UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript is provided in its raw, unedited form and may contain errors. We have not proofread this transcript, so it may include typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this rough transcript as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Suzanne Giesemann. Suzanne is a spiritual teacher, a bestselling author, and a documentarian recognized on the Watkins list of one of the most Spiritually Influential Living People. I’m so excited for this conversation. Suzanne is a former Navy commander who served as a commanding officer and aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then in 2006 she started inquiring into the afterlife—she calls it the everlife—upon the sudden death of her stepdaughter and discovered in that inquiry her abilities as what’s known as an evidence-based medium. She now guides people to live divinely connected lives. She’s authored 15 bestselling books including The Awakened Way, Wolf’s Message, and a new book, Making the Afterlife Connection. Suzanne, welcome.
Suzanne Giesemann: Thank you, Tami. I hope we have fun here today.
TS: I’m sure we will. I’m sure we will. I’m really looking forward to it. As I said there you were in 2006, looking at the corpse of someone extraordinarily beloved to you and recognizing this isn’t the person, this body that is now an empty shell. This is not the person. I think so many people who lose someone they love have an experience like that, and they ask the same kinds of questions that you probably asked. Where is the soul? Is the soul continuing? Could I stay in relationship to that soul? And they come up with, I’m sorry to report, often, nothing. Nothing. They come up with nothing. Tell me why you think it was different for you.
SG: I know, Tami. It’s because it was my soul’s path to open up to the greater reality and help other people find it. Because when I had that epiphany, that realization that’s not Susan, looking at her body, I set the goal then and there I’m going to find you. And perhaps it was my military discipline. I was retired at that point, but it’s still part of who I am. But once I set my mind to it, I wasn’t going to stop until I connected with Susan. Somehow I knew in 2006 before meditation was as mainstream as it is now, that that’s how I was going to connect with her. So I started the very next day having no idea what to do or how meditation really worked. Sitting quietly saying, “Susan, reveal yourself to me.” And I did not give up until I connected with her.
TS: Now, someone’s listening and at the moment hearing you, their hands, their fists are up in the air and they’re like, “I have a love that is unstoppable for this being, and yet I’ve come up empty-handed.” What would you say to them that could help them?
SG: To trust that your individual connection is opening up just right for you and that if you’re not connecting now, there is a reason. I have some of my students who I teach how to connect, who sense their loved one within weeks or months. For me, at first I didn’t tell people how long it took. I didn’t want them to be discouraged. It was three years until I very clearly connected with Susan. But in the meantime, I was opening up to the greater reality. I was having what I call “adventures in consciousness.”
I recently just had the mother of a daughter who passed reach out with the big subject line on the email BREAKTHROUGH, and it took her a year and a half, but because of my trials and commitment, she stuck with it and she got amazing evidence from her daughter. There was no doubt it was her daughter. So it’s a matter of trusting. We’re all blossoming at different rates.
TS: Now I’m once again, and I’m thinking of this because I know someone who’s lost a child, and I know the level of intense heartbreak they feel. And they’re like, “Three years, I would do it. Five years, I would do it. I don’t know what to do.” And this is your specialty, helping people who have a level of openhearted determination make that kind of contact. So I know there’s so many resources you offer, but right here in this conversation, what are some steps that you could offer?
SG: I would say two keys and the three E’s. I love putting things into little categories and acronyms. But the two keys to making the connection are number one, check out your beliefs. Do you really believe you can personally make that connection? If you don’t believe is much less likely to happen. So adjust your beliefs to allow that this is possible for anyone and you. And number two, set a very clear intention. I am going to make personal connection with my loved ones.
So with belief and intention as the keys, the three E’s are: Number one, educate yourself about how this connection happens, why it’s possible. That involves reading and watching videos about the afterlife, about quantum physics at a basic level that explains how everything is connected beyond space and time. Read near-death experience reports. All of those are the educational piece that open our minds and allow us the possibility of an experience like that ourselves, without having to die like a near-death experience.
The second E is experience expanded states of consciousness for yourself. Practices like meditation, presence, and a very short practice I have called the Sip of the Divine. We could talk about that later if you wish. A really simple practice that makes a big difference.
