My name is Will, and unlike Boulder and Scully, both want to believe.
So we've embarked on a journey of discovery. Welcome to Skeptic Medicians Classic.
You are listening to Classic Skeptic Metaphysicians. Welcome to Classic, and welcome
to our version of a walkdown memory Lane as we present classics from the Skeptic
Metaphysician Library. Warts and all. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Skeptic
Metaphysician. I'm Will, and once again today I'm joined by my fabulous co
host Karen Emsley. Karen, how are you doing? I am doing great
and love and be in here, so thank you for inviting me again.
My gosh, you are always welcome. You know you've got an open door
invitation here, Karen. Today we're going to talk about something that is near
and dear to my heart. For obvious reasons. Some of the loyal listeners,
people who've been listening to the show for a while, No, some
of the transformational aspects of this podcast and the journey that I'm on. But
have you ever gone through a big personal transformation? Well? I become a
mother, So I don't know what's bigger than that. Okay, Well,
has there ever been skeletons in your closet or demons that you kind of don't
particularly care for inside you that you try to xcize or anything like that?
Is it bad to say no? I mean, I've known it's wonderful that
if you've not had to have that experience, and that's great. Now I've
had things that happened, But as far as me having demons or skeletons,
I don't really feel. I mean, well, I think I think Carl
Jung would would disagree with you today. In a past interview, I was
introduced to the term shadow work by a past guest, and knowing me,
of course, listeners knew I was immediately intrigued by that term. So I've
done a little bit of research and it turns out that I've been doing my
own shadow work for the past year and a half without even realizing that's what
I was doing. Yes, I love the name. It just sounds so
intrigued. It really doesn't right, right, So what is it? What
is it? Exactly right? Well, it's it's all about demons and shadows
and skeletons and closet. And according to Carl Jung, who coined the phrase
shadow work. This is it's inside all of us, right, every one
of us has that side of us, and it's important to find a balance
between our dark side or shadow self and our light self. Right. So,
in order to talk about this, because I'm not a professional in any
sense of the word, here, we've got a special guest today. She's
no stranger to shadow work. In fact, it's because of her work in
that area that I reach out to to come on the show today. She's
an astrologer, a touro reader, a chandler, and get this, a
light and shadow integration consultant. Wow, yeah right. I am so excited
to have her on the show today. Welcome the cosmic consultant, Laura Black
to the show. Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Well where we could
not be more thrilled. In order to get the conversation going right, I
touched on a little bit about Carl Jung in shadow self and all that kind
of stuff. But can you give us a breakdown from your because you're the
expert right in shadow work, so can you give us a breakdown of what
exactly is shadow work? And why is it important? So it's so funny
that word expert. My little self note in Sagittarius, which is one of
my big shadow and having know it all syndrome, is like, yeah,
yeah, I'm totally an expert. Y you absolutely are. Yeah, once
you invited to come speak about a topic on a podcast, that makes you
an expert, We'll go with it all right. Then had to grapple with
quite a lot and in recent years found that that's where my clientele were really
focusing and that's what I'd been dealing with, and so it became my specialty.
But shadow work, in essence, Carlum did a great job of kind
of describing what it is, but didn't really talk about how to do it.
And I found that astrology has kind of bridged that gap for me,
which Carlum was really fascinated by. So shadow work is the idea that,
you know, all human beings have light and shadow inside of us. We
couldn't have one without the other. There's no saint that never lived a life
as a sinner or vice versa, and that in a time period like this,
which the Yogis would call the yugas the Greeks called it, the Ages
of Man. Every ancient culture on this planet has an awareness of these seasons
and cycles and a larger twenty six thousand year cycle of our sun soul with
serious b But that's another story. So in this time period that the Dark
Ages, so to speak, or the colleague, you got the a where
there is shadow and light in everyone. Theyre's just good and evil if you
want to take it to that like Judeo Christian kind of tradition, languaging,
and that we can't continue toward this awakening that's happening on the planet if we're
going to continue to deny the shadows, which is something we've been in practice
of as we creep, as we crept deeper and deeper into the Kaliyuga.
But if you've heard of the Mayan Long Count calendar, in December twenty one,
twenty twelve, was kind of the end of that Long Count calendar,
and there was a huge misconception in North America at least, that that meant
the end of the world, there's no more time after that, But it
was actually talking about this end of the or the midpoint of the kali Yuga,
the longest distance between our Sun and serious b in a thirteen thousand year
coming together in thirteen thousand year coming apart. So we're going through this awakening
where things look like they're getting messier, but actually they're getting better. It's
just the kind of momentous drag of turning the corner. And in this awakening,
there's a chance for us to use tools such as of astrology and many
others to self reflect and look at both our light qualities and our dark qualities.
