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by Janae Jean and Spencer Schluter
This month, we had the privilege to speak with Susan Wisehart, M.S., LMFT. Susan is a holistic psychotherapist and author of the book, Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future. She has trained with psychiatrist Brian Weiss, M.D. and with Jungian analyst, Roger Woolger Ph.D. She also is a professional speaker and presenter and will be giving her Soul Visioning workshop along with her husband, David Birr at the Theosophical Society in Wheaton, IL, on Feb. 21 and 23, 2019.
This following is only a short excerpt of our conversation with Susan. Subscribe to the Conscious Community Podcast on your preferred podcatcher to hear the entire conversation. Visit www.SusanWisehart.com for more information on this workshop, scheduling a session with Susan or learn about her book.
Janae: Carl Jung is famous for saying, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” It seems to me (from your book) that you try to help people find these unconscious blocks that have been making decisions for them. One of the first tools you mentioned was learning to trust your intuition. Do you have any advice for people who are trying to learn how to trust their intuition?
Susan: That’s definitely true. There’s a lot of myths of programming that leads us to disbelieve or mistrust intuition. Ninety-five percent of the mind is unconscious. One of the reasons that I wrote the book, Soul Visioning, is that I saw that a lot of the manifestation models show the power of the mind to manifest and create your life, but there were some things that were missing. One of them was what part of the mind is doing the manifesting—what part of the mind is in charge. If it’s not the soul, then the ego can manifest all kinds of things but not necessarily happiness or peace of mind. The second thing that the models were missing is that they do not address the unconscious mind, those programs that are running in the background and hold us back. The language of the soul is the intuition. The more we clear the baggage, the more we remove the blocks to our soul, the more we are in touch with our inner GPS. In my book, I have methods to identify what these sabotaging beliefs are and ways to release them. The clearer we are, the more our personality is aligned with our soul, the more in touch we are with our intuition.
JJ: Yes! I think the first step is learning to love yourself and finding selfless self-love. Do you have any advice for tapping into that part of ourselves?
SW: Our true nature is love. Our true self is our soul. We are each a spark of the Divine. As we become more aware of our patterns and programs that have affected our sense of ourselves and blocked that sense of self; the more we are aware and conscious of these patterns, the more we can clear the blocks to love, because that is our true nature. I do past-life regressions with people to help identify what some of those limiting beliefs and patterns are; hypnotherapy helps to get to the root of that. I think self-awareness is what helps us to understand what’s holding us back. When those are cleared and the sabotaging parts are set aside what’s left is our essence, that sense of connection to the Divine within us.
Spencer: I think sometimes people misunderstand manifestation psychology and think all you need to do is think positive thoughts. The way I look at it is if you’re beating yourself up, you don’t love yourself, you don’t believe in yourself and you don’t have confidence, then you won’t get the things in life you want to get. Once you get the point of self-acceptance and self-love and find your purpose, you have to do the physical steps to reach those goals too.
SW: Yeah, like magical thinking, if I say the affirmations and think positive thoughts and do those kinds of things it’s magically going to show up, and that’s not necessarily the case. If you are in touch with your soul’s guidance, with your intuition guiding you, it will guide you to the steps you need to take. Then you have to follow your soul’s guidance and direction. You can’t think, it’s going to magically show up without me doing anything, so I think that’s absolutely correct.
JJ: It seems like sometimes people will have an experience during therapy or a spiritual or meditative experience and think they can skip doing all of the shadow work, but that doesn’t seem to be true. Can you tell us how you incorporate that into practice?
SW: I think you raised a really good point. I’ve noticed that some New Age thought systems skip steps, focusing on the positive, and sweeping the disowned parts of ourselves under the rug and not really owning those parts. The problem with that is that it affects us unconsciously; it comes through whether we are aware of it or not. If we’re willing to look at the parts of ourselves we don’t like that are hidden and buried, and we do that with compassion, it helps us to be fully authentic and present and to reconnect. Sugarcoating it is like putting deodorant on a garbage pile; eventually the stench is going to come through. A lot of people are afraid to look at their shadow, and feel ashamed of it, but we have to have compassion for ourselves.
JJ: Absolutely! I think what you are getting at is the first step to self-love is loving all the parts of yourself.
SW: Yes. The more you have compassion for disowned parts of yourself, the more compassion you can have for others and their shadow parts.
Janae Jean serves as editor, social media manager, recipe columnist and podcaster for Conscious Community Magazine. Visit www.janaejean.com or www.perennialmusicandarts.com for details about her other projects.
Spencer Schluter serves as an advertising account manager, social media manager and podcaster for Conscious Community Magazine. Visit www.yggstudios.com for more about his freelance design and consulting work. He is also a master level Reiki and traditional Chinese Qigong practitioner.
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