Lee Shanks: The Walmart Greeter of the Newly Awakened

Ross Tayler: Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Lee Shanks. Lee is a trained psychic medium who resides with her family in the village of Shawnigan Lake here on Vancouver Island. Passionate about teaching and mentoring, Lee is especially drawn to beginners, affectionately calling herself the Walmart greeter of the newly awakened. Known for her kindness, humor, and accuracy, Lee welcomes people into the world of mediumship with grace and compassion. She works from her home studio in Shawnigan Lake, offering corporate and private readings to clients across Vancouver Island and beyond. Lee is also a proud co-owner of the Blue Caterpillar Emporium, a metaphysical tea shop in Cobble Hill, BC, where she and her business partners have created a welcoming space for spiritual exploration and connection. Welcome, Lee. I'm so happy to have you here today.

Lee Shanks: Good afternoon, Ross. I'm so happy to be here.

Ross Tayler: And excited to have this conversation. You and I met through a mutual contact, and I actually went down to the Blue Caterpillar Emporium and met you for the first time. I just love that space. It's so fun and whimsical, and I love the conversations that happen there, and being able to go and have a nice cup of tea and do some work.

Lee Shanks: Thanks for saying so. That's exactly why we created the space, to give people who are into the metaphysical, a little bit of the out-there stuff, a place to gather and feel comfortable and build community.

Ross Tayler: I love it, and you've definitely done that. In your bio you mentioned that you're the Walmart greeter of the newly awakened, and I love that. I wonder how many listeners might be sitting on the fence of, am I a medium? Do I have gifts? Do I not have gifts? You love working with people who are newly awakened, and that is a passion of yours. I'm curious if you could share your experience of coming into mediumship in that context, and perhaps what you would like to say to anybody who is having that experience.

Lee Shanks: Sure. Let me take you back a little bit to my own personal awakening. Like many of your listeners, I'm sure, I experienced multiple little incidents over my entire life that, if I had followed the breadcrumbs at the time, might have clued me in to the fact that I was a psychic medium, but I was too busy living my life. Fast forward several decades, I would get a deep knowing, and things would work out exactly how I knew they would. I'd get prophetic dreams that would come true within hours. I'd be in the moment, oh my God, that was so crazy, that's wild. For maybe 24 or 48 hours I'd be all up into the experience, and then I would forget about it. I'd put it at the back of my mind. I'd think, okay, that was a one-off, that was weird, I'm unusual, I'm crazy. I just wouldn't carry on thinking about it. Those experiences happened for the first 50 years of my life, just about.

Then I experienced my own awakening. Many people experience an awakening through a traumatic event. They lose a parent or a child or somebody particularly close to them, and they start seeking answers. That's the beginning of their awakening. For me, my favorite rooster died.

Ross Tayler: Hmm.

Lee Shanks: Mr. Handsome was a wonderful rooster. I had a fairly large flock of ducks and chickens and geese, and Mr. Handsome was well known for coming up to you in the coop yard, sitting on your knee, and having a little chat. He was very gentle and very chatty, just a love, and he won me lots of blue ribbons at the local fairs. He was well loved by the family.

One day I went out to the chicken yard and there's Mr. Handsome. He'd gotten into a fight with one of the younger roosters and was beaten up significantly. I separated him from the rest of the flock and put him on the other side of the yard in his own little coop yard, and fixed up a little doghouse with a door on it for him. I began ministering to his wounds over the next few days. One night I went out to lock him up, and I jokingly said, Mr. Handsome, you're getting a little spoiled here, buddy. You really need to get it together and get back to your girls. They're missing you. And I very clearly heard, out of the dark behind me, a voice say, this will be the last night you have to do this. I swung around fully expecting to see my husband standing on the deck 20 feet behind me, and there was nobody there. I went, whoa, that was weird. And like every other time in my life, I instantly dismissed it and carried on with what I was doing. I locked up all the rest of the birds, got everybody tucked in nicely, came in the house, and went to bed.

I got up the next morning, poured myself a cup of coffee, stepped out onto the deck, and looked over to Mr. Handsome's little coop yard. The door on that little doghouse was wide open, and all I ever found was feathers. It rocked me on my heels. I went in the house, and my husband was just inside the doorway. He looked at me and said, my goodness, what's happened? I explained about Mr. Handsome, and he said, I am so sorry, I know he's your favorite rooster. I said, you know what? In this moment, it's not even about Mr. Handsome. It's about that voice. That voice that I've heard countless times in the last 49 years of my existence, and I've ignored it before. This time I very clearly ignored it, to the detriment of Mr. Handsome. That really bothers me, because I don't know where this voice came from.

