Marie Manuchehri Transcript

Marie Manuchehri Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Marie Manuchehri. I first discovered Marie when I was listening to one of Tami Simon’s interviews, her Insights at the Edge series. I really liked what I heard and so I wanted to interview Marie. I’ve listened to her audio book and together my wife and I came up with a whole list of questions because the topic happens to fascinate us, which is spirit guides or guardian angels maybe as they’re sometimes called. Before Marie introduces herself more and we really get talking, I just wanted to put this in the context of the series in general that we’re doing here, Buddha at the Gas Pump, because some people are very strictly non-dual in their orientation and they feel that anything other than direct realization of the Self and its pure nature is a distraction or a tangent and one can get lost in all kinds of details that won’t really be conducive to one’s overall evolution toward enlightenment. Other people are totally into those sorts of details and they may be very much into New Age things and channeling and guardian angels and all that stuff, Archangel Gabriel. And the two camps don’t often see eye to eye. The non-dualists tend to be critical of that stuff and I don’t know how the New Agey types feel about the non-dual folks, but my attitude is that, sure, there’s this non-dual basis of creation, pure universal consciousness, but there’s a vast range of relative realities between that and the ordinary level of perception that most people operate in. In the course of one’s spiritual growth, many people begin to become aware of that range and often wonder what it’s all about. “I’m seeing beings around people, what does that mean? What do they want with me?” And so I think it’s part of the package of really understanding the spirituality in general and it’s interesting to talk to somebody who is quite familiar with it, so that’s why I invited Marie. So welcome, Marie.

Marie: Thank you so much for having me on your program. I appreciate it.

Rick: So Marie, introduce yourself. You were an oncology nurse living a fairly ordinary life and then things began to change for you.

Marie: Yeah. I would say my childhood wasn’t very ordinary. My family is very holistic. My mother didn’t even take us to regular physicians unless she had to for vaccinations or if we fractured an arm. I have four siblings and we’re all a year apart. So I was raised with a lot of awareness, if you will, about diet and nutrition. My parents left the Catholic Church when I was seven. My mom got very angry at Catholicism and kind of became an atheist for about eight months, I think it was. And then she started to study spirituality. So not only was the home full of holistic awareness, but a lot of books on spirituality. So I read things like “Seth Speaks” when I was 11 or 12 and the “Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East”. I love that series. That’s a great series [by] Spalding. But of course, like most people, I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be like my family. And so when I was 20, I married an engineer and we moved to a little part of the city that I called Pleasantville, the neighborhood. I later went to nursing school, which I loved, which was so funny because my family is so holistic and organic. I really didn’t think it was a good idea for me to study nursing. But my very first days in school of studying pre-nursing and then nursing, I loved every moment of it. Of course, very nice people decide to be nurses typically. So I was surrounded by really kind individuals and I just happened to love science. So I became a nurse and I actually started having some unusual experiences while I was a nurse. I was working in a hospital and I started having tachycardia.

Rick: What’s that?

Marie: My heart was racing. I was working night shift. I was working two to three 12 hour shifts. I had three kids and I was working graveyard.

Rick: Two or three in a row?

Marie: I have three children. Oh, you mean night shifts?

Rick: Two or three shifts in a row?

Marie: Yeah. I was working two to three 12 hour night shifts. Sometimes it would be two in a row. It would just depend on how the schedule was. And the tachycardia was often. I finally approached one of the cardiologists at the hospital and said, “You know, I’m not sure. My heart’s racing all the time.” So he actually thought my mitral valve was prolapsed. He was pretty sure I was quite seriously ill. But luckily I wasn’t. He said that my biorhythms were off from working so many night shifts. So he said I need to go to days. And the only opening that there was at the time was on the oncology floor, which was even further away from my roots and not at all what I thought that I would enjoy, you know, giving some of the strongest chemicals to human beings when I’m eating organic food at home. But to my delight, I absolutely loved it. There’s something about experiencing people in transformation, you know, and lots of things can create a transformation for someone. It could be a health issue. It could be money problems. It could be relationship issues. Of course, it doesn’t have to be something negative, but human beings tend to wait till something kicks them in the backside before they actually start to question things or move inward and start to really create a relationship with themselves. So I think I have a great love for transformative experiences. But it was during my time on the oncology floor that I began to see and hear energy, which I had had a few experiences in my life, but there was usually decades in between them. I would have an unusual experience, which I think is kind of normal for most people to have a moment in life where you go, “Wow, what was that?” But when I started working on the oncology floor, they were happening all the time, constantly.

Rick: Like what kind of experiences?

Marie: Well, one of the first ones was that my patient’s organs began to talk to me. So I would be at the bedside nursing someone and all of a sudden their liver would be having a conversation with me about the meds that were given them and why they actually got sick, what was the emotional reason behind their illness.

Rick: It’s funny, there’s a street in Detroit called … they pronounce it “liver noise,” although it should be pronounced “liver-noir,” you know?

Marie: Wow.

Rick: The comedian Steve Allen once asked, “What kind of noise does a liver make?”

Marie: Right? Well, actually when a liver is not happy, it’s angry. And when we look at acupuncture, acupuncturists believe that the liver is where we repress the most amount of anger. I have since learned that men typically repress anger in their chest and women in their reproductive organs, and then when we reach a certain boiling point to that, then it goes to the liver. So that would be one of the things that would happen. Another thing would be that I had started meditating because a year after I was on the oncology floor, my tachycardia came back. I’d already had tons of workup and I knew I wasn’t sick, but I knew I was stressed, so I actually joined three meditation groups because I tried to meditate on my own and I’m still not very good at it. So I joined these three groups and in one of the groups, I actually visualized this beautiful blue ball spinning in my abdomen. It was as if a camera had come out of my forehead and dropped past my esophagus and past my aorta and I was literally in my pelvic cavity and I could see my ovaries and I could see my aorta. I could see blood flushing through my body, but I thought, “Well, I’m in a meditation. I’m studying anatomy and physiology, so I’m just having a meditative moment.” And when I opened up my eyes at the end of the meditation, I could still see this camera inside my abdominal area and it lasted for about four or five months. I could be walking around the hospital floor and still have this interesting experience inside my body.

Rick: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Yoga Sutras, but it’s written in an ancient book by a sage named Patanjali and he outlines all these abilities or siddhis, he calls them, which may develop at a certain stage of one’s growth. One of them is knowledge of the bodily systems that you actually

Marie: Wow.

Rick: Just what you’re describing, that you actually perceive what’s going on in your body.

Marie: Wow. You know, I have not heard of that, no. Wow, that sounds amazing. Another thing that happened for months on end is I would see these beautiful golden pyramids about an inch in diameter spinning all around me. So they were really thick, maybe over a hundred of them. And they would have a humming sound. When I would go to bed at night, I would close my eyes and wonder would the pyramids disappear when I wake up in the morning. So before I would open my eyes in the morning, I could hear their hum and then I would know the pyramids were there. And while all of this was happening, I didn’t tell my husband. I told the meditation groups and they thought it was very cool. Some people were wishing it was happening to them. But I felt, you know, there was a part of me wondering, did I have a brain tumor? Was it pushing on my pituitary gland? Was something happening to me? But at the same time I was in so much joy. I was having such a wonderful time that I didn’t care. I felt like I was having this self-discovery of my own being. I wasn’t taking care of anyone else during those moments. I was really with myself. But ultimately I decided to tell my supervisor at work. I was a charge nurse most days and I was really concerned that I’d be watching the blue ball or the spinning pyramids and someone would crash on our floor. The charge nurse’s job is to call the code team, make sure the crash cart gets there, all of those things. I was really concerned that I would be distracted. So I truly thought that she would suspend me because that’s what I would have done, and order a psyche eval, which I was terrified of because our resident psychologist’s name was Dr. Sandman. I was just really scared that I was going to be in a one flew over the cuckoo’s nest kind of a situation. But luckily to my delight and shock, she told me that she thought I was seeing energy and I needed to start laying my hands on our patients. She mentioned things like Healing Touch and chakras, which I had never studied energy medicine. It took me about three days, but three days later I picked the healthiest person on the floor, which of course now I think is hysterical. I had touched hundreds of patients with my stethoscope and with my hands to put IVs in and to move tubing and all kinds of interesting things like that. But to really lay hands on someone with an intention of just being present with them is a very different experience. So I picked the healthiest person on the floor. She actually wasn’t even an oncology patient. She was an overflow from the surgical unit. As soon as I did, as soon as I laid hands on her, I heard this really high pitched harp sound, which was very familiar to me, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. In fact, I started to cry right away and I was kind of embarrassed. I opened up my eyes to look at the patient because I thought, I’m crying. She doesn’t know who I am. She wasn’t really my patient, but when I first walked into her room, she looked a little fearful like maybe I was going to probe her with something. But then when I asked if I could lay hands on her, she softened her face and said “yes.” And so I opened up my eyes to look at her and she was crying too. It was a pretty amazing experience. During the half an hour that we spent together, I actually had visualization of her internal organs like I had of myself. And I began to see these beautiful orbs of light show up inside of her body, which I later discovered were the chakra system. So that was my introduction, if you will, my multi-sensory opening happened in one of the oddest places in the world, an oncology floor in Seattle.

Rick: Then it kept unfolding from there. So that was internal organs. So when did spirit guides come into the picture?

