sort of enjoying hearing about your life in these sort of dangerous situations with some. Some shady people in New York and some real characters. And so it's. It's really. I love that you're using your life story to illustrate your spiritual points. One of the things that you start the book off with saying is that suffering is. Is. Correct me if I'm. If I'm wrong in saying it the way I'm saying it, but in a way, suffering is necessary for our growth. So if you could elaborate on that, I would love for you to share.

Sure. The Buddhist belief that your cup must be empty in order to fill it is similar to if. If you look at. In order to be whole. Let me start here. In order to be whole, one must experience all emotions on the spectrum. Some of those emotions can only come from trauma. Okay. You also have to experience love and happiness and those things as well. But you can't not experience others that are maybe horrible because that is what makes a human whole. In order for me to become whole and get out of my chaos, I needed to find love. I needed to learn what love was. And I met her as you read in the first book. And it was this huge romantic thing that was so overwhelming to me that I could be loved like this unconditionally and I could love somebody else like this unconditionally. And that opened the door for me to accept the things that were happening to me. That's when I began to explore mediumship, when I began to explore my hate psychic intuitive side. And I began to embrace those things and learn how to use them more and more. And as I learned, and I had my different mentors for many, many years, read everything I could possibly read. Went back to school to learn metaphysical parapsychology. And I started putting these things together in a way that it would make sense to the guy I was sitting with at the bar. Right. Because a lot of people I love, Eckhart Tolle, I think he's the Power of Now is the next Bible. But a lot of people aren't ready for that. But I will explain it to you exactly in layman's terms. How you a regular person like me? I'm just a regular guy. I'M not special. There's nothing special about me. I'm not chosen. I'm nothing. I'm just a regular guy who figured this stuff out because of his set of circumstances in life. And I want to give that to everybody else. So the first book explains how I got there. The second book is how you can.

Get there, which is greatly appreciated. One of the things that I really appreciated that you said was something. And you'll probably remember the wording of it better, but it was like, stop trying to be expletive happy and you'll. Whatever, get expletive happy. I don't know if it was like the wording of it, but it was like. And trying to be happy. Yeah, we're not really making ourselves happy. It's kind of letting go of trying to be happy. And so what do you have to say about that?

So we think that happiness comes from an external. Some sort of external gratification, and it's not possible. There is nothing outside of you that can actually give you genuine happiness. If you think about it, all the different things that one can acquire or one can accomplish, they are temporarily satisfying, and then they're not. So the things that we think make. Make it makes us happy usually are derived from the things that we learned early in life, because we were shown that or taught that parents or uncles or grandparents, etc. And they told us what was supposed to make us happy. You're supposed to do this and you're supposed to do that and get a good job and make a lot of money, and then, you know this and that happens and you have kids and you settle down. Well, maybe that's not my version of happiness. Maybe that's yours. Right? So. But what I'm finding more and more is that that honeymoon effect, which Bruce Lipton writes about all the time, he wrote a whole book on this. Fantastic. When I first saw it, I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. I couldn't accept the concept. But here it is. When you're married after your third or fourth year and that honeymoon phase wears off, you start to think, what the hell am I doing? Who did I. I'm stuck with this person forever.

Yeah.

So even the best things, right, you have a child, and it's so surreal, and it's the most beautiful moment of your life, and you're looking at this little tiny human and saying, I'm gonna take care of you. Three months later, are you still saying that? When you have not slept and you are hallucinating and you're in another place Going, should I really have done this or should I have simply worn a condom? You know what I mean? So even the best things in life, and I'm not trying to be, you know, harsh, I still love my kids. Everybody loves their kids. I still love my wife. Everybody loves their spouse. But. But that high, the high is gone. And then what happens is it takes you very low because you start to say, I had these expectations because my mom told me this was going to be great. My dad told me this is what I had to do. Now I'm here and everything sucks. I'm not happy. And it's because you're looking for something outside of you to make you happy. There is nothing there. And you can give. Tell me anything. Alcohol. You drink, right? You feel good for a little while. The next day you feel like complete shit. And the other side of the spectrum, where you're down, depressed, sad. Oh, my God, I did it again. You feel shame. You. What did I say? What did I do? So there's no bliss without extreme sadness. You can't one without the other.

And you and I are both recovering addicts. And so I know that I relate very much with that feeling of. I was always seeking the intense density and the high. The problem with that was that the lows were the lowest of lows. The higher I got, the lower I would get. And so it's this extremism of, you know, trying to chase that high, chase that high, which only ends up in, you know, now I don't even want to be here.

Right.

And I let you continue, but I do want to know. I know you were going somewhere with this, but that's. And I know that's sort of what your book is about is how do we find if it's not happiness? Is it contentment? Is it contentment?

Yeah, it's contentment and peace. That's exactly what it is. So you have this swing of emotions where on the very low side is guilt and shame. Dr. David Dawkins did this study where he gave. He allotted a number to each emotion with the bottom of the. The very bottom being guilt and shame than sadness. And at the top, you know, peace, love and bliss and so on. And now what happens is. And again, it doesn't matter what the external item is. It will give you that bliss for a short period of time, and then it's going to result with you being on the other side of the spectrum. So the real happiness is not being sad, it's not being happy, it's not being sad, not Being depressed, never being depressed. I'm never sad, I'm never angry. Maybe for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, but then I let it go. And I always stay neutral. I'm always like in the middle. I'm not looking, I'm not seeking the Bentley that I can't afford, that I'm going to have to make payments on and then I don't have the money. And where am I going to come up with the money? The car was great for three months and now I can't pay for it. Oh my God. Guilt, shame, right?

Yeah.

I don't find anything that makes you happy. And I will show you how it will result in guilt and shame. So the contentment, the marriages that make it are the ones where the two parties are content. I don't need my wife to make me happy. Just don't make me miserable. Yeah, that's it. And we're together and we're solid. And that may not sound like ultimate happiness, but another human can't make you happy. Nor should you put that on another human because you can't make them happy either. No one can make anybody anything. I can only not hurt you, but I can't make you happy. It doesn't exist. But when I buy you things and then that wears off, then I buy you more things, what it. There's nothing there. It's just that camaraderie, that trust, that belief in one another, that bond. But at the end of the day, it falls somewhere in between. Not too happy and not too sad. And that is where it lies.

