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I am new this year to planting zinnias; their colorful faces have joyfully brightened my backyard landscape, my family and I delighting in the surprise of each tiny bud turning into many layers of summery beauty.

As we turn the corner into late summer, many of my Zinnias are turning to seed. Their newly-brown heads holding an ancient beauty that one could miss if you aren’t tuned into what lies within. If you take the full head of the browned flower and pull it apart, inside are a plethora of seeds. One flower gone, and dozens of other flowers within it waiting to be planted next season.

I’ve let many gardening seasons pass me without opening up browned flowers to find their seeds. I’ve just let the flowers run their course, and without thought gone to the gardening store the next year to purchase a packet of seeds to plant a whole new bed.

This year, I have felt a pull to finally collect, dry out, and store my own seeds. Tend to the gardening season of now, with the sweet knowing that next year’s flowers came from this lot. I feel called to honor the beauty of nature’s innate wisdom system of regeneration. What I need is already here- I just need to do the labor required to transform seed into bloom.

Many souls have transitioned recently, turning to seed for our collective processing. When a human dies, their soul moving on to a period of review and rest, the contents of their incarnations become the seeds that we are invited to collect, process, store, and in time plant within our own soil. Their hardships, victories, and shortcomings, their generosities, legacies, and mastery, their capacities, reflections, and focus all get to become our guiding wisdom, our precautions, our lessons. If we can take the time to tune in and sift through it all, we can fold those lessons deep into our own beings in the spirit of building new greatness and expansion in our own fields. If we do it right, we sow their seeds into even more fertile ground- building upon and growing from all within their sacred paths.

I believe all souls that pass merit our attention, our honor, our processing. And when certain souls pass, it can ripple out deeply through our field- asking for a bit more of it all. For me in recent days, that soul of significance has been Dolly Parton.

Upon Dolly’s death last week, it’s been so powerful and beautiful to witness so many individuals sharing about her impact on their lives, snippets of her interviews over the years, stories of her immense legacy. A client wrote me a few nights ago and said, “Someday, some people may be lucky enough to have Dolly Parton as one of their guides.” The thought made me smile- imagine how Dolly will continue to support us all in our sacred becoming.

Dolly has been ever-present in my heart and mind since her passing, the clarity of her being ever more true in the wake of her death. She lived a life of immense purpose rooted in deep self-awareness. She was extremely clear on who she was, how she wanted to show up, and how she wanted to walk her path. She did it with humor, with kindness, with deep heart and grace. She was a powerhouse business woman who stayed deeply connected to her roots and values, and was beloved by individuals across the globe, across the aisle, a true uniter. She was an activist, an artist, a humanitarian, an entertainer, a woman truly true to herself. Her mission and her heart as clear as day.

Of course, these layers hold collective relevance to the exact moment we find ourselves in as a human community. And, of note, they hold personal resonance for me and the exact moment I find myself in within my own path.

In the days since her passing, I have felt myself more inspired than ever to root myself in my own kindness, to hold and regard myself with even more truth and knowing, to look at all of my gifts and see how else they can help others, to come even more fully into my own brilliance. I have been thinking about community and service, about how we all need each other more than ever, how every single human holds a spark of God. These are all truths held and articulated by Dolly, and now I can feel them nestling even deeper within myself.

In a culture in which awareness is our greatest currency and within the fast-paced nature of modern life, how do we keep our ancestors’ and beloveds’ legacies folded deep within our bones? How do we honor all that they were, and stay connected to their lessons and wisdom in the spirit of bringing this whole project forward? How do we find the time to store their seeds for safe-keeping, and sow them when the season calls for it?

Thank you, dear Dolly, for a life so beautifully lived. I trust you are smiling down, receiving the light of a world honoring you for all you walked and embodied. Rest easily, dear soul- may the fertile ground of all our lives in time reflect even greater fields of collective care, art, and wisdom than what you gifted us all.

“We are underground” are the first words that come out of my mouth, as the vision of this client’s room is still coming to form in my mind’s eye. We are certainly underground. I can see that we are in a dark tunnel that is a part of a series of tunnels. The tunnel through which we are walking has paths on the left and right, and a stream of water running down its middle. Along the left and right-hand pathways, we must follow a cascade of stairs- 5 steps up, plateau, 5 steps down, plateau, 5 steps up…and so on. As we move through the tunnel, I begin to hear a chorus of voices chanting. They are coming from one of the tunnel pathways that is up and to the left. I am told that we can’t go to see where the voices are coming from, but that these are the voices of the ancestors encouraging us onwards. “If it weren’t for these voices singing, I might be afraid down here,” I say to the client. And indeed, that’s true- I know I’m supposed to feel afraid in this tunnel, but I also can sense that I just have to keep going, and that somehow my guidance system and the ancestors will keep us protected. Their chanting is a lifeline for us not to be consumed by the darkness and the subterranean nature of this place.

When we get to the end of that tunnel, we enter a new room- still underground. This room has four ladders- one on each wall- and above each ladder is a hatch door that we can open by turning a wheel attached to it- kind of like a manhole, but on the ceiling. At first I wonder which ladder and manhole we are supposed to choose, but I am told it must certainly be the one on the far wall. So I climb the ladder, and open the hatch door and am immediately flooded with light.

I emerge into a stunning white tent that is above ground. This tent looks like one of those tents one might rent for an outdoor wedding, except this one has no doors or windows. I can’t see through the tent material, but it is very clear that on the other side of the tent’s walls is the outside world. It feels really good to receive the imprint of sunlight after having been underground for so much of the client’s room, even if I have no idea how we are to leave this tent or what we are to do here. I ask her guides what I should do, and they tell me I have to wait. So I wait. And I wait. And then I’m told that I get out of this tent through prayer. So, I begin to pray and her guides begin levitating my body up and out of the tent, shooting me out of the central pire of the tent’s structure.