So I went and sat on my front veranda and said to my husband, I need to process this, because I've had this stuff happen. I've mentioned it to you before. I told you about when I knew I was going to win a 100th anniversary Harley-Davidson from the radio station. I knew three months in advance I was winning it. I told everybody it was my motorcycle. When I won, I just went, yeah, I knew, but I didn't question it. I said, you've heard me express that I know these things, I've had these dreams, but this all means something, and I can't figure out what it means. So I sat on my veranda for the day. My poor husband would come out every hour or so and put a coffee in front of me and leave. I processed all those times over my life where I'd had a knowing, I'd had the voice, I'd had a vision, and I realized they weren't one-off anomalies. They were in fact breadcrumbs leading me to a truth about me that I wasn't aware of in that moment.

One of the things I had to process was that my mom used to always say, after the fact, I had a feeling that was going to happen. We used to chuckle and roll our eyes and go, sure, Mom had a feeling. In that processing, I had to accept that my mom probably did have feelings about things in advance but was too afraid to own them in the moment, so she would say it afterwards. I had to send an apology to my mom in heaven and say, I get it now. I don't know what this is, but I understand a little bit better. By the end of the day, I said, you know what, Spirit, I don't have a clue what this is. I don't know what's going on, but I'll tell you what, where you lead, I will follow. That's how I ended my day.

The next day, I received an invitation from a somewhat famous psychic medium in Alberta, whose mailing list I was on, saying scholarships to mediumship school were now open. I thought, well, that's pushing it. I've just accepted that I am intuitive and might hear voices, but I'm certainly not a medium talking to dead people. That's something completely different. I chuckled it off, and then I heard the echo of my own voice: where you lead, I will follow. God, fine, I'll apply, but I'm not expecting anything. I applied for the scholarship, and in the meantime, I went to Duncan to see a psychic medium I'd never met before. While I was there, she said to me, you're a lightworker. I said, what's a lightworker? She said, you've got a job here to do on earth. I said, what's that job? She said, you'll discover that for yourself. I left there and Googled what's a lightworker. I got excited by all the things I came to understand about this role. I've always been the kind of person who loves to help people, and being in service lights me up. I thought, whoa, I get to be in service to others, and maybe that's my new role moving forward.

Understand, by this time I had been in bed with a chronic pain condition for four years and had given up my previous careers and what I thought they were going to be. I had completely surrendered to that being my new reality until this experience. So I was all high on this idea of being a lightworker. I happened to be going to this woman's house, because she'd bought something off me and I said I'd deliver it. While I was there, we started a conversation. She said, come in here and see, and I walked into one room. She had an entire wall of cubbies filled with baskets of crystals, 50 or 60 cubbies. She said, pick one. I said, what? She said, pick a crystal. I said, are you serious? She said, yeah. I've always been drawn to amethysts. She would have given me anything. I had free range, and I picked a beautiful amethyst point. She said, are you sure that's what you want? I said, this is what's calling me. I was all excited. I thought, this woman has crystals, she knows what I'm about, she gets this whole lightworker thing. I was floating on cloud nine, and I told her I was experiencing this thing called an awakening and I'm a lightworker. She looked at me very coolly, shrugged her shoulders, and went, yeah, isn't everybody?

It completely burst my bubble of joy. I spent literally days ruminating over that, because I had been so joyful, so high on life and excitement, and she made me feel like it was nothing. Over the next week or week and a half, I allowed myself to convince myself that awakenings are a big deal. I'm coming into a whole new iteration of who I am. I may not understand it, but I'm allowed to be excited about it. In that moment I said, never ever, if somebody comes to me who is newly awakened, who doesn't know what it means or where it's leading them, will I make them feel how I felt. I'm going to make sure they know it is a big deal. It is something to be celebrated. It's something to be excited about. That's why I have such a passion for beginners and the newly awakened.

Ross Tayler: What a great story. When that voice came through at the chicken coop that night, I got full chills in my body. I could feel it. And I love what you're saying about bringing that experience to the newly awakened, because it is important. I can also see the perspective of that woman. She was probably saying, well, we all have gifts, on some level. But that wasn't meeting you where you were at, because this was a big deal.

Lee Shanks: Yeah, it was more about her dismissiveness of it. She could have, in that moment, thought about it. This is why I call myself the Walmart greeter of the newly awakened, because the Walmart greeter is the first person who sets the tone for your experience. I want people to know that I don't care if I'm at this for a hundred years, and I truly hope I am, I want to be just as excited about the thousand-and-fiftieth person who comes to me and says, I'm newly awakened, as I was about the first, and my own.