And I love astrology as that tool because it's a map, not something
that rules you, but a blueprint that shows the soul contract that you made
with this life upon entry, and it shows you all of the potentials of
who you are and what you're doing here or who you could be. But
the soul decides how they access those energies. And everything in your chart has
a positive and a negative, a light in the dark and in the caliyuga.
We want to use both of them because these are souls trying to experience
what is it to suss out the light in the shadow and which one do
I want to be. That's why we're all here at this time. It's
the wildest ride in the multiverse to get soul evolution, which direction you want
to go, And there's so much diversity and so much conflict, and so
much potential because there's so much light and shadow, as opposed to when those
two stars are really close in this twenty six thousand year cycle, when all
of the beings on any planet orbit those stars or their highest point in human
culture or in conscious that whatever may look like and there is it's really pure
light, and when they're far apart, there's really present shadow. My work
is to help people move away from shadow denial and recognize all of the negative
qualities that come on come along with the gifts that they've been given. And
some of us are stuck in our shadows, which is where I'd been most
of my life, very unconsciously living from the shadow aspects of my chart.
And so now I get a chance to use the chart as a tool to
see, oh, yeah, I do this, I do that, what
does this mean? And every day I'm studying my chart and learning more about
my light and my shadow. And then I get to watch myself in daily
life and see where those tendencies crop up and make decisions about which side of
my Gemini or my Leo or my whatever I want to pull from, right,
it's fascinating. So I have so many questions but me too, but
one that isn't like a live So this is isn't necessarily the shadow of question.
It's right before that. You're talking about people in their charts in astrology.
So if I mean everyone all over the world people are being constantly born,
so are there people that have the exact same charts like a whole you
know, a whole budget gaps of people's totally you know, it's funny.
I have my romantic partner currently I know is chart well. And I had
a mentor while I was in astrology school a while back who has They were
born in different parts of the world. He's from Connacre, Guinea and she's
from Minnesota. They were for two minutes apart on the same day, and
there were kind of equal latitudes actually, and that's not true at all,
but they were close enough of the only gutting difference was their moon slan off
by two degrees. Every placement, every planetary placement in your chart has a
degree out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of this wheel we're looking at,
right, But the planets get more detailed than that. It's not just
degrees. There are also minutes and seconds, so it's very mathematical. Like
they say to row is for literature people, astrology is for mathematics people.
That's not true for me. I had not heard that before. That makes
a lot of sense. Yeah, it's very precise, thick goodness. I
was born in an area with computers, because if I had to handle all
these things, oh my goodness, charting with math, So these planetary replacements
by a minute and second can totally change the flavor. I have twin nephews,
so I'm always studying their charts. They're just a couple of minutes apart,
and they're totally different human beings. I mean physically, emotionally, mentally,
they're totally different, but the same general energy. Because the souls that
show up in that chart choose how they're going to pull from that blueprint,
so we're free agents. Chart doesn't rule us. It's never an astrologer's job
to tell you this is how you are, but it is an astrologer's job
try to help you get a bigger perspective, the more thorough perspective about who
you could potentially be, who you might be being that you don't want to
be, so you kind of we get aware. A lot of the longtime
listeners will probably have listened to the astrology episode that we had where we did
have someone come and pull my chart and I learned a lot about myself during
that that episode, but also a lot of people that are listening learned a
lot about me. And in fact, I had to edit out a lot
this shadow It was just yeah, it was you know, she she had
That's where I got the term shadow work because she did say, Wow,
your your chart has a lot of shadow work, and that you've got to
do. You're you're undergoing and very similarly to you, I my entire life,
I've been living in the shadows without even realizing it until it became very
I mean a catastrophic event that forced me to look at you, shine a
spotlight and go, what WHOA, this is really dark in here? What
what is going on in there? And then and that has has sparked a
ridiculous transformation in me. Why which is why this is so intriguing to me,
because I'm learning all of these things like it is it is possible to
go through life completely in a sleepwalking state, right, not even really all
the stuff that you're doing right, so, and I love how you stay
to something that makes so much sense to me. And I've asked the question
different people and no one has, but you just gave me the perfect answer
when you talked about I'll resist these serious be Harry Potter reference in there,
right, But when you say that, we're just it seems like it's things
are really getting crummy, but it's really getting better because we're round in the
corner. I've always asked that question, like, if everyone's saying we're about
to go through this whole age of awakening, why does it feel like we're
going in the opposite direction? And I've gotten some great answers, but I've
never gotten one as precise as what you just said. And it gives me
a lot more hope. So thank you for that. Oh good. Yeah,
I'm so curious sometime I want to hear about those other answers too,
because that's a question I've asked a lot. But it's big aquary and energy,
You're honest. Energy. It's revolutionary and it's it's the tower card interrow.
It shakes things apart, and it's very messy. This is don't future
trip people, but this is I'm going to do it book. I'm writing
a book. Someday I'll produce them book. It's called The Messy Awakening.