I am now outside, hovering over the tent, and can see the wondrous beauty of the land that surrounds us. There is a mountain range with a river carving its base, and next to the river is a meadow abundant with green and gold grasses. Her guides float me over to the corner where the mountain, river, and meadow converge. We are safe here, they tell me. Time to get used to being here, on the outside. You will move further out into the meadow when you are ready. It is beautiful to take in the tranquility of this space- the sound of rushing water, the view of the meadow, the safe harbor offered by the trees. We are safe here.

At this point in the reading, I remember feeling deeply moved by how specific and guided this journey has been through my client’s room. Each portion of the room was so clear, and I didn’t have a ton of choice in any of it. Each portion was very specifically guided, and even though I didn’t have choice, there was still an aspect of each leg of the journey that felt sacred- even destined. Surely there is a metaphor here.. but what?

As my exploration of her room comes to a close, my client chimes in. “I spent 25 years living underground protecting my daughter from sexual abuse after rediscovering that her father had abused her as a 2-year old.” Because her toddler was not deemed a “viable witness” by the courts and police, they claimed they couldn’t protect her in pursuing her claims against her husband and so she made the choice to go underground. After 25 years of living an underground life, she was arrested and charged with felony and custodial kidnapping. She then lived under house arrest for about a year and then was sentenced to time served and moved through 16 jails in 6 states. After three years of probation and some service hours, she was freed to live her life in the outside world.

She shared that it was through prayer and the support of her ancestors that she was able to navigate her life underground, her subsequent time under arrest, and now as she navigates her new reality as a free woman in the outside world. She is working to become an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse and believes deeply in the power of sharing her story in service of the liberation of all.

This incredible mystic soul is a light warrior, and has spent many of her incarnations in battle with darkness in service of the integrity of the light. The radar she holds for negatively-polarized soul is strong, and she has spent many incarnations using all of her energy to determine where the line must be drawn in order between dark and light to shift realities in order to protect that which is true and good. This incarnation represents a unique journey for her, because within it she faces a challenge beyond battling the darkness: to also transform how she shows up as a representative of the light warriors as their collective body seeks to change their shared paradigm. Instead of serving as light warriors via sacrifice and martyrdom, there is a shifting towards serving the light through wholeness, through softness, through charging themselves first before charging forth. A watchdog invited to also become a lapdog- serving from the meadow instead of the dark tunnel.

I extend deep gratitude and awe to this luminous soul for allowing me to share her story. May her path continue to be amplified and held in her magnificent journey of service and becoming.

A few months ago, a dear client-turned-collaborator of mine- Grace Boda- reached out to me. She had been invited by Aviv Shahar to be a part of a conversation for his podcast Portals of Perception. Aviv is interested in the epochal evolution being offered during this time, and has been curating a series of conversations to invite practitioners to gather together to share their observations of what they are seeing arise within humanity and the collective during this time. To structure the conversation, Aviv would invite one practitioner he knew whose perspective he wanted to invite and elevate- in this case, Grace- and then Grace was to invite someone else whose complimentary perspective would seed fertile conversation. And in this case, Grace said she received a ping that it was to be me!

When I received Grace’s invitation, it was a true and immediate yes for me. I love that Grace got pinged to invite me- and that she followed it. We both believe we were invited to constellate something bigger than ourselves in this conversation- for the divine feminine, for the collective consciousness, for our total expansion. And it was such a delight and pleasure to get to do this alongside her.

Grace is an executive and transformational coach that works with high-powered leaders in cultivating their own awakened sense of self within their work and life. She is brilliant and- true to her name- so full of grace and light. I can see why so many high-powered leaders seek Grace out to support them in their own personal and professional development journeys- she is deeply rooted to the ground, with razor-sharp acumen and depth of perception, while also maintaining an incredible through-line to Spirit and her own heart. Her channel is strong and the web of care she emanates is wide. Every time I speak with Grace, I leave feeling more connected to my own self and purpose, and with a widened perspective of the world around me- I know you’ll receive her many transmissions within this conversation as expansions.

Aviv was an elegant, warm, and deeply wise facilitator. I very much admire the work that he shepherds within the Portals of Perception project and community, and am honored to be a part of this conversation. (He’s put out an enormous body of work that’s available on the Portals website around what these times are asking of us, how we can consider these times within the broader context of history and soul, and what resources we can leverage to truly work with these times as opportunities to birth the next iteration.)

Within the conversation, we cover:

• How we start our days to ensure we are connected to our own power and knowing

• How we make decisions incarnationally about when to come in, and what this means for the souls that are here within this moment of the collective

• Why sovereignty is a theme across souls during this moment

• How these times offer the opportunity to develop new sensory organs and multitudinous perceptions in order to support the creation of individual fractal integrity in support of the fractal whole

• How we think of attuning to guidance systems in an age of AI

• Frameworks of power systems that are currently crumbling and frameworks of power that are arising and birthing greater fractal integrity

• How we think about and personally work with and cultivate wisdom

• Our deepest prayers for the collective at this time

You can watch the episode on YouTube here, or on the Portals of Perception website here.

This is my second podcast appearance and- wow- each one is its own initiation! Preparing for this conversation with Grace and then sitting around the metaphoric table with her and Aviv was a deep expansion for me, too, as I continue to come into my own voice and visibility. My intention going into this conversation was to stay within my own pacing and my own knowing, and I am proud of myself for honoring that. I am really grateful for this conversation and hope it reaches the souls it is meant to.