Ross Tayler: Absolutely. As you were talking, a couple of things came up for me. One was that the first time I experienced what I now call intuition was probably about 29 years ago. I was working at a Wendy's restaurant. The end of the story is that I got robbed at knifepoint. Somebody broke in and stayed in the restaurant, in the ceiling, and came down afterwards and robbed me at knifepoint. The funny thing was, when I went back through the night, it happened to be the first day I worked at that restaurant. I'd just been promoted and was getting to know the place. There were a number of things that happened. One was that I walked in and it was the first Wendy's I had worked at with a false ceiling. All the other ones had a solid ceiling, and I made note of that when I walked through for the first time. Later in the night, it was one of those days where everything went sideways. I was sitting in the dining room smoking. I used to smoke back then. This fellow walks towards me, and right in that moment I thought, something's not right. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't articulate it. He came over, introduced himself, and said he worked there. I said, nice to meet you, and went and sat at an empty table. I didn't order food. Something happened, I got distracted, and went back to work. The moment I encountered him later that evening, standing in front of me with a knife, I thought, my God, it's him. I made the connection: this is the person I felt something was not right about. Luckily for everyone, it all ended smoothly, and it was quite the experience. But I remember clearly, it's like I knew. I knew something.

Lee Shanks: Yeah, that deep knowing. What we know now as claircognizance.

Ross Tayler: Exactly, that's my clair.

Lee Shanks: For sure. In my training I've come to understand that no clair is any better than any other, whether you're clairvoyant or clairaudient, or maybe it's your smell or your taste. But claircognizance, that clear knowing, I'm telling you, I may misunderstand something Spirit shows me. I might mishear a word they share with me. But I will never mistake that deep knowing. None are any better than the others, but it's kind of my favorite.

Ross Tayler: It's interesting, as a male going to shamanic circles and intuitive circles and listening to the stories that get shared by someone who is clairvoyant, with all the imagery and all the detail, it's interesting to have that contrast as someone with claircognizance, and be like, why am I not having that experience?

Lee Shanks: Yeah, everybody develops differently. I have my claircognizance, and I'm fortunate that my clairs are pretty strong, except for my smell and my taste. Seriously, it's because I prefer if Spirit doesn't use those clairs, simply because of an experience I had several years ago where I tasted and smelled liver and onions. My entirely least favorite food in the entire world is liver and onions. So I shut that down. I said, Spirit, you're not allowed to do that with me anymore. It's only in the last couple of years I've opened myself up to using it again, because I understand that sometimes a smell may be the strongest connection you have to somebody: their favorite perfume, what their laundry detergent smelled like on their clothes, their particular aroma, or Mom's baking or Grandma's cookies. I've opened myself up to them, I just don't use them very often. But my claircognizance, I trust that one implicitly. We're all human, we're going to second-guess things, but I never second-guess my claircognizance.

Ross Tayler: I love that. You also made me think about something in my lineage. I remember talking with my mother about psychic gifts, and she made the comment that she shut that down and that her mother shut that down. I was like, wow, you were both aware of these gifts and didn't bring them out into the world.

Lee Shanks: Neat.

Ross Tayler: So neat, and also sad that it wasn't possible to speak about those things back then. It's interesting to think about that in hindsight, and I bring this up more for anyone who might be having similar thoughts. We live in a world now where people are so receptive to hearing about this. And yet I always think of people in smaller communities where there might not be a circle they can go to or a gathering they can experience, and yet people are probably out there.

Lee Shanks: I've had many of those conversations with clients who have crossed my path. Countless times, I've worked with a mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother in spirit who says, I had the gift. Back in the day, Grandma would talk about having the ladies over for tea in the afternoon, and they would make a game out of reading pictures in each other's cups, but they weren't reading. They were playing a game, so it was safe, it wasn't involving Spirit, and it wasn't against any religion they were involved in. But what they always say is, I wasn't free to explore this. You are. Please pick up the torch and allow yourself to explore who you are as a soul being, not just as a human being, so you can really and truly flourish to the best of your abilities in this lifetime.

Ross Tayler: I want to speak to your level of excitement around this work. I work with people helping them find their purpose and find that spark, and it's so evident in your energy how much you love this work. What can you say about that?

Lee Shanks: I really, really do. It's probably because I had a difficult upbringing, a difficult childhood, lots of big-T and small-t traumas that I experienced. Through it, I always muddled my way through. I was surviving, but I never really felt like I was thriving. Eventually I became a journalist, and I spent several years as a journalist. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. I left that career and went into government communication, same thing. I really enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. In the job I was in with government, I was quite high up in communications. I managed and built a communications department for the largest Crown corporation in the province. I'm very proud of the work I did, but again, I wasn't passionate about it.