And then the third E: Engage higher consciousness for yourself. As you’re sitting in an expanded state experiencing images and thoughts that arise, that you say, “That’s not my own thought.” Say, “Who is this? Who’s here?” And gauge what you’re experiencing. So educate, experience, and engage.
TS: Let’s take a Sip of the Divine. Let’s do it.
SG: It’s very simple because it overcomes the most common excuses why people don’t meditate: I don’t have enough time, and I can’t quiet my mind. The Sip of the Divine is three minutes a day, and I love that it’s the acronym stands for sit in peace. But we can playfully say, “You have five minutes a day to make a cup of coffee and sip on it. Can you spare three minutes a day to connect with a loved one who has passed or connect with spirit guides or connect with source itself and get answers?” Anybody can find three minutes a day and I can’t quiet my mind. But the point of the Sip of the Divine is not to quiet the mind; it’s to notice and observe how the mind works. And that is really eye-opening.
You start as you sit, take a nice relaxing breath and just watch how thoughts arise. Sensations arise, feelings arise, and you start to notice you can’t stop it, so don’t try. But the more you observe them, you say, wait, that doesn’t serve me. Let that go. Oh, that’s just my thought. Let that go. And so you become the observer instead of caught up in this monkey mind and you create space. Now when something arises in awareness that’s not the normal patterns, it stands out and then you engage it.
So I didn’t know if you wanted to actually do that, but I don’t know if you want three minutes of quiet time, but it’s very simple.
TS: Maybe at the end we can end sipping the divine together and then leave people and they can keep turning the sip into a big drink if they want. I love it. Sitting here with you, what I am inspired to see if I can feel into, and our listeners can also have this experience is what it’s like to be behind your eyes, what it’s like to be in your perceptual universe. And I realize this is a big open question, but I’m curious how you see and experience being an alive human being right now, how it works for you, how you experience multidimensional awareness.
SG: First, I’d like to dispel the misperception that I might see spirits around me all the time. I don’t at all. I need to sit with the intention of serving someone in a reading or connecting with my own guides, sit with that intention and shift my consciousness. But sitting here doing this interview, I prepared myself by talking to my guides and saying, speak through me. May our words combine to provide the best possible answers. So right now in this moment, I’m shifting and flowing. It’s more like a dance. So I’m aware of things in the room. I’m aware of something snags my attention because that means I’m supposed to talk about it, but I’m listening to make sure that the words that are coming out are stated in the best way that will help people. I’m aware of being helped. I’m aware of my heart and being open and merging with you. It is a dance.
TS: You mentioned if you were doing an actual reading, you would shift, you would tell me more about that, what it’s like and could you actually do it and describe the shift as it’s happening?
SG: Yes, I can guide everybody through it, but it really helps to have an understanding of what’s going on Heaven. The everlife is not a place we go to like an out-of-body experience. People think you travel outside of your body. What’s really going on is that we exist as part of one field of consciousness. We are at a frequency band that we call the human in a body experience. But I’ve come to know from talking to thousands of souls who are no longer in a body, there’s another frequency band or channel that we can call the astral realm or we could call the afterlife. And then there are other channels such as where we would connect with guides. There’s another channel for archangels giving another analogy like one keyboard with different octaves. But it really helps when understanding the shift to imagine this more like one TV network.
This is the channel we’re used to, but we want to shift to the loved one in the afterlife channel. We get there with intention because it’s right here. Just like any TV channel, if you pick up the remote control, you know that you press the button with intention knowing what channel you want and it appears on the screen. It’s that simple. We don’t have to understand how the remote control works. So when I do the shift, I’m simply bringing into awareness that the spirit world is right here, interpenetrating our channel, just a different frequency. And that if I simply use a keyword in my case it’s shift with intention, now I just tune in and notice who’s here. And I felt my stepdaughter just like that, very unexpected. But she’s the one who taught me they are always around because the channels interpenetrate each other, but we don’t always notice who’s here because that would be chaotic wouldn’t it? To have all of the channels playing at once. So it’s simply a matter of visualizing going to a higher space. And I know that sitting in meditation helps me to feel what it’s like to be in an expanded state. So I’ve trained myself to drop into that expanded state instantly.