Yeah.

Give you a quick example. I was driving one of our youngest daughters back from practice. We were coming home, it was not that late, maybe 9 o'. Clock. The roads are pretty clear and I had a green light and I was driving straight and the other person ran the red light. So I swerved around the last second and I got around the car and you know, I yelled like, you effing. Blah, blah, blah. And then I just kept driving. And my 10 year old says, what happened? And I said, well, you know that other guy ran the red light and he almost hit our car. And he would, he actually would have hit the side you on. It would have been terrible. And she's like, so you're mad? And I said, well, I was mad. And she goes, well, you're not mad now? And I said, no, that was three blocks ago. I have no reason to be mad now. Now I'm in the present moment and there's no cars trying to hit us. So it happened. I Yelled and it was over. You know, I don't carry the emotion. I experience the emotion and then I let it go. Because if you carry it, you're only hurting yourself.

Yeah. And logically we understand that I've gone through many years of peace and then I just went through this long distance move that was the most stressful. It was probably like the top three most stressful events of my life. Thank God. Thank God. That's the worst of it. But I. It totally shook the last. The years of progress that I've made. I actually called the moving company, swore at them. I don't do that. That is not me. Lost my center, lost my grip. If you've ever heard of hostage scams, you'll understand why I was so angry. Also, while I'm not sleeping and breaking down and relocating and all this stuff, and I found myself recently losing total equilibrium, even though I know all the things that you're talking about, I have felt great peace for many years. I felt like I finally found peace and contentment. I'm not chasing any high. I'm just so happy to be alive. And then just this stress factor sort of knocked me off my balance. And I'm doing all the things. Meditating, yoga, cbd, salt, babs, walking, being in nature. And I'm still having trouble sort of recalibrating. So Mike and I keep finding myself irritable, angry, and not letting go of things, and every little thing pissing me off. And so I'd love to ask you, when you say that, how do you. Because, you know, we can say those things and then something happens and then maybe our nervous system gets reactivated. What. How do you do it? I just. And I know this is a lot of what your book is. How do you keep your center? You know, on a day to day basis, it might be easy. But when things get really stressful, how do you keep your center?

Okay, so the way I do it personally, one of the things I say in the book is you have to own. I say own your shit.

Yeah.

That means you have to own your good stuff and you have to own your bad stuff. So when you've done something, like screamed at somebody on a telephone, even if they did you wrong or, you know, like I yelled at that guy who did not hit me.

Yeah.

Right. So I really had no business yelling at him. I'm to blame. Right. I learned that behavior and then I repeated the behavior. I'm wrong.

Yeah.

I need to own that. I owned it with the child. I said, you know what? I should not have done that. Now I have to let that go. Owning it and accepting it for being an error and not justifying it and saying that I'm doing this because you're an. That's only going to fuel it.

Oh, yeah.

You know better. They don't. They are. They were raised the way they were raised. They have no idea what their ego is or their subconscious mind or anything else for that matter. And they are out to harm you. Right. So you need to let that. Accept that for what it is. Not let it go. Just accept it and experience it. But then let it pass. You get to move to Arizona. You don't have to move to Arizona. You get to deal with these problems. You don't have to deal with these problems. You could stay where you were. These are things you get to deal with. Right. I always say, people say, I have to drive my kids to school. No, you don't. You get to drive your kids school. You are blessed with children. Many people are not. Yeah, I have to go to work. Well, you got a job. You get to go to your job. We get to deal with these problems. It makes us stronger. It makes us better. Bring it. Give me the problem. I get to deal with it. That's what I get to do. I get to deal with it and I get to deal with others and I get to help them get beyond that. And it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, regardless of how big it is. And, and, and you've seen some of the stuff in my book. My experiences are pretty big. And yet. And by the way, I know the hostage thing, it's happened to me before.

So validating. See, even just hearing that makes me feel better.

Oh, my God. Yes, I did.

Like, I'm sorry you went through it, but it's like, makes it just sharing, connecting, makes me feel better about the whole thing.

So. Yeah.

Oh, no.

It's very, very common. And I nearly lost it. But they got your stuff on the truck.

That's why I lost it. Felt like I am being victimized. Like, it's like, you can't do this to me. So, yeah, I thank you for validating that experience. It was.

It's totally okay to experience anger. Listen, say. If you say I am angry, you have just defined yourself as what you are.

Right.

Okay. But if you say I'm experiencing anger, that doesn't hurt so bad.

Nope.

Because that's going to pass. I'm experiencing a cold. That's going to pass. When you experience something, it goes away eventually. But when you are something, it Doesn't.

That's brilliant. Yeah. And it actually kind of leads me to a point. It might be a loose connection, but I'm making it anyway. You. I just was reading a part of the book that really resonated with me because it's something that I talk about a lot and feel a lot, and a lot of people have issues with it. But we. You talked about when we come. When we come from source energy. That source energy, whatever you want to call it, is just the energy we all come from. And it isn't bad or good. It just is this. In my. The way I'm interpreting it, you can give it your own words. It's all love, it's all light, it's all good. It's when that light gets transmuted into human form that things go wrong. And that's because we have free will. And that's something I have talked about a lot because. And people don't like it sometimes because they. They like to think that people are either good or bad or there's good. They're. They're good people, they're evil people. And I've always been like. I don't really subscribe to that because I think that people do bad things because they've been indoctrinated, they've been traumatized, they have mental illness, they've been wounded in some way or they're not in their right mind, but doesn't mean that their soul is inherently evil.

That's correct.

So I'd love to hear you speak about that, because you do talk about it.

That I heard. One of the best examples I heard was Eckhart Tolle. He was asked the question, why do you. Why does God do bad things to people?

Yes.