It's very much about the Age of Aquarius, how it's shaking things loose,
and it's hard to even stay in the mindset or the perspective or have hope
or trust that things are getting better. That we can you know that we
haven't destroyed everything already, from our own personal lives to this whole planet because
of that kind of drag and and the Uranian Aquarian shake up. So the
musical hair was correct. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,
basically what you're saying. And you notice that you say iranus. Yes,
I like that Uranus. You can say that without giggling. Right, Well,
I've heard I've heard that. I've heard uranus. Well that still makes
me laugh. My astrology Teato didn't shy from saying, Okay, here's how
you find uranus in the chart. She's predictated. So I have a question
about the dark and the shadows or the shadows and the light. Is it
like inversely proportionate, like if if you are living and they have this great
light. Does that mean you're going to have this equal amount of dark shadows?
You know? So are you trying to achieve the medium where it's coind
of me? You know? How does that work? Yeah? So,
okay, I want to make clear the design of the zodiac, every planet,
every element, because it all just boils down to the four elements.
That's it. They all have light and shadow in equal proportions. Yes,
and souls get you know, the universe God souls. We're curious creatures and
we want to expand and understand ourselves more and more. And so we're going
to try every level of volume for all the lights and the shadow. But
it boils down to the same laws of physics that we experience in the physical
realm. There's no the greater the light, the greater the shadow, and
the inverse is true. And Carl Jung was famous for saying, no tree,
it is said, can reach the heavens. I let us its roots
grow down to Hell. Yeah, and this is you're and dear to my
heart. As one of my catastrophpic events that launched me into my shadow works
some years ago was discovering that I have bipolar disorder and grappling with what it
means to try to heal something so highly stigmatized and misunderstood, and that shows
up in such a variety of ways. And you know, self care became
the big subject of my life many many years ago for this and understanding.
The gift that comes along with the bit of hell is that I do reach
these, you know, in toward mania, we get to these, right,
So then by shadows that can be a whole array of I guess situations.
It's not just that you have these dark, evil deeds. It's not
like Star Wars the light and you know the war is not darkness or I
mean kind of in a way. Well no, but bipolar isn't something that
you do or cause you know, it's really about shining a light like a
Carl Jung has a quote that I love. It says, until you make
the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate
right that it's a great quote that speaks to me personally unbelievably. So it's
not just demons. It's also things that you're grappling with that isn't the accepted
Norman society. Okay, it's things that you have lived through without even realizing
you're unconscious coming to light, Then can I change my answer earlier? I
got some stuff all you said, I was like, we should talk about
what we feel like. I was like, I have done these bad deeds.
I'm like, I haven't really done bad stuff, but that I understand
it better now, So thank you for explaining that. Yeah, And I
think people get scared of the idea of darkness. I've had a couple of
people come onto my Instagram and be like, Wow, I like this thing
that you votes for that, and then they see that I really am I'll
talk like you asked earlier before we came out. If there's anything you don't
want posted, you know, you can let me know which is. I
love that consideration, and my answer is put it all out there, like
I'm an eighth House center, No, my son, and I'm here for
Scorpionic. Let's hear the my south note and zas, let's talk about it.
That's been part of my journey as well. I think that the only
way to truly heal from things is to be completely authentic. Right, So
though the details of what happened don't necessarily concern folks out there because it involves
other people. It's still about being your authentic self and saying, hey,
this is who I am, this is what happened, this is what I'm
trying to do to fix it. And as long as we all shine that
light on that unconscious part of ourselves, I can tell you I didn't know
how much of a jerk I was until I was forced to face it.
And now I realized, WHOA, I don't want to be that guy,
so I need to make some changes. And this is all part of the
journey, right the shadow works. And now I'm now realizing I'm undergoing that
I didn't have any idea I had to do. Yeah. Yeah, And
I'm with you one hundred percent on that. And you said earlier something about
you mentioned it like it's probably a lifelong journey. This is something we're always
going to keep doing. And that's so true, because the more you shine
the light on the shadow, the more there's a shadow of something else.
Of a sudden, it just keeps going. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
little unconscious bias in my maybe not to income, maybe a more conscious bias
in my head. Now I'm petrified to have any shadows anymore, Like I'm
trying to light on everything, like I want to know it all. I
don't want to keep anything from myself because I don't want to cause any damage.
Right, you go overboard on it, but for me, I'm a
Gemini. All are nothing kind of guys. So I've got to when I
do it, I do it all the way through. So we're going for
it. Yeah, yeah, that's and I love that. I think that's
why I love astrology as a tool for this, because you can't lie.