I remember the experience of my first Akashic Records reading very clearly. As I sat in my mentor’s office and heard her describe my room, my contracts, resonant past lives I had led, I felt as though I was flying on a magic carpet ride. The precision of information that came through was uncanny, and I remember my body felt like it was vibrating for days after my reading. As I metabolized my reading in the days and weeks that followed, I found myself not only in continued awe for the remembrance of self that I experienced, but also pulled in by the mystery of the Records. I could sense the bigness of the space, and the bigness of my connection with it, even if I didn’t have words to describe it all. There was something magnetic and undeniable about my need to explore it all. The mystery was clear and I needed more.

After a few years of dedicated study under my mentor and many subsequent revisitations to the Records, another thought then dropped in: Could I be an Akashic Records reader? Beyond logic, I placed that question on my altar and there it sat for years, beckoning me forward to dance with the mystery. All this time, I knew that I knew something- but didn’t quite know how to articulate it, as though a subtle golden thread was pulling me towards something ancient and true.

Years later, here I am as an Akashic Records reader with hundreds of clients across the world, and I am deeply grateful to my past self for allowing mystery to inhabit so much of my field. This moment is just one of many in which my encounter with mystery and my ability to follow it has led me towards a more aligned destiny. I find these moments so thrilling to think about. Moments in which we encounter mystery as a sign of something meant for us. Mystery as compass.

A few weeks ago, I did a reading for a client who has a cosmic background, meaning she has had lives on other planets within the universe besides Earth. This client has far more cosmic lifetimes than lives on Earth, and at one point her guides brought us to her home planet where she has spent most of her lifetimes between her Earthly incarnations. They showed us this gorgeous deep blue planet whose soil felt like kinetic sand. They then showed these luminous blue beings that lived on the planet laying down within that sand, and the sand engulfing them whole. The moment that they laid down in the sand, the sand itself would begin to cover their body and pull them down into the ground, until all you could see was flat land- as though they had never been there in the first place. This client’s guides explained to me that when this planet’s sand subsumes its beings, the beings lay in the color of the planet for a long time. The rest and oneness with color is deeply nourishing and vitalizing for these beings, who are a source of coherence for the rest of the universe. These beings are building oneness and coherence through rest, which allows for a state of reception- also enabling these beings to be highly creative beings in future lifetimes.

Her guides then took us to another planet where she had spent time, and the reading went on…

After the reading, my client and I sat for a few extra minutes to process all that had come through. She shared with me that one of her most vivid memories from her childhood was that when she would get into a sandbox, she would experience this deep urge to lay down in the sand and feel it cover her body completely. It felt deeply comforting to her, as though it were home. She would try to do it, but would never completely be able to get to that point of total engulfed release within the sand that she wanted to within herself. At one point, she confided in some of her friends from elementary school about this desire of hers, and they made fun of her. So she let it go, and stopped tracking this ongoing deep yearning for the sand that would consume her whole.

In a recent medicine journey she had, this remembrance of the sand and her desire for it had come up for her. She thought- perhaps this is coming up again because this is a childhood trauma? Perhaps this experience held memories that were painful for her, and now they needed to resurface? She couldn’t quite make sense of it.

Then, our reading happened; she looked at me with big eyes filled with wonder and countless questions: could these sand dreams of childhood be connected to an ancient remembrance of her home planet?

This reminds me of the time I read for a first-time client, and within their past life review we were shown a life in which she lived in Indonesia and dyed fabric using an intricate process that resulted in these multi-colored designs used across many villages. After the reading, this client shared with me that when she was in middle school, she attended a summer camp during which she went to a workshop to learn how to do Batik fabric dying. Without the instructor showing or telling her how to do it, she immediately began the process as though she had done it thousands of times before to the amazement of everyone around her. She went on to become a teacher of this fabric dying art form- which, I later learned via a google search that revealed fabric of the exact same designs as I had seen in her reading- originated in Indonesia.

This also reminds me of yet another first-time client who, after her first reading, shared with me that everything within her Akashic room- the exact setting, the other figures present within the room, and the ceremony they were holding for her within the room- as I described them exactly matched a dream she had had one year previously. The dream had startled her and stuck with her, as she could feel the significance of it but couldn’t make sense of its many pieces. She even brought the dream to her therapist to try to make sense of it, but didn’t leave their conversation satisfied with the meaning. Still her dream remained a mystery.. until our reading, in which her Akashic room was an exact replay of that dream, and within it her guides sharing deep descriptions of how and why this very room was the space of her soul and its sacred evolution.

There is the mystery of the unknown, and then there is the mystery of what you know, but you don’t know yet how you know it. This mystery is not only found within an Akashic Records reading; it lives within all of us. This mystery exists within the moments when you meet a person, encounter a place, receive a thought, or witness an experience and your internal tuning fork goes off. These experiences, people, places, or knowings are meant for you in a way that you don’t yet understand. A signpost along the road of sacred unfolding. This mystery lives within the memories that still hold curiosity for you, the pieces you keep circling back to, the whispers that live deep within. The resonance of mystery has a way of continuing to vibrate until our attention is put where the mystery wants it to be- in sacred timing, always.

As I sit with this experience and so many others that have occurred within clients’ readings, I want to deeply honor the parts of our paths that are deeply imbued with the mystery. The parts that still don’t quite make sense, the parts that strike us as something a bit more than curious. Yes, sometimes the mystery is here to humble us, to remind us of the necessity of surrender, to return to a place of flow with life and her many forces. And sometimes I think mystery is also here to constellate us with pieces of ourselves that we’ve left behind, now asking to come back online. When the mystery beckons to us, revisits us with her questions and knowings, I wonder: what can be gained by listening and staying with her as long as we can?

Just over a month ago, a sweet mama bird decided that the Christmas wreath I had hung for too long on the brick wall outside of our front door was the perfect spot for her nest. She wove sticks and string, forming a masterpiece fit for her four sky-blue eggs that appeared within a few weeks of the nest being created.

