01. You’re currently in two worlds

Hey friends,

Episode one of the podcast is here! And to celebrate I’ve actually dropped episode two as well, so you can listen to them both.

In this episode, we talk about what this podcast is all about, where I'm coming from, and—most importantly—an energy reading for the collective that you can apply to your life.

You’ll hear:

- How I transitioned from freelance writing and authoring books to hosting this podcast, and how spirituality became a cornerstone of my journey.

- Energy update using the Queer Tarot Deck by Ash + Chess, I talk about the current energy and the feeling of holding things together amidst internal and external chaos.

- How many of us feel torn between the intense reality of global crises and the mundane of our everyday lives. How do we balance being present while also engaging in the bigger picture?

- What happens when your consciousness levels up, and how do you manage to be in this new energy while living in the practical, earthly world?

- The Empress card which points to a new season of your life—about birthing something new, even if you're still figuring out exactly what that is. Trust that it's all happening for a reason, and it's worth waiting and planning for.

- It's tempting to chase the powerful feelings that come from a spiritual awakening, but the real work is staying connected to Source in sustainable ways, even through the mundane and empty spaces.

Transcript

Hey, how you doing? Welcome to the first episode of sunflowers and stars intuitive Tarot for the collective with me. Fiona Fletcher Reid. And I just want to start by saying, hella, hella, thankful and grateful to you for tuning in today.

And also shout out to everyone who has been cheering me on on sunflowers, stars, Instagram, for those of you who don't know, for the last eight years, I've been a freelance writer. I'm an author.

I have been hosting online writing groups, and in 2022 I came out as a lesbian, I got divorced, and I moved in with my parents. So there's been a big transition in my life over the last few years, and with that transition has come a newfound connection to spirituality, and I know that that has been a bit of a surprise to everyone. It's been a surprise to me too. So I just wanted to say I'm so so grateful to anyone who's come over to Sunflowers and Stars Instagram or podcast from my previous online presence, which was under the name Fiona Thomas, and I'm sure over the over the coming episodes, I will get into some of my own backstory and what's going on in my life right now.

But for today, I really just wanted to get straight into our first reading, our first Energy Update, if that's what we're going to call it. It's a reading of the collective energies that hopefully you can apply to your own life, and then see a knock-on effect in the collective. Because as much as we want to liberate the collective, and I think that is a worthy cause, certainly something that I have come to care about a lot in the last year or so, it really does start. It starts with you. For those who are interested, I'm using the Queer Tarot Deck. It is by Ash and Chess. You can get it everywhere. You can get it on Amazon, if you choose, you can get it online. You can buy it directly from them. It's a beautiful deck. I will try and post pictures of the cards on Instagram so that you can have a little look. But they are beautiful cards. They are very inclusive. And I would recommend it if you are looking to get started. They're a really beautiful, beautiful deck.

So checking them with the current energy, there's a real sense that you're really just holding things together. There's a lot for you to consider right now, internally, externally, you may feel as though you've got one foot in one world and one foot in another. I know certainly lots, lots of people that I speak to these days are not engaged in what's going on outside of their immediate circle, and then there's lots of people who are engaged. So it can, it can really feel like you're living in a different reality when you consume social media, when you see what's going on in Palestine, what you see what's going on in the Congo, Lebanon, the list goes on when you witness the oppression that is happening, and then you speak to people in your daily life who are more concerned with maybe what movie they're going to watch today, or where they're going to go to get their hair done. And not to say that those things aren't important, they are, but you might feel as though you're kind of going through emotions in your daily life with the people that you love dearly and that you care about and you have a history with.

But then you may feel that you kind of when you leave them, you step you step away, and you step into this other world that you feel is reality. And obviously everyone's reality is subjective, and I think this is what we're being invited to try and manage, try and understand. We have to get a handle on that, because when you essentially you've opened the door to truths or energy, it's like you've levelled up, you've you've levelled up energetically, and you've your consciousness has been elevated. And once that happens, it can't be undone.

Once you have a spiritual awakening, once you see behind the veil, so to speak, you can't unsee what you see. So it's, it can be very difficult. So there's a, there's definitely feels like there's this settling-in period that perhaps has been on the cards for a while, but you're only just starting to see the manifestations of it. So you, you've, I get the sense that you had your, your kind of spiritual awakening, or your new understanding of your reality, you processed that in private.

You didn't speak to a lot of people. You isolated yourself as a means of survival, really, to process all of this, and now, now that you're you feel able to go back out into the world, it's now realizing that you're not the same person that you were before. And so it's kind of like if you imagine when astronauts go to space and they have to be trained to feel and act and move in response to the new energy that is around them, they have to train to understand what it feels like to be without gravity.

