09. allowing fear to become expansion

Hey friends,

In this episode of Sunflowers and Stars, we dive straight into the collective energy with one of my favourite tarot cards — the Star. This card speaks to a deep emotional and spiritual awakening happening right now. Whether you're basking in synchronicities or navigating a dark night of the soul, this episode holds space for your journey.

What we cover:

- A collective energy check with the Star card: the beauty and challenges of awakening

- Exploring the dark night of the soul

- Witnessing fear as a tool for growth and understanding its systemic roots

- Tips for staying true to yourself when others don’t understand your expansion

- Messages from your Higher Self: every moment is an opportunity to choose yourself and realign with your truth

- The meaning behind Sunflowers and Stars and my first spiritual awakening.

- How societal systems weaponize fear and how to reclaim your power.

We talk about how fear is often used to control us and why breaking through it can be an act of liberation. Whether you're feeling expansive and mystical or stuck and overwhelmed, this episode invites you to trust the process, care for yourself, and honour your personal growth.

I’ve also released a bonus episode over on Patreon, where I share a technique I've been using to weather tough emotions, how working with the shadow self can help you expand into the fullest version of yourself, and what your breakthrough wants you to know

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Exclusive extra content on the Sunflowers and Stars Patreon

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I use the Queer Tarot Deck by Ash & Chess

Transcript

Hi. Welcome back to sunflowers and stars, Intuitive Tarot for the collective with me, your host, Fiona Fletcher, Reid, I want to dive straight in, because I've just pulled, like one of my favourite cards. I've pulled the star card, and that is the collective energy check for this reading is that you are going through this emotional and spiritual awakening right now, you feel so in tune with yourself and so in tune with the universe and with nature and with people, like there's a real there's a real sense of a spiritual awakening right now within the collective energy.

And you might be sitting there thinking it doesn't feel like I'm going to a spiritual awakening. But I think that's because we quite often think of a spiritual awakening as something that feels positive, something that feels uplifting. But for some of you listening, you will be going through a dark night of the soul, and things will be falling apart, and you are maybe going through like a breakup, or you're you're not connecting with friends anymore, but it's because you're connecting with something different. You're connecting with something deeper. And when that happens, unfortunately, people and habits and things that you used to enjoy like they just fall away. The universe comes in and says, Okay, we need to rip this apart, like we need to kind of rip off this outer shell so that you can see what's going on on the layer underneath. So I'm sending a lot of love and good vibes and positive thoughts to anyone who's going through that experience at the moment where it feels like everything's falling apart.

The invitation here is to trust that when it all falls apart, there are things coming up to the surface for you to address and for you to look at and for you to feel and also, when we get down and when we get unhappy, quite often, that is when we no longer have the energy to uphold the kind of the mask and the societal expectations. So quite often, we isolate and we we go internally, and that is where the spiritual awakening happens. It just as happens when we look internally, when we're willing to really be with ourselves and be with our thoughts and our experiences, and really allow ourselves to just acknowledge who we are, what we've been through and how we feel in this present moment. And quite often, life carries us along and keeps us busy and keeps us distracted, and we never do that.

So sometimes we have to go into a state of depression or upset or feeling really low energy and low vibration in order to shut out the world and actually look internally. So I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be on medication. I'm on medication. I have depression and anxiety. So I'm not saying that there aren't medical needs at this point, but they're also quite often This is just when we are allowed the time and less distractions to look internally. So the star card is showing up. For some people, is quite, quite heavy, quite intense. And for some people, some of you listening, you'll be having mystical experiences. You'll be observing synchronicities in your life. Perhaps you know someone that you've not spoken to for a long time is has come back into your life, and it feels really meaningful. Perhaps you keep seeing a symbol repeated, like when I first had my first spiritual awakening, I kept seeing sunflowers everywhere. That's why this podcast is called sunflowers and stars.