And he said, well, he said, let's look at it like this. Let's imagine God is the sun, and the sun is the source of all energy for the earth and all living things on the earth. And if it wasn't for the sun, plants wouldn't be alive. You wouldn't be alive. No animal life would be alive. Right. But that sun is sending photons to the earth that we absorb and we use and we recreate into our own energy. Now, once that energy, those photons take form into a plant, and then we eat the plant and that energy is ever changing. Is it the sun's fault if I kill my next door neighbor? No, it doesn't make any sense. So you can't blame Source. It's something that happened to me or something that I saw that I thought that was okay. That, which obviously it's not. But you can't blame Source because source just gave you power. You took your free will and did as you will with it. And there's that healing process, right, that we go through. The first part of the process is we realize that, you know, between the ages of 2 and 7 are, are learning we're in a theta state the entire time. That's a hypnotic state, a theta state. Right? When, when a hypnotist puts you under to try to get you to quit smoking, he puts your brain in a theta state. It's a theta brainwave. So he, he or she can talk directly to your subconscious and tell you you're never going to smoke again. And it works for some people. Right? Okay. So between the age of two and seven, as a child, you're always in a theta state. Almost always. So that's why when you speak to a child, sometimes they can't hear you, but they're hearing. They don't answer you or acknowledge you, but they hear every single thing. They witness every single thing. Because they're strictly using their subconscious. They have no filter yet. They have no conscious to filter and say, whoa, that doesn't sound good. They don't know that yet. So everything they hear and say and that's around them, whether it's on tv, they don't know if it's real, whether it's on the radio, whether somebody's talking about it. It's not always parents. It could be friends and it can be neighbors and it could be where you live. Environment plays a key role. We base the majority of our lifelong decisions on the things we learned before the age of seven. How crazy is that? Think about that for a second. I'm deciding my relationships with women in my twenties based upon what I saw at seven years old. My parents hated each other. So yeah, I had a terrible relationship after terrible relationship. Of course I did. So a 7 year old is determining my future with women for the rest of my life. Ridiculous. Okay, so consciously we have to reprogram ourselves, repattern our thoughts, not to allow those thoughts of others come through us and decide what we're going to do or not do, because we live by those. You know, you might think you got rid of one or two here or there, and you probably did, but how many times have you said something, oh my God, I sound like my mother? It's because it's embedded in there. You're, you're essentially brainwashed with that information. So in order to make it Go away. What you have to do is work on your patterns. And one of the things, excuse me, one of the things, one of the practices that I give to my clients is when I went back and I said I have to drive my kids to school. No, you get to drive your kids to school. Making those changes right there is, is starting to change the way you look at things. Starting to change your perception. And the more you change that and the more you deviate from what you think, thought you were supposed to think, the better you will be. You have to find yourself. Yourself is not your 7 year old. That's somebody else. That's a lot of other people. That's all the people of authority that were in your life. That's the teacher who said you'll amount to nothing. That's maybe the police officer who, you know, I don't know, chased you around the block for breaking a window. Whatever it is, right? It's all of those people. It's not you. You are your awareness. And your awareness is your highest level of consciousness because we call it awareness because you're aware that you're having a thought. You're one of the few animals that can do that on the earth. So if you're aware you're having a thought, or if you're aware you're having an emotion, guess what? You can change it. You don't have to have it. Oh wait, I'm feeling anger. I don't like anger. I'm not going to feel that anymore and don't remember. Nobody can make you anything. Nobody can make you miserable. Nobody can make you drink, Nobody can make you do anything. You have to make yourself do those things. No one can affect you but you. You. There's no rule book that says if somebody punches you in the face that you have to get mad at that person. That's your own decision. You choose that or you don't choose that. Right? I'm not saying by any means I'm turning the other cheek anytime soon. I'm a work in progress. Okay, I'll hit him back. But the point is, is the better we get with dealing with stuff like that, the more we become ourselves. And unless we become what we've seen, because obviously we've tried that and that didn't work. Well, now I'm looking for something better. So sometimes when little things happen and they're not so little, you can reframe them in a way and find the good that came from it. My traumas are the best thing that ever happened to me because if they didn't happen, I would not be here telling you what I'm telling you and telling this to. To all the people that are reading the book, hopefully thousands and thousands. And, you know, I would just be a talking head. But because I had those experiences and I learned how to get around them and get through them, that made me stronger, that made me better, and that made me able to tell you how not to go through those steps.

Right. Yeah, I know. I wouldn't be sitting here doing this podcast there. So we wouldn't even be talking right now because there would be so much insight that I didn't have. One thing that you talk about is the power of now, which I really value myself after. You know, sometimes you go, well, you go through a period of stress, and this is the way our bodies work. I've noticed it in myself, and I know this to be tr. True that a lot of times while you're in the middle of a crisis or stress, your body is just running on adrenaline. So, for instance, while I was getting ready for this move, it was two months of packing, packing, packing, organizing, stressing, and going on five hours of sleep a night, which I was surprised. I'm like, I can't believe I'm somehow functioning. I usually collapse if I don't get 10 hours of sleep a night. And I'm like, I'm going on five. I'm doing fine. I'm actually not having anxiety. This is crazy. And then going through that whole thing and then driving cross country with the cats and the hostage scam and the whole thing, and I got here and still had more stress to deal with. And then as soon as I finally got settled, that's when the panic attacks started. That's when the anxiety started. That's when the irritability started. And I noticed, I was like, I have so much to do. And I'm like, well. And I said, okay, well, everyone has so much to do. I mean, we all have work, family, household tasks. I was like, every day I have to go to the dmv. I gotta clean the house. I gotta do this. I gotta go. And I was like, all right, this is where the power of now comes in, right? Because I said, who's putting this stress on you? I am like, write it down. Everybody has tasks that are endless. I mean, we all have a million things we could do, but does it have to be done today? Can I. You know? And I just started to say, all right, well, let's focus on the task at hand. And I started to find Myself, I'm doing a task I'm already thinking about. Oh, God. But I also have to do this other thing. And so I asking you kind of your. I don't know if it's trick tricks or whatever for. For managing that, where one is the awareness that I'm putting the stress on myself. I'm feeling like I have to do it all today. The stakes feel high. And I'm like, but why are the stakes high? Because I'm making them high.

Right.

And that sort of thing.