This blueprint isn't going to lie to you. It's what see is what you
get, and you can bullshit if you don't have something showing you like,
no, this is what God said from the moment you were for you want
to face That was the most interesting thing that I that I found in that
astrology episode, that she was saying things to me about me that were one
true, but I never faced it or talk to people about it. Right,
there's no way for her to have known these things. So it was
a and it's certainly an eye opening experience for me. I still don't know
how it works, but I'm closer to being that believer that that says,
yeah, now she she blew my mind. So astrology for sure it made
me change do a turnaround, and I like that idea of kind of putting
everything on your plate out there for yourself and for anybody else. That way,
there's no misrepresentation, you know, it's like what just use what you
get and it's so much easier that way. And that's the big proof of
the shift that we're making from the Age of Prices to the Age of Aquarius
that we are now officially in as of December twenty first. It's full throttle.
It's been warming up since the sixties here. Now there's transparency. I
mean, it's the age of the internet, right, you're out there now,
and the more you just show it. That So December twenty first of
twenty twenty one, or was it or is it coming up in the near
twenty twenty so were you was the Great Grand Conjunction. Oh so if people
out there speak astrology at all, you've probably heard or if they have their
you know, finger on the pulse at all of astrology. That was the
big, big, big, like huge revolutionary energy that came through the Grand
conjunction of Stupiter, Jupiter and Saturn in at zero degrees of which is big
revolutionary energy, but a big struggle and the big macro astrology theme that we
saw out there with a lot of things happening, but there's kind of big,
heavy restrictions around freedom. There's chaos in the collective, there's things are
getting shaken up. And the really obvious one was big tech put out their
new terms of agreement and a lot of creators were getting their work suppressed or
shifted depending on whether or not your views aligned with the owners of big tech
companies like Instagram, Facebook, things like that. So there's just been a
lot of conversation now around what is freedom of speech, how do we stay
connected? Who's really in control of anything? Anyway? Those kinds of themes.
This is Aquarius and Saturn, a big struggle around those themes and trying
to break morms and go a new direction. Right. The only thing I
know is that mercury retrograde comes on around the nicety in bed, because that's
all I know. It's bad. Yeah, I don't know, it's not.
It's not that that's a my wit. We talk about that. Yeah,
No, by all means, yeah, what is mercury retroget That's all
I hear online, Like go with mercury. Careful here it comes mercury,
you know, So what does that mean? What is it? Is that
something we should be concerned about. I have a little analogy with my very
practical mercury in Taurus. I like to give very three dimensional ideas of astrology,
make them really practical for us. So let's pretend you're a car.
Like the sun sign is your the frame of your car. So we're a
Gemini, right, You and I are Gemini have shaped. People know,
we're chatty, curious, maybe a little nosey. We want to share ideas.
And if you look at mercury, mercury is like everything under the hood
of this car. It's the engine, yeah, the radiator. It's also
the signals and the lorn. Because mercury is the mind. It's what you're
interested in, it's what you want to learn about, and it's how you
communicate with oncoming traffic. So when we're looking at mercury retrograde, what a
planet retrograde is, what we're talking about is geocentric astrology, because there's another
type hoolcentric based on the Sun is the center because as it is there et
cetera says everythrom the human's perspective on Earth. So if this is the Earth,
we're right along, right along. Here's Mercury coming along, and our
orbit passes mercury, and for a while it looks like Mercury is going backward
from our perspective. So it's kind of the sensation energetically of sitting in your
car and you've pulled up alongside on a big truck or a train or something,
and you're both sitting still and all of a sudden they start moving and
you don't and you care. I feel like you're going backward, you know,
Yeah, like a car wise, Yeah, yeah, that always happens
to me. There, you're standing at the beach, a little wave comes
in, you stand still on the sand, the wave starts to go out,
and you feel like you're sinking and going backward as you look at over
the ocean. Right, that feeling where like in the movies when they're both
zooming in and pulling out at the same time. Give that weird. Yeah.
So there's this energy that happens around any planet that's going retrograde. That's
the effect. It turns it the energy ruled by that planet internal. It
makes it awkward, It makes you go back, reflect, redo, revisit,
reassess, approach anything with the or ree. Really, it happens most
planets. They all go through a retrobrate at some point. Chiron just what
retrograde a couple of weeks ago. Jupiter is now retrovate. So when Mercury
retrovate, because it does it the most, because that's just moving. Mercury
is the messenger of the god that's Hermes tooth in Egyptian mythology. So this
is the communicator, right, It's the channel. Gemini is ruled by Mercury.
So it affects us a lot. Friend. Hell, this is because
it stays close to the Sun. It's the closest planckfas of the Sun.