And then also, when they come back down to earth, astronauts say there's this, wow, my body feels so heavy I didn't realize how heavy my body was and how much of effect gravity had. So it's like you kind of elevated up and now you've come back down into reality. You're ready to step back out, but you're having to relearn how to move in this world. Because as much as you've zoomed out, and you've had this new perspective on life, and you, and you perhaps, are now more connected to source. You're now more connected to the universe. You understand that you're part of something bigger, but you still have to come back into reality and live in this earthly domain. You still have to do your laundry, you still have to go to work, you still have to care for the kids, you still have to play the game, there's, there's, and this is something I've struggled with recently.

For this year, I've been going to job interviews. I've been making the move from self-employment into regular employment, and I really struggled with remembering how to act, remembering the kind of social etiquette and the language of being in employment and having to remember how to sell myself, like what words to use, how to format interview answers and stuff like that, so that I can get what I want I know that I'm good enough for this job.

So how do I speak the language? How do I play the game in order to connect with other people, to make progress? And I'm getting the sense that this is something that you're struggling with just now, and it might also come as a feeling of homesickness, feeling as though you don't fit in, feeling as though there's nowhere on earth that holds the same frequency as you.

But that's not true. There are people, there are people who hold the same frequency. There are spaces that will be really that will feel like home. And so you're in this period of figuring out, and it's very much you know when you have to go somewhere for the first time, for example, perhaps you want to try out a new coffee shop, and it's about a 30 minute walk from your home, and it's lots of twists and turns to get there. The first few times you do it, you will need to use a map. You'll need to have your directions on hand.

But the fifth or sixth time you do it, you remember, I walk up here, and then I see this pop on the right, and then I turn right, you have all these cues that help you do it without having to necessarily mentally engage with it. So right now, you're in this teething-in period, and I see that you've got there's a real motivation here to turn this, to turn this newfound knowledge, this energetic level up that you're experiencing, there's a real,

almost primal urge for you to share this with the world and for you to turn it into something new, to turn it into something you know, not necessarily something that the world has never seen, but you really want to pivot. You really want to use this new energy to turn your life around, and not for yourself, but for the world. And that's that's so beautiful. That's so the more people that do that, the closer we are going to get to a more beautiful world for you to want to be in service to other people is something that I don't want you to lose. Hang on to that. That's you know, don't let these teething in period make you think that you're on the wrong path.

You I mean, you know this anyway, you know that you're moving into a new season, and in this, in this new season, it is going to be like, you know, I've pulled the Empress card, so, which is very much about pregnancy, and that can be, I very, very rarely, pull this and tell someone that they're going to get pregnant. It's really about birthing a new season of your life.

And you can feel that, you can feel your intuition is not off. Your intuition is correct when you feel these twinges of when you step into your old life and you're like, oh, oh, this doesn't, this doesn't feel right, and then when you step into the current energy that you that you've just embraced, when you step into that, you feel, you feel like, there's like a warm light on your face. You feel like, aaah, this, this is what I want more of. And then you have to hop back into the old life.

And because we're because it's the Empress card and it is a pregnancy card, sometimes nine months can be a helpful frame of reference. It can be a reminder that what you want is worth waiting for, and it is also really worth planning for. It's worth taking care of yourself so that you can create this thing that you want to see in the world.

And you may not even know what this is. You may not know what the thing is that you want to manifest, and that's okay. That's okay if you know the energy behind it, and you continue to connect to the energy behind it, and you continue to connect to the the energy that was behind the spiritual awakening, you will always be on the right path. And the problem that we're facing at the moment is for you to be in that energy, for you to

and this is the thing that people don't always talk about, is that once you have a spiritual awakening, yes, it can't be undone. You can't unsee what you saw or you felt or you experienced in that spiritual awakening, but the high that you get afterwards, the buzz, the feeling of freedom, the feeling of empowerment that you have just after a spiritual awakening does not last. And so really, this experience that you're having right now of being in one world and in another, this one foot in another, sorry, one foot in one world and one foot in another.

This is really, this is like the montage in Rocky This is the montage of you figuring out how to manage the energy that you've been gifted.