When I was leaving that role, because I was done with it and wanted to move on, my next natural step should have been to go work for industry. I would have been paid an exorbitant amount of money to do crisis communications for oil and gas pipelines in Alberta. But every time I thought about it, I got this sinking in my stomach. I went to my husband one day and said, I know I don't want to do this anymore. I know my next step should be the oil and gas sector, but every fiber of my being is saying no. My husband, God bless him, just went, well then don't. I said, but I don't know what I'm going to do. He said, don't worry about it, we'll figure it out. And we did.

That's about the time my chronic pain raised its ugly head. I took a journey through the medical system, and it really took me down. I have a chronic nerve disorder that I've had brain surgeries for. It didn't correct it. It's invasive, it's horrific to live with. But when I started opening myself to my spiritual journey, it began to take a backseat. The condition I have, I'm not supposed to be able to recover from, ever. But I have. I am now having a life again. I credit as much to my spiritual journey as I do to the fact that, because they both happened at the same time, I got off all pharmaceuticals and exchanged all of that for more natural medications that worked for me. I do want to make very clear that I fully support and believe in the Western medical health system. It definitely has a place. It was just not for me for this particular condition. Coming out of that and finding more natural ways all happened at about the same time that I experienced my awakening. I believe I was too numbed out from the pharmaceuticals to have experienced this otherwise.

So my passion is because, from day one, without the understanding of what was going on, I got that inner excitement. I got that flame lit within me, and from day one I was passionate about following it wherever it took me.

Ross Tayler: It's so interesting, because the woman you met was kind of like a test. She blew out your flame for a moment.

Lee Shanks: Right, and I could have stayed with that. I could have said, okay, it's no big deal, I'm making stuff up in my head, I shouldn't be this excited, and I'll just go back to average. I don't want anybody to think that just because I've tapped into my abilities, it makes me think in any way, shape, or form that I'm above average. I'm not. I'm just an average person who has now tapped into my soul being, and that's available to all of us. My life has changed. Saying a 180 just doesn't quite cover it. Ten years ago I was in bed for four years, the majority of my time, in constant chronic pain. I wasn't living a life. I was a spectator in life. Now I'm fully engaged. Don't get me wrong, I still have my bad days, but they're few and far between. I get to experience watching somebody else light up as they tap into what they're capable of.

I hold classes sometimes. My favorite part of holding the classes, particularly for beginners, is watching them do things for the first time and realizing they can. I remember walking into every single class. You were good friends with Reverend Nicole Powell. She was my first development circle leader in person. I had done some online courses with Carmel Joy Baird, but Nicole was my first in person. I remember going to class every week telling myself, this is the one where you're shown to be a fake, a phony, it's all in your head, you're making it up. I would walk out of every single class going, holy crap, I can do this stuff. Now I get to watch other people have that experience. In one class recently, I invited a friend in. He was quite spiritual, went to the spiritualist centers, enjoyed meditation and all the rest. He's 76 years old. He said, Lee, why would I come to class? I can't do any of this. I said, just come, I'll invite you in, and just see. I am telling you, the look on his face during the very first reading he did. He said, I don't know, I'm just seeing this and I'm seeing that and I'm feeling this and I'm feeling that. Then his sitter was able to say, I understand it all, and this is how. She made the connection between those dots and made a picture for him, and it blew his mind. I will never forget the look on his face. I get to see that so often with the beginners.

Ross Tayler: I love that. You're reminding me of when I worked at the treatment center in Squamish. A 92-year-old woman showed up, not so much for addiction, a little bit, but she said, I just want to make the best of the rest of my life and I need some help to do that. It was so beautiful. So it's never too late is the point.

Lee Shanks: It is never too late. When somebody tries to tell me that, I always remind them that I was just about 50 before I woke up to the fact that I could do these things. Further than that, when I was a journalist, my favorite story that I ever did was when I went to interview an 80-year-old woman who was celebrating her 80th birthday by climbing into an airplane that she planned to jump out of. She was also doing it to celebrate the fact that she had just graduated with her Bachelor of Arts degree. At 80, you're never too old. There's no such thing. I would suggest that science is now backing that up. Everybody thinks that as you age, your brain starts to get a little soft and you're not quite as capable. Science is proving that to be all wrong. You can create new neural pathways and stay just as sharp as ever. But I always think of her when somebody says, it's too late for me. It's never too late.

Ross Tayler: There was something you said earlier that reminded me of a podcast I was watching with Richard Rudd, who does the Gene Keys, and a polymath whose name I can't come up with right now. The polymath was speaking about the calculations that take place in Gene Keys, and then he mentioned another calculation which has to do with your name. It was not a simple calculation, it was something a little deeper. What he came forward with was this belief that every single person on the planet has a unique number that identifies them. He said this is the unique energy that we each bring to the world, that we're supposed to bring out into the world. Just hearing that made me think, wow, it proves how true this is. We all have a purpose here. We all have something we're meant to do or a way we're meant to be, and that is the gift we bring. It's so beautiful when we get to see people doing that. At the same time, there's a cost to pushing all of that down. I think we're always being guided in some way to allow that to come forward. When I think of the story I shared about my mom, that would have been a pushing down of those gifts and that unique expression.