So I don't even need to tell you to be open to that, because clearly you are, you are you are open to that, and you're noticing synchronicities, and you're noticing the energy as well. So you might be doing your own tarot readings, and you're feeling like, like you're really getting into the cards, or even, you know, at work or in your social circle, you feel really, you feel like you can read the energy of a situation or a group of people without having a conversation about it. You just, you may not even know what's going on in detail, but you can read the energy of like, oh, like, this group of people needs me to come in and and inject some humour, or this person needs me to come up, come in and be really caring. You're really getting in tune with this. It's like you've unlocked, like a connection to a layer of energy that has always been here on Earth, but you've not had access to so with this star card and this new spiritual connection. It's like, I guess, kind of like you've maybe opened your, your third eye, but I think your third eye has been open for a while. It's more that your third eye is now kind of strengthened up and it's able to see things. Maybe it's like your, it's like your third eye has had, has had laser eye surgery, can see now it can see things more clearly, and sense things more clearly. So, so that's that's fun. It also might be quite intense. So just take, take care of yourself. And you know, be aware that when you do sense these energies that you don't need to take them on and that you shouldn't take them on.

You can do things to I guess it's a learning curve of detecting those, those energies, detecting them, responding to them, but allowing them to kind of pass through you or wash over you. It depends how you personally like to visualize it me. Personally, I like to kind of in my mind's eye. I kind of hold up my my palms against like the external world, and I just kind of say to myself, That's not my stuff, and I don't need to take on. That's not my stuff, and I'm not going to take it on. And I just put my hands up, kind of like a like a shield, like an energetic shield, so I don't even really let it pass through me or kind of touch me. I just automatically, kind of politely say, Oh, I'm not gonna, not gonna let that, not gonna let my, my energetic self, absorb that. I find that's really helpful, and it seems like that's really quite important right now, especially because within this spiritual awakening, you're also dealing with your own stuff.

So when that kind of portal within opens to let out all this, this new kind of universal knowledge and this, these skills that you're now going to be able to detect and witness things and feel life differently, like you're going to be feeling things very intensely, which is great, because the joy that you feel and the pleasure that you feel will be unlike anything you've ever felt before. You've probably already started to feel this. I know I have, I've been having, like, I don't know, like, orgasms that I've never had before, and and feeling pleasure I'm in my body outside of, you know, sexual things. I've been feeling pleasure in my body when I work out. I've been feeling pleasure in my body when I meditate as well and and being able to, like, I don't know about you, but I hold a lot of tension in my jaw, and I've found I'm now able to kind of, kind of on demand, stop, kind of release it and transmute it into a real pleasurable feeling within my jaw. It's very interesting. So you hopefully have started to experience joy and pleasure and all the good stuff in a heightened way. But with that also comes experiencing the hard emotions in a more intense way.

And the I pulled a card to ask, you know what energy is coming up right now to be witnessed by us, by you and by the collective. And I've got the nine of swords, so it's what you're being asked to witness right now, is your anxieties, your fears, but not not specifically, like, it's not a specific fear that's coming up to be witnessed. You know it's not like, well, you've got a fear of spiders, and you're being asked to work through this and learn to love spiders. What you're being asked to witness right now is fear as a concept, like fear in general, and to witness how fear has become a weapon for systems and for people in power. They know that when they keep the population in a state of fear that they're easier to control, easier to manipulate, they're more likely to spend more money and to feed into capitalist structure, structures.

You know, when people are in fear, they're more likely to continue to work instead of protest because, you know, things are expensive and I don't want to lose my job. Unemployment is really high, so I'm just going to, you know, I'm too scared to speak up, so I'm just going to continue to stay oppressed. Not to say that being oppressed is a choice. I don't really think it is. But there are moments in time where the collective push through that fear and continue to speak up and protest. But right now, we're being asked to you're being asked to just witness this fear and to see it as a pattern, really, so every time that you yourself feel fear or anxieties, really, just being asked to look at like, is this founded in truth? Is it founded in reality? And is there something on the other side of that fear that is worth pushing through, the fear to get to so if you've got a fear of public speaking, like actually, is there a deep desire for you to be seen and to be heard so as the fear of public speaking worth working through so that you can fulfill your life purpose or what your soul is calling you to do. Because quite often, like I said, the systems like they they're trying to keep us down. They're trying to keep us quiet. They're trying to keep us in line. And so thinking about how that fear, how keeping you in a state of fear serves other people, and if it serves other people, then what are you missing out on? If it serves a power structure, capitalism, if it serves patriarchy, then actually, is there a reason why they don't want you to break through that fear? So you're being asked to witness your fear. Anytime that you feel scared to do something, anytime that you feel this just random burst of anxiety, you are being asked to observe it. You're not being asked to fix it.

