Detangling the skein of expectations, with Doris Samuelson

In this episode, I speak with Doris Samuelson, Völva and practitioner of the mystery arts, about discerning what is useful and what is not, in stories and in life.  We explore past lives, textile and real magic. 
Head to @moonlitpathchannel on Instagram to see Doris' favorite woven pieces. 
You can find her at https://www.pathsandportals.com/

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This podcast is hosted by Laure Porché: http://laureporche.com. You can follow me on Instagram @laureporche
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Laure: Today I have my dear friend Doris Samuelson here as a guest. Hi, Doris. 

[00:00:05] Doris: Hello Laure, how are you? 

[00:00:08] Laure: Good. I'm good. Happy to see you. 

[00:00:11] Doris: You too. 

[00:00:12] Laure: And Doris is a practitioner of the mystery arts, and she's also an avid traveler and an occasional knitter. So she's an all around perfect guest for this podcast. I'm going to start you off as I do everybody by asking what is your favorite story and either what does it say about who you are or how did it help you in your life?

[00:00:39] Doris: Wow. Okay. It's really hard to pick a favorite story. It's like saying who's my favorite pet or who's my favorite child. So it's kind of hard, but I would say that I would have to put in the context of currently, and I'm not trying to hedge my bets here, but I would say my current absolute favorite is a book by Theodora Goss, G O S S, Snow White learns witchcraft. 

[00:01:08] Laure: Ooh, that sounds like I want to read that right now.

[00:01:13] Doris: It's beautiful and rich and delicious and velvety and surprising. It's one of those books where I would take to a desert island. If I had one book to choose. It's short stories and poems, a lot in a very short amount of pages. 

[00:01:32] Laure: Ooh, that sounds wonderful. That's a great recommendation for our listeners to take into their pockets.

[00:01:38] Doris: For me, it's the magic in what's written, the mystery what's in between. So you can read a sentence and it's the sentence that you see in front of your eyes, but there's a whole lot more coming into your body. At least it is for me. And it kind of takes me places that normally I wouldn't be transported to. 

[00:01:58] Laure: Ooh, that's, that's a feat, cause you go everywhere.

[00:02:02] Doris: I do. I do. I mean, it's fairy tales, but it's not. But I'm not trying to do a book review, but it's about possibilities. So it's about possibilities to me. I really enjoy that. 

[00:02:16] Laure: Yeah. And I think that's one of the functions of story is that they show us different possibilities of what can be and how to react, how to behave and how to do this and how to do that. And if you go this way, then this is the result, and if you go that way, then this is the result. And that's one of the primary function of story, right? Cause fairytales were for adults. They were not for children. 

[00:02:40] Doris: Yeah, most cultures, they definitely are geared towards adults. I mean, maybe getting some children to behave a certain way, but yeah, it is about the certain paths, like right. You take, take a certain path, but it's also to me very affirming that you may have taken a certain path, but there's other possibilities.

[00:03:02] You're not on the same path if you choose not to be, you have choices. 

[00:03:06] Laure: I like that. 

[00:03:07] Doris: Yeah. 

[00:03:08] Laure: So keeping in the topic of stories, talk to us a little bit about, practitioner of the mystery arts, that can be a lot of things. And what's the place of story in that? How do you use it?

[00:03:20] Doris: Well, what I would first say is that I do shamanic work, I do oracular mediumship, channeling, probably some other things I'm not mentioning, so what is the place of story? My first response would be it's a way of teaching. It's a way of explaining to a client.

[00:03:43] And oftentimes it's really used or utilized more actually by a deity or an angel that I might be channeling or being a medium for. It can be a very gentle way of reminding someone of something that they may have forgotten, but that is somewhere kind of buried in them, but can easily come forward. 

[00:04:07] Laure: Yeah, 

[00:04:08] Doris: I don't know if that answers your question. 

[00:04:10] Laure: It my question. Because you work mainly with metaphors... My understanding of clairvoyance and mediumship in the little experience that I have of it, because I'm not very clairvoyant, but I'm somewhat clairvoyant, is that it does come in metaphor a lot of the time, things come as stories and metaphors.

[00:04:27] And what's your experience with that, of like translating that or not translating that, or what's the impact that you can see on people. And how does it differ from just telling them to do something and telling them in a metaphor. And if you have some things that come to you as not metaphor, what's the different quality, I guess is my question.

[00:04:52] Doris: So to speak to the first part of that question, I would say if there is an ally or a guardian or an angel, that's saying something in a metaphor, and whether I interpret that or not I guess the short answer is it depends. I learned very early on not to assume. I mean, because we all have our filters, we all have how we're taking in information, how someone's going to hear a metaphor.