It'll always be within one side of the Sun. And it seems to go
backward from the Earth the most three times a year. At least last year
it was four. Wasn't that fun. It's a three week lot where every
time it yeah, yeah, and so it's not bad. It's just that
the it's the most common one. Like Marsco's great, Well, it fuck
shit up when Mercury backward, it seems to us to take all of communication,
which hello, that runs everything in the world and it makes it all
awkward, bumpy. It forces us to reconsider how we're communicating, how we're
thinking. And it is for the benefits. It's for the improvement of connection
and communication and community and commerce, business, all these things integrated with Mercury,
the share of information, teaching, learning. But it's frustrating and there
are often miscommunications both interpersonally and internally, and communications systems shut down and so
lately has become more noticeable because of technology and communication systems are everywhere and watch
Mercury retrograde, things start to break. Don't buy a moone during Mercury retrograde.
No to sell Yeah, I'll sid contacts during marketing retrograde because these are
I mean, life goes on. You have to you have to do life
right. But one of my favorite astrologers was just saying like, Okay,
don't stop your lives based on the astrology, Like we still have to live
and it's a tool for awareness, not to be fear. You know of
events, celestial events, like they're here for us, We are them,
we are those bodies, right. But she signed a contract New Leaks for
an apartment during Mercury retrograde. She's like, well, I had to because
life goes on. And then she got into that place and a week later
a better spot opened up and her place wasn't working out. She'd be like,
oh, okay, this is why I was signing those contracts. Okay,
after retrobage is like a down right, So she said life has to
go on, But at the same time, she really wished that life had
not gone on because she could have a better place. No, it's just
a good example for her, and it probably happened because she has such a
huge astrological platform to show people, like, look, life goes on.
I had to sign this contract, we got into the home, we moved,
it was a big hassle, and then whoops, things didn't work out.
We had to move again. I'm not sorry it happened. It had
to happen that way. I don't really know why, because I'm not God,
but like this is kind of the idea behind it, and life goes
on and you have to do what you have to do. Right, We
need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more amazing
conversation on the skeptic metaphysicians brings us back around to the whole shadow work thing,
right, because these are things that a lot of people, me included,
say, yeah, going through it sucked. It's still it sucks,
but it's making me such a much better person. So at the end of
the day, it was a good thing in that sense alone. It made
me a better person, made me aware of faults I had to fix,
and it helped me to become better. So will everybody, at some point
or another go through their own shadow work? I don't know that I can
say that or can answer that question. I don't know what everybody's going to
do. I'm not God, but I do and ask for should they?
I don't know that I can answer that one way or another either, Because
the one thing I truly believe in and know of this life, the cosmos
or whatever energy is forces behind it, is that we are free agents.
People should get to choose if they take a look at themselves and not.
I would love it if everybody would. Why doesn't that so be good?
So? Can I just clarify? So is the goal of shadow work not
necessarily to get rid of the shadows, just to kind of shine a light
and see what's going on in there? So you know what you're working with.
Yes, I love this question so much. This is vital. You
can't get rid of the shadows. This is the thing that Carl Jung drove
home again and again in his writings I did there is no getting rid of
them. A lot of shadow work is engaged in initially because people are realizing
I'm an asshole. I don't want to be an Assholey, don't I stop
being an asshole? I like, well, good luck changing your chart.
You can learn about the qualities that we have. Like your chart basically shows
you your traumas, because we all have it where our defense mechanisms got set
up, where our feelings or whatever our successful coping mechanisms, or any other
functional attributes we have, how they got set up in our lifetime. You
can read it as a time lets see what happened, and as somebody who
had blocked out a lot of memories of trauma, that was really helpful.
Not that the chart showed me the trauma that had been there, but as
repressed memory came back, I was able to, in a state of total
confusion, look at the chart and be like, oh my goodness, I'm
not making this up. This is there. Really you know, so the
chart can help you explore the shadow and then look at what gifts come out
of trauma like that. Let's say, for example, you have Mars and
aries in the first house pure aries energy, Mars rules aries, it's in
the sign of areas is in the house of aries. That's an angry dude.
I mean maybe not angry, maybe ambitious, maybe driven to the high
quality type of of a But they may have been put into place there because
he experienced some violence as a little baby or something, you know, and
has a big defense or a lot of you know. It could have been
place there because he was really encouraged as a baby and felt confident and supported.
So there are all these different ways that these planetary placements can be set
up. But if they were put there because of trauma, for example,
the placements in my chart that show my bipolar disorder. That sucks to have
bipolar, honestly, but also there are some really big gifts that come with
that. I'm a really good channel, so you know, I look at
the dark side the shadows of what I have. Bipolar happens to have a
flavor of narcissism too. It real fun that I can use my ability to
get attention and to talk about things, and to talk a lot. Lumping
this out of my own voice. Let me tell you about astroloa to try
to help about me so much anymore? You know I'm still a narcissist.