TS: You work with a group of guides that you call Sanaya.
SG: Yes.
TS: Is this group of guides, are they available on the remote for you? Like, press the button and there’s Sanaya, just like that. Speed dial.
SG: Oh, they’re right here all the time. And often when I’m teaching or when I’m doing interviews, they’ll snag me and they’ll say, “You could say that another way.” It makes me look a bit schizophrenic sometimes because I’ll say, “What?”
TS: And tell us how you understand Sanaya. I said a group of guides. Is there a certain number? Do they work together in some way? Is it one being with different facets?
SG: They came to me in 2010 and I felt their presence as both masculine, feminine, very powerful. So I said, engaging, “Who are you?” And they said, “We are a collective consciousness of guides, and you will call us Sanaya.” And over time, several of them have introduced themselves to me, knowing that I could Google what they told me and validate who they are. Others I couldn’t find on Google. So they haven’t bothered. But for example, Emanuel Swedenborg is one of the group, and Professor William James, the philosopher who was interested in mediumship in the late 1800s, early 1900s, both have come to me, just dropped in on me from time to time. And both times, anytime I meet somebody new, I say, “Well, you need to prove to me who you are.” And for example, Emanuel Swedenborg said, “Well, of course I was known for my spiritual side, but I was also an inventor and I invented things that were far ahead of my time. I was also accused of being a heretic.” And I’m writing down all these things that I’m hearing, looked it up online, and indeed that was valid evidence about him. So various members of the group, but they come and go depending on what the question is, what I need at the time, what the energy that’s needed at the time is.
TS: I would be curious to know what Sanaya has to say about this time in our species’ evolution and development. So many of us are so confused. We have our own theories about what’s going on right now, as there’s so much collective chaos.
SG: They say that they can see the order through the chaos and that as we come to realize that this is part of an evolutionary trajectory, we would trust the process more. What appears to be chaotic when seen from below is actually part of a beautiful tapestry when seen from above growing pains is what you are experiencing. The awareness that all is in order at all times is what will bring you peace.
TS: And for those of us who are struggling at this time with the level of pain that so many people are in and loss and tragedy and just all kinds of horrors, how can we align with this evolutionary movement? How do we relate to the pain we feel for others who are suffering?
SG: We use that for empathy and compassion and understanding why people are suffering. But just like the subtitle of my book, The Awakened Way: Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life, or consciously connected life, we will suffer as long as we’re in only-human mode, as long as we’re identifying with the stories that we’re embroiled in. But just that shift to that state of awareness that’s more expanded, that’s beyond the story, gives us the observer perspective and you will feel peace when you align with that higher vibration. So I give it the analogy of stepping onto the balcony in a theater, no longer identifying with and as the people on the stage and the people in the audience, but being able to take a breather step above and say, OK, that story is temporary. This too shall pass. What can I gain from this higher perspective?
TS: You write that one of the things that matters the most is our point of view. And here I hear you pointing to that, pointing to our point of view. And my question is, it’s kind of a repeat of the last question in a different way. How do we maintain that elevated point of view that has a long time horizon while simultaneously being human beings who really care right in this moment about losses and deaths and suffering that’s occurring?
SG: And that is exactly the challenge that you as a soul came here to do to integrate the soul awareness with the human drama. And it’s they say nigh unto impossible to maintain constantly throughout the day that I am also a soul and not get embroiled in the drama. And so a practice like the Sip of the Divine gives us three minutes a day where we remember we’re souls. And the more we do this, it’s a cumulative effect throughout the day. We remember, oh, I’m getting caught in the drama. I can make better choices when I rise above and remember to see other people’s viewpoints realize we’re all in this together. It’s work. We have to work it to remember and overcome the left hemisphere’s propensity to see separation, to look for problems when the right brain just wants us to flow in a state of wholeness. So you work it. That’s the answer.