[00:05:17] Well, they may hear it on so many ways that we couldn't possibly imagine. So I'll just give you a really quick example. One of my first times partnering up with someone, this is like decades ago and we're like, okay, the person's going to ask a secret question and they're not going to tell you what it is, but you're just going to start talking and seeing what the images you have and... 

[00:05:36] So the question ends up being from my partner of "what should I be doing in retirement?" Because she was near retirement. So that was a very broad question. And the images that I had received were : her and her husband are on a bridge, but he's on one side of the bridge and she's on the other side of the bridge.

[00:05:55] Right. So you think, oh, no, right. That's our human mind thinking. Oh, that means... and you ascribe some meaning to that. But what was really clear, my allies were like, no, you just tell her what you're seeing. Don't start translating it, Doris, just tell her. And when I told her it, she just burst out laughing and it had absolute meaning for her because her and her husband were bridge players and I go, okay, but I'm sorry why are you on opposite side? She goes, that's how you play bridge. Your partner sits across from you. So that was a really early on lesson. I could have gone the route of, well, you know, perhaps you and your husband are growing apart in retirement, but that wasn't the issue.

[00:06:34] Right. So I learned really to first say this is what I'm seeing, or this is what I'm hearing. Because it can also in that description, can really again stir something and someone who's completely forgotten and will be like, oh my gosh, I remember this. I was eight. This happened then. Oh. And then they start building on that and it can really not only be freeing for them, but like this rediscovery. But sometimes I will translate. Sometimes I will translate if someone just is really, really like, okay, what does this possibly mean? That I'm in the middle of a tree, please help me here. So sometimes we do go a little, we could go different ways. It just depends. It depends on the situation.

[00:07:19] Laure: That's an interesting question. Actually, I, that I hadn't thought about necessarily. Do you run into people who really don't understand metaphor? Like metaphor doesn't speak to them at all? 

[00:07:29] Doris: Yes. For sure, for sure. Or it's not speaking to them that day or that hour for whatever reason. So it doesn't mean that they can't ever, it just means in the situation or what's being presented, it's like speaking another language. 

[00:07:45] Laure: I wonder also if it's relative to how mind oriented you are. That some people will really hate metaphors because they need to have very cognitive thinking, maybe people who want more control over their lives or who want more control in general.

[00:08:00] Doris: I think that's certainly true. I think it can be what you're used to as well. I've worked with English professors and thought to myself I don't know am I going to be graded on this? I've worked with nuclear physicists who loved metaphors or using it in the language that they're familiar with.

[00:08:19] Sometimes it's just one word. Just tweak it a little bit, rearrange it a little bit. And then a light bulb can kinda go off. 

[00:08:29] Laure: Yeah, I know you very good at arranging words around the person's needs. That's one of the things that you do really well.

[00:08:37] Doris: Oh thanks.

[00:08:38] Laure: Yeah, that's true. 

[00:08:40] Doris: I think it's where that person is that day. Cause I've seen also with clients who I see second or third time, sometimes there's a shift. Maybe the first time they really understood the metaphors and they really understood the story about being in the tree or whatever it might be. And then the next time they're kind of looking like, I don't know what language you're speaking today, so it can shift. It's not always the same every time, which actually, I think I'm really happy about that too. It's different. It's not always the same at all. And not having the expectation that it will be the same, just being kind of wide open to that discovery of, okay, it's new today. What's it going to be? 

[00:09:21] Laure: Yeah, I like that. One of the strengths, I think of shamanic healing in general is that it allows for new story to happen or to take place in the person. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about that, or if you have any stories about that, of how a story can completely shift or turn on its head through shamanic gaze or clairvoyant gaze..

[00:09:47] Doris: In terms of what I'm working in a shamanic way, and there's some sort of clearing or some sort of repatterning or however you wanna phrase it, on an energetic level that can affect the physical, the mental, the emotional, I think then that sometimes it can become easier for someone to let go of certain stories. I mean, some stories, they're stories. The reliability or unreliab ility of witnesses you know, someone that a bank robbery, like everyone's got a different take on what they saw and what they experience and what the stories they'll say afterwards. I think, from the shamanic perspectives or some others, I feel like there's quite an ability then to shift certain stories or to realize maybe this is a story in the sense of, I don't have to hold this anymore. That there's something else I can write. I don't have to be, you know, to use the book metaphor. Like I don't have to be in this chapter anymore. Let's flip the page. We have a new chapter. So I think it just depends, but I love it when in a session we can be like this is old story, what's the new one, and it's so exciting. And when we talk about possibilities, I get really excited about possibilities. And the possibilities and the new stories, again it could be one thing. It doesn't have to be like, oh my gosh, you're finding a new partner, moving and something else as no, it can be really something beautiful and seemingly insignificant, but it's huge. 