I couldn’t believe this magic. Four eggs? A mama bird? All literally outside of our front door? My kids nicknamed the mama Phoebe, and she quickly became a part of our daily routines. Every time we would enter and exit our home, Phoebe would quickly fly away to one of the mature trees across the street from our house- just far enough to keep an eye on us in our comings and goings before she could return as quickly as possible to guard her nest. Her departure meant we could nab a peek into the wreath to catch a glimpse of her precious eggs. One, two, three, four- yep, all there. What a miracle.

Just last week, a morning glimpse into the nest revealed: feathers! Little pink bodies! Baby birds! And of course, mama Phoebe was devotedly resting upon them, only occasionally leaving the nest to fetch food and then return to share it with her hungry babes.

We were overflowing with love and awe for these four sweet miracles outside our doorstep, all stewarded by devoted mama Phoebe.

A couple days after the babies’ birth, I emerged from the basement of our home after a few hours of doing readings. My husband and two youngest kids were playing in the backyard. Upon making eye contact with my husband, he held my gaze and softly said, “Phoebe’s gone.” What? Surely I misunderstood. As my face conveyed my confusion, my husband added in a gentle but clear voice, “The babies and Phoebe are all gone. The nest is empty.”

As though my speed could reverse the truth of the moment, I rushed over to the nest and sure enough- nothing was inside. The nest was perfectly intact, the ground below revealing zero clues- no feathers, no blood, no signs of scuffle. I surveyed the brick around the nest- could an animal have climbed up here and taken the babies? I couldn’t find a single scratch mark on the brick. Phoebe and her little ones had been there this morning- and now, just a few hours later, they were nowhere to be found.

Where had Phoebe and her babies gone?

I returned to my husband and kids, my mind stunned, my heart deeply saddened. What could have transpired that would have led to Phoebe and her babies no longer being in the nest? My mind began to invent storyline after storyline, some more believable than others. Perhaps a bluejay got to the babies while Phoebe was out finding their morning food. Or perhaps Phoebe and her male partner had co-constructed another nest farther away from prying human eyes and then had co-transported the babies there to safety. (I know, I know… but my mama heart couldn’t bear thinking of those sweet babies not alive.)

The kids were rightfully upset. So many questions were sent our way. We faced the choice that all parents face time and again- how much reality do we choose to share with our children right now? In general we choose to err on the side of truthfulness, and thus chose to tell them that we didn’t quite know what happened, but we hoped that Phoebe had taken her babies to a more private nest. Truth tempered by optimism.

Life of course has continued, but each time I pass Phoebe’s empty nest I cast my eyes to the sky, as though I’m going to see her flying there as an answer in plain sight. And as my eyes take in the blue sky with no outline of Phoebe, I am left pondering the role of mystery in our lives.

A few weeks ago, I was on a phone call with my mentor, discussing a soul with whom I work. This person is a deep spiritual seeker that also struggles with being here on Earth. She gets easily despondent at the state of things, the state of humans: how distracted we are, how we choose the shallows over the depths, how few helpers there truly are. She has depth of perception that sometimes veers on seeing too much- a burden too heavy for one individual. “There is a cost to knowing too much,” my mentor said. “Sometimes it actually supports us to stop investigating and instead to find the beauty in the mystery.”

Her words have been ringing in my head ever since. In my work as an Akashic Records reader, I am tasked to dig deep into my clients’ records to answer their sacred questions. This means a chief part of my role is to craft better questions, to find the question behind my client’s question, to not stop looking until I find a satisfactory answer. I get to be a dedicated detective within a swirling realm of insight.

And- many times in sessions when I’ve asked my clients’ questions, the guides have gotten quiet. The records have been quite clear that this question is not to be answered, not today, and perhaps not ever. I then must share with my client that this question and their seeking around it might be a part of the mystery. Perhaps it will be knowable one day, and perhaps not- in which case mystery becomes the teacher.

When I personally work with mystery as a teacher- when I acknowledge that not only can I not understand the totality of a thing, but that in fact it benefits me to not know it all- I can feel my breath deepen and my shoulders soften. This is the land of trust, the land of surrender. The land in which I acknowledge in embodied form that I am a speck of sand in the wide spans of the universal beach- a mere morsel amidst multitudes. It is not my job to understand and hold totality. In these moments, I see how mystery invites me to loosen my grip and trust in the sacred benevolent order of all.

Mystery seems to invite a dance, a softening, a new form of being and knowing. A turning away from a knowable story and a turning towards the sacred mysterious web of existence.

Sweet Phoebe, thank you for choosing our home for the period of time that you did. Thank you for blessing my family with the gift of awe, for the small window into the miracle of life that we gained through your and your babies’ presence. May your memory always serve as a reminder of the sacred mystery of life.

When I first enter this this room, I immediately recognize that I am submerged in sparkly water. All around me, there are countless glowing luminescent energies- almost like the water is filled with golden mermaid fairies amidst golden glitter. This body of water is calm but vast, and I sense that we are in the ocean. As I continue to take in the scene around me, I see my client swim ahead of me- she is proceeding quickly through the water, her breaststroke strong and fluid. Interesting, I think. I’ve not yet had a client move ahead of me within their Akashic room. This makes me smile. I sense that this client holds deep sovereignty of self within her, a strong sense of internal direction, and a desire and capacity to move forward on her own.

I follow my client, and see that she has already emerged on the beach that borders the ocean, and is drying herself off with a towel. I laugh, because she’s showing me the way. She is a capable seeker, strong of body, mind, and spirit. Her giftedness reflected on many levels.

The beach is beautiful and tiny, a sacred little cove of sand adjacent to the large stretch of ocean ahead of us. When water is represented within the records, it usually represents Great Spirit or the Great Mystery- and this swimming journey through the Great Mystery feels joyful, purposeful, clear, filled with magic. The mystery is available and inviting of exploration for a capable and eager spirit adventurer.