And once you notice that, that's the first step in changing it, because you notice that it's you doing it to you.

Yeah.

Look at your list. And I really don't know what's on your list, but I can tell you that I've got maybe, you know, 50 things on my list. And whatever I do today, I get to do today. Whatever I do tomorrow, I get to do tomorrow. Whatever I do the next day, I get to do the next day. And quite frankly, I don't really care what gets done and what does it, because it's all going to work out. It's all going to be fine. Nobody's going to kill you if you didn't put the stuff in the closet. Nobody's going to kill you if you don't make your credit card payment. Nobody's going to. You know what I mean? There's. There's so many. Nothing's going to happen to you unless somebody puts a gun to your head and says, you got to do this right now. You don't have to do anything.

Yeah.

So just chill. Just. Just take that. That onus off yourself because that's coming from something deeper. Right. That's. That's not you. You don't want to be that. You're telling me I don't want this?

Yeah.

So now you have to find out who that is, because we know it's not shining. So now we have to find out who that is and tell that person to take a hike. Because you want to be your awareness. You are aware that you don't have to have these feelings, and so you are allowed to change them. I don't have to get upset if I don't get this done today. I don't have to get upset if I disappoint that person. You don't have to get upset at all, ever. You don't have to get upset at a funeral if you don't want to. People might look at you like you're crazy. But I'm content.

Right. And, yeah, I'd love to know too. This is a big question and, but I'd like you to riff on it is basically, why are we here? Like, what is the meaning of life and all this stuff that we endure? I only, like, why are we here?

I only have a theory. And I don't know. You know, I can. It's not. All right, so being a medium, I've been able to communicate in the next realm, which is. Many people call it the fourth because they call this the third. Dimension is a word that got thrown around incorrectly. Dimension is height, width, depth. It's not really. It's not a place. A realm is a place. Right? But for whatever reason, this is called the third. Okay, so then the next one must be the fourth. In the fourth is your pit stop, where you go next when you die. Okay, I'm not going to give it a name and I'm not going to say it's good or bad. I'm just going to tell you that's the next place. The way I understand it, my spirit guides are in the fifth realm. And the way to get there is to master three and four. And until you master three and four, you're not getting a five. Now what happens beyond that, I've never seen. I've never spoken to anybody. I have no idea. So I'm sure that there's a. If you're asking me why we're here here like on Earth, or maybe we're not always on Earth, by the way. We may come back and some other planet or some other means, but the, the recycle is because we don't get it right. And when Buddha died, he said that, I'm not coming back this time. I've done what I needed to do. He became enlightened through self torture, through. Through self inflicted trauma. He had no trauma. He. He was a prince. He left to be to torture himself with no food, no clothes, no water. He didn't start out just sitting under the tree. He was anorexic. He almost died. He had to experience that because he had the other side. For him to become whole, he had to go to the downside, right? And when he did, and he eventually is like, I'm not leaving this tree until I figure this out. Allegedly, it was 47 days. People came by, gave him food and water, and eventually he achieved what he needed to achieve. Then he taught others how to do it. And at the end he said, I'm not going to come back. He said somebody said it was because there were seven times it's got nothing to do with a number. It's got to do with what you achieve. If you understand how this world works, you go on to the next one and possibly the one after that so that you can guide other people as a spirit guide.

Right. And I've heard people say that we, well, we choose Earth because it is the most difficult place to incarnate into.

I've heard that too.

And that we're the real warriors. Who knows? Yeah, it could be a rumor, but it checks out. I mean, I, I, I've had it. Listen, I've had a very blessed life. I really have. I haven't been through severe. We all have our traumas. Right. And it, it's not to compare. I've been very fortunate not to have such severe tra. Actual traumas that I, that I consider to be like really severe. And yet my brain doesn't know the difference, you know.

And so I was just gonna say everybody's trauma to themselves is the worst trauma in the world.

Yeah. It still made me feel terrible, even if it wasn't a violent assault or war or. And I'm, yet I'm very aware of how fortunate I am that, you know, I'm middle aged and I still have my parents, a beautiful childhood. Um, you know, it's, it's mostly just being an anxious per, like being born with severe severe anxiety and having to manage that and dealing with like self esteem issues and all that stuff. I think I've had the luxury of sort of that being my trauma is, is it, you know, but I, but like I said, I know that we can't compare them, but I know that even the most privileged people understand trauma. I don't think any person, they may not admit it, they may, they may not be in tune with it, but I don't care. If you're like you said, a prince and you had everything you could possibly want, well then there's probably some kind of dysfunction there too where it's like you're not actually being allowed to experience your humanness. That's sort of an artificial environment.

That's right.

And so I know that we all experience this stuff. One of. Well, I would love to hear too, what, in your book, when you talk about, you know, you're alive now, act like it. There's so many things that we encounter that are so hard and people could say, well, yeah, I'm alive and it sucks, like I don't want to be here. So what do you mean by that? I guess the question is, what do you mean by that?

Well, the title comes from the fact that make every day count as though it was your last, because one day you'll be right. And life is not as complicated as we make it out to be. It's not as difficult as we make it out to be. Other people set our goals for us. Other people tell us what's going to make us happy. Other people tell us how we're supposed to feel, how we're supposed to act, you know, what group or separator we're supposed to be a part of. You know, when you relieve yourself of all of what everyone else thinks and you just focus on you and what you really want or don't want or don't care about you, you'll realize how many things you actually don't care about and how many things you do care about. And they may be completely different than what you thought growing up. Right. So, you know, there's example. The best one that comes to mind is always this plan where our parents say, okay, you're going to go to school, you're going to get good grades, you're going to go to college, you're going to get good grades, you're going to have a great job, you're going to get married and have two kids. Well, my number one client, my number one coaching client is a female between the ages of 40 to 50, has everything. She's an executive at a company, she has two kids, she's got a perfect marriage, she lives in a huge house, excuse me, drives a hundred thousand dollar car. And she comes to me and she says, I am goddamn miserable and I have no idea why. That is my client. Yep, that, that's because these things are yours. This is what your parents told you you had to do or your grandparents told you was right for you. You maybe you want to live out in the wilderness with, with puppies, I don't know. But this is what you were told and you achieved it and you did it. And you got here and you're like, ah, this ain't bliss.