TS: OK, well I have to ask you this left hemispheric type question because when you talked about your group of guides and I was thinking, OK, here’s Suzanne. She has the ability it seems like to connect to anyone who’s ever lived it seems potentially with the right intention and energy and focus. So this is the left hemispheric action I took. I typed into Google how many people have ever lived and the answer I got was 118 billion. And I thought, well that’s interesting. I never asked that question before. That’s interesting. And then I thought in Suzanne’s multidimensional map of the world, are there 118 billion souls? This is me trying to process everything through my left brain for a moment. And then all the people who have lost animals they loved and they’re all available. This is a very highly populated everlife, and I wonder how you see it.
SG: I see it as an ocean, like a sea, with eddies, whirlpools. If you’ve ever seen a map of the Gulf Stream flowing up the East Coast of the United States, it’s these beautiful swirling patterns flowing into each other. That’s how I see all of us, these patterns that exist for all eternity in the sea interacting. But I know that because it’s not dense like the ocean, this is actually patterns of consciousness. Just thinking about someone activates a connection with them. That’s why our connection with loved ones who have passed can be immediate, and we recognize them because we are already entangled. But if we just for fun want to reach out and connect with Albert Einstein, will he answer back? Will he feel that connection and connect with us if it serves the greater good? So there are a lot of TV channels playing right now. Thank goodness we can’t hear every one of them. It will be chaos. We don’t want to connect with all of them. We’re not interested in all the channels, but if there is a specific being, your intention from the heart as it serves the greater good lights up, that connection connects your two eddies in the stream and now you can interact. And I had some amazing interactions with Albert Einstein with evidence. So I speak from experience.
TS: Give me an example of that. I think our listeners are curious.
SG: Well, I asked him to connect with me. I went into an expanded state using my blessed me method of connecting with higher consciousness and I felt a presence and I said, tell me all about you. And for the first time I heard someone who I hadn’t met speaking in something that was other than sounding like my thoughts. I heard a German accent. OK, I could have made that up, but tell me things I don’t know about you. And he said, “I lived a life of penury before I became famous.” Well, penury means poverty. I wouldn’t have used that word. He taught me all kinds of things I wouldn’t have known about him. And then told me how he came up with some of his greatest theories.
The thing that really convinced me was several years later sitting in the Laboratory of Consciousness at the University of Arizona with Dr. Gary Schwartz and his wife, Rhonda, who is a medium, suddenly I sensed Albert Einstein in the room with us. Very unusual for me to do this. And I looked at Rhonda and I said, “Did you know that Albert Einstein is here?” And she said, “Yeah, he’s sitting right in the chair over there. He’s been here all along.” And I said to him, quietly, “Tell me something I don’t know to validate this.” Albert Einstein said to me, “They bought that hat on the wall in Tombstone, Arizona at an outdoor market.” And I said, “Rhonda, where did you get that hat?” She said, “In Tombstone, Arizona at an outdoor market.” So I recognized Albert because I had already connected with him. She knew him because she’d been working with him for her own experiments. We ask the evidence, we get it. And it’s self-science for sure in that case, but was it helpful? Absolutely. The things that he taught me helped me more about connecting with higher consciousness. That’s why he came through.
TS: Have you ever connected with who you were in a previous life and actually learned from a previous incarnation of yourself?
SG: I have and it’s ongoing and that’s why I don’t talk much about past lives because I hadn’t given credence to the lives that I allegedly lived through. Someone regressing me. But my personal spirit guide who I deal with daily, awoke me at three in the morning and told me about a life that I lived with him in Russia in the late 1800s. He gave me historical facts that I wasn’t aware of. He explained it’s why I was able to learn the relic alphabet literally overnight when I got to college and can still write it to this day because I had used it as my native tongue in that life. When I got up in the morning, went online, Googled the historic facts that he told me and they were all valid and things that I was not aware of in this lifetime until he shared it with me. So again, these are personal anecdotes, but anybody can do these kinds of experiments.
TS: One of the questions that has fueled my own spiritual inquiry over all these years is wanting to be well prepared for a good death, a good and free and blessed death. And I wonder what you would say about that for anyone who shares that desire.