Marie: Well, shortly after that, I kept hearing auditory sounds from men and women who I later determined were my spirit guides. I’d never studied anything such as guides. I really believe personally that everything in the universe is alive with energy and creation and God’s source. The universe is communicating to us all the time, just like our bodies communicate to us all the time. I think that different people have different comfort levels about what feels comfortable for them and how they may accept that type of communication. I happen to be in love with the human race. I am. I’m deeply in love with humanity. And so I have spirit guides that show up to me that look like humans. It started right after that. They started to talk to me about how I needed to communicate the experiences I was having at the bedside with the patients, like when someone’s body part was talking to me or expressing to me their history. I would be standing at someone’s bedside, and I would hear information and start to see images of their childhood. And so I would hear a voice that said, “Tell them. Tell them.” And I would be arguing with this voice, saying, “I’m not going to tell them.” I was already really uncomfortable. I would close the door very tightly, kind of worried that a physician was going to walk in and wonder what I was doing when I didn’t even know what I was doing. But I began to listen to the voices, and I began to follow what they said. Every time I did, more wonderful things happened. Nothing bad happened. People would start crying. They would start to feel more relaxed. Physicians started to ask me questions. Physicians then began to order me to work on their patients, which was kind of funny, to lay hands on them. At one point, the home I was living in, I was meditating, and I heard this woman’s voice that said, kind of showed me images, like snapshots, of if I were to walk from the couch to the den, which was my former husband’s workout room, was full of equipment and weights. So I got up and started following the images and opened the door. And then I heard that I needed to clean out this room, paint the ceiling, and make it a healing room. I thought, “Well, there’s no way he’s going to move his stuff out of this room.” And we didn’t have another room in the house where he could move his weights. There was this back and forth where I wouldn’t really – I would listen to the voices, but I was very hesitant. I’m kind of a skeptic, which I think is a healthy perception to have. So I asked him, “Could you move your stuff out of the den?” Within two hours, he moved everything into the garage. No arguments, no discussion. I really think that guides or beings who are devoted to the evolution of the human species, just like we have nurses and doctors and lawyers – well, lawyers who are, maybe let’s say, do more of a humanitarian approach on the planet – that they are invested in the human consciousness or growth and expansion, where there are many beings who live in other dimensions who are also devoted to the evolution of the human species. Because in reality, we’re all one. So if we start evolving and waking up and finding ways to delight ourselves and to be fulfilled and heighten our frequency and our vibration, of course it helps all of the cosmos and all the beings who live throughout all the universes.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which says that – it uses the word “gods,” but it has this whole thing about, “You support the gods and they support you.” Like, there’s this mutually supportive relationship.

Marie: Yeah, that’s how I feel, and that’s what was described to me, that human beings really need guidance, whether it comes from a tree or a kitty cat or some inanimate object, the stars. There’s a veil that surrounds the Earth plane, and as we become more conscious, it dissipates and thins for the individual. I actually think that right now the human race is actually increasing their frequency so much that the veil is thinning for all of us, which is quite beautiful.

Rick: I like that metaphor of a veil too, because I’ve sometimes made the point on this show that maybe 2,000 years ago the veil was more like a thick curtain, you know, and it was really hard to get through, and you had to be somebody like the Buddha to punch your way through this thick curtain. But these days it’s much more diaphanous, you know, and so people are waking up right and left.

Marie: I think your analogy is absolutely 100% accurate. I also think the Earth was created to be the time-space reality that is unique from other time-space realities, where it’s physical, there’s a lot of contrast here, but for some reason, I think over the last few years the vibration has increased so much that, yes, the veil is getting thinner and thinner and thinner, which is quite amazing for all of us, because it’s such a comfort when we can listen or understand the guidance, the awareness that is there for all of us. I think it’s a great comfort.

Rick: Yeah. So, spirit guides, let’s dwell a bit more on what they are. Would you say they’re the same as guardian angels?

Marie: I think they’re different than guardian angels, but I mean, I can’t say I know for sure. I can only express my own perception. I think that spirit guides are, I think we choose guides before we come here. I think that coming to Earth is a conscious decision, and I think we spend a fair amount of time, like maybe an average of four human years, you know, figuring out what it is that we want to learn, what kind of, what century we want to be a part of, what gender. I think we even pick our parents before we come here, or parental units that have a certain type of personality that will either push our buttons so that we will do inner work that we forget about when we get here. You know, most people don’t remember their past lives, so we need to have something that reminds us of what it is we want to work on. So, I think we even choose our spirit guides, and they’re beings who we believe who are more evolved than we are, and they have had to, what I believe, to have experienced a lifetime on Earth. Because, you know, I believe we have free will, so we can evolve in any part of the universes that we choose to. I believe in that. And so we pick these individuals, and they know everything about us. I believe they study our previous lifetimes, and they know a lot about who we are. I also don’t believe that they are part of, like maybe our familiar line, because I think they have to be very, very neutral.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to ask you that, because you watch shows on TV like the Long Island Medium, you know, Teresa Caputo, who is an amazing psychic.

Marie: Yeah, amazing.

Rick: And she’s mostly dealing with relatives who have passed over, and those relatives seem to have a fatherly or motherly concern for the person that’s still on the Earth, and they’re helping them out and loving them and guiding them and all. But you’re saying, you just said that probably those aren’t spirit guides because of the familial connection.

Marie: Yeah. I think that, you know, really, even when we’re in that place where we feel most guided, and we can sense our guidance, whether we see it, hear it, or feel it, we are neutral. There’s this neutralness that happens when we’re in that high vibrational place where we can trust the guidance, and it’s not a desperation like a family member would have. So yeah, I don’t think our family is part of our guidance system, because they’re too perhaps connected to their great-grandmother or something of that nature that could be limiting for us.

Rick: Yeah. So you said a minute ago that guardian angels and spirit guides would be two different things. How would you distinguish them?

Marie: I think guardian angels are there, and not that spirit guides aren’t there for what I’m about to say as well, but I think that guardian angels probably haven’t had a time on Earth. I think they’re a different species. At least this is what my perception tells me. They’re really here to help the human race, especially when they’re in very, very difficult and challenging times. They hold this high, high frequency of compassion, and they can help anyone at any time there. It’s almost like their ability to be in multiple places at any time is really expansive. That could be true of spirit guides as well, but I think spirit guides are more like very evolved parents who don’t have a lot of baggage, and guardian angels come when we have kind of desperate times.

Rick: Yeah, kind of like avatars. You know what avatars are?

Marie: You mean like from the movie?

Rick: Well, no, it’s a Sanskrit word which the movie got the word from, but it means like Lord Krishna or somebody was said to be an avatar. It’s like God takes a human form in desperate times in order to achieve a particular project or facilitate something that needs that divine intervention in order to take place.

Marie: Yes, I would agree.

Rick: Now I get the impression from listening to you in previous recordings that I’ve listened to also that there seem to be a great many spirit guides, like people may have a minimum of three around them and sometimes many more, so it would seem from that that either there are a heck of a lot more spirit guides than there are people, it’s like heavily populated in that dimension, or the spirit guides are multitasking, you know, that one guide might be assigned to ten people or something. So how does that work?

Marie: I mean, I haven’t even thought about that, but that certainly would make sense. I believe that we each have a primary guide who doesn’t leave our side, and I do believe our other guides can come and go, and I always have this image that, you know, because we have free will, a human being, once a being has come into human form, they may have had an idea of what they wanted to experience and made some plans before they incarnated, but again, we have free will. Let’s say a soul said when I come off into spirit human form, when I kind of just associate in a way and start to have this different kind of educational experience, and also joyful experience hopefully, that maybe that part of that soul said, you know, I’m not going to have any kids. Then, you know, through the incarnation, they go, you know, I really want to have children. And because we have free will, anything could change at any moment. So several spirit guides go to a place that I call like the round table and have this negotiation. Okay, we need some kids, you know, what does this person need to learn from this child experience? What children would do well, or what souls would do well in this family group? And so I think there is that back and forth when we make different choices. I also think when people have an opening or awareness, they may attract new guides to them that could be permanent, but certainly temporarily. I know when I opened up and I started to gain insights into the human anatomy from an energy medicine perspective, at one time I had 27 guides. When I would start to work on people and lay hands on them when I started a business, I would have that many in the room for about two years. And they told me they were teaching me information and more insight into what energy medicine meant and how I could help human beings from that perception.

Rick: So it’s sort of almost like a system upgrade. If you make more progress than the original plan for your life, then you know, then they have to bring in reinforcements or there’s a changing of the guard, so to speak, where you know, you’re going to get new specialists coming in to help with the new situation.

Marie: Absolutely. Because I had an opportunity when I was 15. I could have seen someone who was an energy worker. I was actually a patient of a chiropractor and he had an energy worker in his practice. At that time I didn’t know anything about it. Just like when I was for me to go see this woman and I actually turned it down. So, you know, we have a lot of opportunities in this wonderful earth realm and sometimes we don’t always listen to the opportunities or pay attention.

Rick: Yeah. One thing I just want to interject is that you keep saying, “Well, I think this and I think that.” I get the impression, and it’s funny because I agree with everything you’re saying, but how do I know this stuff? I mean, I don’t have any clear perception of it, but I sense that obviously your perception of it is a lot more detailed and clear than mine is by a long shot. But I just kind of want to emphasize to the listener that my opinion is that you’re speaking from your personal experience rather than just philosophical speculation or stuff you’ve read in books. You’re getting a lot of intuitive knowledge about how all this works.

Marie: Yeah, I’m highly intuitive. I’ve had a full-time practice for 15 years helping people intuitively, not just health issues, but all kinds of issues. And I use it every day in my own life. But I don’t believe that I have all the answers or that my answers are the only way. I believe we’re unique and we’re individuals and how we perceive life is perfect. If my way is helpful, I think that’s wonderful, but I don’t think it’s the only way.

Rick: One thing that I found a little puzzling in Tammy Simon’s interview with you is that you mentioned, I don’t know whether it was her spirit guides or somebody else’s you were referring to, but you said there were 74 of them there. Maybe it was Tammy’s. If I were in a room and there were 74 actual human beings around, it would take me quite a while to count them. I’d have to check them off on a list, “Okay, you get over there now so I don’t count you twice.” So how in the world did you know just like that, that there were 74 around Tammy?