Really, what you're being asked to do is to do it, is to dive into it. So so for example, if for me personally, I get anxious when sometimes I get random bursts of anxiety when I'm in a closed space. So maybe, like, on a lift or on a bus. And in the past, if I get that sudden, like, kind of Oh, like, butterflies starting, I would find a way to distract myself. So I would like see if I've got a snack in my bag, or a drink of juice, or I'd put music on and, like do anything other than acknowledge the physical discomfort in my body, but what you're being asked to do is to take a moment and just be in that discomfort. So when we think about, if you think about the fear as like a kind of like a force field, like an energetic force field that is, that is in front of your path, and when you bump up against it, it gives you that butterfly feeling where you're like, oh, I don't like that. It feels, Oh, that feels wrong, like, I don't want to go through that feeling of anxiety. So instead of pushing through the force field when you get close to it and you touch it, you just turn around and go in an opposite direction, or you find another way to get to wherever you want to go. But what you're being asked to do is to to, kind of like, stand next to that force field and touch it and really experience it. You don't necessarily need to go through it straight away, but that is what you will do is that eventually you you'll stand next to the force field, and you'll feel that discomfort, and you'll say, okay, I can withstand this for another few minutes. Okay, I think I can withstand this. And then you'll maybe pull away. And then next time you feel it, you'll hold it for a little bit longer, you'll realize that this discomfort is just a physical sensation that you're observing in your body, and that it's not you as a person, and it's not going to kill you. Then it's actually just a part of growth, and when you can feel that, feel that physical discomfort, feel that fear, but still pursue the thing that you want to do, still pursue your goal or your life purpose, or what your soul is telling you is the right thing to do. The more that you can stand in that force field, slowly move through it, withstand the discomfort, then you find you actually have gone through it, and you're on the other side. So it's that age old cliche of feel the fear and do it anyway, but you're being asked to do it in a really kind of slow and gentle way, and just just allowing yourself to be in that little bit of discomfort and know that it's you, it's you pushing through this layer that people have told you and have taught you that, oh, you couldn't withstand that. You couldn't you couldn't possibly deal with that here, have a have a glass of wine that'll make you feel better, that'll help you de stress here, go, go and do some retail therapy that'll make you feel better. It's like, yeah, all that stuff's fun, but to evolve, to grow, to expand, instead of shrinking back like we want to expand. If we're not expanding and we're not growing and we're not we're not becoming the fullest version of ourselves, and what are we doing? Like, what really? What is the point? Because we're just going to go backwards, get smaller, repress who we are. That's not what we came here to do. That's not what you came here to do.