SG: Learn about mediumship, learn about the afterlife, come to know that there really is no suffering at the level of the soul when we pass. I just did a reading yesterday, and I knew immediately that the person I was connecting with across the veil had died at the scene of a car accident. I see a symbol that goes like this. I see like charades, a hand going up, and I said, “And your loved one died instantly.” She said, “Yes, she did.” And I said, “She wants you to know she didn’t suffer because the soul was out of the body.”
So these kinds of stories let us know that we don’t feel pain at the instance of passing even if it appears that the body is suffering. And then we learn about truly how beautiful and loving the experience is once we’ve crossed the veil. What caught my attention as you were asking the question was a reminder about this documentary that is just coming out very shortly called Wolf’s Message based on my book. And it has three very important lessons, but the third one comes out right at the end about how knowing that we don’t die as souls. The physical body dies, but we don’t die. Knowing that we are still connected to our loved ones and that there is another reality after this one that is quite pleasant takes away the fear of death.
It’s brought through in a very profound and touching way in this documentary by one of the main protagonists who didn’t understand that 14 years ago and is now going through a very challenging battle with leukemia. And she states how her son Wolf’s passing changed the whole way she looks at death.
TS: Tell us more about Wolf’s story for people who are hearing about this for the very first time.
SG: Well, just like my stepdaughter Susan, Wolf was struck and killed by lightning. The most stunning part about Wolf’s story is that he laid out for the world to see before he left absolute proof that at the soul level he knew he was going to be struck by lightning. In the next day he set up his apartment in such a way that it basically shouts out, look here, pay attention to this, pay attention to that. I’m leaving by the light of nature. Even cut out his favorite T-shirt with a lightning bolt on the front and pinned it to the wall across from a poem that described it was time for him to go, freed by the light of nature. And he left a drawing that showed what would happen after he passed. And then he came back through a reading I did for his parents and a special drop-in even before that reading with evidence from the afterlife that really causes us to pay attention.
TS: You mentioned that if you want to have confidence in the soul’s continuation, which when I say a good death, and back to that previous question, I’m not so much talking about dying free of pain or I’m talking about with this soul level confidence in liberation, continuity, having had a benevolent life, not having unfinished business. That’s tethering me here. And so my question is, and this is part of really the core I think of what you’re helping people with as a spiritual teacher in the awakened way if we want to develop that kind of confidence, you mentioned, well, you can get interested in mediumship. Well, I don’t know if I’m really drawn exactly to mediumship. What other options do people have?
SG: Again, it’s reading people’s near-death experiences. Those two really are the keys after death. Communications is another way of saying mediumship. In my book with the title Mediumship, part two are 32 stories of normal people who are not necessarily mediums who know they have communicated and receive communications from their loved ones who have passed. So noticing the signs that we are connected to another reality is a great way of coming to know that we are not just these bodies and that we don’t need to fear death. I’ve come to that certainty beyond all doubt. And yet for a while what held me back was the fear that my husband would suffer if I died before him because I saw how he suffered when his daughter died. I didn’t want that for this person that I love so much. So I was afraid I don’t want to go before he does. And then with this pap, you come to realize that even the suffering helps us grow, but we are beyond the suffering here and now we can make that shift. So again, it’s a matter of just not dismissing all of this but being willing to dive in and do some self-inquiry.
TS: You mentioned that you’re able to make this shift, whether it’s bringing sanaya in or connecting with a soul that’s passed through an elevation and then a shift that you made. Tell us about the elevation and how we can explore that.
SG: Again, it comes down to word choice to understand ourselves in terms of consciousness, the human would be restricted consciousness. The soul is expanded consciousness, so I love to use analogies. What if there is a shaft of energy, like a shaft of light or an elevator shaft and you want to go to that expanded state or the higher state? Well then you just choose a higher floor. And as your consciousness moves away from this restricted body and goes even beyond the body to a higher state, say the penthouse from this state, you can literally feel and experience expansion and that’s where we tap into the higher realms.
TS: What do you think keeps people from getting to the penthouse and then surrendering from there and expanding supremely broadly?