Once this client and I begin to get to know each other more, she shares with me that as a child, her parents had a house on a beach close to the ocean. She would often swim in the waters at night and there were bioluminescent energies floating in the water that she found to be fascinating. After our first reading, she also sent me a picture of this sacred beach from her childhood that she still frequents now as an adult, and sure enough- the beach looks exactly as it did in her room.

Within a future reading, we explored her connection to this sacred land and discovered a lifetime as an indigenous person to this land, marked by sacred stewardship and protection of the land and its surrounding field. We were both so touched to see that her connection with the land continues to be a part of her world today.

This beautiful soul is here on a mission of bringing depth of coherence triangulated between our bodies, the Earth, and the cosmos. It has been such a gift to work with her and have so many conversations anchored on her beach next to her sacred glittering waters.

And who is the face of this TedTalk? A grandmother, her wrinkled face speckled in gold.

Of course. Why might ChatGPT and its supporting storytelling artists choose the face of the grandmother for its first TedTalk broadcast to humanity? I would guess because it is quite clear that humans are starving for elders. Starving for guidance, for anchored and embodied wisdom, for a lighthouse of discernment and beauty, for others who have figured out how to build a life of grounded meaning and truth in transitional times of rapid change. Those who have consciously walked their own paths, have let themselves be initiated by the fires of life, and now stand by the gates of wisdom in stewardship of the generations to come.

Where are our elders? How are elders made? What role does culture play in stewarding our connection to our own internal wisdom, and how does this connect to the presence or absence of elders today?

Lately in my Akashic Records reading practice, I have had several readings focused on elderhood. One of my clients is a mother of three, and now all of her children are grown, out of the house, living their own distinct lives. She loves them, is so proud of them, very consciously understands she did a wonderful job as their mother; she also grieves. She grieves that they don’t stop by as often as she’d like, being the one that they would always call when things go awry, the chaos and swirl of their activity organizing her days. And she is examining her current stage of life, wanting it to still be filled with purpose, service, joy. What can that look like now?

I feel this in my mother heart as I listen to her. I have three little children whose beautiful chaos organize my days, too. I know that one day I, as well, will have to confront a quieter home and days that are just mine to fill.

So, we go to her records to see what highest wisdom her guides have to shed upon this new chapter in which she resides. What can be shown to her to help her more deeply integrate the passed era of her children being young an under her wings, and what is the highest insight we can provide to her about the unfolding of this next chapter, of open horizons, along her highest timeline?

They take me to a past life of hers, an indigenous life in northern Argentina. Her tribal center is based in the forest, and she’s a 35-year old mother with 5 children. Her oldest child is 15 years old, and her youngest is 4 years old, the rest smattered in between. They open us up in a scene of my client standing on a boulder above the forest in the early morning, a routine she has before all of her children wake up. She comes to this boulder to greet the day, and to have some quiet to herself, a moment of coherence and light.

They fast forward us to a scene later that day, in which her oldest son is about to embark on his initiation ceremony into manhood. He and 5 other young men from the tribe will be going out into the wilderness beyond the tribal boundaries for two nights on their own, and then will return to the tribe to share what they learned, what they were shown in their time away, as a part of the ceremony of welcoming them into manhood.

The morning of his ceremony, he has been instructed that he is not allowed to talk to anyone in his family. He needs to be deeply within himself, not tethered to others, as he is about to walk into an experience that requires him to see who he is as a man. He is required to walk away before he can return anew.

My client within this scene lets her son walk away, even though her heart beats loudly for him. She honors his moment, even though inside she wishes she could keep him close.

Two days pass, and the whole tribe gathers to greet the returning men from their days and nights away. There is ceremony to how they will be greeted- the young men, as they return from the bush, will first be greeted by a circle of elder men. Then they will be greeted by a circle of fathers. Then they will be greeted by a circle of young men. They are then allowed to take their seat around a ceremonial bonfire, are honored within a ceremony that the whole tribe witnesses, and then they can return to hug their individual family members. They are first met by circles of men to reinforce where within the circle of men they now reside.

When my client and her son are finally allowed to embrace, they are both shaking. They allow their foreheads to meet, the tribal custom to say thank you. In this moment, they both get to meet again, new versions of each of them present as a result of an immense tribal tradition that stewards the individual and collective becoming of the group.

The guides then fast-forward us about 15 years, to a moment in which her youngest daughter has just gotten married. My client is now a mother with no children left in her hut. And at this moment, the tribe holds a ceremony for her, to honor her as a mother and a woman who has contributed her whole heart to the becoming of her children. She is first surrounded by a circle of her children, their spouses, and their children, then by a circle of other mothers, and then by a circle of the elder women. They place a crown made of leaves and branches on her head, and each member of the tribe walks by her wearing this crown, touching her shoulder as they pass. In this touch of the shoulder, they are communicating- thank you for all you have given, and now is your time to rest.

This does not mean it is her time to wither away. In fact- quite the opposite. Now she has earned her position as the matriarch, the elder, the one who wears the crown. Now she gets to enjoy, to observe, to witness, to hold the wisdom when it is called for.

Tears were streaming down my face as I saw all of this. Tears not just for my client, but for all of us. Because in witnessing this ceremony, I see how much we are unheld and unstewarded in our current culture. How unguarded the threshold moments of our lives can be, how unformed the circle. How our own connection to our power, our purpose, our wisdom is very much tied to the presence or lack of presence of these circles and ceremonies.

While the grief that resides in my chest when thinking of the vacuum of ceremony is real, I also am deeply grateful to receive insight on what has existed before that once held humanity in true circle. A blueprint for how to make the elders, the men, the women. We live in times of dissolution in order to allow the new to emerge. As I look forward, I think about holding and stepping into circles of women that hold others across the many thresholds in their life. I think of the importance of building the culture within which we want to live. I believe that we are charged with the return of ritual and ceremony for those that we steward and hold.