So being asked to witness your fear, you've been asked to slowly move through it, and I pulled the queen of cups. So the invitation here is also to create space for this to happen. So for example, if you're feeling this anxiety like maybe the place to move through it is not when you're at work in the middle of a stressful meeting, maybe that is not the place where you want to start moving through your fear of speaking up, okay, because the stakes are high, it might become overwhelming. You may end up feeling worse after it because you weren't fully prepared and you pushed through it before you were ready. So queen of cups is asking you to create space to work through these fears. I think for you, it's going to be one of two ways. It's going to be journaling, which is great because it's a set container where you can sit down with your notebook, you can control the conditions so you can make sure it's like a certain time of day. You've got privacy, you've got your nice music on, you've got a nice hot drink, like you can, you can give, like, treat yourself as someone who's doing something hard, like you're you're facing your fears, you're challenging yourself to grow through discomfort, like don't make it harder than it needs to be. Make you know when you open that notebook and you want to journal on it, give yourself the other comforts that you can in this world. Put on your cozy jumper, get into bed and you know, give yourself the compassion and love and gratitude to yourself that you're going, you're going to face this kind of difficult thing. So journaling can be good. In the Patreon community, if you search journal prompts serving your true self, that would be a good place to start, because it doesn't, it doesn't actually speak about fear, but encourages you to look at all the ways that you demonstrate actions and behaviours that serve other other people, and encourages you to think about ways that you can serve yourself. So when you do that, there will be fear that comes up, because you will start to think about, oh, what would happen if I instead of, you know, visiting that family member once a week, like I'm expected to do, how would it feel if I actually didn't do that and I served myself by, you know, going to a pottery class instead? So there'll be some fear comes up there that you can then face and think about, okay, like, how am I going to move through this? Can I sit in that feeling right now? Can I feel what that discomfort might feel like, and can I allow myself to feel that discomfort in order to encourage myself to expand, and also, by the way, encourage that other person to expand, because

for you to choose yourself okay, and this is the best way that we can have collective awakening, is that when you demonstrate that you are here to serve yourself, that you're here to expand, that you're here to grow through discomfort, that you're here to. Stick the middle finger up to societal expectations. That is like the best way that you can serve your family member. If you do it with love, you do it with compassion. You communicate why you're doing it. You communicate your truth. You say it with love. You set the best example for other people to do the same. That's when other people start putting a middle finger up to societal expectations, that's when other people start to care for themselves, love themselves, and really take responsibility for their own experience on Earth.

So journaling is, of course, as a writer, of course, I'm going to say journaling, but you know this, they are such an easy, simple, free way to create a space for you to face your fears, and the other way to for you to create a space is to just think about yourself as having this kind of circular like sphere around you that is kind of your energetic boundary, okay? And so imagine that you've got like a kind of a sphere all the way around you, and this is a kind of boundary between you and the rest of the world, but it's also a boundary between you expanding into a higher version of yourself. So when you think about when you have these feelings of fear and anxiety, when they crop up day to day, you know, when you're in the office or on public transport or about to, I don't know, like eat in public or take a shit in public, these things, well, don't take a shit in public. But you know, some people haven't, some people don't like to do a number two in the office or whatever, like in the office bathrooms. Personally, I think you should always do your number two on business time, but that's just my opinion.

When these fears come up, what I want you to do is imagine that that sphere around you, the edges around it are, are what symbolise this kind of anxiety feel. And that's where that that's where the kind of, the sticky, tricky emotion is the that is on the edge of the sphere. And what you want to do is just imagine yourself bumping up against that and slowly, slowly as that you know, and feel it in your stomach, feel it in your body, feel whatever that energy is. Just allow it to be there, and imagine yourself energetically expanding, just like a centimetre. And imagine that sphere getting bigger. Imagine the sphere kind of almost like the edges dissolve, and then another new edge appears, but it's slightly bigger than before. And every time you break through a fear, every time that you allow yourself to sit in anxiety, every time you allow yourself to sit in the energetic space of fear, you build up your window of tolerance, and your sphere becomes bigger your energetic soul like you're you, whoever you are, like you just expand a little bit more every time you break through that fear barrier, you get bigger, you get more expansive. You create more space within you to hold whatever life has to throw at you, and you have a bigger energetic effect, because you're getting bigger and more expansive, and you're able to reach more people and have an impact on the collective so I hope that was helpful.