Lee Shanks: Yes, exactly. I love that you're sharing that, because one, we sometimes think our unique expression has to be something large and grandiose, and it doesn't. We are being healers just by allowing somebody to sit and vent and holding space for that person. If that's all you're doing, that's a big gift you're giving somebody. I don't want to discount that as a small thing at all. It's not. It's not always the big grandiose things people think of. It's the small, day-to-day things.

Ross Tayler: Absolutely, and to your point about the Walmart greeter, the Walmart greeter can change someone's day and light them up as much as anybody else can.

Lee Shanks: Exactly, that's exactly what I'm talking about. With opening up to understanding ourselves as soul beings, I always joke around and say, this human experience is a lovely thing. That's what we're here for, the experiences, to learn and grow and expand our awareness. To me, that's like the human sandbox of life. There are good toys in there, sure there are, and we get to meet lots of neighborhood kids and so on, but it's kind of limiting. It's not as big as it could be. Or we can go play in the sandbox of the universe. It's the biggest one available. It's got all the best toys. There are new ones being introduced all the time. And the neighbor's cat never comes and uses it. It is that universal sandbox that we get to play in where miracles take place every single day. We tap into that as our human selves and lean into ourselves as soul beings, and open ourselves to the guidance that's available to us from the universe.

I love the fact that I now call that God Universe Source, Gus. I learned that from you. I can't even tell you how many people I share it with who love that. When we just hand it over to Gus, in the understanding and awareness that there is a higher power available to us, and every single one of us has a divine team dedicated solely to us. Your divine team doesn't give a flying fig about me, and my divine team doesn't give a flying fig about you. My divine team just wants me to have the best life possible and available to me. They're going to give me the guideposts, the signs, the symbols that lead me into that life. But if I'm not aware of them, and if I don't have a relationship with them and I'm not trusting them, then I'm still over here in my human experience trying to slog my way through life all on my own. Our brains are wonderful tools, but they'll also lead us wrong six ways to Sunday. Our intuition will always lead us exactly where we need to be.

I say to people, tapping into your own intuition when you're not trusting it is the same as if a stranger walked up to you and said, hey, Ross, you need to go down this street three blocks, turn right, go a block, turn left, and go into the building with the second door on the left-hand side. You're going to look at this person like, I don't know you, you're weird, and just keep walking. But if it's somebody you know and trust, and they say, hey, Ross, my God, you've got to go down here three blocks, turn, go in this doorway, there's something there for you and you're going to love it, you're going to go, okay, and you're going to be excited to see what the surprise is. That's the difference between working with your team and without your team. They can guide you all you want, but if you don't know them and you don't trust them, how likely are you to listen to them? Make the connections. Build the relationships.

Ross Tayler: It can be small things. This morning I was going to a store where I wanted to buy something, and they were closed today. I didn't realize. I was walking back to the car and I heard this voice say, no, go to the other store. I was like, right, the other store. I went to the other store and found exactly what I wanted, but I didn't expect to find it there. It was great. That little voice was like, go to that store. It can happen in bigger ways too.

Lee Shanks: Yes, it's not always about, that guy looks a little fishy to me. I've had, slow down, you're driving too fast, and it helped me avoid a head-on collision. But sometimes it's, move that cup off the edge of the counter, it's going to get broken. Sometimes it's, go to the door, your dog wants in and it's pouring rain and they're too stubborn to ask. Sometimes it's the little things. It's knowing who's going to call before they call. It's knowing the next song that's coming on the radio before it comes on. But sometimes it's the big ones. What's your first step to get over this mountain of a challenge in front of you?

Ross Tayler: Yeah, exactly. There's two things I want to say, one and then another question. You were talking about the mind leading us astray six ways to Sunday. In Human Design, there's this idea of not letting our mind drive the car. If we let the mind drive the car, we're not going to go to the right places, we're not going to have the same experiences, and really we're meant to be in the backseat. Using the acronym you mentioned, Gus is the one who drives the car. If we can surrender to that, then all we need to do is enjoy the ride. I can tell you from my own experimentation with that, it's easier said than done. We live in a culture that is all about thinking our way through everything and trying to make life happen. I can tell you that it just doesn't work. It's laughable to place so much self-importance on the fact that we're the ones making our life happen. It just is not true. We are passengers in this experience. This comes back to all of the teachings that are 5,000 years old and more. They knew this, they figured it out.