Marie: I’m highly intuitive. So I just look at someone and I know things about them. And so I looked at her. I don’t even remember the interview actually. I have one of these interesting things that happens to me when I’m in an intuitive reading. When I’m done, I don’t remember most of what happens. Even with my clients, I don’t take an intake form because I don’t want to know anything about them before I see them. So when they come back to see me, which could take a year or whatnot before I see them again, I’m not going to remember anything about them until we start to have a conversation. But yeah, I looked at Tammy because now I’m plugging into that moment. And I saw all these beings around her and I heard 74. So that’s how I knew.

Rick: I see. You heard a number.

Marie: Yeah, I heard a number, yes.

Rick: Okay. So you’ve been talking to me for half an hour. Is there anything you care to divulge about me that’s suitable for public consumption?

Marie: If you want me to, I’m happy to.

Rick: If you want.

Marie: You have a lot of spirit guides around you. I would say probably about 30 or maybe a few more. Just remember, the physical realm is limiting to us. We have walls and doors that other dimensions don’t. So they don’t have to be all crowded around you around the computer. They can seep past the walls and doors. They’re not limited by physical space. I will say that since we connected, I keep hearing things about your mother. I don’t know what they are exactly. I just know that there’s something deep about your relationship with your mother that is pretty intense. I know that.

Rick: I can tell you. I was pretty close to my mother and she loved me very much. She died maybe over 20 years ago, 25 years ago of ovarian cancer. But she had a bit of a rough life. My father was an alcoholic and he was very abusive, although he was wonderful in his own regard. I could sing his praises. But she ended up in mental hospitals for most of my teen years and tried to commit suicide three times. Then eventually I more or less strong-armed her into learning meditation. At first it didn’t take, but then at a certain point it took and she really got into it. And she came over to Switzerland and spent nine months around Maharishi with me and everything. And it really had a transformative effect on her. So I had this burning desire to somehow get her out of this horrible situation that she was in. I was very gratified when she really blossomed like that.

Marie: Wow. What a beautiful story.

Rick: And I’m sure she’d be very proud of me.

Marie: She is.

Rick: What I’m doing now. She was always one of my biggest fans.

Marie: Of course.

Rick: Mothers are like that.

Marie: I know, right? Well, and I think mothers have a lot of compassion. So what happened as soon as I saw you, I could feel one of your deepest wounds, you know, because of all, and I didn’t know the story behind it if I had plugged in a little bit more, I could have, but out of respect, you know, when I’m in a public place or things of that nature, I do my best not to get too involved with people’s energy. Plus I would never be able to order the right coffee when I’m, although I don’t drink coffee, the right tea when I was at Starbucks or I would buy the wrong food if I was at Safeway or wherever because I would be taking care of people. But yeah, I kept hearing the word “mother.” I’m also a medium, so I’m sure we’ll be chatting her up shortly. She’s a little shy, actually, which is kind of interesting.

Rick: No way. She was also a ham. I mean, she was a goofy, funny person and she could be a real cut-up, you know, sometimes.

Marie: I think when there’s a large audience, though, I think it makes her uncomfortable.

Rick: Yeah, probably would have.

Marie: Yeah, not just, you know, a few family members, it was her distraction. The humor was how she kept everybody not asking too many questions. But I think a large audience would make her uncomfortable and that is something she’s very proud of you about, you know, that it doesn’t stop you and all the potential things that could arise in an interview, you that you’re in your calling, is what she says.

Rick: I’ll tell you a funny story. One time I was lecturing up in Rochester, New York, and I had a big audience, like 500 people, and my mother was sitting in the front row. I was giving a lecture about TM, intro lecture, and somebody in the audience raised their hand and said, “What does this do for your sex life?” I said, “Well, looking at my dear mother’s face sitting in the front row, I can only say that I’m totally unqualified to answer that question.”

Marie: Wow, that’s adorable.

Rick: Cracked everybody up. Incidentally, so as we talk, you know, I wouldn’t consider it invasive if you pick up on anything about me. You know, obviously there may not be some things that are suitable for public consumption, but I’m an open book. So, most people are totally unaware of their spirit guides so is that an impediment at all to their spirit guide helping them? How can the spirit guide help them if they’re totally oblivious to their existence? What are the mechanics of that?

Marie: No, I don’t think that it is limiting. I think what’s most limiting for human beings is their addiction to their thoughts and their overthinking and their overanalyzing and their over-processing. I think that is their biggest stumbling block to living a fulfilled and wonderful life. I think that our intellect is this highly evolved perception of us and has all the answers when I think it’s actually the opposite. I think that the ego resides in the brain and it’s drenched in fear, and the more we analyze and process things, the more limited we are. I think literally by getting out of the brain and dropping into the body, you know, being present either at the solar plexus or the second chakra, which is my absolute favorite, then we can actually hear or sense guidance. It doesn’t have to be a determined spirit guide. I think that the knowingness that we have inside of us is quite profound and evolved, and I do think spirit guides do talk to us constantly. I’ll tell this one story. It’s associated to that healing room. And so all the equipment was removed, and now I found myself needing a massage table and all the trimmings. Of course, I’m a self-taught healer, and my teachers come from the non-physical realm, the majority of them. So I’m trying to talk my frugal husband at the time into all this equipment. It was like a thousand dollars, and this was like 1997. So it was kind of, we have three kids and he’s looking at me kind of oddly, like, “Why are you getting this stuff?” I don’t know. I just have to get it. He doesn’t even know yet of all the things that I’m seeing, hearing, and feeling. All of a sudden, we hear a knock at the door, and one of his friends is there. And I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m not going to get this equipment now,” because his friend was also very frugal, and they often complained about how much money their wives spent. So he comes into the house and for some weird reason, convinces my former husband into buying everything. I wanted a stationary table, so it was a little bit more expensive than a portable one. So to my delight, he orders everything. And a few months later, after I’d been doing some work at home on clients, his friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And I worked on him for several months before he had his surgery. Then I was able to go into the critical care unit post-operatively because of my nursing background and work on him right after his surgery, moments after he came out of the OR, and he had a complete recovery. I believe the surgeons did an amazing job, but I think energy medicine can be very helpful. I often think that all of our spirit guides were having conversations with each other. Even when I asked my former husband to move his stuff out of the den, I think his spirit guides were talking to him and saying, “Just move it nicely into the garage. You’re probably going to like the cool air because it’s so hot when you’re working out.” Then his friend, when he came over, I think his spirit guides were going, “You may not know this, but you’re going to get a not a fun diagnosis pretty soon, and you might need some table time on this table.” So I don’t think we have to have this awareness of communicating with our spirit guides, but I do think we have to be present and we have to feel where neutrality is. We often allow drama to guide our lives, rather than that calm, present stillness that I think is what guidance is all about.

Rick: That’s nice. You just answered the next question I was going to ask, which is that it seems like there’s this orchestration. Obviously our lives are intertwined with everyone else’s lives, and so spirit guides couldn’t be exclusively focused on us. They have to have the broader picture, right? And they must collaborate with one another somehow in order to orchestrate all the interactions and meetings and whatnot that work out our destiny.

Marie: Yes, yeah, I think so. And so that afternoon, both of those men were having fun talking about me buying this weird stuff that I didn’t even know what I was going to do with it. I think in feeling that flow and that comfort, that they didn’t know what it was going to lead to, neither did I. I think that’s what following what is in our highest good is all about. It’s following the flow of life. It doesn’t make a lot of intellectual meaning at the time. It doesn’t make any sense at all from the mind’s perspective, but there’s a felt experience that we have when we are in the flow of higher consciousness.

Rick: Yeah, we were talking earlier about how one might upgrade one’s guides if you make significant spiritual progress or something. So this is kind of a related question. Do really highly evolved souls, people, need spirit guides since they’re kind of in tune with their own higher self or with the Divine anyway, or is it somehow one and the same that they would still have them? Go ahead and answer the question.

Marie: I’ve heard that it’s best to allow guidance before you incarnate. Again, we have free will. We get to make all those decisions ourselves. I think that we do have different levels of consciousness here on the planet, clearly, but I also think that when we reach a certain point of consciousness, we don’t necessarily reincarnate back to the Earth realm. So, of course, we can look at beings like Buddha and Christ and others who obviously were extremely evolved when they came here. And so, evolved beings do come here, but I don’t think it’s the common destination when you’re really evolved.

Rick: Yeah, well, to take Buddha and Christ as examples, would Buddha and Christ have had spirit guides, someone of their stature, their caliber, who were really one with God, or would it be unnecessary for them?

Marie: I think the physical reality can be very challenging, especially when you’re being hurt, physically harmed, or when you’re witnessing physical discomfort in the world. I think it can be very challenging no matter how evolved you are when you’re in the physical body, your experience is very different, even for people who are quite aware. It’s hard sometimes to disconnect from all the chaos and the challenges that are happening on the Earth plane, and so I think our guides can help us with that. But I’m sure it’s an individual choice.

Rick: You may not know this, but do you think that someone like Christ had spirit guides or some higher entities at his beck and call to such a profound degree as to enable him to have walked on water or manifested loaves and fishes or something like that?

Marie: Why not?

Rick: I mean, maybe that’s the mechanics through which he was able to do such things.

Marie: Right, because I think the more aware we become too because I believe everyone is multi-sensory, I believe everyone has natural gifts and talents, and so through our elevation and vibration and frequency and consciousness that we allow those gifts and talents to come into our awareness. But yeah, I can’t say for sure, but I would imagine that, especially when Christ came to Earth during the time that he did, having guides probably felt like a good idea, because it was a challenging time to be so evolved on the planet. However, I believe that what he brought, his true teachings, is probably what has allowed us to be where we are in our frequencies now.

Rick: Contribution.

Marie: Absolutely.

Rick: Do spirit guides speak to us through dreams?

Marie: They can speak to you through anything, even food.

Rick: I mean, people are sometimes more open in the sleep state, in the dream state. They don’t have the usual walls and defenses up, right?