[00:11:23] Laure interview (2): Yeah. And what's interesting is that very often you work with very old stories because you work with past lives. I feel sometimes like past lives work works on two different levels. One level is what actually happened and that you're like unraveling what actually happened. The other level is the metaphor. Like it's almost your past life is a metaphor for what's happening in your life right now. And to just have that metaphor allows what you have in your life to shift into something else. I wonder because it's a fine line to know, I think what to reveal about past lives to the person, cause I've seen cases or I've seen people who will then kind of hang on to that old story, if you're too detailed. And I wonder how you gauge that or if you've had examples of that in your practice or, you know, when, when is a story useful, and when it's not useful.

[00:12:19] Doris: That's such a critical, it really is a great question. I would say that, yeah, my hope is always that someone, if there's a traumatic past life somewhere, I mean, we've had so many different lives. I mean, there's, there's going to be some trauma in there. There's going to be some joy in there. Pick it it's, this could have probably be there somewhere. So I think one is understanding that, that most people we have more than two or three lives and I always preface it as like, look, we've done some great things. We've done some not so great things. I might throw a couple examples, like not so great ones I wouldn't be doing that kind of behavior in this lifetime.

[00:12:56] So I point that out. And when I'm doing past lives, I'm more interested in the healing than the yes, you were a Roman soldier, you did this and you killed a lot of soldiers in battle, I mean, that might be relevant for someone but I'm more interested in the threads that come through and how those threads can be viewed and maybe dissolved. That maybe this was really important for all these lifetimes, but it's not now, unless you decide you want it to be important. I see it more of an empowering way to look. And to say, when do you not say something? I would say usually my allies or guides will just basically put up a hand and say, well, we're going to take care of it. This is all we're going to tell you, and we're not going to show you anything else because they will get caught in the details, you know, in the gore and whatever those sticky details might be. If they're going to be sticky, they're probably going to steer me around that. Hopefully. 

[00:14:03] Laure: But that's also from your own intention. Cause if you had the intention of seeing the gory detail, then probably, they wouldn't steer you around that. You know, if you didn't have the intention of I just want what's useful for this person. 

[00:14:14] Doris: Yeah. I don't want to come in and just basically throw a huge pot of cold ice water in someone's face, you know, because that's not my intention and I don't know how that's helpful for anyone. But I do get people who have had past life readings and they go, I did this, I did that. I did that. I think as humans, we tend to remember more of the negative. People usually don't lead with, I had some past life readings and oh my gosh, I was so great. And this and this, they usually lead with, oh, I did this and now I can't seem to shake it. I think it adds a burden some layer to that. Like, it just becomes another burden on another burden if you know it 

[00:14:56] Laure: Yeah, I agree with that. That's when the story can become not helpful. I see it a lot. Unfortunately I see it a lot, and in France as well. I've seen it more in France than in the US but I think that's more about the circles that I'm in where people who are clairvoyant don't discriminate. They just say everything. 

[00:15:19] Doris: And again, I have learned this is interpretation. I mean, I've been in a big room with a lot of clairvoyant or psychic people and asked to analyze one thing you'll get about eight different answers. 

[00:15:34] Laure: For sure.

[00:15:34] Doris: Are they all right? Are they all wrong? They're all just part of the information. 

[00:15:40] Laure: Yeah. I think we've done that together. Actually, 

[00:15:42] Doris: Probably 

[00:15:43] Laure: In circles or like... oh, so what color is this goddess? And everybody has a different answer 

[00:15:50] Doris: Right. And so it's your experience. So, yeah, I think when someone says, oh, I heard this from a psychic and I'm not disparaging anyone, but always know that it's coming from someone's filter. It's kind of a disclaimer. And the allies can say a certain thing and you can repeat it verbatim but... 

[00:16:09] Laure: But still... I do think it's useful to be able to discern within the story what's useful. It's useful to discern in the story that you tell. And it's also useful to discern in the stories that people tell you what is useful and what is not. And I think when you know how to do one, you know, also how to do the other one.

[00:16:29] Doris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is really what is helpful here? It's kind of parsing out. And I always, always, always encouraged people to say things out loud. I mean, we're telling ourselves thousand different stories every hour. We're not aware of it, but say them out loud. What if you had on running monologue? Like if you're home by yourself or, you know, your family understands or your partner, and you're just doing a running monologue of what's going through your... How many stories are in there and how many of them are really not based in any type of factual reality, you know what we're telling ourselves? So it's an interesting discernment practice. I think 

[00:17:10] Laure: Definitely. Going in a, in a slightly different direction, I'm wondering because I know you travel a lot you like a world traveled.... I think you travel more than me.

[00:17:23] Doris: Well is that possible? 