SG: Left hemisphere of the brain, physical senses drawing you in. Like I just used the analogy earlier this morning for the first time, like a baby lying in the crib staring at this mobile. So fascinated, we can’t take our eyes off of it. We’re just so focused on the external objective world. We think this is all there is. And what it takes is just closing your eyes for a minute and believing there’s more. And using our imagination to shift higher, like going to the penthouse and now in this expanded state, because given up my fascination with shiny objects, now I’m here and I say, what if I’m curious? Those are very important. Curiosity and being willing to step outside your normal beliefs and say, what if there really is access to something higher? What if I really can talk to guides? What if Jesus or Buddha or an archangel would come talk to me? Now I’m up here, now I’m playing, come into my awareness now and tell me something I don’t know, put something in my hand that will surprise me and show me I’m not making this up. These are the kind of games we can play that can actually lead to some serious insights.
TS: I noticed, Suzanne, that I feel a little stumped in a certain way, and I want to tell you why. I could ask you any question right now. I could talk potentially to any of these great master teachers who’ve ever lived, and I’m like, who do I talk to? What do I ask them? And I’m curious instead to turn the tables, if it’s OK, and see who might want to come right now with a teaching for the Insights at the Edge Sounds True audience that would be the most helpful evolutionarily to where we’re at and see what naturally wants to come forward.
SG: Wow. OK, so this is where you train yourself to recognize the human side says, oh, I can’t do that. Or oh, put on the spot and you say thank you very much. The left hemisphere goes over there and we just trust higher consciousness here. And you want to know who would have a message for us? Now I’m just going to rely on Sanaya for that.
OK, so shifting. Who’s going to come through and talk to us? I can’t make my lip twitch, but it does it when I connect with them and they’re laughing and they’re trying to make light of this and it sounds absolutely ridiculous, but they’re showing me the cartoon character. Really? I want to be erudite and impress you, but they’re showing me Dumbo.
TS: Oh, this is the perfect—the perfect presence has arrived.
SG: And I’m saying why? And they say, because you won’t be convinced unless you get true—let me shift better here—unless you get true evidence from someone who you can validate. Do not read into the name Dumbo that you are being dumb, but instead be more childlike and know that any aspect of consciousness that you tap into can give you what you need, for they are all connected to the one field of consciousness. What is it? You want to know how to find more peace, how to ride the waves of this storm in which you find yourself. That is what we have been given you throughout this interview. They said, if it comes from a pink elephant or a known elephant cartoon, does it matter? It is all the same.
The pink elephant story comes back to when I advised a client once, ask for a sign that you can trust this communication but make sure it’s something that you could really validate. Like don’t ask for a pink elephant. The very next day I was on a bike ride riding down a trail I’d never been on and there was a life-sized pink elephant in front of a car dealership. So that’s why the guides brought that up right then. Does it matter if it’s Dumbo or a pink elephant or if Jesus had shown up, the answer is going to be the same.
TS: Wonderful. Now you mentioned it’s our left brain that gets in the way, and one of the threads that I found in your work was this connection with our heart and the right brain’s connection with the heart field and how this kind of perception is opened through the opening of our heart. And I wonder if you can speak to that.
SG: Yes, the right brain helps us understand more of wholeness and not separation allows us to be more in a state of flow. Meditation dampens the left brain processes activates the right brain and brings the two into balance. Women are in state of balance with left brain and right brain with head and heart. Now we’re in a whole coherent state and I know you’re familiar with coherence with the HeartMath practices. Coherence means you are radiating energy that is aligned in phase, not scattered, not incoherent. So dropping into the center of us, there’s a big difference between tuning into your heart, which in human terms opens and closes is loving and offended. That’s the emotional heart. But there’s a spiritual heart of us, which I like to term instead the core because then it takes away that emotional heart element when we drop into the core of us, that is a state of just being, of pure being.
We access that when we are in coherence, when head is balanced with heart, when the brain is balanced in that core, when I am in that place in me and you are in that state, in you, that’s where the oneness is. So we learn to become balanced by activating the right brain, dampening the left brain, dropping into what we understand as this state of pure being. And from there, any connection is possible. So see, we can connect from the spiritual core or we can use a visualization to go to the penthouse. It’s all connected and it depends on our intention.