Marie: I think everyone is unique. I don’t remember my dreams unless they’re…I’ve remembered maybe a handful of precognitive dreams, so I don’t really, that’s not my way of experiencing. I think everyone’s unique. And I also think the more we expand in our consciousness, the possibility of how we may receive information is going to change, because our auric field just gets bigger and bigger, and we start to move in the multi-universes. So however someone is right now, that could actually change for them. They may have another added element to their ability to experience awareness that goes beyond what they might be experiencing right now.

Rick: Does the same set of spirit guides, or some of them, stay with us through many incarnations, or do we get a whole new batch each lifetime?

Marie: It’s again the individual choice, and also spirit guides have free will. So it’s kind of a big job. I mean, you and I have probably been spirit guides for other humans, believe it or not. It just depends on the guides, too. Do they want to do that again? Sometimes when I’m reading energy for a client, I can tell that one or two of their spirit guides have known each other for a very, very, very long time, and they have been guides for each other in other lifetimes.

Rick: So again, you just answered my next question. You are intuitive. Can spirit guides be reborn as humans and vice versa? I think you just answered it.

Marie: Absolutely. In fact, I think it’s a requirement. If you’re going to guide someone in human form, you need to know what the potential experience could be. And that’s why I think archangels don’t hold human form, so that they can hold that very high frequency of helping us during our darkest times and not be affected by the human condition.

Rick: Yeah, to me it would stand to reason that there are levels of creation which don’t need to have direct interaction with human beings. They have other jobs to do, and spirit guides are more of a direct interface with us.

Marie: Absolutely, yes, absolutely.

Rick: Are spirit guides always right, or like us, can they err in their judgment?

Marie: Well, you know, they have a lot of information. So first of all, they study your previous lifetimes before you incarnate. They know from a soul’s perspective what it is that you want to learn and know and experience. So they know a lot about you before you incarnate. And of course, they’ve connected with you. To me, all of this is through God consciousness. I think that creation is everything. And so they’re very connected to the divine while they’re having this interaction before you incarnate. So I think that their accuracy is very high. But I also believe that they first and foremost respect you and any decision you make. So if they’re saying, you know, collectively, “Go left, go left, go left,” as you’re making a decision, and the individual decides to go right, then I think all the spirit guides, “Okay, everybody, she’s going right.” They just love and respect and support you no matter what decision you make. Because we can learn anything under any circumstances. You know, we’re here to have life experiences. It’s all perfect, you know, we can’t really make a mistake.

Rick: I’ll ask you more questions about that in a while, but you know how there’s that cartoon where you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and they’re kind of arguing with each other trying to get you to do one thing or the other. I mean, are there kind of a counterpart to spirit guides which have a negative intention and which tend to want to lead us astray while the spirit guides are trying to get us going in the right direction?

Marie: Right, that’s a great question. I don’t think so. I think that we already live on one of the lowest time-space realities in all of the cosmos. I think the Earth realm is a pretty low frequency time-space reality. I think our ego and our fear is that other devil being that, you know, through our terror and our fear of… I think we’re really afraid of our magnificence. That’s what I think. So that’s the other voice that we might be listening to, but if we can get into neutrality and be neutral, and whenever we’re making a decision, if there’s a neutral feeling to it, that’s when I believe we’re connected to guidance and what is in the highest good for all involved, not just our ego selves.

Rick: Neutral meaning we’re sort of in a state of equanimity and we’re not longing or attached or repulsed or anything. We’re in a more balanced state, you mean?

Marie: Yeah, we’re calm. There’s a calmness about it. Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. Some people… I know you never really had a teacher, right, so much, an Earthly teacher. Maybe you’ve had some since, but some people who have a really close relationship with a spiritual teacher or a guru or some such thing, for them, would a spirit guide be so necessary since they have more of a kind of a divine human guidance, or would they also need spirit guides?

Marie: I think they also need spirit guides too, because spiritual teachers, although I haven’t had the joy of having someone like that in my life. I’ve always wanted one actually, but it just hasn’t happened for me. A lot of times they’re speaking to the masses.

Rick: It’s true, and they can’t give you a lot of personal attention.

Marie: Right, and so your spirit guides are just there for you.

Rick: Yeah. I have a good friend who I’ll talk about a little bit more later who has a lot of subtle perception and sees this stuff all the time. He went to see Amma when she came to Iowa a couple of years ago, and he said that she was just swarmed with all kinds of subtle beings that were around and very happy to be in her presence and also sort of, I guess, involved in the lives of the people there.

Marie: Amazing.

Rick: If we kind of ignore our spirit guides consistently, do they tend to back off? Conversely, if we listen to them and attune ourselves to their guidance, does that attunement grow and the guidance come through more clearly? In other words, can you dull it down or clarify it according to how you respond to the prompting you receive?

Marie: That’s a great question. Yes, if let’s say over and over again our guidance is saying one thing and we keep ignoring it and pushing it away, out of respect for us, they stop.

Rick: Because we have free will.

Marie: We have free will. I’ve had clients who have said to me, “I keep asking this one question and I just don’t hear an answer for it.” I’ll say to them, “Well, do you have an idea of what the answer should be?” They’ll say, “Yes, of course.” And I go, “Well, if you’re not getting an answer from it, then probably the answer that’s in your highest good is not what you think it is.” That’s just a whole other part of really listening to guidance, getting out of the way, because we are a part of a phenomenal universe, universes actually. And so the potentiality is huge. I mean, so many things could potentially happen to us individually, collectively, within the entire cosmos beyond anything that we could possibly imagine. And yet, many times we’re again stuck in the linear mind, and so we can’t even potentially perceive what could happen that would be in our best interest.

Rick: Yeah. Do animals have spirit guides?

Marie: I think so. I think when you move into the animal world, you need a cat. I know my cat, Finn, has had a lot of guidance to make sure that he gets through all of his nine lives, because he’s always in some sort of mischievous trouble. But he magically gets out of it, so I would imagine he has a lot of guidance for him.

Rick: Just as you said that, just the thought came to mind, and it relates to things you’ve been saying, but that we really do live in an intelligent universe. I mean, there is no particle of creation, large or small, which is not permeated with Divine Intelligence. So really everything is just this cosmic play.

Marie: Everything’s alive.

Rick: Yeah, and maybe we’ll talk a little bit more about the hierarchical nature of creation and all that might be dwelling on different levels. Here’s a question. Do you want to comment on that before I go on?

Marie: No, you said it beautifully.

Rick: So here’s a question. So in the course of someone’s spiritual evolution, does everyone eventually become aware of their spirit guides, or is that kind of a special ability, like musical ability for instance? Because I know people who I consider highly enlightened or self-realized who don’t have this kind of subtle perception, and I know people who have subtle perception who probably aren’t that self-realized, and then there are people who have both. So is it an aptitude, which not everyone is going to have, and what determines whether or not we develop it?

Marie: I think it’s about what works for the person. I think we’re very unique. We’re all a part of God consciousness, and I think we’re very unique, and maybe someone doesn’t want to have this awareness of their spirit guides. I really don’t know. I think that whatever brings out the best in the individual is what they need to be focused on and not compare or contrast one person’s experience versus another person’s experience. I think too, if someone really wants an experience, not from a desperation, but from a true “I would really like that” kind of experience, then I think that they can have that, especially if they heighten their frequency. So a lot about sensing outside of the physical realm is about vibration. Before we went live, you asked me if I’ve always been a positive person.

Rick: Yeah, you seem like such a totally upbeat, positive person.

Marie: Right, and I am, and I always have been. I think that allows me to sense beings and other energies that are outside of the human realm because they vibrate at a more subtle frequency. So a lot of what people experience has to do with their own vibration, and a lot of humans vibrate in conflict, in challenge, in difficulty, and it makes it harder to actually sense those subtle energies if your vibration is lower. Also, a lot of human beings tend to run their energy like this. So they may fall up and down. They may fall in and out of love all day long with things. One moment they’re looking at their animal or a beloved human in their life and they feel, “Ah,” and then the next moment they’re thinking about a bill and they drop their energy. Then in one moment, again, they might be thinking of the holidays if they like the holidays, and then they’re looking at their credit card statement or the traffic or whatever. So to sense subtle energies, it requires a subtle frequency. And sometimes people will have experiences like you perhaps maybe have had moments where you sensed your mother around you.

Rick: A little bit, yeah. Actually, my wife had one. After my mother died, we were sitting in her hospital room and her body was there. And Irene had a very clear experience of her getting free and rejoicing, and at one point she said, “Hello, Irene!” Kind of like that. I was just feeling, ironically, I was feeling very deep bliss and depth of awareness as if I was partaking in her freedom or something. I mean, some people will be grief-stricken or something when their mother died. I felt a liberation because I think I was sharing in my mother’s liberation and she was good to go. I mean, she wanted to get out of that body. So anyway, I don’t know, I’m rambling here.

Marie: No, I think what you described is perfect. So everybody’s frequency was up, even though this woman had just passed away. Because you also had worked really hard on this relationship and you had come to a place in the relationship where it was loving and respectful and fun and interesting, despite all the hardships. I mean, that’s a huge accomplishment. So your vibration was elevated. You got to be with this woman during her passing. You got to celebrate her. You got to say goodbye. You probably also have some different perceptions about death on the other side. And she also was suffering at the time. And so you knew that when she left her body, she would be liberated. So you and Irene were vibrating your frequencies in a higher place. You could feel your mother and her bliss, because most people do feel bliss when they leave their bodies. Irene actually had a glimpse of her, which is not an uncommon thing. When people are at peace in someone’s passing, that is a neutral energy and they can start to expand their frequencies pretty rapidly. And so they can have a moment with that individual. Now, if people would do that throughout their lifetime, but most people get very sad when they think of their loved ones. They get depressed. That’s the typical response. And that’s why they don’t have these interactions as often as they would like or sometimes never. Most people on the other side are so looking forward to the Earth’s realm expanding its frequency because they can see us whenever they want to and hear us and they know what’s going on with our lives because our vibration is within their frequency. So they’re looking forward to the time when more human beings expand their vibration so that they can have these moments with their loved ones and feel at peace and know that that person is wonderful. How could they not be there on the other side? It’s a pretty dynamic place.