The other thing is that I often wonder, the more I've learned about the nervous system and the fact that our nervous system is scanning our environment under the surface, and you mentioned little-t trauma and big-T trauma, where is the line between intuition and our nervous system? Maybe it's the same thing. When I think of many people I've worked with who have gone through horrific things, those things have tuned their nervous system to be amplified and open and hypervigilant of their environments. To me, that is information coming in, but it's at the hands of these emotional traumas. Where's the line between a dysregulated nervous system that's open and trying to scan for danger, versus intuition? How would you describe that?

Lee Shanks: I don't know that I can, but what I can say is that for myself personally, when it comes to the nervous system being constantly on guard, it meant I wasn't trusting my team to guide me forward. I wasn't trusting my own intuition. I am the first to tell you that despite the large and small-t traumas in my life, I wouldn't have traded a single one of them if it meant I was a different person sitting in front of you today. I'm pretty happy with who I am. I'm more than thrilled. My self-love and self-worth also came along on this tuning into who I am as a soul being, learning to accept myself as I am. In taking this journey into trusting and understanding my intuition, I got more grounded and more centered, so my nervous system didn't have to be hypervigilant. I'm sensitive to things, but now I can calm it down. I don't have to be on all the time, because I trust my intuition to keep me safe and keep me out of situations that my overhyped nervous system may have been reading wrong sometimes.

What happens is we lay down neural pathways. We have an experience, we have a reaction to that experience, and if it happens again and again, we react as we've always reacted. Our body does it without us even thinking about it. But when you start laying down new neural pathways of, I know that's my trigger, but I don't have to respond to it, in fact I don't have to react to it, there's such a difference between react and respond. You teach yourself to respond in a measured way as opposed to reacting.

Reacting and responding was explained to me this way, and I've never forgotten it, so hopefully your listeners will grab onto it as well. If you've got a deep cut that gets infected and your doctor gives you antibiotics, and you have a reaction to those antibiotics, it likely means your airway is closing up, you're getting blisters, your tongue is swelling. That's not good. But if your body responds to the medication, it means you're healing. Reaction, not good. Responding, very good. Reaction is when we just act on the information coming in from our nervous system. Responding is going beyond that reaction into the intuition: what am I really getting out of this?

Ross Tayler: Right. I just realized as you were speaking, or remembered, that when we're in fight or flight, we're not able to access that higher source of information, because we're reacting. It reminds me of a past guest on this podcast who spoke about that. She said the nervous system reaction is like white noise. She gave the example of the kitchen fan after you've been cooking. You leave it on and go sit down at the table, and you come to tolerate that noise. Then you realize it's there and you turn it off. It's the same when our nervous system becomes regulated. She said the white noise is gone, and all of a sudden our intuition can actually come out and play.

Lee Shanks: That's brilliant. I love that. Exactly.

Ross Tayler: Again, I'm thinking about the newbies, the newly awakened. What else would you like to tell them? What else is important for them to know in terms of what to reach out for specifically? Where can they find development circles? We live in an age where things can be accessed online, not just in person.

Lee Shanks: Exactly. Number one, as you alluded to at the beginning, in larger centers it's maybe easier to find a development circle or like-minded individuals who are willing to explore with you, and maybe it's a little more difficult in a small town. I'm a small-town girl myself. My suggestion to the ones I've talked to in small towns is to start one. If you can't find one, be the beginning. I distinctly remember sharing that advice with somebody who came from the central interior of the province. They started that circle and they were shocked by how many like-minded people there were in that small town who came out of the woodwork when they heard about it. These were people they knew on a daily basis, saw in and out of the stores and the local schools, who had no idea they were on their own spiritual journey, their own spiritual quest, if you will. So one, if you're in a small town and you can't find a circle, I suggest you host one.

Two, I tell everybody to make use of what you can for free. Why do you need somebody to sit in circle when there are so many people online who offer so much free of charge? Quite often I'll say to people, check out a free master class. We all know that master classes are held to get you to sign up for something at the end of their period, whether it's two, three, five days, whatever it is. At the end, it's all a pitch to get you to buy into something. But you don't have to. You can enter a free master class saying, I'm just here to learn what I can from the free portion, and then move on to the next free master class. You will know when it's no longer enough.

I mentioned at the beginning that I took online classes through Carmel Joy Baird out of Northern Alberta. She's a really well-known psychic medium. She used to have a show on TV called Mum's a Medium [?]. For the first three or four months, those classes were fine. I would sign in, watch a video, and go practice what I learned. But there got to be a point where I wanted more feedback in the moment. When I got to that point, I cast about and said, okay, Spirit, this isn't working for me anymore. I need something more. This is where that interaction between you and your team comes in so handy. I handed it over to my team. I said, this is what I need, please find me something. The very next day, I received an email that started off with, hi, you don't know me, but we have a mutual friend in common named so-and-so. I hold a local development circle and she suggests you might be interested. It was our dear friend Reverend Nicole Powell, and she lived five minutes away at the time. That's when I started sitting in circle with Nicole Powell. Trust your team.