Yeah. Have you ever seen the documentary Happy? It's on Netflix.

No, but it is.

Watch it. It is. The focus of it is that especially in the US culture society, we have more people that are depressed and on antidepressants than any other culture. So they interview people all around the world and also people here that have just had horrific things happen to them and they find that people with less tend to be happier. Um, and like they interview a guy. I haven't seen it in years, but It's. It really struck me think it was in India, where he just had a tin roof, no walls. All he had was a bowl of rice. And he was the happiest guy you could ever imagine because he didn't have these, like, expectations or feelings of missing out. He was just so happy to have that bowl of rice. He was so happy being present. There wasn't, you know, social media. There wasn't anything. It was just existing and being grateful for this roof, even though it's leaking. And then there were people that had suffered. A woman who had not wanted to live, and she attempted suicide. And in the process of that, she lost her face. Like she was disfigured. And she said she's happier now than she's ever been after surviving that. So it's kind of all relative. And I really related so much because I'm like, God, I have been on and off of antidepressants my whole life, yet I have this beautiful life. I mean, I really am so lucky. I have so much love in my life and. And yet what is the matter with me? I mean, I don't ask myself, what's the matter with me? And it's like, I'm a very, very, very sensitive person, so I absorb a lot of things. But I loved that documentary as it just talks about the nature of the more we have, the more we want, and then we're never satisfied. And also, yes, we kind of sometimes lose touch with that essence. You call it consciousness in the book, too. It's like we lose sight of what we really are and who we really are. And suddenly we become these automatons where it's like, go to work 9 to 5, have the kids do the thing. And the grind of it all.

Gotta make more.

Yeah.

Gotta make more. Gotta make more. Yeah.

And it just creates chaos. So much chaos. Yeah. And it just. It makes things more complicated.

Right.

Yeah. And so how do we kind of, like, I guess I'll say unfuck ourselves in terms of, like, you know, we live in this, especially in the United. In the United States, but other. Other cultures as well, where we're just bred to be, like, robots and money makers. And sometimes it's so easy to lose sight of what really matters because we're like, I can't. For me, I know finances. It's like, I feel like I can never keep up. Everything's so expensive. How am I going to make them? And it's just this, like, hamster wheel of how trying to make more and more and more and more. And it's never enough. And that kind of thing.

Have you ever asked yourself, the thing that you want to buy, is it really necessary? Is it really?

Yes, I've. I do a thing. It does. And I'm not saying I always succeed, but when I'm really conscious and present, I say, do I want. Do I need. Do I want this or do I need this?

Right.

So that's one little trick.

Yeah, exactly. So. And I'm not one to say, like, if you've got billions of dollars and you can afford the Bentley, by all means, buy the Bentley, because it's in the bucket for you. But if you're doing it to keep up with the Joneses and look cool, yeah. You're just setting yourself up for disaster. Right. So anyway, your question was.

Yeah, kind of, how do we stay.

Undo that. Okay.

Yeah.

So the. The first. The most important thing to figure out first is understanding how the mind works. Okay? Because that is when you understand how things work, you can start to fix them. Right? You can't fix a car if you don't know how to take apart the engine. So you have to learn how to take apart your mind in order to put it back together again the way you want it to be. So we have an unconscious, a subconscious, the egoic mind and the conscious mind. And then we have the awareness at the very top. The unconscious is your emotions. Right? Those are pretty much solidified really early on. Okay? So the subconscious is the experiences that we have. It's the largest part of your mind because it remembers everything. It sees everything, and it remains remembers everything. Recalling it is the hard part. Okay? Those are the people we consider geniuses. When they can extract it and tell you, on 1975, it was a Tuesday and it rained the blah, blah, blah. Right? Okay, we can't do that, but we know that we have that information if we lived on that day. It's in there now, this subconscious, when it meets an emotion, you take an experience and you have an emotion. Because we're emotional creatures and you put those two together, that becomes your truth forever. That's it. It's not changing unless you consciously break these apart. Okay, So I always use this. This example, and it's kind of silly, but it makes the point. There's a couch in my office, and it's like one of those colors that you could say it's one color, I could say it's another. Right? Okay. So I always ask the person, what color do you think it is? They usually say beige or brown or something like that and they're probably right because I'm partially colorblind. I don't know. So I say gray because it looks great to me. That's my truth. My truth is that's great. Their truth is that's brown. Completely different perspectives on the same thing. I'll give you one with an emotion. Okay. Two children live in different homes. They're both six years old. They're both boys, right? Boy over here walks over to the stove, puts his hand on top, it's hot because his mom's been cooking. He gets burned. Oh, my God. He has never experienced pain like that before in his life. He is never going near a stove again. Okay? That's it. Stoves and he together causes pain. There it is. That solidify. Stoves hurt people. He's never going to forget it. The other kid goes over to the stove because he hears about the friend, and he touches his stove and he's like, nothing. No pain. Nobody was cooking, right? Kid number two goes to kid number one and he goes, I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, you know, Mike's. I touch the stove all the time. There's nothing wrong. I don't get hurt. Something wrong with you? And he goes, no, you're just stupid because your mom makes reservations and not dinner. And the difference in the perspective here is this guy is never going to go near a stove until someone takes him aside and consciously teaches him that it's okay to use a stove, but you have to use it like this. And that has to consciously be done now to redo what was done, what was solidified as his truth. Because his truth is not going to change until somebody teaches him otherwise or he learns otherwise, and he accepts that as truth. And that's very hard to do. Most of us don't do it. Most of us will accept. I've seen this. I know it's right. This is what it is. That couch is gray. I don't care what you say. No, no. That's my perception of something. And perception is truth. When you change your perception, you change your truth. When you change your truth, you change your reality.