I spoke a little bit about, you know, caring for yourself through this process, but I've also pulled the judgment card. So what I want you to do is know that not everyone is going to understand you as you expand, knowing that part of expansion, part of levelling up into this new kind of frame of consciousness, this new heightened connection to love, connection to Source, is that some people are not going to understand you, and what I want you to do is to treat yourself with love and treat yourself with respect. Okay, don't put yourself in positions where people make you feel like you're being difficult or that you're not good enough. Like I'm not saying avoid people who have got bad vibes or whatever. Okay, that I don't I believe you can learn something from everyone, but if you're continually putting yourself in situations where people just don't understand you, they make fun of you, or they make you doubt yourself when you know like you come away from that experience and you're like they may be. Out myself, and now that I'm on my own, I know, I know like my experience is real. I know that I'm going through this thing and that I'm expanding, and I'm feeling really good, and I'm feeling like my best self, and they made me feel crap. Then there comes a point where you've just got to ask yourself, do like, what good is coming from me continually putting myself in this position, actually, would I be better going and spending that time doing something that helps me expand? Would it? Would I be better going and spending that time with people who understand, people who allow you to be yourself? That's that's the real takeaway message is like, make sure you carve out time and prioritise time with people who are able to witness the expanded version of you. Because some people are not, some people are not, because it brings up too much shit for them, and it makes them realise that you've changed, and should they be changing? Like, should they be doing that stuff and they don't want to, like, they're not ready to grow, and that's that's fine, like, it's not our job to enlighten other people or to wake other people up. People can only wake up on their own timeline when they're ready, when they're when they feel safe to do it. But really, you should think, just think carefully. It's not to say, I don't want you, like, cutting people off just because they made you feel bad that one time. I just mean, you know, think about how your energy is affected by other people.

And so maybe you don't spend as much time with people in general. Maybe you actually find you're more like as you kind of work through this anxiety, because it is a tender process, and as you kind of go through this, this phase, maybe you're like, actually, I do lots better when I'm just spend more time alone, or I spend time with just these two people that I really trust and that they get it, and I can talk deeply about this stuff and share my experiences, and they really understand it, and they're going through it too. You know, find those people who are able to, you know, as you expand, they're able to kind of expand with you, but also create space. Create space for you to be the way that you are. So hopefully, you know some people who can help you do that, if not like don't worry, because we pulled the star card. So you are attracting those kind of people into your life. The more that you are yourself, the more that you expand, the more that you you don't even need to talk about this stuff with people when you meet, but you will exude this energy, and you'll attract the people into your space that get it. You'll attract the people who are able to have the conversations with you and are actually able to support your growth as well, because people who challenge us like people who trigger us like they challenge us to grow. But so do people who we are in harmony with those people challenges as well. They just do it in a different way. They do it in a way that feels easy and fun and expansive. So those people are coming to you. Those people are if they haven't shown up already. They're gonna so just just be open and be ready to engage with those people when they show up. And the best way to because this is, this is all quite work, that kind of can feel quite discombobulating like you can. You might feel like you're kind of doing that thing again, of that we spoke about before, of jumping between one one world and the next. You might have days where you feel really fearless, and then you have days where you're totally overcome by fear and you can't, you can't really push through the barrier. Or you you push through a little bit, but it's exhausting.

So this process, you you're just going to be in a constant process of integrating that so you know you've expanded, and then so when you expand and you become this fuller, truer version of yourself who is now just even just like one or 2% more able to speak up for themselves, and more able to ask for what they want and to demonstrate integrity and make choices that serve you and not someone else, like when this continually happens then and you've expanded, you're gonna, you know, most people tend to see the same people, day in day out, go to the same workplace or have the same community, so you're going to be showing up to people as a new version of you. So that might be quite discombobulating for you and for them. So just to be aware of that, when you're constantly expanding like people can people can find that quite triggering, and they can find it confusing, because they're like, whoa, like, this person's like, way more confident than they were like two weeks ago. So to integrate that really, there just needs to be for you moments of silence and moments of recalibrating that through stillness and through silence, so through meditation and through being still, it could even be in bed at the end of the day. You just lie there and you just just feel into the energy of your body, I think quite often when we do this spiritual work, we can get kind of lost in the ether and forget to come back down. So really taking these moments to connect with the Earth, you know, and with the Earth, it can just be your carpet, you know, cross legged on the floor, and just really reminding yourself that you're grounded, that you're supported, that the earth is here. Every time you fall, you land on the earth, you're okay. And even though that can sometimes feel like to ground, can feel like no, like I want to be in the spiritual realm, like I don't want to be grounded. But grounding is what gives you the ability to go back up and come back down. And we don't want to go up into the spiritual realm and get stuck up there, because we still have to live in the physical world. So staying grounded is a really important part of the integration process, because it allows you to go up, get the wisdom, then come back down and reconnect. So grounding practices for you might be just like getting outside and and listening to the birds you know, feeling the wind on your face, all this anything that just reminds you that you exist in a physical form is really good, because it gets you out your head and into your body. Personally, I've been really enjoying exercise as well, but doing it more intuitively. So just, you know, moving, not moving in a way that is to achieve an end result, just moving for the sake of moving, moving for the sake of presence. I think presence and stillness is really important part of integration for you through this process.