I don’t believe AI is pure evil. I think in many ways it’s here to serve and bring us home to our truest selves- by encountering it, we remember that even richer treasures of understanding and seeing exist within each of us. Emergence into deeper embodied and expressed truth through oppositional encounters.

In this case, a video of a tech-bot-generated elder can either just be consumed and internalized- or- it can catalyze us all to consider how we are making elders in our communities and how we are individually becoming the elders that will one day guard the gates.

P.S. There’s so much more to say about this ChatGPT TedTalk and the relationship between AI and our sense of our own humanity. I touch on some of my thoughts in my earlier piece on AI, Our Brains, and Our Souls and look forward to being in exchange with you all about how you are witnessing the unfolding of AI impact matters of humanness and soul in your world.

The Akashic Records are a storehouse of universal consciousness, where every thought, feeling, or experience that has transpired in the history of the universe is vibrationally stored. Within the Records, each soul has its own unique space in which every thought, feeling, or experience it has had across its many incarnations is also vibrationally stored. An interesting aspect of how I read or perceive these soul spaces is they present themselves to me as rooms, and the rooms themselves take on an aspect of the soul. The room can look like a sacred space where the soul has spent time before; it can be a space the soul itself has designed to be a cozy resting spot where the soul can truly just be; it can even take on a physical metaphor for the journey a client is on within this specific incarnation, like a map of the inner psychic landscape of the soul. While exploring a client’s room only takes up 5-10 minutes of a reading, what the room represents usually holds deep significance around the process and incarnational journey of the soul. Within this series, I am sharing illustrations and write-ups of different Akashic rooms I’ve had the privilege to visit, with the shared permission of my clients.

Upon first entering my client’s room, my face is blasted with cold air. I taste salt and can sense dampness on my face- and before the visualization of his room becomes clear, I know we are close to the ocean. As his room begins to form in my mind’s eye, I can see that we are stationed along a long curving stretch of a sandy beach. The sky is slate grey, with no sign of sun. His guides tell me this is an abandoned beach, and this word choice feels important to me. I look around, and can see some mountains out in the far righthand corner of the room, and a group of sand dunes hugging the edge of the sand, marking this stretch of beach almost as a cove.

I look up towards where the curve of beach stretches up to the left, and can see a grove of evergreen trees surrounded by golden light. His guides tell me this is his enchanted forest, a place where he is destined to spend more time. But for now, he must reside along his path on the beach. My face turns towards the sky that hovers over the ocean, and I feel as though I am talking to god, and asking many questions. Questions about the nature of existence, and why his beach has to be like this. A sense of reckoning, a sense of doing it alone.

At this point, his guides instruct me to pick up a stone and to throw it towards the water. As I do it, I witness the many ripples that echo out upon the stone’s entrance to the water. He is learning about ripple effect right now, they tell me. I can sense the depth of this learning.

His guides then tell me that six months ago, he wasn’t stationed at this point in the beach. In fact, he was much farther behind on the path, farther away from the enchanted forest. I look behind me, and can see just how far this beach’s path stretches, a path of his footprints marking his progression over time. Just the same, they say, in three months’ time he will be further along the beach, closer to the forest. I note within me how this time for this dear soul is clearly a deep and dedicated time of intense growth.

I have had the honor to sit with this client many times for readings. Each time we sit together, we are dropped in further along his path, even hovering outside of his enchanted forest at times. Just as his path along the beach evolves, so too do our conversations. We begin with conversations about lack of true presence, a feeling of wanting to escape, of solitude and the sense of being abandoned and alone. As we explore the many choices and experiences of his soul related to these feelings- both in this incarnation and others- we begin to uncover a soul curriculum organized around many questions. Just as his path takes him from the beach to his magical forest, so too does his soul’s arc take him from healing lines of toxic and immature masculinity towards embodying the healed masculine; from locating oneself in darkness to locating oneself within the light; from a solo journey of carrying the load of many to a more divinely guided journey in true communion with his guides and Gaia.

It has been a beautiful honor to watch this soul’s continued emergence into the role of protector, light worker, and healer. Immense gratitude his way for sharing his room and path with all of us.

We all have these abilities as children. And then somewhere along the way, somehow, these abilities soften. Sometimes they completely disappear.

I’ve lately been thinking back to little Ellen, back in my college days. Jean jacket, Joni Mitchell playing on loop on my iPod while I zoom around on my bicycle, ready to feel it all. I left high school having devoted an enormous amount of energy into academic mastery (any other recovering valedictorians out there?) I remember arriving at college with a deep thirst to continue mastering, but this time on my own terms. I felt enormous thrill at getting to choose my own courses and structuring my days around what I wanted to explore. Less grind, more choice. Less mastery on others’ terms, more passion on my own terms.

My summer after my freshman year, I had moved off campus into a gorgeous old home with my best friend and two other women. I was going to spend the summer taking one summer school class to satisfy (ahem- get out of the way) a science requirement within my liberal arts department. (No knocks to science here. Just wasn’t my big thing at the time.) My days were open and luxurious, a constant invitation to lean into whimsy and truth.

That summer I decided to teach myself how to play guitar.

My dad and brother played guitar growing up, and I was always envious of their abilities. But never before had I even considered that perhaps- perhaps!- I could play too. I started with “Let it Be” by the Beatles, quickly memorizing the simple chords and playing it again and again until the rhythm, the formations of my hands, the combination of voice and strumming was second-nature. How many hours did I spend at my desk next to my second-story window, looking out over the sunshine-soaked streets of Berkeley? This became my version of heaven.