Yeah, and actually, I have a. I was about to ask you something. I didn't want to interrupt, though, but I wanted to ask you. Can we actually create our reality? And I asked that. I mean, I know that we can rewire our neurons in our brain, our neural pathways, and that's from a physical standpoint. So I can. I guess I'm sort of talking about manifestation wise and spiritual Wise. But I kind of have. I'd love to hear your perspective, because I have sort of mixed feelings on this. I'm a big manifester. And at the same time, I'm like, well, do I. Do I think it's sort of magic, spiritual? Or is it just because when I focus on something, I'm more receptive to seeing examples of it in my path? Or is it actually, like, do we actually. From a quantum standpoint, can we actually manipulate our reality and actually create. Is it. What do you think about that theory of. Yeah, that's what I really can. Yeah.

And that's. This is really cool. Okay, so here's how this works. We vibrate at a certain frequency, right? I want you to imagine a satellite dish and a radio, right? And playing through the satellite dish is from the radio station. And they're projecting their music, and you want to listen to that music, so they're projecting it on a certain frequency. Now, when you turn on your radio and you tune into their station, that frequency matches this frequency, and guess what happens? They connect. So frequencies that are alike will always connect. Does not matter what it is. If I take my cell phone and I dial your number, my cell phone adapts to yours, becomes your. Your frequency, and we can talk to each other and information goes across. Okay? So this can be done with anything. You have to align your frequency with what it is that you want. You have to believe it, and you also have to know how to ask for it. It's not just. It's. It's. There are methods to you staying in that frequency. Okay? So the first thing that you always want to do is ask in the positive tense. This keeps you. Keeps your emotions high, keeps your vibrations high, keeps you in tune with that thing that you're looking for. Never say I. I don't want to be sick anymore. I don't want to be sick anymore. I don't want to be sick anymore. Guess what's coming to you. You said I and you said sick. Okay? Universe doesn't speak English, Okay? So this is what you put out. This is what you got going on. I. Sick. You're getting more sick. Okay? I want to be healthy. I want to be healthy. I want to be healthy. You send that out, and health is coming back to you. The things that you need to make you healthy are coming towards you. It doesn't matter how the universe does it. It doesn't. We don't know how grass grows. It just grows, right? Who cares? It happens every single time. If you align your frequency with what you need. And it's harder than people think because what changes your frequency?

I mean. Well, actually, I was just gonna say.

But just changed your frequency recently.

Yeah, I was just gonna say I've been able to manifest beautiful things, and lately I've even caught myself doing exactly what I know I'm not supposed to do in manifesting saying, I hate this, I'm mad at this. I, you know, and, and, and saying, why is it so. When I feel good, it's so easy to do that. It's so easy to say, I, I am abundant. I attract abundance. I am. I am only available to receive the highest and best. And then when I'm in an angry, anxious, stuck in that. In that stuff which has been lately where I'm really struggling physically with anger and irritability and anxiety, I find it so difficult and I have little moments, little sparks.

So what you were manifesting, the moving guys came and changed your emotion.

Yep.

And took it away.

Yeah. Right. And. And even though my. I know, like, better than that because when I tell other people, I'm like, you, you can't let that. You know, you can't let that in. And I even sort of. I didn't shame myself, but I was frustrated at my inability to shake it, you know, that was like, I'm frustrated at my own anger. It's irritating.

A learning experience.

Yeah.

It's. Now you know what it is, and now you figure out how to adapt to it.

Yeah.

There's no shaming by any means.

No.

We're all learning. I make tons of mistakes and then I go back and I try to dissect them and figure out how could I have done that better?

Yeah. And it's so true. I love what you said. Because when I'm in my. When I'm in my power and I'm feeling good, it's easy for me to say things like, I know I'm going to get that because I get everything. I mean, just for my own self. I'm not saying that I walk around with this arrogance, but I do, in my own house, walk around and say, I get everything I want. It's easy. Money comes to me easily. Love comes to me easily. I have beautiful relationships, you know, everything's beautiful. And I believe myself. And then even today, I found myself right. Even a couple hours ago, where I have a condition called muscle tension dysphonia, where the tension from the stress ends up here. And then I can't do my voiceover work, and then I get stressed out and angry and then it creates more anxiety and more anxiety. And then I just yelled in here. I was like, I hate this. I'm so sick of this. I'm so angry. And I have this thing and I know better. It's like, I know that instead of owning, like you said, I'm experiencing a struggle right now. I'm experiencing some muscle tension. I am not this disorder. I am not. You know, but even when you're. When you're in it, you're so. It's hard sometimes to push past that and say, no, I'm experiencing some frustration. I'm experiencing tension in my throat. I'm. I'm struggling to get through this. It's just a feeling. It will pass, and it always does pass. And it. But it's. I. It's hard for me. I find it's difficult for me to feel loving, kind, abundant when I'm in that state. And I even get ir. Irritated. I'm irritated with my own self. I'm irritated with my anger. I'm irritated with my emotions. And that's when it can be really difficult for me.

Anyway, so you're kind of. You kind of get caught in a loop.

Yes.

The incident happens and triggers your emotion, and then you're upset with yourself that you're having the emotion.

Yeah.

Right. So before you even go to a place where you don't have the emotion or don't allow the thing to affect you, the first thing would be accept that you have the emotion. It's okay. And it's going to take a while before you don't have it anymore. Accept that as the reality, accept that as your truth, like own it, and then let it go. And every time you. Something arises that you know doesn't go your way. Well, I get to do that because I learned this and this is going to make me better and I'm going to be able to teach others or I'm going to use this this way or use it that way. Look for that silver lining. You get to do it because it's going to benefit you some way, somehow. There is no good or bad. Okay. Thinking makes it so.

Yes.

My favorite quote.

Who was that again? That said that?

I paraphrased that. It was Shakespeare.

Yeah. And I. Yeah.

And I think nothing is either good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.

Thinking makes it so. Right.

So you decide what's good and what's bad. You decide what's going to affect you and what's not going to affect you. So step one is not to get upset. That you're getting upset. Step two is then not to get upset.

Yeah.

There's nothing wrong with you. You're way ahead of 98 of humans.

Right. Just being not.

You notice that. You know what I mean? And. And you're already doing. You've been doing something about it, so you're out of the curve.