How do I shift and try to lessen that and make this more about service
to the collective? Right? Right? So it's not about getting rid of
the shadows. It's about looking at the shadows, how they got there,
being aware that they're never going to go away, and trying to become more
conscious of how they show up day to day, moment to moment and whoops,
okay, that's my dark areas energy. What if I try to reach
for the light areas energy? How can I be confident and encouraging in this
situation? Things like that. It does very similar to when we spoke to
someone about the tourou and the forward facing or the right facing and then the
reversed. I guess it is. There's always different messages. Just take the
awareness and use it in the best possible way. I guess that's what you're
saying. Yes, I love it. So you said something that this may
not be the right time to have this conversation but I'm super curious because it's
not how I understood charts work. So maybe you can enlighten me on it.
You mentioned that taking your example of the aries dude, the really angry
guy who perhaps something had been put on his chart because of abuse. I
thought the chart was laid in once you were born and doesn't change, right,
So how does that work? So really fascinating that what keeps me up
at night. I love it. I mean, this is what makes me
use the G word. Got now I have. I want to share a
little backstory that I have a lot of religious trauma the bipolar actually comes.
Can I get really explicit here a little trigger warning, of course, about
the kind of trauma? Absolutely? Okay. So I was sexually abused by
a church leader when I was like two to four years old in a very
very like Culty Mormon family. My whole family is still Mormon, and I
had to leave that church. I kind of lost the family for a while.
We're healing those relationships, but I have issues with religion, and yes,
my whole life path has been to explore what is power? This is
what it means to have an eighth House son? What is what is the
shadow? Is why do people believe what they believe? Where does power come
from? How do we wield it? What does manipulation these things? And
how do you heal and transform? These are all scorpionic themes. So I've
gone on kind of a mission my whole life to explore every religion or spiritual
practice. I come around and kind of like the skeptic to metaphysician, I
love this. I really love what you're doing here. Like you. That's
what I've done with religion or spiritual practices, and I kind of try on
all of them like a Gemini, and then I keep what works for me.
I look for what's universal. I think critically about it as best I
can, and I watch why do people fall in? Like what is group
think? Things like that. I'm fascinated by psychology for a spiritual pursuit,
and I came to I didn't like to use the G word god. I
considered myself atheist for a very long time, and then I explored all kinds
of world religion and became a Yogi. I was a Hindu, I was
a Buddhist, I was a Ginis, I was you know, I went
through all these Right now, it's Islam that I'm exploring, which is very
similar to Mormonism. And what I find is that the chart is your chart
from the moment you're born. All I need to tell somebody to explore and
be very accurate with somebody about their life path and purpose and experiences is their
date, time and location of birth. That's it. Complete. Strangers I
read for every single day, and yet I can tell them all about themselves
based on the moment of their birth. How why are those planets up there?
Everything in nature on this planet has a reason and a balance and a
symbiosis with something else. Why are those planets up there? My dad taught
me how to tell time with the stars when I was a little girl,
and I just I just wanted to know why they were up there. It
didn't make sense. They were beautiful, and my dad had a lot of
ideas about them being gifts from God and all kinds of other things. Mormons
have some funny ideas about how we all get our own planet after this life.
The other story so interesting, and I had not heard that about Mormon.
Do you think I've heard about that? Piantology? Yeah, scientology,
I don't think I heard that. Yeah, Mormon is what's interesting not to
bash religions that I want to be respectful of it. For sure, I
feel the right to back the religion its brain. Washington two said, all
right, So I pondered this. I found astrology when I was fifteen years
old, and I brought it home when I talked to my parents about it,
and they just shamed the hell out of me and made fun of it.
And then all my life it was my obsession. It was just a
calling, you know. So I kept studying it on my own, and
then I'd be in relationships with men or friendships that with people who just thought
it was ridiculous and constantly put it down and made fun of me and thought
it was just Hippi Wulu novemens. And then I decided, when COVID happened
and my yoga career was kind of pulled out from under me, what am
I going to do? And I went into some meditation and did some sacred
plant medicine therapy and had the message to me very clearly that I needed to
go to astrology school, which I didn't know was a thing. I didn't
know you even actually had that either. Wow, Yeah, it's cool.
So I went to the Dubber Silverman School of Astrology. Highly recommend any astro
geeks out there. Go. She's amazing. Is that an honor? And
you can do Also, do you have to go in person? You can
go online. She used to do her Level three is actually in Hawaii with
her at her home. But yes, please, I like, I'd like
to do level three. You just jumped at three. She's amazing. It's
all online now. I think they will host in person work chops against some
very cool, great school. You get mentorship, you get a lot of
guidance, gal a lot of practice. It's wonderful. She's the best of
the best. And you know what, well, she's not paying us a
sponsorship. But I'm still going to put in a direct link to or because
I think it's on your The information is on your Instagram, So I'm going
to grab that and put it on the show notes. If you're interest didn't
go into astrology school, maybe this is the one for you. Yeah,
And it was life changing. It's really amazing. And you know, my
family didn't think much of it, and they were like, really, you're
going to waste your time and money on that then, and want to do
sadly and I found through deeper study at that level that just how accurate everything
is. And I realize, look these placemens. I can look at my
chart and see events in my life where the planets fall. I can see
being molested. I can see blocking out those memories from being caughtage thloring my
body by my parents and the religious shame of that culture. So I can
see how I came alive, how I came into my own in the start,
I could see the timeline of it, and yet it's been there since
my firth. So when I say, like in that example, the Moors
dude Mars in the first house, maybe this happened when he was a baby,
I don't know, And some astrologers go there and try to pick that
apart. My astrology teacher happens to be a psychotherapist of forty years, and
so she's always applied. That's the name of her school is applied astrology.