Once that song became part of me, I moved onto other songs. Three Little Birds, Harvest Moon, Run-Around, Mr. Jones… Music began coursing through my blood, and then I began experimenting with my own versions of chords and progressions. Songs began to pour through me, and I began to write. Turns out, I could sing! I wrote songs about my friends, my dreams, my fears, my observations and my heartbreak of the world. I would play for hours while friends sat around me, late into the evening, feeling the energy of the muse and spirit coursing through me, through my hands, through my voice. It was all so pure, so true, so fun… magic was all around.

I am so grateful- during this nascent period of becoming- that a smartphone was not turned facedown on my desk, offering a constant invitation into portals that weren’t my own. I am so grateful for the innate protection offered by the cocoon of that time, that space, for my own meeting of myself.

My guitar-playing carried throughout the next few years of college, and defined a lot of my experience. My senior year, I accepted a job to teach 3rd grade in Phoenix, Arizona within a national teaching service program. I was thrilled and so excited to begin teaching, and very swept up in what this new chapter would ask and require of me. I knew intensity would be a big part of it. I so wanted to show up fully for these beautiful children that I would serve, and was ready to fully devote myself to this endeavor.

The alignment and green-lights of this decision were so clear, but at the time I didn’t know how to bring my commitment to the muse along with me. And so, upon moving to Phoenix, upon switching my attention to mastery-based teaching and instruction, upon (re)entering the world of rigor and ambition, my ability to catch songs left.

Just as quickly as my gift of channeling songs came in, it all went away.

Over the subsequent 20 years, I played guitar now and then for myself, for friends, even performing at a few weddings- but all the songs I played were old. I was never able to get back to a place of receiving songs.

Looking back, and especially now given my current profession as an Akashic Records reader, I can see clearly that what I was doing back in my college-guitar-playing-days was channeling. I had made an implicit agreement with the muse to devote time and attention to her, and to allow songs to come through me. Discipline, devotion, and depth were defining forces. What a gift to dance with those energies during my coming-of-age years.

Now I dance with these same energies within the Akashic Records. There are absolute parallels between channeling information from the records and channeling music (or art, or writing, or wisdom…) And yet, as I’ve gotten deeper into my own work with the Records within my client work, I’ve felt the pull within my personal life to come back into relationship with my creativity.

Recently, I recommitted myself to being a collaborator with the muse. I sat on the floor of my living room, my guitar in my lap, and quite simply said outloud: “I want to receive you again. I am open and dedicated to devoting time, space, and energy to your messages and energy.” I then imagined the top of my head opening up into a golden crown, and just sat with that image for a few moments. What a moment of simple ceremony, beauty, and truth.

Within a week of making that commitment, I wrote my first song on the guitar in 20 years. And then more songs and the seeds of others have continued pouring in. It has been so thrilling to reencounter this part of myself, to devote space and energy to creation, to field the current of creation yet again. To meet myself, yet again.

My stepping into this space of Substack, too, is a part of my commitment to myself and my channel. In doing so, I honor what wants to come through me. I too am holding deep awareness that I must create my own cocoon around myself creatively yet again. The collective noise is greater now. The noise is monetized, flashy, fast. Finding my own frequency, my own truth, my own texture is truly a discipline that I am honing with each passing day. But I am focused and deeply excited to figure out how to do this. When I’m truly in the frequency, it feels like play, like I’m a mud-splattered wild child lost in the moment of creation. It feels like magic.

When I first entered this Akashic room, I was told by my client’s guides I was in her antechamber. I had never heard that word before in a reading- an antechamber. How formal and intriguing; why must we wait here? What comes after?

As I began to take in the features of the antechamber, I noticed that there was an opening to a tunnel on the far wall- clearly we were meant to go through there. But then I took in the circle of metal coils surrounding the tunnel entrance. These coils held charge, intimidating me with their spikes. I knew immediately we were going to have to touch them, step upon them, experience their shock in our passage towards the tunnel. There was no other way.

Her guides shared with me that these are coils of initiation- bringing her into her truest state, her most authentic form, and her deepest gifts through challenge and discomfort. It was clear to me that these coils were a part of her early life, perhaps her childhood and adolescence, and perhaps even into early adulthood. What courage to have to cross over and become oneself in such a way.

We then proceeded through the tunnel- a space of becoming, a middle passage. The tunnel is tight, a bit of a squeeze, not unlike a birth canal. We army-crawled our way through, finally emerging to the other side.

As we peered out from the end of the tunnel, I saw we were suspended in the middle of the sky, surrounded by layers of beautiful white, puffy clouds. The light from the sun was bright, and the space felt angelic, spacious, and uplifting. I peered down and could see the ground; below us was Earth. I could view a mountain range, a creek, a small patch of forest. Her guides shared with me that her descent down to land was defined by coming to know the many layers of the psyche and of consciousness. As she descends through each layer of cloud closer and closer to Earth, her guides also shared that within the descent she would come into acquisition of her many gifts, as she is meant to be an energetic teacher and guide based on her expansive heart, experiences, and knowing.

Upon landing on Earth, her guides led me towards the creek- “stay close to the water,” they said. It was clear to me the depth within this client after such a long journey: her initiation by the coils brought her into truer knowing of herself, the tunnel revealed her strength and ability to move towards a new reality, and her descent through the clouds and sky granted her the gifts and knowings necessary within her path as teacher and guide.

I’ve had the privilege to read for this beautiful client many times, and interestingly, in each of our readings her guides have dropped us into different portions of her room to encounter and dive deeper into the many different portions of this incarnational journey of hers. Sometimes we have begun in the sky, orienting to her true nature as an angel desiring to serve; sometimes we have been dropped into the tunnel, meant to understand certain passageways she’s had to journey within and excavate the lessons uniquely suited for her within those experiences; sometimes we have been placed by the coils, asked to look at challenging earlier experiences that she had to walk through to encounter truths of humanity and energetic realities on Earth. Each place holds sacred meaning within her path.