You've got an idea that you want to channel it into something, but you can't channel it into something until you've learned to manage it in the physical world that we live in when we have a spiritual awakening, it's very it can feel very ethereal and very otherworldly, and it can be addictive. It can be it can be so it can be such a thud to come back to reality that we continue to chase that high. We continue to chase that, that feeling of oh, like that, almost Godly, powerful feeling, and that is not sustainable, maybe, maybe it will be at some point, maybe. But we do everything in stages. We can't just overnight. You know, when we see people that have been an overnight success, either it's actually not an overnight success. And there's been lots of work behind the scenes that you haven't seen. But when someone goes viral or, you know, we know that stuff affects you, it's not natural to go from one energy and then rack up, 56789,v10 levels like we need to do this in a sustainable way. We need to do this in a way that our bodies and our minds can actually handle.

So. So what you need right now is to stay connected to source, not chasing a spiritual awakening. So if you had your spiritual awakening as a result of meditation, for example, you meditated for five days in a row, and on the fifth day, you had a spiritual experience that really left you dumbfounded, and changed your life. Now, every time you meditate, you're looking for that same experience. This is a lesson in understanding that the experience that you have when you meditate is not the point.

The point of the meditation is to stay connected to source and sometimes stay connected to source, quite often staying connected to source is about emptiness. It's about clearing away. It's about unlearning all the stuff from that 3d world that you feel so uncomfortable in, the world that puts pressure on you, the world that limits you the world that instils fear in you. So much of the meditation is just about letting that go. It's not about tapping into this magical, mystical, otherworldly, powerful emotion. And really, when we look at those two ends of the spectrum, it's the modern world that makes us think that that's what we need, because the modern world has conditioned us to respond to high-energy emotions we you know, You just need to look at the news cycle and to see what is trending on social media, to know that emotional content gets an emotional response. We go from high to low, high to low. It's exhausting and the spiritual, the connection to source, it's about the evening that out. So really, what you need to do is figure out, how are you going to continue to stay connected to source so that you can birth this new project, this new idea, this new season of your life without getting pulled away, pulled away by

negative energies, pulled away by the fear that the modern world tries to instill in us the exhaustion and the burnout of modern culture. How are you going to stay connected to source? And we've pulled 10 of Wands for the what ask, what do you need?

And this is the burnout card. This is the card of you've taken on too much, and you may not have done it actively. It's one of those things that just builds up over time, and you realize that you're doing other people's jobs, that you are managing other people's emotions, that you are abandoning your own well-being, your own happiness, your own sense of self, in order to help other people manage things that they should be managing. And quite often, this is so insidious, it is especially for women, because we are taught that to be caring and to be of service to others is our responsibility. So this is an invitation to look, be aware, look out for moments in your day-to-day life.

Life where you are abandoning your own spiritual needs, your own mental needs, your own your own desires in order to serve other people. For example, do you abandon your meditation practice as soon as you get a text message from a friend or as soon as your partner says, Do you want a coffee? Do you - at the drop of the hat - abandon the things that you know. You know that when you're on your own and when you sit and you think, you know that your meditation practice is the one thing that keeps you connected to source, and yet, every day, you find a reason not to do it. Sometimes it's by choice, sometimes it's pressure from loved ones. Sometimes, it's pressure that has been conditioned into us for so long that we don't even notice it's there for women, this is very much the case. We want to be the good daughter, the good sister, the good wife, the good mother.

And really, what's at the root of this is the fear that you will not live up to someone else's expectation. So how can you meet your own expectations?

And how does living up to other people's expectations shatter the image that you have of yourself? Because at the end of the day, the most important image of self is the one that you hold. No one should be able to take that away from you. That is the power that you hold. That's the power that source gives you. And remember that when you set a boundary with someone, when you say, No, I'm going to meditate instead of going for coffee or whatever it is, whatever the thing is that's trying to pull you away from your spiritual practice. Remember that when you set a boundary, you give that person the gift of having to manage their own experience. And by the way, you can't manage other people's experience. Anyway. You think you can. You think that when you abandon your needs to be at their side, that when you give them all the sympathy and you run after them and you help you think that you're managing their experience. You're not. You're probably managing your own emotions, and you're probably trying to avoid guilt. You're probably trying to avoid guilt and shame, and you're trying to help them avoid discomfort, but what you're left with is a sense of disconnect from yourself because you're not doing the things that make you you, and what builds is a sense of resentment and possibly a sense of shame anyway, because The self that you bring to the table is not the self that you know you're capable of. So setting these boundaries gives the other person the gift of handling their own stuff.

And it may not feel like a gift at the time, but I know that you know you've been through so many experiences that have made you stronger, that have made you wiser, that have uncovered new layers of yourself and have made you more connected to your own abilities. And you can give that person that gift of self-growth. It's up to them if they open the gift, if they deal with it, but what you really need to do is let some of those responsibilities go. So how can we make this happen?