Yeah. And I will say for anyone that might be struggling with the same thing, sometimes it's just a matter of moving your body. I know that animals, for example, I learned when I did an EMDR session that animals, when they're being pursued by prey, they go into fight, flight, or freeze. And a lot of animals, like deer, go stiff. Their whole body goes stiff, and they freeze. Well, when the danger is over, somehow they escape the stain. The predator goes on. The animal then shakes it off. Literally shakes and tremors until. And then. That's why they don't have PTSD like we do. Humans don't have the ability to. And I don't have ptsd. I'm just saying humans don't have the ability to shake it off. So sometimes I find. And I've been doing that this week of. I want to hear what you had to say.

Well, do we have. Do. Is it that we don't have the ability. Do you really think a deer is smarter?

No, I think that we just don't. We have different ways of shaking it off, but from a scientific standpoint, what it's been explained to me is that we don't actually, you know, like, if we're attacked, our body doesn't do that shake thing, and then it just goes away. Like, an animal is designed to shake it off so that they can continue to walk through the forest and not be in constant terror all the time. Although they're very. They're still alert, but they're not, like, so traumatized that they can't move through their life. They don't complicate it because they don't have that kind of depth of awareness that we have. And so what I've understood is there are ways to shake it off. And my way is sometimes I'll just go for a run. If you're capable of doing that, taking a warm bath, doing some yoga, meditating and. Or even crying. Any of those things. But also things like EMDR therapy for ptsd, where it's actual rewiring your neurons through different exercises as you talk about the trauma. You do eye movement therapy and things like that. And that's how we kind of shed it. And I had done days last week Of I did restorative yoga. I got a massage. I did. And then all of a sudden, I just. I ran for 20 minutes and it was gone. And I was like. I think I just needed to, like, shake it. It needed to just get out of my body somehow. But what were you going to say about that?

Well, trauma, it does. It exists in the nervous system and it stays there. But. Yeah, the reason I think it does is because we overthink it. Caveman was chased by tigers and got over it pretty quickly. He didn't curl up in his cave and didn't go hunting the next day. He had to got to eat. We do it because we're not used to PTSD on a daily basis. We don't see it all the time. We're over overthinking it. Like, if something, God forbid, tragically happens to somebody. Okay. My own example, being shot at. Right. And. And getting away. Every time I would hear firecrackers, I would go, oh, my God. You know, like, what was that? Okay. So. But that's because I'm overthinking it. Not. Not because I'm. I want to hold on to that. It's. I have to realize, what are the odds of that ever happening to me again? Right.

None. Yeah.

Because I'm not going to put myself in that ridiculous situation. I'm not stupid. I'm. It's never gonna happen. Like getting struck by lightning twice.

Yeah. So it could happen, but it probably won't. Yeah.

I'm just beating myself up with something that I could just let go, like the deer, and start grazing again. Five minutes.

Right.

But we don't do that. We harbor it. We hold on to it, and then we tell others about it.

Yeah.

You don't believe what happened to me today.

Yeah.

You ruin that person's day because they care about it.

Right. Yeah.

Everybody down with us. Why not?

And one of the rules of manifestation is, I've heard said, is don't tell anybody. I mean, obviously we have to talk, but sometimes it's like, don't talk about it because you just give it more power. And I found myself knowing as I was doing it, bitching, complaining, venting. And I was like, shannon, stop. Like, giving it more power. And yet in the moment, I just wanted to get it out and vent and talk about it. And sometimes we do. And. Okay, we're human. It's fine.

I'm confused. Do you mean the thing that you wanted to manifest?

Well, no. Well, I was saying, like, with, for example, like, the moving thing, the drama of it all. It's like, could I have just sort of talked to one person about it, gotten it out and been like, I'm not letting this get to me. I'm not going to let this ruin my, you know, eventually I got my things, I spent my life savings on it all. One day. I won't even look back at one day. It won't even matter. One day, like in a year, am I really going to be sweating it? No. You know, and, but it's like I had to kind of remind myself, just stop talking about it because you're just feeding the beast. You're just feeding it and you're getting more angry and you're also creating more negativity around it within your nerves.

It's going to stay. The next time you see a moving.

Truck, you're going, oh yeah, yeah, those assholes. You know, when really it's like, am I here? I made it here, I have my things, let's just go on, let's just forward, let's just move forward now. But I think, I think that's so interesting to me and I think I really appreciate you sharing about that. You actually can raise your vibration to meet the things that you want, where they are.

When you match your vibration, you're almost guaranteed to get it. And in this book, I think I, I put a series of four examples where I needed a specific amount of money. I don't know if you got got that far. I needed. The first one was I somehow screwed up on my kids college money and I was exactly $10,000 for it. And he was moving into his dorm in two days. And they were like, you didn't give us the ten grand. He's not booking it anywhere. And I was like, oh my God, this can't be happening, right? And so I, oh, just dropped to my knees and, and I'm like, okay, this is what, this was one of the first times I ever manifested. I had heard about it. My mentor taught me how to do it. I had never really, really done it. So I said, I'm gonna see if this works. And I said, you know, I did, I did my, I do Oz in the morning, I do ohms at night. That's to, to get my frequency going. And then I do what's called an attitude of gratitude where I'm thankful for all the things that I have have been given because that also raises my frequency. You can't be in a bad mood after you do an attitude of gratitude. I don't care how bad your life is after you say, I'm thankful for this, thankful for that. I'm grateful you change your mood. And then I go back to my odds or ohms, depending on what time of day it is. And then I express what I need. Now the creator and I are partners. Not less than, more than. I'm a part of that entity. Everybody's a part of that entity. So I'm like, I need you to do your part right now. I need this 10,000. This is not for me. It's for my son. I've killed myself to make sure that he can go to school. Worked 60 hours a week. Messed up, and I need your help. And I did it again. I. I must have. Normally, it's twice a day. I did it, like, six times a day. On day two, I got this package in the mail. My other son had thrown it down. He's like, this is for you, Dad. I looked at it, and it was from the irs. It was. It was from my cp, my accountant. I just filed my taxes. I always have to pay taxes because there's never been a year. I don't.

Oh, yeah.