With everything, you take what works for you, and if somebody says something that doesn't land, you leave it behind, it's not for you. We have a belief system based on our own experiences and how things feel to us. That feels right, I believe it, not because it's dogma, not because I'm being told that's what I need to believe, but because it feels right to me. That's how we build our own personal belief system. We should be constantly testing that belief system. I believed that last year. Do I believe it now? Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Always be open. I call it hollow bones. We're constant beginners.

Ross Tayler: You're speaking to the mechanics of being in the backseat, because when we're in the backseat, Gus can actually step in. And yet, because we have free will, if we're in the way trying to make it happen, it's like, okay, go ahead, have at her. But once we surrender... I think one of the best stories I have is from when I was living in the Okanagan and doing Human Design readings at a yoga studio. I had another event happening three weeks later, and I was driving when my car made a sound. Because of all the work I had done, I just knew this sound was not going to end well. I had that moment of panic, as we do when something happens with our car. I remember being so clear: I don't know how this is going to resolve itself, I know it's not good, but I hand it over. As quickly as I had the thought, it was gone, and I just kept driving.

That night at two o'clock in the morning, I awoke to the sound of glass breaking. Before I left the house to investigate, I thought, that was my car. I went outside, and the neighbors were all outside. It turned out the neighbor across the road had a psychosis on mushrooms, and he decided to do a river dance on the roof of my car. It was $5,000 worth of damage, and my car got written off, and I didn't have to worry about fixing it. Within two weeks I had another car. There is no way I could have created that scenario. Spirit worked through him to have a river dance, this poor guy, who didn't actually mean to do what he did. He came and apologized the next day and actually paid my deductible. I was never mad at him, because I was so happy that there was a solution to my problem. I must have said something about no one getting hurt, because I didn't want to have a car accident as well. It's just such a great example of what is possible when we get out of the way.

Lee Shanks: It truly, truly is. I could sit here all day with you, I'm sure, Ross, and come up with examples where we've handed it over and the best possible outcome was what happened, nothing we could have thought of or considered in our wildest imagination, and yet it worked out for the greatest and highest good.

Ross Tayler: Right, and of course after that experience my mind was trying to recreate that. How can I recreate those things? How can I manifest from that place? But I was trying to do it from my mind, so it doesn't work.

Lee Shanks: Never works. This is where trust and faith come in. Once you hand it over to your team, once you say, you know what, Gus, it's in your hands, I'm trusting you with this, if you sit and fuss and worry about it and continue that thought process, what you're doing is indicating to Gus that you don't trust him. There's no faith, there's no trust. Your mind is still engaged with trying to do the problem solving. So where are you truly handing it over in trust and faith and just letting them do their thing? You're interfering and setting up your own blocks. That's not going to work out for you. Let it go.

Ross Tayler: You mentioned the term lightworkers a few times, and that was certainly a term I became aware of probably 15 years ago, something like that. I definitely felt that and feel that now. I think there's a need for more lightworkers than ever, because I think we're about to experience a lot of adjustment, let's say it nicely. We're going to have to adjust to a lot, and we're going to need all hands on deck to help everyone get through this time. What would you say to those lightworkers who maybe know that?

Lee Shanks: Step up and step in. Step over the fear. When I first got started on this, I was scared, absolutely. I didn't know where it was going to lead. I had spent my entire life thinking that all those things that happened to me were because maybe I'm a little bit crazy, my mind doesn't work properly, I'm broken somehow. To be able to step over that and allow myself to say, I don't know for sure, let's just see where it goes, took a lot of courage. I'm asking you to tap into that courage. Yes, you're going to feel afraid, but step in. I think the largest tsunami of spiritual awakening is underway around the world right now. When we step into who we are in trust and faith and build our own repertoire of what that means for us, all we have to do is turn to the next person on the path and say, just keep going, it's going to be okay. Because it really, really will. The more of us we have standing at the head of that pathway saying, come this way...

I could be sitting here talking to an audience of a hundred people and say, this is how I found my way through, and maybe 20 people, if I'm lucky, will raise their hand and say, that sounds like it's going to work for me, I resonate with what you're saying. There will be eight people I don't touch who don't get it and aren't going to be able to follow my way. It's not going to work for them. But then you stand up and tell your story, and somebody else stands up and shares their story, and by the time we're done, those hundred people have a way forward. Every single one of us has a unique story, a unique journey, a unique path, and it's our job to share that with others so they can see their way forward as well. That's where the lightworker comes in. We shine the light on the path behind us.