That's why I take kind of a psychological perspective, even though I am not
a mental health professional. I have no business in that, but I truly
believe, like Carl Jung said, ecology will continue to be a dinosaur science
until it includes the study of astrology, and I give it a couple hundred
years. I think they'll be one of the same. I think astrologers and
I think doctors, medical doctors, and psychologists will be therapists will be astrologers.
Well, we've got a long way to go towards that that, because
even when I post things about astrology on the show, I can't tell you
how many times, how many comments, how many really just nasty people saying,
yeah, you really expect me to believe this kind of stuff and without
you know, just just listen to the show, make up your own mind.
But yeah, there really is no reason to bash something that you don't
understand just because you don't understand it or you're afraid of it. And our
stance here is keep an open mind and don't get yourself into a rout where
you feel something is unbelievable, because the minute that you feel that something is
unbelievable to you, you've just proven yourself right. Right, the whole Schrodinger's
cat thing and the quantum physics, and you know, see, and my
take on that that is so he's the skeptic, I'm the believer. I
feel like you kind of lose some of that joy and wonder if you don't
believe, you know, if you're just looking for reasons to disprove something I've
got to find. It's like such a negative thing to me, and I'm
like, oh cool this too. Wow. Absolutely, I was really stuck
in my shadows for the long period of my life where I was not letting
myself believe because I was so wounded by being forced to believe on my life.
She wasn't given the choice. This is the truth, the only truth,
and we have the only truth. That's the way. It was very
narcissistic, abusive relationship with a church. Coming out of that, I was
like, like, I can't believe, but astrology has proven it to me.
It's mathematical proof that God exists. I don't know what that God is.
I don't see any rules applied. I see there's light shadow, and
we are free agents, and there's a math that can tell you all about
you and your specific relationship to that God and to this life. Yes,
and I'm violated by it. I'm not like, I'm not hook line and
sinker sold on any one way of looking at it, because I'm a Gemini
and I will not follow any religion around it. But I'm fascinated and I
want it to be my life work to ask questions about what I'm doing here,
what everybody else is right here? It sounds like you should have the
podcast, yeah, because I mean that's exactly what we're doing on the show,
right. I've always the reason why I started the show is because I've
been looking my whole life very similarly to you, looking into all kinds of
religions and all kinds of modalities, looking for that three like that physical I
want to be able to touch it, proof that there is something out there
beyond this physical world. Right, So I have found certain things. A
raiky energy to me was the thing that made me go, Okay, this
stuff is real because I actually I felt it. I actually felt it.
I've spoken to psychics and channels and it sounds right, but it's just kind
of hard to hard to swallow right now. What's the scientific modality? Yeah,
how does that work? Right now? Over the course of my last
year and a half or whatever, I've found that it's amazing how much is
out there that I don't know about. So reading the book Wayne Dyer talk
about on the show all the time. The fact that there is so much
in this world, in this universe, like we don't know how We know
scientifically how a flower blooms, but we don't really know how a flower actually
blooms, Like what makes it? Like what's the intelligence behind that? Right?