And finally, I asked, What does your Higher Self want you to know? And we pulled two swords, and your higher self is really saying, like every moment of the day, every day of the week, every week of the month. Every month is a chance for you to start again. Every day you get a choice, and your higher self is just saying, trust yourself to make the right choice. Trust yourself when you think to yourself, you know when you see when you feel yourself about to go through the motions, about to deny your own needs and desires in order to, you know, just keep the peace. I don't want to start an argument. Fiona, just go along with this thing the universe is saying. Like those things accumulate, those choices that you make that deny the truth of who you are, that deny that you're a creative person or a romantic person, or someone who loves sex or loves food, like every time you deny yourself these things, like, you take yourself further and further off your own path. But what your higher self is saying is that you always have the choice to come back every you have, like these opportunities every day, every week, there's always a chance to choose yourself and to choose something new. Doesn't even Ha, you don't even have to know, like, Oh, I'm aligned to do this one thing. It can just be like, You know what, if you want to change your the coffee order that you've had for the last 20 years, fucking change it like, it's fine, it's fine. And who knows if you start drinking vanilla matcha latte instead of cappuccino, who's to say, like the butterfly effect? Who's to say, what that will that effect that will have on your life, but your higher self is saying, like, you can start anytime you want. Like you can start right now. You can start right now by listening to all the past podcast episodes again, you can go on and get those journal prompts in the Patreon. You can cancel those plans that you've got tonight. You could book to go to a meditation retreat like you, like small, big choices, they're all yours and your higher self esteem. Like just go for it. Why? Why wait any every moment of every day you get the chance to choose yourself, and the sooner you do that, the sooner that you're going to reroute yourself back onto alignment, back into your higher purpose.

Speaking of the Patreon, I just also released a bonus episode today. We speak a little bit about, like, deprogramming, which is, which is kind of similar to what your higher self is saying. Is, like, can you like, what do we need to do to de program ourselves from what we've been taught? Like, how can we reroute ourselves back onto our soul path. And we also talk about some shadow work and how powerful Shadow Work is, because it actually acts as a key to open a door into this, these new parts of yourself. And we also talk about breakthroughs that are coming for you, and what your breakthrough wants you to know. It's a really fun reading. And also, I had, like, a bit of a weird kind of felt like a, like a psychic attack during during the reading. So yeah, it was quite a wild one for me. I've never experienced that before, and but if you're keen, you can go and listen to that on Patreon. There's actually quite a few fun things on there. Now there's three bonus episodes, and there's lots of journal prompts, if you're into new moon and full moon stuff, there's, there's, there's like a workshop there. There's a meditation. There's a few different meditations as well. So really love the community that is unfurling over there. And, yeah, we spoke about kind of finding the people who get it and the people in there get it. That's what that space is for. So we'd love to have you in there, if, if that sounds like something you are called to do, I would love to have you there. That is the energy update for today. I really hope that you found it helpful. Please come and let me know on Instagram if you've enjoyed this episode, and if there was anything that came up for you that I didn't mention, I'd love, love to know, like how this is connecting with you and how it's impacting you and your in your personal situation. We'd love to know it. If you're willing to share, I'm on Instagram. All the links for that are in the show notes, and I love you, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Fiona

xx