We've pulled King of Pentacles. So there's a there's a question here about how you, how can you find stability in this world that feels so unstable. Well, we've also pulled the Page of Pentacles. We've got Two of Pentacles here. Got three Pentacles cards. So there's the overall tone of this reading is that actually your spiritual practices must be grounded in reality.

This is a hard one for us to digest, because the spiritual self is invisible and it's in the soul. It's in the aura. It's in the is it in the head? Who knows it's it doesn't feel tangible. It doesn't feel something we can touch. But when we live in the physical world, this, the physical world is what holds our attention. The physical world is where we have to spend all of our time. So when we put our spiritual practices in this in the physical world, then we're forced to engage with them, if we just keep them hidden, if we just keep them in our heads, if we just do them on the train when no one's looking, it's easier to ignore them, it's easier to let them fall away.

So how can you bring your spiritual practices into the physical realm? Whether that's setting up an altar in your home, somewhere that you go to every day to pull a tarot card and check in with yourself, could it be going through the energetic exchange of paying for a meditation app that might be the thing that gives you the discipline to meditate every day or every couple of days. Maybe it's finding a buddy who you know you can have these spiritual conversations with, and making time to hang out with that person more often. Whatever it is for you, it's about finding the tangible, real life, ways that you can continue to connect to source and think about the body.

Because pentacles is often, we often think about the Pentacles being about money, but it's also about the body. So how can you honour your body during this time as an act of connecting to source, because our bodies are a manifestation of source energy. And so when we look at it that way, we can, we can worship the self as though it is a God, because we are all part of God, the universe, whatever you want to call it,

we are a physical manifestation of universal energy. So how can you honour the body? Through nourishment, through movement, through sleep and hydration. These are all spiritual practices that will allow you to stay connected, and think about how you can engage with the people who keep you inspired in spirituality. And maybe inspired isn't the right word, because the important thing here is, how can you continue to stay connected to spirituality so that you can birth this new season. But how can you do that without becoming complacent the I think the best spiritual leaders, if we can say that, I don't know if I like the term spiritual leader, because it's based in hierarchical structures, which are inherently harmful. But when you think about the maybe the books that you read, the podcasts you listen to, how can you follow people, engage with people who challenge you, not people who tell you how it is, not people who tell you that positive affirmations and manifestation to earn a million bucks is going to change your life.

But how can you find the people who feel like they're speaking your language? You really understand them and you and you click with their energy, but really importantly, do they challenge you to always be questioning your spiritual process, your purpose, your relationships, your approach to life, your limiting beliefs. Who are the people who constantly challenge you to do that work, because those people are really going to help you find balance, and they're going to help you birth this new season. And this is a really beautiful reading because the outcome card. So what was the outcome of this process that we are discussing? And we've got Four of Wands.

So really, there's just this energy of getting what you worked for, getting to a place where you actually just feel happy to wake up in the morning, you feel optimistic about life. I don't even think this is about having achieved something in particular. I think that the Empress card, the birthing of the new season, is not an end product. It's not an end a specific achievement. It's an energetic state. It's of you getting through this transition period and then feeling, oh yeah, I did it. I'm no longer triggered by stepping into the office. I'm no longer triggered by that one a family member who doesn't understand me doesn't validate me. It's not to say that you'll have solved all your problems, but the outcome will be that you get through this transition period of feeling like I don't know if I can survive in this world now that I've seen what I've seen, and I felt what I felt, I just don't feel as though I can do it.

You're going to get to a point where you realize that the things that used to make you scared, the things that used to feel really hard and really challenging to your sense of peace no longer bother you. That will wash over you and you will have made some new connections a small community of people who really understand you, really validate you, and just by seeing them and being around them, you enrich your own spiritual practice. Just being in their energy, it's like you're bathing in the stuff that boosts your life energy, And it's really beautiful. You

And actually, if you're looking for a new tool to kind of reconnect you with source or to get you into the right headspace. I've got a free meditation on my website, which is designed to be used before you journal. So I know a lot of you are writers and you love to journal just like me, so I have recorded a pre-journaling meditation that is designed to get you into a calm, collected kind of bubble of safety before you journal, I'll leave a link in the show notes if you want to get access to that. It's totally free, and that's all from me. This week for our first episode, I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please, please, please leave a review and subscribe for the next episode, which will be up very soon.

I love you, and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye.

Fiona x