Ross Tayler: You're reminding me of something a channel I worked with years ago, and many times over the years, always said, and I quote her often: we're not meant to be a lighthouse to the entire ocean, just our part of the ocean. That's what you're speaking to. That 20 percent, and the others needing to find another teacher, it's exactly that. We need to find that resonance with who's going to be our guide, and what our path looks like, and shine that unique number into the world.

Lee Shanks: Exactly. Well put.

Ross Tayler: And mediumship, there's more to mediumship. Sometimes people can get scared by that word, but mediumship involves psychic abilities. What else?

Lee Shanks: At the beginning, I sort of dismissed the psychic as part of the mediumship journey, because I did get that scholarship to mediumship school, obviously, and I thought they were two completely separate abilities. I don't consider them gifts, I just consider them abilities. I think they're a gift maybe when you share them with others. But they both work with each other. Psychic work is very foundational to mediumship work. With mediumship, most people have experienced it, the ones who know there's something going on. They might have sensed spirit around them, they might have gotten goosebumps, or that deep knowing, that claircognizance we were talking about, and those kind of freak people out. But 99.9 percent of the time, when you're feeling that, it's one of your loved ones. It's not some random person you don't know and never met who, you know, took his own life after killing 20 other people. It's your loved ones, your grandma, your grandpa, your ancestors coming through to give you that guidance, give you that support, tell you how perfectly imperfect you are just as you are. So let the fear down so you can let your loved ones in to talk to you. They take up the same space that we do. They're not in some far-off realm. They're just right here with us.

I liken it to a ceiling fan going in the room. If it's going really slowly, you can pick out the individual blades. But when it's moving at high speed, it's just a blur. That's our loved ones, our ancestors. Their vibration is so high we can't see their form. It's like electricity, you can't see it. But they're here, and we can feel them, and we can hear them, and we can tap into them.

One of my favorite things about this ability to connect with people who have passed on into the realm of spirit is this. I alluded to the fact that I didn't have a good childhood, and I wasn't raised by my birth mom from the time I was six to 16, so I didn't have a close relationship with her. I tell everybody unequivocally that I get along better with my mother now that she's dead than I ever got along with her in life. The point being, I can still have a relationship with my mom. I have formed a new relationship with her, not based on our human experience where ego and addiction got in the way. It is a pure connection, soul to soul, where I just get to know my mom. It's a beautiful thing, and we all have that ability. We can tap into loved ones we've maybe never met and get to know them. What was their favorite color? What was their favorite food? What was their favorite thing to do, their hobby, what did they do for work? What was their personality all about? We can still do that with our loved ones in spirit that we've never met. To me, that's the gift. We're not here all alone, ever. Being alone is an illusion.

Ross Tayler: I love that message. I feel like it's a really important one to remember, because in spirit, we're not who we were in this life.

Lee Shanks: No, who we were or what we experienced does not define us. Like you said, it's that unique signature we all have. That's who we are underneath all the fluff and the bother, all the things we think are important that are not as important as the things we feel.

Ross Tayler: By the way, in case anybody is wondering, the name of the polymath is Robert Edward Grant. It was him and Richard Rudd on the Deja Blu [?] podcast, B-L-U. Just in case anybody wants to watch it, because it was actually really cool.

Lee Shanks: I think I'm going to go back and watch that one now. Brilliant.

Ross Tayler: Well, Lee, when I met you at the Blue Caterpillar Emporium, there was no question in my mind that it was going to be very easy to have a conversation with you, and I think we could easily keep going. But it also feels like a good place to stop. Before we wrap up, I always like to ask my guests a question. What is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Lee Shanks: Believe in it. Just believe in the possibility. It's not complicated. It doesn't have to be confusing. It could be as simple as setting the intention of, I don't know where this is leading me, but where it goes, I will follow. Then whatever comes before you is for you. Good, bad, or indifferent, if it's in front of you, it's for you.

Ross Tayler: I love that. I'm all about simplicity, and that's simple, but it's also complicated when the mind gets in the way. So it's not a little challenge.

Lee Shanks: It is not a small challenge. I hope what your listeners take away is how worthwhile that effort is. To truly step into the fullness of who you are is so far beyond your human understanding. It's incredible, and words just cannot convey it. I'd like to try. I could spend all day trying with you.

Ross Tayler: Well, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation and the time we just spent together, and all the wisdom you've shared and all of the nuggets my listeners are going to walk away with. I really appreciate having you, and I look forward to future conversations in person.

Lee Shanks: I've really enjoyed being here with you, Ross. This is my first podcast, so thank you very much for having me on and for this being my first experience. You made it very simple and easy, and it was literally just having a conversation with you. It was brilliant. Thank you.

Ross Tayler: Excellent. You're very welcome.