Rick: It’s funny, I had the same experience when my father died, but I didn’t know he had died. I was having this incredible day and I was feeling so blissful and I was thinking, “What is going on? I feel wonderful.” Then later in the afternoon I discovered my father had died the night before. So it was like somehow there was this karmic release or something, or again I was partaking in his freedom.

Marie: Right. And you have such a love for spirituality that people on the other side can sense that, that they can tell when individuals have a belief system outside of mainstream consciousness. So your father, when he was flying by you, he could expand that energy with you, especially when he was embodying more particles than he typically was, especially when the body’s dying, people’s energy is very, very depleted because they’re waiting for enough organs to shut down or systems to collapse so that their energy system can vacate the physical shell.

Rick: His death was sudden. I’m not sure what happened, either he was mugged, but the official explanation was that he fell down drunk and hit his head on the sidewalk, but he was sudden.

Marie: Well, except for your father didn’t take good care of himself, so his energy was actually very depleted by the time he died. I mean, he was one of those people that he could have died many, many times before. His body was not healthy at all. So when he escaped, he was always trying to find a way to escape, your dad was, by the way.

Rick: Alcohol.

Marie: Right? Then he felt so great and he could say, “Oh my gosh, my son is vibrating on this frequency or can, so let me go over here and expand my molecules with him and oh my gosh, we’re going to have a blissful moment,” which is such a, I think it’s so freeing for humans when they have that type of an experience with a loved one, especially not knowing that he had passed, but knowing that you connected vibrationally during that time. It’s heaven, it’s very freeing in heaven, it’s really beautiful.

Rick: I have a friend that I alluded to earlier, and when I first discovered that he was perceiving all these things, like he would see clusters of beings all around attending to people, and that was his everyday reality. When I first found out about that I got really curious and I started asking him all these questions. We were in this elevator in the airport together and I said, “Are there any here in the elevator?” and he just kind of smiled and then afterwards when we got out he just said to me, “Don’t point us out to people. If they’re meant to see us, they’ll see us.” So my question is, do gods really want us to see them or is it better that they do their work sort of behind the scenes and if we are eventually meant to see them we will, but it’s better to just let them do their thing?

Marie: It’s a really great question, I love your questions by the way. I think that when the veil was really thick, it was thick because humans were not ready for expanded consciousness. In fact, we had a lot of institutions filled with people who we thought were crazy. Now someone like myself can have a job talking to people that nobody else can see, so it’s a different reality. I think we are meant to be guided, I think we’re meant to have an awareness of what’s in our highest good. Whether someone says that that’s a spirit guide who’s communicating to them or a tree or the cosmos, I do think that we’re meant to have more than our human perception as we make decisions about life and move forward. I think of all the decisions I’ve made in my life since the moment I became aware that I could hear and see and feel energy are very different than the decisions I made prior. Again, there’s no right or wrong, there’s no mistake, we’re all learning consciously, but my life is a hundred times improved. I’m happier, I’m more fulfilled. I’ll give you an example. I believe that our emotions are connected to the second layer of the auric field. So we have this beautiful aura that surrounds us and in truth, the auric field extends throughout ininity, so there’s no end to our energy system, just like the chakra system extends throughout infinity. But the second layer of the auric field is called the emotional response center. It’s the emotional response center for each individual. So the heart chakra is where we feel other people in other scenarios, but where we feel ourselves is from the second chakra because it connects to this layer of the energy system.

Rick: Can I quickly ask you, I’ll have you continue, but you said something about the second chakra earlier and you said that that’s your favorite chakra, but I don’t know a lot about chakras, but I’ve always heard that that’s sort of the sexual chakra, you know, associated with sexual desires and stuff. So there must be more to it than that in the way you’re using the term? So please explain that as you go along.

Marie: No, no, it’s great. Actually, I love all the chakras, but I will often say that’s my favorite.

Rick: Never met a chakra you didn’t like, right?

Marie: Right. Yes. Every time I talk about one, I go, “Oh my God, that was my favorite.” But yes, you’re right. The second chakra governs key things in the human world. So career, resources, intimate partnership, close personal friends, and creativity. I call it the juicy chakra. It embodies the emotion of joy when human beings connect to this vortex. It’s also a place where kundalini energy enters, and that is part of passion, which of course could be sexuality, but people are meant to feel impassioned when they’re looking at a tree.

Rick: Doesn’t the kundalini ordinarily depicted as being coiled at the root chakra, the base, a sleeping serpent, so to speak, and then it begins to rise up?

Marie: Yeah, I see it entering through the front of the second chakra, and when people have their kundalini open, which not very many people do on the planet, by the way, it then moves at the spine in that figure eight serpent, if you will. It looks like this electric blue light. Then it enters into the occiput, activates the hormones in the brain.

Rick: Occiput meaning the back of the head.

Marie: The back of the head where that bump is. Activates the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. Activates psychic sight and intuition. And so as a healer, kundalini is an important energy, I believe, to run. I think everyone should run kundalini anyway, personally.

Rick: How do you run it?

Marie: Well, I think through joy and passion, quite frankly. I think whenever I see a healthy second chakra, I always have an image of Woodstock in my head. So I’ll see people having, as if I was at Woodstock, indiscriminate sex, peeing on bushes, and having skinny dipping in big mud baths. What it really means is that to run kundalini is to be free.

Rick: I almost went to Woodstock. We had tickets but my band had some gig and we couldn’t go at first and then we couldn’t get there because the New York State Thruway had become a parking lot. But when you mention Woodstock, free and full expression and all, but it was quite decadent in a way.

Marie: Yeah, the most celebrated musical festival ever.

Rick: There were a lot of casualties from that lifestyle, people ending up totally burning out or even becoming psychotic from drug use. So unbridled hedonism?

Marie: Well, think of it as a metaphor. It doesn’t mean that you have to go out and have indiscriminate sex or take LSD in order to open up your kundalini, but you need to allow yourself to be free. Yeah, what does that mean to the individual? It’s a personal experience. Real freedom is.

Rick: Of course, there’s always a balance between doing whatever you feel moved to do and societal constraints and marital restraints and moral restraints and so on and so forth. So you do have to find that balance. You’re not advocating just…

Marie: No, right, no. But I do think that when people feel their authentic joy in their bodies, like for instance, nursing, intellectually that made absolutely no sense to me. It was actually my husband’s. He goes, “I think you’d make a really great nurse.” Because when he graduated from engineering school, I was jealous that he had a degree and I didn’t. And he goes, “I think you should go be a nurse.” I go, “Why? It doesn’t make any sense.” He goes, “No, I think you’d be really good at it and I think that you would like it.” So my mind is telling me he’s nuts, but I decided to go ahead and take some science classes. And that’s when I found out I fell in love with it. I also would have had no idea that that’s where I would open up and create a completely different career. But I think Kundalini and freedom is about joy, authentic joy. And the first time I walked into a hospital as an adult before I went to nursing school, I was pregnant with my first child. We were living in a really small town in Oregon and my OBGYN didn’t have a phlebotomist in the office and I needed to have labs drawn for pregnancy.

Rick: Blood, a blood analyst, right?

Marie: Right. Yes. Thank you. So I walk into the hospital and it was one of these little turnaround doors. And in my mind, I’m thinking, “No, I’m not going to like this because my family is so holistic and my mother was so against conventional doctors.” In fact, I don’t think she’s seen a conventional physician in over 50 years. And she’s very healthy. She looks lovely. So I’m walking into this turnaround and I am immediately filled with bliss, immediately filled with bliss. It wasn’t until years later that I put it all together, that there’s something about being in hospitals and medicine that allows me to be on my path. It allows me to connect. There’s something in my history or my previous lifetimes or this knowingness that comes over me because I’m connecting to something that brings me enormous joy. That’s, again, an individual thing. So when we allow ourselves to be in our freedom and we can sense what real passion is for us, whatever that is for us, and we walk in that direction, I think that’s how we live full, meaningful lives. Yeah, that’s what I think.

Rick: This is a personal question which we can edit out if you like, but I was wondering whether your breakup with your husband had anything to do with the flourishing of your spiritual capabilities, whether you somehow outpaced him in terms of your spiritual orientation and it no longer became appropriate for you to be together because of that.

Marie: That’s a really great question. In fact, I often wished I had talked more about it in the interview with Tammy Simon. Yeah. Well, it was a challenging marriage to begin with. When we talked about how I have this kind of upbeat personality, which I do, I realized while I was married that I didn’t really know how I was feeling. I mean, I feel other people and I certainly know what they’re feeling, but I really hadn’t asked myself personal questions. And when I discovered that blue ball in my abdomen and I started meditating with it, I asked myself if I was in love with my husband, why am I an oncology nurse, and am I happy? When I sat with that blue ball, because it’s in the second chakra is where it was for me, connected to our emotional part of ourselves, I didn’t know the answers. And I was embarrassed and kind of shocked that I had no idea if I was even happy. So I started to just sit in this abdominal area, which I found out while working with my clients that a lot of people aren’t comfortable with knowing what they feel. Again, I think it is this gateway to freedom, to know what we’re really feeling about things. So finally I got the answers. It took me a while. And I was married at the time, so all of this happened while I was married. And I heard that I was not in love with him, I wasn’t happy. Even though I love nursing, it wasn’t my true passion. And so knowing that helped me to make different decisions. I believe opening up intuitively allowed me to see my marriage more authentically. And instead of trying to fix it and make it better, I just then decided that I could walk away from it. It was, again, having that awareness to my insights of what was really going on for me, feeling guidance. I was able to make decisions that were in my highest good and ultimately everyone’s highest good.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to say, I bet your husband is kind of better off in a way now.

Marie: Absolutely. And our children too. Absolutely.

Rick: So was it a relatively smooth and easy transition for you or were you still conflicted because there’s so much entrenched experience?