And I said, you're not understanding what I'm saying. Yeah, I need money. I. I can't do this and this. So I took it and I threw it. And I was so frustrated, but I didn't give up. I went back to it and did it another three times. The next day, finally, on that second day, when I. I said, let me open up the package and see what's inside. And I took it out, and sure enough, it was my tax return. And the first letter said, dear Ray, you have overpaid the federal government by $8,000. And I was like. It was like, 8,000 and something, something, something change, right? And then the second letter, I pulled out, Dear Ray, you have overpaid the state of New Jersey. 1,900 and something. Thousand dollars.

There's your $10,000 right there.

And I wept like a child.

I've had that happen twice. And, yeah, there was a time when I couldn't pay my rent. Called my landlord. He was an angel. He said, shannon, I trust you. I love you. You'll figure it out. I was like, I don't have a job. I don't have money. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I. A friend of mine said, put it in a God box. Said, what's a God box? She's like, it's a box. Any box. And I want you to write down all your fears. What are you Afraid of, I can't pay my rent. I don't have any money. I don't have a job. She said, put it all in there and just say, God, I give this up to you. Now I let it go. This was a 12 step trick. And I said, and at the time, I didn't really have spirituality in my life. I was like, more than just basic, just 12 step entry stuff. And I was like, this is not. What are you talking about? Put it in a God box. That's not gonna work. And I did it. And. And I said, God, I give it up to you. I don't. I don't know what I'm going to do here. And the next day, my ex boyfriend's friend called and said, I work at a casting company. We need some help with some casting. He's like, I'll take you out to lunch. I said, I just like doing this. He's like, do you want. Well, we need someone to work at the company. So he's like, we actually need help at the company if you want to work for us. So I rolled up in there my first day, and they're like, can you. We're trying to cast this thing, but this company wants. We need to get people to like, tweet about this product and why they like it. And it's like, no one wants to do it, so can you just do it? Because I wasn't on staff, so it wasn't a conflict of interest. I was just like working their door. And I said, fine. I said, well, what is it for? And they're like, well, if you get it, it's like $500. And they interview you. And I was like, I mean, okay, fine. And I did it. And before I knew it, they're like, okay, you're gonna do this video thing. They couldn't tell me the truth because it's an NDA thing. What it was. So they're like. So we set up this whole thing where it was, and I got ambushed by cameras. Turned out it was a national commercial, and I ended up getting $20,000. I. I thought it was. I was stoked when I saw that it said 800. I was like, 800? That's not what you told. Like, we couldn't say anything. And then all of a sudden, money just started coming into my ch. Into my account. And that commercial, I would blink and you'll miss me. They could have cut me out. I was not integral to this commercial at all. All I did was say, it's stretchy and like, that was it. And there have been. There are other times where I've done that, where I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And then all of a sudden, this windfall happens. But it's in the context of saying, of doing, of consciously saying help. I sometimes forget. I can ask. I can just ask. Please help me. Please. Even just me being here. I was broke, depressed, driving for Uber Eats in Virginia, and my lease was about to end, and I was like, I don't know where I'm going to go. And then I went, oh, yeah, I can ask. I said, spirit guides, angels, ascended masters, God, Jesus, whoever's up there, up there. And I said, please just show me the path. And the next day, my friend called and said, this is kind of crazy. I have chills all over my body, but I think I have a job for you if you'll move to Prescott, Arizona. And I also have a living situation for you. And I said, yes, because I knew where it came from. And so, yeah, yeah, that, that.

And. And there's so many of those that it's too undeniable that this, as is real, can be done, can be mastered, should be. And it's only our own emotions that take away from that frequency when we have that connection that stops us or prevents us from getting. That's it.

Yeah.

Push that away and stay focused. It's coming. It's really coming.

Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I'm so excited for your book to. I want everyone to read it. As many people as that can read it. I'm reading it. I'm enjoying it. There's a lot of great wisdom, and it's very layperson. You even say if you don't curse or you're offended, then you can move right along. I like that you speak. You speak in your own voice, and it makes it really approachable. It's an easy. It's an easy, light read. The only reason I haven't gotten further is just because I read it before bed. And before you know it, I'm conked out, drooling on my pillow because I'm just exhausted right now. But I wish you the best of luck and I thank you for being here. And I just want to. I'm so honored. I love having you on. And in fact, on that note, while you're here, I'm just going to. I have to. I was going to do a plug in the beginning, and it just kind of. I didn't end up doing it, but there are Two things I just wanted to share with everyone that as a medium I am teaching a develop your intuition class soon. It is July 20th at 5pm on Zoom. And that is if you want to learn how to be a medium or even just connect with your loved ones in spirit and practice some reading reading some tips and tricks that's there. You can go on my Instagram, which is Realmagic. Shannon, the other thing is. Is that. What is the other thing? The other thing. Oh, is that I am starting a new podcast and actually I'd like to ask you, Ray, to be on it. And I just want to kind of draw attention to. Is about people who are. Have overcome terrible obstacles and challenges. Come out on the other side. Overcome. And the working title right now is from tower to slide star. I don't know if I like it or not. I may just stick with it, the tower card and then ending up at the star. So I just want to talk about it and give everyone a heads up that that is coming. I've got it set up. I have my first interview lined up and once it's up I will let you know so that you can tune in there. But honored, I would like. Yes, I. I would like to have you on it. So that was. I'm saying it with you here and I'm also saying it to my audience just to let them know that it's coming. And Ray, thank you so much for. You're just great and I love having you on. So I wish you all the best. And is there. Are there any parting words that you wanted to say even though you just said some great stuff?

Yeah. You're still alive.

Yes.

Live every day. Take advantage of these things. Take advantage of all these things that we can do. You're not restricted by things that you may think you are. You can literally have it all. You can have anything you want and go do it. Just do it.

Thank you. You know, I needed to hear that today. So selfishly, thank you for that therapy session. I feel so much. I really do feel my anxiety has dissipated and I hope that everyone else will feel as inspired as I do. So thank you again, Ray. Thank you so much for listening with an open heart and mind for your like. Subscribe Subscribes leaving comments below and sharing with like minded friends. Your support means the world and I could not do this without you.