TS: Let’s take a three-minute sip with the core of our heart, open and awake. Can you lead us in that?
SG: I would. And we’re going to start with this vagus nerve breathing that I spoke of where you breathe in very slowly and I’ll guide you through it to the count of four. But you exhale longer, putting pressure on the vagus nerve as you really press down. And that helps you by activating the relaxation response in the body, helping you drop into the right brainwave state. When you’re in this state, picture the mind like a blue sky and everything that you become aware of, sensations, thoughts, and feelings are just clouds. Please don’t resist them. Don’t try to push them away. I want you to notice them basically. Oh, that’s a thought. Let it go. Oh my nose itches. Let it go. But we’ll ask one question and you’re going to let go of everything that doesn’t answer the question. But when something jumps out, then you engage it. Alright, so that’s the brief experience.
So if everybody would just close your eyes to shut out the outer world and with the intention of relaxing as fully as possible, breathe into the nose to my count. One, two, three, four, exhale through the mouth. One, two, relaxing more. Three, four, sinking deeper. Five, fully relaxed. Six. With a nice feeling now at being fully relaxed. Drop awareness to the center of you near the heart, knowing that you are connected to a source of answers. Ask that source now what do I need to know that I don’t know?
And now observe what arises in awareness and with gratitude in your heart for whatever was received, send that gratitude outward and just take a nice refreshing breath and come on back in. Very simple but very enlightening as well as to how the mind works. Did you get a message?
TS: I did, actually. It had to do with being loved and kind of my essential nature as love and goodness. So it was a beautiful message. Did you get a message?
SG: I did. What was that? It was that this is going to lead to more opportunities than I am currently aware. I was fun to see. Wonderful.
TS: Yeah. And in that spirit, what do you feel is your purpose right now? I mean, here you are. And it’s remarkable to me. I had never even heard of you, Suzanne, until a friend who introduced us said, Tami, you should have Suzanne on Insights at the Edge. And the answer was yes. When I looked at your work and I was like, how did, I didn’t even know Suzanne existed. This person is amazing. What she’s doing is amazing, but it was under the radar. And I have a sense that that’s over. You’re now on the radar and not because of this show in particular, but just because of an entire upswell that’s occurring. And I’m curious to hear in your own sense what your sacred function is right now.
SG: It is to help bring what appears to others to be woo-woo to the mainstream. To show people that we are part of a greater reality is basically the awakened way teaching, to share the awakened way teaching with the world that we are not only human, that we’re all connected and that love is what connects us. That’s my mission. But to get it beyond those who already know this.
TS: I want to circle back to the beginning of our conversation where I had in my mind someone who had lost a child, someone very dear to them and their suffering. And I imagine that some of the questions that you get are things like, this was a very violent death, this was a death perhaps in someone’s case by suicide or a tragedy or a murder or some type of sudden death. Terrible. Is the soul suffering or not? And is there anything you could say that would be sort of general principles that would apply in all of these cases?
SG: Absolutely. That every soul is met by love. Every soul. And it doesn’t matter if they were what some people consider an evil person. Every soul is met by love. And the true suffering takes place here before we realize who we really are, that I have brought through so many souls who completed suicide. I’ve brought through happily, not too many who were murdered, but an awful lot of tragic castings. And there’s immediately an awareness that that was a role I took on. It was very real. And may it lead to greater growth for all involved. There is purpose in every passing. Susan’s passing by lightning strike, pregnant with our only grandchild was devastating and a tragedy to us. But now it has helped us touch literally millions of lives with my videos and the teaching. And so when we learn from these things that we truly have nothing to fear beyond this life that makes this life bearable, that diminishes the suffering here, gives us tools.
TS: When you say every soul is met by love, I notice, I think that sounds really good and I hope it’s true, but there’s a part of me that says, wait, I’ve heard from some people that they’ve connected with people who have crossed over who seem to be struggling. They’re not quite sure that they’ve died. They’re still attached in some way. They appear to be suffering, not just in some terrific love field.