Absolutely? If you look at like how do you how do your brain
impulses come and make you move your finger? Right? I mean we know
how to do it scientific how to happen scientifically, but but really, what's
the intelligence behind it? It's like why, Yeah, it's the same general
principle who knows and again that the whole Asimov thing about to a primitive culture,
science will look like magic because it don't understand it. Like what what
in the future are we going to find? Like, like to your point,
astrology to some people is kind of this esoteric. They call it a
pseudo science honestly, So so what what if in the future there is more
proof that says, yeah, this is real and it's no longer pseudoscience,
this is actually science, and maybe it's taught in school and that's that's where
my mind looks at it. That's right, I mean it's happening. We're
in process right now. I know it doesn't seem feasible because in the mainstream
it's not accepted, it's it's ridiculed a bit. But I know one of
the people that it was, like a guest teacher while I was in astrology
school, was talking about how they have five hundred thousand pieces of data explaining
or if they're collecting data around how placements got set in a person's charts,
like, oh, this this person experienced sexual trauma, this person experienced you
know, support and love and nurturing at this time of their life. Like
they're understanding why how these charts got there, They're understanding the psychology relationship,
and with that emerging, I think it's only a matter of time. It's
just that astrology is the energy of Aquarius. Hello, Age of Aquarius,
and that highest level air it's at Air is information, intelligence, knowledge,
communication and sharing, connecting community, the collective. And so with astrology being
in the Age of Aquarius, we're starting to remember some of the old the
highest sciences. It was the same kind of thought line as like Ancient A
Wiams. Have you guys ever seen that show? Yes? Yeah, oh
yeah, yeah, love of that show. Yeah. So it's the idea
that there used to be higher science and higher technology than there is on this
planet right now, that we've had, you know, atomic weaponry long before,
and that Egypt wasn't eight ten thousand years ago, it was those pyramids
were built way before as a mercoba, as a way of interdimensional travel of
communication. That we understood the power of sound, frequency and light. Back
then, the highest sciences, the natural sciences, we understood the technology of
the Earth and how to work with that as human beings on a very advanced
level. And that sciences such as astrology and even yoga. I mean,
look at the history of yoga. The Siva came down ascended in a beam
of light on Mount Kilivinjo and gave yoga to the seven Ragshi's like these are
these are extraterrestrial forces with us, and we're trying to show us how to
become more aware. It expand its human beings, right, And astrology was
just this tool that they were saying, look, there's a way of mathing
using astronomy. Astrology used to be more respected than astronomy because it wasn't just
the geometry, the physics, the mathing, the mathematics. It was also
something spiritual about psychology and integrating the living human being and how to understand how
we work, what we're here to do, and how we can do it
best. I can't not believe thinking for Yeah, this conversation has been absolutely
fascinating to me. We went through to so many rabbit holes I never expected
us to go when we were talking about shadow work, but it was absolutely
fabulous. You help people with their own personal shadow work, right, that's
one of the things that you do. So if somebody was interested in reaching
out to you and working with you to explore their own shadow selves, what's
the best way for them to do that? So I'm my website is under
construction my mars Is and Gemini, so I'm about getting things together, but
we're in progress. So you can look through my website. I just don't
have my current yoga teaching schedule up there and so it's not always exactly accurate.
I might have to change the time with you. So the easiest way
is my email, which you can reach me at Cosmic Consultant seven seven seven
at gmail dot com or Laura Black forty two at gmail dot com, or
through my Instagram where you can check out a lot of my posts and message
me directly, which is the Underscore Cosmic Underscore consultant. Okay, at the
positive Consultant. I'll lay in some direct links to those in the show notes
so that you can access them without having to take notes. If you listen
to this on the radio, don't worry right right, you don't have to
pull over you can. You can visit Skeptic metaphysician dot com later on and
get all of that information. Laura, this has been absolutely fascinating. Is
there anything any last minute words of wisdom that you want to make sure you
impart on our audience before we close it out today? Yeah, Getty,
really honest with yourselves. It's hard and it's scary. It's the best shadow
work is where it's at. It's the most uncomfortable and the most rewarding thing
you'll ever do. Very well, said Laura. Thank you so much for
coming on the show today. If you're interested in reaching out to her,
like I mentioned, I'll have all of those links directly on our show notes.
I am in awe of the amount of knowledge that you have shared with
us, and so much more knowledge I'm sure must be in your head that
we didn't even get a chance to touch on, but I'm in absolute awe.
I don't know how else to say. Well, I'm really looking forward
to talking with you more and still hope to have you on my little show
and show off your chart for I would be thrilled. Thank you for the
invitation, happy to join in with you. Okay, So, Karen,
thank you again for joining on this one. This was This was a fun
one, but I have so many more questions with a chart if they's going
to start getting better, but I get it soundly, we want to have
Laura come back for part two. Sincerely, thank you a listener for coming
along on our journey of discovery. If you know someone that would benefit from
hearing these messages that we're sharing on the show, I urge you to share
this podcast with that person or this radio show with that person, because you
never know who might just have their life changed by it. Now. Like
we mentioned, if you'd like to learn more about my guests, check out
her Instagram at the Underscore Cosmic Underscore Consultant, or just go ahead and search
for a name Laura Black Astrologer. That's how I found her. Or check
out her website. It is under construction, but most of the stuff is
there. It's Thecosmicconsultant dot com. As I mentioned, I lead in direct
links to those in the show notes for convenience, you can always find those
and so many other things on my website Skeptic Metaphysician dot com. Not only
can you access those direct links and the direct links to our social media platforms
and those are my guests, but you can also leave us voicemails there too.
We'd love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your questions, your
feedback on the show, the guests, all of that. Well, that's
all for now. We will see you on the next episode of The Skeptic
Metaphysician. Until then, take care,