Marie: For me, it was kind of funny. I was, of course, getting counseling at the time because I was married for 20 years, and I’m getting a divorce, and I’m becoming this woo-woo lady. My life was a little bit chaotic in that way, but I was so incredibly happy and blissed out. I mean, to see a chakra is still one of my greatest joys.

Rick: Do you see it more often?

Marie: Oh, on everyone constantly.

Rick: All the time, right? M;Yeah, constantly.

Rick: Including over Skype or more like …

Marie: Yeah, I have clients.

Rick: You don’t have to be in person.

Marie: Right now, I have clients around the world. I do Skype every day. So I was in this blissed-out mood, very, very happy. In fact, my counselor kept telling me I needed to smile less around my kids because they were obviously having a hard time. It was a very tumultuous divorce. We both fought for custody and the house and everything. It was a very difficult divorce. But I was actually, most of the time, thankfully, because of the energy medicine part that was just blossoming in my life, I was distracted from it and was able to make really good decisions. I was able to support myself emotionally rather than supporting my former husband, which I had done for 20 years. I was able to take care of myself and do what was in my highest good.

Rick: Nice. Marie and I sat down, we started talking, and she brought up my mother. And she was saying some interesting things. So I thought, “What the heck, we should record this stuff too.” So she said that she saw Caesar standing right behind me wearing a nightgown, which is symbolic of having passed away in a healthcare facility of some kind.

Marie: Right. Yeah. She has a birthday cake actually in her hand. And so that would mean that someone’s birthday, either yours or your wife’s perhaps, or I don’t know if you guys have children, is within a six-week time period. So like right about now or …

Rick: My wife’s birthday is February 8th. That’s just about six weeks.

Marie: Okay, great. Yeah. So it’s a fairly large cake, by the way. Yeah. So she has that. She must have felt some endearing feelings towards Irene. Is that true?

Rick: Yeah, I’d say so. She died 25 years ago. Wouldn’t she have been reincarnated by now?

Marie: Well, most people wait about 100 Earth years before they incarnate. Although the Earth plane is really heating up. I mean, obviously we’re populated by nearly 7 billion human souls or spirits. Even if she has incarnated, but I don’t believe she has, she doesn’t want to incarnate until you return is what she says.

Rick: In other words, until I’m reincarnating again.

Marie: Right. Until you go to the other side and sit down and say, “Hey, do you want to incarnate again together or what do you want to do?” Because we have free will. We don’t have to. We can incarnate with whomever we want to. We tend to incarnate with family members. That’s why everybody pushes our buttons so quickly, you know, really fast. Right? But we have free will. Pardon?

Rick: We have karma with these people.

Marie: We do. Well, we have karma that’s very similar. It may not even be with the same people, but our patterns are very, very similar. And so we’re trying to heal whatever the karma is. Like, let’s say someone wants to learn to be more empowered. So we choose parental units, if you will, that will help us to be more empowered. So that’s why we don’t always incarnate with the same people, but the same themes are going to be there. Most people do incarnate with their family members over and over and over again. So …

Rick: Why would a person incarnate with someone who is going to, like, say, sexually abuse them or beat them or be a really rotten parent? What would be the evolutionary purpose in that choice?

Marie: A great opportunity to learn to be authentically empowered, regardless of what happened to you or your perception or the Earth’s realm’s perception of how unempowered you are or how horrific your experiences are. Because true authentic power has nothing to do with anyone else or what happened to us. It has to do with our relationship with ourselves and what we believe, how we believe we are and who we are.

Rick: Yeah. I think that kind of question, you know, comes to the mind of many people who have a hard time believing in God at all, for one thing, aside from all this other stuff that you’re talking about, because, you know, they can’t reconcile that with Auschwitz or with some of the terrible things, which we don’t need to enumerate, which happen to people routinely. There are more slaves in the world now than there have been at any time, you know, sexual or labor slaves or other kinds of, you know, little children are kidnapped from Nepal and forced into slavery in Bombay and stuff. So, you know, it’s like people wonder, “How could there be a compassionate God? How could the universe be in the interest of our evolution? It just seems like such a dark place.”

Marie: It is a dark place. The earth realm is one of the lowest time-space realities in all of the cosmos, and we consciously know that and choose to come here. I don’t believe we have more slaves than we’ve ever had before. I think there are definitely more slaves than humans.

Rick: There’s millions. There’s like 23 million people in slavery right now. There’s this whole thing where Amma just met with the Pope and some other religious leaders to have this whole discussion about eradicating slavery or diminishing it.

Marie: Well, how I kind of look at it is that we’re actually kinder than we’ve ever been to each other. We’re living closer than we ever have been, but we have less violence on the planet than we’ve had before. I mean, think of the Dark Ages, those 500 years. We were extremely violent with each other, extremely violent.

Rick: You’d be getting burned at the stake for what you’re doing.

Marie: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you lose a hand for stealing a piece of bread to feed yourself. So I think our compassion has actually increased because our evolutionary process has increased. But this is the planet of contrast and as a soul. So a soul is this huge, incredible part of ourselves that has a lot of very evolved pieces and doesn’t believe in death or even suffering, but knows that we are choosing, if we choose to incarnate in a place like Earth, that we’re choosing, especially if we’re having a challenging life, like to be sexually abused or murdered or tortured or anything like that, that when we’re consciously making that decision, that that is a possibility, a probability, or something that we really want to have. It’s an experience that we’re wanting to have from that moment that we’re connected with our soul. So we forget all about that and how horrific it is and that everything’s eternal when we’re in the physical form, of course, but that could be part of what we’re trying to move through, is any limitations we have of ourselves.

Rick: Yeah. So to summarize then, what you’re saying is that having something horrific happen to you, some kind of abuse or torture or something like that, in the big picture, if we really had the big picture, we would see it as being in service of our ultimate evolution. It’s not like we’ve just fallen into bad times and it’s meaningless suffering, but there is some evolutionary significance to it.

Marie: Absolutely. You said it beautifully. I even think something like the Holocaust was helping the human race to recognize that we cannot believe in one person, that we can’t just follow one individual and their belief system, that horrific things can happen when we do that.

Rick: Yeah, I was thinking about that tragic massacre in Pakistan the other day when the Taliban came in and murdered all those children. But it’s interesting to see now the reaction of the world and of Pakistan to that. It’s sort of like, “Okay, this is it. We’re just not going to tolerate this anymore.” Maybe those children made a sacrifice so that such evil can really be eradicated once and for all.

Marie: I do think souls look at that. They’re looking at their personal experience, but they’re also looking at, “Well, within my personal experience, can it globally affect all of humanity?” So, absolutely. karma can be shifted at any moment through consciousness, but a lot of times when people come to Earth, they’re wanting to have physical experiences to heal their karma. I think souls are so precious and so profound, and to come and have a lifetime here, regardless of how horrific it may look from the human perception, that I think we need to have a lot more sacred appreciation for the choices that people make and honor that rather than thinking that it’s horrible. I think we have to still have our compassion so we can make choices that are different and help with the evolution of awareness. But when I hear of suffering around the world, I like to have a lot of appreciation for the soul and the choices it made. I find that very rewarding, actually.

Rick: It took a lot of courage to make those choices.

Marie: Absolutely, and I’m grateful. Who am I to know why they made those choices? When we look at people who have had hundreds, maybe thousands of lifetimes, it’s very, very complicated. The older we become as a soul, the more we’ve done. We’ve all killed people or maimed or whatever. We’ve all done things. So, who are we to judge what is someone’s suffering? It could be someone’s freedom. We don’t know that. But I do think that we can’t be caught up and we can’t make decisions from that belief system. We still have to stay in the compassionate part of it so that we can allow humanity to be humane.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, there are some who might say, “Oh, well, it’s their karma to be starving,” or something. The compassionate response would be, “Okay, maybe it is, but it’s our karma to feed them, to help them in some way.”

Marie: Absolutely, absolutely.

Rick: Yeah. I was going to ask you if it was somehow related to this. Oh, well, maybe it’ll come back. Well, here’s a question. Since time isn’t really linear, can you dwell in the fifth dimension or wherever spirit guides dwell as a spirit guide and yet simultaneously be living life on earth? So, in a sense, could you actually be your own spirit guide with one aspect of your being in a higher dimension and the other incarnate?

Marie: I think anything is absolutely possible, and I think we’re having multiple lifetimes at the same time. Some people believe that evolved souls like Buddha or Christ also had multiple souls within them, having a profound high vibrational experience in their incarnation here on earth. I don’t think our minds could possibly allow us to know all the potentiality that exists in the universes.

Rick: Yeah. So, I guess an addendum to that question would be, in a way, at some deep level, are spirit guides just aspects of our own being in the larger sense and not some autonomous separate entities? But are they kind of like part and parcel of a larger being that we actually are?

Marie: Yes, I think that’s highly possible. I think that one of my spirit guides, because I can see three of them, those are the ones I see all the time, I think she is my higher self, actually, and that’s how I feel. And I love what you said. It makes profound sense. And we’re all one. We’re all connected. Even though we are individuals and we have uniqueness to us, we’re also one. When we look at the auric field, the sixth layer of the aura has a phrase on it, as each one of the fields has a phrase or a word, wording on it, and the phrase is, “We are all one.” And then the seventh layer of the auric field, which the belief is that that’s where we get closest to God, it has the word “individualization.” So, we’re both. We’re individuals and we’re all one. So, yeah, I think your perception of it is perfect.

Rick: I remembered what I was going to ask, which is that I’ve heard it said that the earth is actually a very opportune place to achieve higher consciousness, to get enlightened, whereas there might be angelic realms, which are really nice to live in, but you don’t feel like going within there. You’re just so enraptured with the beauty of the world you live in that there’s not that much incentive to kind of seek out the ultimate and discover that.