SG: Don’t you try to give love to somebody here who’s suffering, and they’re just not open to it? And no matter how much you try, they’re just not ready to make that choice. Well, that happens across the veil to some souls who cling to the story, even though there may be some beautiful, loving beings right here saying, “Look, we’re around you now. Notice where you are. It’s time to wake up.”
TS: So what you’re saying is someone could be suffering in the “everlife,” even though they’re surrounded by loving beings.
SG: It does happen. It’s very rare. They’re met by love, and it’s an individual choice. So the reason I haven’t had the personal experience of anyone suffering is because if they’re coming through to me, they are awake. Right?
TS: I’m not sure I understand that. I mean, wouldn’t people come to you in all kinds of situations? I mean, if you’re functioning as a medium for someone, aren’t you going to find all kinds of connections?
SG: Well, my connections are two-way interactive with the spirits. We are conversing; we’re talking. I’m not just sensing into, oh, there’s a loved one and they’re suffering. I haven’t gotten that because that’s not my role. I’m an intermediary. There are some people who train in helping souls who have not yet realized they have passed. That’s not my work. So I haven’t had that experience.
But I know it will help you—I hope it’ll help you—I’ve had two experiences where I had in separate readings, right in a row, a father of my client be escorted in by very powerful beings. But the father showed like an analogy wrapped up like a cocoon, not allowed to talk. And the guides that brought him showed me they were surrounding him with love, but he had to admit that he had committed terrible, evil acts while here, be willing to make amends for that, forgive himself, and those he hurt before his energy was allowed to merge back into the collective. And indeed, in both of these cases, the daughters told me about such atrocious acts. I couldn’t even imagine it. And that’s how both of those showed up to me. So they were met by love, but that was a prison of their own making across the veil.
TS: I’ve heard you describe what’s happening for us as humans as “earth school,” and I think a lot of us relate to that. It feels like we’re in earth school and continuing to learn lessons. Do you feel that it continues to be a type of school even when we’re not incarnated? It’s still an educational frame, if you will.
SG: I do because as the guides have shown me over and over, the trajectory is ever onward, ever upward, like an opening spiral. I would like to qualify that my version of our school is not like, oh, sit there and learn your lessons, even if it’s the hard way, but more like creative art, school, music, school. We come here to create and evolve through our creations, through our choices. So it’s not punishment to be in this school. We made a choice to come here for this experience. And across the veil, absolutely the soul continues to expand through the story if it chooses, if it serves the greater good to hang onto that story.
TS: Suzanne, here, as we end, I wonder if Sanaya would come forward one final time and offer our listeners some kind of blessing for their life.
SG: OK, we’ll just totally just let them speak. All right. Tell us who’s speaking as well. OK, we’ll see. OK. They’re saying they’re going to speak as the collective, so that’s what they do often. And they’ll say We instead of I, what message do you have for everyone?
The greatest blessing you can come to know is that you are not alone. That you are part of the same kind of collective as we are. For you cannot be separated from your source, but even in saying the word “your” that separates you from the all. Come to embrace the paradox of being both human and a soul. And then you will be more able to dance as the beautiful light that you are. The challenge for most humans is feeling less than, feeling incomplete. And you will feel this incompleteness as long as you identify with the story of you. But as you learn that you are both the story and the shining light, then you can live as both, as often as you remain awake and aware. This is the challenge. And immersing yourself in energy such as this helps you to entrain to the higher energy that is your birthright, allows you to embody more of this higher energy, and then you will no longer suffer by dragging yourself through the mud and muck of being only human. The spiritual path is not about creating a better you. You are not a victim. Here is the message that most do not understand. At the level of the soul, you are already whole and complete. As Suzanne has stated publicly, your bodies and your life may not be perfect, but you are already divine. Learn to embrace your divinity and notice how that changes things for you within the story. You are so very loved. It can be no other way.
TS: Suzanne Giesemann, author of the new book Making the Afterlife Connection. Suzanne, I’m so grateful for how straightforward, honest, and filled with integrity you handled our conversation. You just told it right like it is and right like it was coming to you. And I deeply bow and respect that. Thank you so much.
SG: Thank you, Tami.
TS: And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the aftershow Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