Deepest gratitude to this radiant soul for letting me share in her Akashic space, and in letting us all witness it too.

The first aspect of this room that came into focus for me was a staircase: the steps were all individual circles, hovering in a winding spiral, all unattached from one another. These hovering circles led to a magical balcony suspended in mid-air, surrounded by twinkling fairy lights. 

It is nighttime in the room, illuminated by the millions of stars burning in the sky alongside the brilliant light of the moon. While it is nighttime, the room does not "feel" like darkness- this is not a soul here to confront, explore, or walk within darkness. Instead, the room has a mystical exploratory feeling- like the magic of exploring a land at night, a solo journey lit up by the moon.

Looking out beyond her balcony, I see a path winding in front of me, with a lagoon to the right and a huge lake to the left. The light of the moon reflects upon the water of both. A meadow lies beyond them, and a forest borders the room. This room is expansively large, with much land beyond what I can perceive from my station.

Her guides share with me that the steps of the stairwell are unconnected, requiring us to jump from one circle to the next if we want to proceed up to the balcony. This stairwell represents her spiritual journey; it requires leaps of faith and trust in the universe, surrendering the need to know all the details in between.This journey's reward is arriving at the balcony, providing a perspective and magic that were previously inaccessible. When this soul follows their path of putting faith in spirit and the universe, they then get to reside on the balcony.

The room is defined by nighttime lit by the moon. Just as the moon sheds light on all that would otherwise be dark, this lifetime for this soul is about reconnecting with their inner navigation system and intuition. This soul is charged with stepping out of other ways of knowing- as defined by culture, lineage, or prized ways of knowing- and instead stepping into a deeper relationship with inner knowing, with intuition. 

What magic, what beauty. Many bows of gratitude to this soul for sharing their Akashic space with me and others. 🤍

My husband was sharing his admiration for Esther and her navigation of the conversation, how she established a safe and non-judgmental space for this man to discuss what a relationship with an AI-girlfriend holds for him. There is immense complexity within this landscape- what would drive a human to seek an intimate relationship with an AI chatbot-generated personality?

While I don’t know anyone personally that’s in an intimate relationship with AI, I do know that one of the most common uses of ChatGPT is therapy and know many people who rely upon AI for feedback on intimate parts of their life. The questions I hear people asking these technologies are personal, private, and based on content of the inner world, heart, and soul. I want us to ask such questions. I want us all to feel deep care. But I think we have become misdirected in where we seek wisdom and connection.

I’m not here to throw out AI from our lives. I believe it to be a tool that will remain. ChatGPT is an app on my phone, and I’ve used it occasionally to understand it and play with its many applications. And I personally feel deep tension with this technology as an explorer of the Akashic realm. I believe that the Akashic Records and our individual personal intuition systems are our most ancient technology systems. And I believe them to be diametrically opposed in composition to AI systems. The Akasha and our intuition are touchpoints with all that has been, all that is, and all that will be. AI and large language models indiscriminately pull from billions of data points of the past and across disparate contexts to generate solutions with the aim of the client experiencing immediate gratification. One takes us within; the other looks outside. One takes time; the other is almost immediate. I don’t believe they have to be in mutual exclusion, but I do believe we have to understand each for what they are in order to wisely navigate them.

To whom do we turn for wisdom of the heart and soul now? How is our own connection to our unique knowing and wisdom stewarded over time by our families, communities, and culture? How do we honor the wisdom that already exists in those we love?

I think about how the original blueprint of Earth held villages and tribes in which our elders and wise ones knew their place and we knew where to find them. We could walk down a path five huts down from our own and call upon an elder for advice. Or we would know that the tribe would soon gather in circle around the fire to hear the sage’s thoughts about the state of things. We could turn to sisters and cousins, aunties and teachers all around us for reflections and wisdom. Our cultures held us in ritual and ceremony that acknowledged us as fully sentient beings with spiritual gifts from the moment of birth and across threshold moments of life. The cycles of our life, our souls’ paths, and our relationship with wisdom were stewarded and held by community.

As our communities have become more fractured from original form, I understand that desire and pull to find wisdom and to seek knowing elsewhere. But what is the cost of bringing matters of the heart and soul to AI? To me, the impact is two-fold in terms of what it takes away from our individual capacities and also how it degrades our connection to one another.

To begin, I do not believe that AI is a sentient being. AI is not a conduit for Spirit or other beings. AI is an invention of tech firms- a business product, as Esther Perel aptly refers to it- that surveys billions of data points to generate answers that serve the individual and corporate audiences it serves. AI responses feel human because they’ve been programmed to assess your language, interests, background, and personality in order to talk to you in a way that you will receive. AI is programmed to gratify us. What is lost in our own heart and spirit’s capacity to navigate our lives when our source of wisdom is seeking to tell us what we want to hear as quickly as possible?

Brain-wise, a plentitude of neurobiology research reveals that our brain atrophies in the areas that we don’t use. If we rely exclusively on our phone’s mapping services, we start to lose the navigational prowess of our mind. If the vast majority of what we read each day is short-form social media posts of 100 words or less, then we begin to lose our brain’s capacity for filtering through long-form argument and the holding of complexity.

So- if we outsource personal questions around growth and the heart to AI, what happens to the intuition centers of our brain? And beyond that, what happens to the sovereignty of our souls? What happens to our ability to know our own center, our own sense of our personal navigation of our lives? What happens to our connection to magic and awe, to challenge and shadow, to our perception of time and the true pace of healing?

We are in an epidemic of loneliness. If we always turn to an app for insight, what happens to our relationship structures and communities? How will we still need each other and develop each others’ own keen sense of wisdom?

These are the questions I ask myself daily. And- I believe that our sense of embodied humanity and creation of a soul-aligned reality highly depend on wise and discerning navigation of these business products.

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