Marie: I agree 100%. That’s why we keep coming back here. The time here is actually very quick, even though we’re living longer and longer and it feels like a long time for some individuals. It’s a very short duration period of time. And because it’s so contractual, there’s so much objectivity that could be experienced that we do have the potentiality to learn so much in a very short period of time. So, yes, when you’re in a non-physical reality where you don’t have to eat, pay a mortgage, go to the bathroom. I mean, when I think of what we have to do as a human being, even what you and I had to do to get ready for this interview, wake up, go to the bathroom, find food, clothing. We have so many things we have to be responsible for that makes this world even more of an interesting place to grow and evolve through. We have to make decisions constantly all day long. We have so many opportunities to be present, so many. And I do think that that’s something that we’re looking forward towards when we’re here. It’s a lot more difficult when you’re in a different time-space reality and you don’t have to go to the bathroom or eat food or wear clothing. It just feels so fun. Like, “Yay, let’s just chill and hang out over here.” And your awareness, the consciousness that we have in other realities is much more expansive. So it’s easier to be compassionate. It’s easier to be understanding. If you can see someone’s past life, where their not being very nice to you in another time-space reality versus when you’re here in traffic and you just want to flip that person off who just cut you off on the road and you have to stop and breathe and say a lovely phrase to yourself and remind yourself that none of this really matters. It’s a great way to evolve.

Rick: Yeah. There may be … I don’t know, I’m just speculating. There may be realms where there are highly enlightened beings who just dwell there and every bit as enlightened, if not far more so than anybody on Earth. But my understanding of enlightenment, at least for those of us here on earth, is it’s the capacity to encompass the full range of creation within one’s awareness, from gross to subtle to transcendent, and to be able to have one’s focus at any point in that range that situations call for, but ultimately to be established in the foundation of it all, pure, unbounded awareness. So that’s more of a statement than a question, but it sort of pertains to what we’ve been saying and perhaps you have some comments on it.

Marie: Sounds amazing. It makes sense to me. Because it sounds almost funny, at least to me, it always has, to just be in this Nirvana place. People ask me all the time, they go, “Aren’t you looking forward to not reincarnating on Earth?” And I’m like, “No.” Oh my gosh. One of my favorite places that I am aware of anyway. I love the beauty here. And again, I love human beings. So I really enjoyed what you just said. It makes total sense to me to be able to be wherever and to be content and to be awake. Yeah, it sounds amazing. That I think is the true Nirvana.

Rick:One reason I made that statement is that there was one part of your audiobook I was listening to where you took people through this guided meditation to what you call the enlightenment plane. And you were talking about going off past the planets and out into the galaxies and so on and arriving at the enlightenment plane. I had to kind of scratch my head at that one because I don’t understand enlightenment as being something on some plane far off that you would travel to. It’s more of an incorporation here and now of the deepest nature of our being into our conscious awareness. It’s not something you would sort of go to in any geographical or travel sense. So can you reconcile that for me?

Marie: Sure. A lot of times when I encourage people to go off and out of their bodies to be in a different vibration so they can incorporate that higher self-awareness into their humanness before they come back into kind of a physical perception. A lot of people have a hard time doing that in their body. They get stuck in, “I don’t like my thighs.” All this stuff that’s going on in their ever-growing, ever-thinking mind. And so by taking them out there and helping them realize that they are enlightened in this other field sort of perspective and that everyone there loves them and adores them and cherishes them just exactly the way they are. And then they can bring that energy back into their body.

Rick: So the whole thing about traveling out into the universe was sort of a metaphor just to get them out of their thighs and into kind of a more transcendent state?

Marie: Yeah. I want them to feel that energy, and a lot of people have a hard time feeling that energy when they’re in their bodies. It’s challenging for them. I hope that when they go out to that place, when they come back, they’ll maintain that feeling that they had. It’s almost like they give themselves permission once they’re in that field. But I agree with what you’re saying, that it’s meant to be felt and experienced no matter where or who we are.

Rick: Yeah, okay. Shifting gears a little bit. It’s said that that which is closest to truth lasts longest. I’m wondering if spirit guides who are kind of at a deeper level of functioning, do they have longer lifespans than a human being? And kind of an attachment to that question, do they have a gender or are they androgynous?

Marie: Again, I think that’s based on what the individual will accept. So because I love human beings, my spirit guides look very human to me. In fact, one of them, my primary guide, looks like Sean Connery. He’s really handsome.

Rick: Young Sean Connery. The James Bond guy.

Marie: Well, maybe. He looks a little older, yeah.

Rick: Okay, Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels?

Marie: Yeah, yeah. And so let’s say someone loves the animal kingdom, and perhaps all their spirit guides to them look like beautiful wolves. Or someone just loves energy and wants to see color and frequency and vibration. So I think it’s up to the individual and what they are going to allow themselves to perceive, which is really how consciousness is about anyway. I think sometimes people have a hard time grasping new awarenesses because they’re not allowing themselves to have the experience in a way that would be connected to who they are right now. They’re looking for something that’s outside of their current belief system or perception. If individuals would be comfortable with who they are right now, then they could allow themselves to have a multi-sensory experience.

Rick: I’ve heard you mention that there are probably thousands of levels of creation. There’s this vast range of dimensions. I think you used the word dimensions. I find that interesting. And we kind of have talked about it, but I just kind of want to have you talk a bit about the fact that in … because some people think of the world as so material and concrete and almost dead, whereas in fact, as I understand it and intuit it, it’s teeming with life, not only on microscopic levels if you look at what’s going on in the grain of dirt, but also on all these subtle levels. It’s like an ocean, you can think of it. There’s the surface level of the waves, and maybe you see a few fish swimming around there, but then there’s the deep, deep, deep levels of the ocean, and there’s fish at all those levels that live appropriately at each level. And so, paint us a picture of the universe in terms of its vertical dimension and all the sort of strata, and maybe you don’t know specifically, but the idea that life thrives and flourishes on all those different levels.

Marie:Yeah. Well, even something like indoor/outdoor carpet is aligned with frequency and vibration. Every time I walk into a hotel to teach a class, I’m enamored by the particles that are moving in the carpet, all the stories it has to tell, the people that have already stood there or spilled their coffee there or whatnot. It’s very much alive. And your mother, who lives on the other side, the other side is only a few feet away from us. So our worlds literally move within each other all the time, constantly. There isn’t like walls, perhaps, from other perceptions, like we mentioned before. It’s kind of like “The Matrix”, the movie “The Matrix”, and when the hero in the movie starts to see all the beams of light moving and how all the construct dissipates, and he can see through the walls and the building, and everything kind of slows down for him, and he can see, he can even anticipate what another person is thinking or feeling or whatever their reaction might be. And I think that we’re even capable, even though many people may not think this is true, that we’re capable of having those experiences if we heighten our frequency, because it’s all about vibration. Everything about life is about vibration. What we’re noticing on the Earth realm now is that the vibration is speeding up very rapidly, which is funny. I heard, because I host a radio show and I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and starting a couple years ago, a lot of authors had told me that they thought the frequency was increasing. I’m like, “No, I don’t think so.” I think that frequency is just staying the same. I really don’t think it’s increasing. I would say towards the middle of this year, I started to feel the vibration increasing for humanity. So that means that mainstream consciousness is starting to vibrate very differently. So we’re noticing people who haven’t put a lot of energy into inner work or spirituality, or maybe even to spend time in nature, which is an excellent form of spiritual awareness. All of a sudden, they’re beginning to change their awareness. Their frequency is shifting, which is then changing the whole frequency vibration of the human realm. So in part to answer your question, we don’t even know all the capabilities or all the ways that we can experience life, because we haven’t reached a vibrational mass consciousness on this planet yet. But things are beginning to shift from, if you will, the bottom up. Again, that’s not a judgment. All frequencies and vibrations are viable and beautiful and extraordinary. But we’re starting to notice that vibration is moving from the bottom, is starting to increase the molecular structure. So everything is made out of subatomic particles, right? Even your liver is made out of particles. Our thoughts are made out of particles. How a person moves their energy, it’s all molecular vibrations.

Rick: And the particles aren’t even particles if you take it deeper. They’re kind of like just probability waves or something.

Marie: Absolutely. So the mainstream human thought process, or the majority of people who vibrate … So I look at social consciousness as most people vibrate in social consciousness. Most people think and act out of a certain frequency. Then there are different people who vibrate at different levels of awarenesses that are not within the social construct. So what’s happening is the social construct is shifting right now. That means the molecular vibration is speeding up, and people are starting to experience their personal lives differently. I think this is one of those rare times in human existence that this is happening at a very big … Probably when we discovered that the Earth was round, before we thought it was flat, and we had this huge conscious awakening that changed the dynamics of all of our lives. That’s what’s happening right now. Many astrologers believe that this is the true age of Aquarian, that the 1960s or ’50s or whatnot was not really the Aquarian age, and that we’re actually experiencing it right now.

Rick: Yeah. If the de facto collective consciousness is waking up, or the ambient collective consciousness is starting to wake up, it would seem to me that there are going to be huge shifts, not only in people’s experience, but in the more manifest world. Political systems, banking systems, economic, environmental things, all that stuff, much of which you can’t imagine existing in a more enlightened world. So it would almost seem like the rug’s going to get pulled out from under a lot of this stuff, and it’s going to have to crumble.

Marie: Right. And we’re already noticing things shifting in terms of things becoming more to our consciousness, more deception, more inequalities are starting to be brought to our awarenesses, which is, of course, disheartening and disappointing, but if we can bring light to it, then we can actually begin to make changes. Also, as the human population becomes so disappointed and un-enchanted with the things that other people have done, that sends a clear message about what we expect and what we really want in life, and that creates a lot of change throughout media and in governments and whatnot.

Rick: It’s true. Oprah has this new movie out called Selma, and it’s about the Civil Rights era, Martin Luther King, and black people getting the right to vote and all. We’ve come a long way since then, but it seems that even now, with the whole situation that happened this summer in Ferguson, and similar situations that have been happening, there’s a sort of insistence that things not continue the way they have been, and that there’s a new wave of change, it seems, accelerating.

Marie: I agree that what we may consider to be smaller incidents are also not okay. This is still based on old thinking and backward belief systems, and that this is not okay. It may not be in a big way that it used to be, but these instances are also not acceptable. This is not how we’re allowed to treat one another.

Rick: Homework assignment for listeners is to go and listen to Bob Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are Changing.” Not many of the lyrics of which I can recite. I don’t know if I quite asked you this, but we’ve alluded to terrorists and so on in this talk. Those people probably have spirit guides, you will say. Are those guides kind of being punished with a bum assignment, while the guides of saintly people have a coveted assignment? I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist spirit guide. I would really be horrified by what the guy was doing and feel powerless to change it.

Marie: Well, remember, spirit guides are evolved, more evolved than the person that they’re guiding, typically. At least that’s what I believe.

Rick: I hope so. Otherwise, they can’t be guides.

Marie: Right. If you’re evolved, you love everyone and everything. If we look at all of our teachers from out time, what their primary message has been is to love. That’s their primary message. So a guide who’s guiding a terrorist is madly in love with that being and helping them to shift and change and to maybe make some sort of conscious advancement, even if that doesn’t mean that they’re going to change for another 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 lifetimes. Because it’s not a race. Evolution is not a race. If it takes someone 400,000 lifetimes to reach that equilibrium that you discussed earlier, it’s okay. What else are we going to do?

Rick: Okay. So imagine you’re a spirit guide, and you’re assigned to be with some guy that’s strapping explosives on himself. He’s going to go blow himself up on a bus. What would you be doing?

Marie: I would be sending love to him and all the people that he would be affecting. That whatever is in their highest good, whatever could help them in that moment. I would be calling in every archangel in the cosmos, for sure. Absolutely. Which I think is something that already happens. Because remember, the universe is a lot more conscious than the Earth realm. So before events happen on our planet, beings are brought in immediately, even before the event occurs, to take care of individuals as they leave their bodies, as they mourn the loss of the people they care for, as their body is maimed. We’ve had a lot of people write about who have survived horrific events or had near-death experiences. And most of them talk about feeling embraced by love and comforted during those horrific times in their lives.

Rick: My wife just passed me a note saying, “Shouldn’t the guy be slapping him?” “Snap out of it, dude.”

Marie: Yeah, right. Well, and that’s what we think from the human perspective. I’m definitely one of those people that when someone’s not being very nice to their kid, I want to go give them a lecture. Recently, this would be a sign of me not being very involved, by the way. Recently, I was in a restaurant and there was a family sitting next to my daughter and me, and they were, in my opinion, not being very kind to their two-year-old. And I was just, my daughter could see the steam coming out of my ears, right? And she goes, “Mom, take a deep breath. This is not your child. Just relax. Be with me right now and let’s have our lunch. And if you want to send love to the family, that’s fine.” So what happens is I lowered my vibration in that moment significantly. I felt, I actually took an impression and felt the child is suffering, which also lowered my frequency. I also thought very unkind thoughts towards all the adults that were at the table. I was disappointed in them. I wanted to lecture them, as I said. I was criticizing them in my mind and judging them, which is not a sign of evolution or expanded consciousness. So I’m really grateful my daughter was there to get me out of that energy so that I could enjoy my lunch and send love to the table. Because I don’t know what that little boy wants to learn. He chose that parental unit, you know, if all of that is true, which I believe it is, he chose that parental unit to learn something.

Rick: Yeah, it sounds like your daughter’s got your number.

Marie: Yeah, I’m very blessed.

Rick: But on the other hand, there are situations in which we should intervene. There was a situation back in the 60s where this woman in the Bronx, I believe, named Kitty Genovese was stabbed over a period of 20 minutes in an apartment complex lobby or whatever. People in all the apartments could hear it going on and nobody did anything because they didn’t want to get involved. So obviously, sometimes we need to just dive in and stop something from happening.

Marie: Well, imagine if we’re present. Like when I dropped in my second chakra when I was in that restaurant, I didn’t hear, “Get up,” when I got neutral and I got in my own emotions. I didn’t hear, “Get up and go talk to those parents.” I heard, “Relax, take deep breaths.” So whenever we’re present, we get out of our fear, actually, because I was in fear when I was worried about this young kid. I was in frustration and fear and anger, which is not me connected to my higher self. So if we become present, then if we need to intervene, if it’s in our highest good, if it’s exactly what we need to do, then we will know. We will absolutely know. Then we also need to remember, too, although in this instance, I’m not saying that this is true for this woman who had such a horrific moment in her life, many moments in her life, is that the only way you leave your body is through death. Unless we’re evolved like the people that Spalding writes about in The Life and Teachings of The Masters of The Far East, which I think is what we’re all meant to do ultimately is to walk out of our bodies, not to die of disease or be hit by a car or murdered by someone. But the only way we leave our bodies for most of us right now is through the body dying. And this is a temporary time-space reality. So I believe that every form of death is a form of suicide. I think we have free will and we even choose when we want to go. I think that we go, “Hey, if I walk that street on Monday, there’s going to be someone speeding through the … this is all unconscious … someone’s going to be speeding through that light and I could be fatally hurt and I really want to go. I’m done. I learned that thing about my mom. I’m all good to go. I really want to go home. I’m kind of done with the Earth plane.” That’s an important part of our consciousness that we need to develop more so that we recognize that souls are deciding when it’s time for them to leave this planet and we need to respect that as well.

Rick: Yeah. There’s a story, I think it was at the beginning of the Mahabharata, which is an Indian epic, where there were these six or seven celestial beings who … they had done something wrong and so they had to be born as human beings, but one of them had done something more wrong than the otherS. He was the main culprit. They had to be born as human beings, but they kind of negotiated and said, “We really don’t want to be human beings. We don’t want to live long lives. Get us out of there as quick as possible.” So on the human side of things, there was this king and queen, and the queen agreed to marry the king only if the king never intervened with anything she did. He didn’t try to thwart. And so one by one, her children were born and she threw them right into a river, which of course would be horrific in this day and age. We would condone that sort of thing. But those were the souls that had agreed, had reached the agreement not to live long lives. And then finally the seventh one was born and somehow her husband couldn’t stand it and he intervened. And so the kid had the long life, but his wife left him because he had violated the agreement.

Marie: Wow. Exactly. My point exactly.

Rick: Yeah. So in other words, the point being here, there’s a much larger script and we only see a few lines of it. We don’t have the whole storyline.

Marie: We only have the third dimension to look at and we live in a multi-dimensional, multi-universe reality. And anything that we could already believe or perceive has already been manifested and created. And we live in this very, very vast, huge, expansive, multi-conscious, yeah. All of that.

Rick: Good to remember. So is there anything else? I think I’ve exhausted all my written questions and nothing else is coming to mind. Is there anything that you would like to say that I haven’t thought to ask about?

Marie: I think just to remind all of us that everyone is uniquely gifted. Everyone is magnificent beyond measure. And that we most are afraid of is our magnificence. And so that if we can find ways, whatever creative ways that we possibly can to expand our energy, shift our frequency so that we can align to some neutral place of awareness, then we get more opportunities than we could possibly believe in to be our true selves. I think that’s one of the reasons why we incarnate here on planet Earth.

Rick: Yeah, I think Christ said that in a nutshell when he said, “Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.” You know, if you have that intention, things start happening.

Marie: Wow, that’s great, yeah.

Rick: Yeah. Well, in the spirit of Christmas, I have an important announcement. You ready? I mean, no, this is the end. Irene really wanted me to do this. So here we go. You ready? [“Jingle Bells” playing]

Marie: Awww.

Rick: I think that was actually Bing Crosby’s voice.

Marie: That’s lovely.

Rick: Yeah, well, you said, “We’ve got to free up our Kundalini’s and just do wild and crazy things,” so that was my little Woodstock moment.

Marie: Yay, love it. See, it’s so individual, right?

Rick: Yeah. Okay, so let me make my typical usual wrap-up points that I always make. First of all, thanks, Marie. This has really been a great conversation. I’ve loved meeting you and talking to you and everything. It’s been really fun. I think a lot of people enjoy listening to it.

Marie: Oh, thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Rick: Yeah.

Marie: Great questions, by the way.

Rick: Oh, thank you. Well, I just kind of got my creative juices flowing as I was listening to you and all these things came up. And Irene composed half the questions, as I was saying. Okay, so for those of you who may be listening to this for the first, you haven’t listened to any of my other interviews, this is a series. There are now about 260 of them. If you go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, you’ll see them all. There’s a “Past Interviews” menu, which if you pull that down there, you’ll see them categorized in a number of different ways, so you can explore. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted, and that is generally the only emails you’ll receive. We just sent out a Christmas email, but otherwise just one a week. And let’s see, there’s a “Donate” button, which I really appreciate people clicking on if they feel inspired to do so, it’s the only means of support for this whole thing. There is an audio podcast of the show, so if you like to listen to things while you commute and so on, you can sign up for that and get it on your iPod. So that just about covers it. Thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next week. Next week’s guest is Mary O’Malley, and the title of her book is something like, “What Is In The Way, Is The Way.”

Marie: Is the way. Check.

Rick: You know that? You know her?

Marie: We live in the same city. I haven’t actually met her, but we live in the same city, yeah.

Rick: Yeah. So in other words, the things which appear to be impediments to us are actually opportunities for our growth.

Marie: Beautiful.

Rick: Yeah, so we’ll talk about that. All right, thanks, Marie.

Marie: Thank you. Happy holidays.

Rick: Oh, and one thing I forgot to say, of course, is that you’ll have your own page on BatGap, and it will have links to your books and to your website and all that stuff.

Marie: Wonderful.

Rick: So people can find out more about you and what you do.

Marie: Thank you so much.

Rick: You’re welcome.

Marie: Merry Christmas.

Rick: Merry Christmas to you. Talk to you later.

Marie: Bye-bye.

Rick: Bye.