[00:17:26] Laure: Well, nowadays it is. And I wonder because I know you have a relationship with the Nordic mythology quite a lot. And I wonder, if you had in the many different countries that you've been in, do things come differently to you depending on the country, do metaphor change or the nationality of the person that you're working with. Do you have things that come differently or metaphors that shift depending on who you're working with or where you are?

[00:17:59] Doris: Oh, definitely. It definitely does. I mean, some countries, I feel very foreign, no pun intended and others. It's very easy. So you know, that's could be on a variety of reasons or factors. And I can find myself even interacting differently. And when you say about different metaphors, absolutely. I have some clients who culturally, I don't know that much about, I'm trying to educate myself more, but sometimes certain allies or certain guardians that come in for them, I'll just say, I'm not sure who this is, I haven't met them yet, but they're here for you and it makes absolute sense to them. And I am using terminology I'm not used to, but it's that sort of openness of, again, meeting the person where they're at. And I don't know why it makes me bring this up, but someone's asked me this before a number of times: when you're working with someone from a different culture, they're like, well, how are you talking to their ancestors? You don't speak I don't know. Or, you know, Mandarin, or you don't speak whatever it might be right? I was like, no, but you still communicate right? There might be idioms. There are things that... but I'm still able to communicate my language kind of just transcends. 

[00:19:17] Laure: Yeah. To me. It's the same way like how do you communicate with the Norns? They don't speak English, but that's where metaphor comes in useful. Cause I don't know about you, but I rarely, and again, I'm not the clairvoyant girl next door, but I rarely have specific sentences or... it's more, I get information as images and as metaphors and sensations in my body. And sometimes as something that is like a truth, like a sentence that is true, but I know that comes from me. Like, it's revealed from myself. I don't hear it. Some people hear what is being said. I don't hear that. I only hear my clients and my own voice when I speak to myself.

[00:20:04] Doris: But as you know, there's a lot of other different clairs. I mean, there's that knowing, and I think it's languaging too. Cause sometimes I'll be talking to a client or someone I'm mentoring and they're like, but I don't see this. Or I don't hear it that way what you're saying. I'm like, well, that's my languaging. I've never met anyone who, if you say to them, hold an apple in your right hand and look at it and see what it looks like. Anyone can do that. It's not a challenge for everyone listening, but maybe it is. I don't know. 

[00:20:32] Laure: Yeah, but it won't be the same apple for anyone. 

[00:20:34] Doris: No thank goodness. Right? Why should it be?

[00:20:37] Laure: We all have, like a different Snow White poisoned apple. 

[00:20:41] Doris: Right. Or someone's got a delicious one that they're like, I'm hungry now. And I can smell it even. Or like it's, you know, heavy in my hand or it's light in my hand or it feels a certain way. 

[00:20:51] Laure: That reminds me of acting school. Suddenly. 

[00:20:55] Doris: Oh, 

[00:20:55] Laure: We did that all the time. Like hold the bottle in your hand and how heavy is it? And then what are you going to do with it? And yeah, definitely a lot of apple holding in my past. You know, you were talking about threads earlier which I really liked that image of you're almost re-threading a tapestry or re-threading the warp from the loom. And I know you like textile 

[00:21:19] Doris: I love textiles. 

[00:21:20] Laure: You knit.

[00:21:22] Doris: I knit. I do other fiber arts too. 

[00:21:26] Laure: Well, tell me, I know you spin a little bit.

[00:21:27] Doris: I embroider, 

[00:21:29] Laure: Hm

[00:21:30] Doris: Free hand, knit, I needle felt 

[00:21:36] Laure: Ooh. That's cool.

[00:21:37] Doris: To me, it's really meditative. like to really, really meditate And just let my mind go blank when I'm doing it. Which is a little harder when you're knitting and you're following instructions. But given the chance, that's my favorite way to do it, or to change it up a little bit and maybe go outside if I'm used to being inside or.

[00:21:59] Laure: What's your experience or what's your perception of the connection between magic and textile? If you have one,

[00:22:09] Doris: oh, I could talk about that for hours. How much time do we have? 

[00:22:12] Laure: Please do.

[00:22:13] Doris: Oh, I mean, historically there's so much in that, in the weaving and the, I mean, well, like the fates in Greek mythology and Norse mythology. There's many other mythologies where there's a weaving of the tapestry, like you said before. But historically there's documented women who would be weaving while there was some kind of battle going on and they're weaving their intentions into whatever this is.

[00:22:38] Or we hear in fairytales or read in fairytales, or here's some story about like, you know, this shirt that's woven with protection or this garment that is some kind of amulet or talisman or something. So that has a long history. And that's something that we're doing when we're creating something, whether it's cooking or whether it's crafts or arts or whatever it is, weaving, we're weaving some of our essence into it. Some of our intention. When you taught me how to spin, I remember, like I was thinking about something that was really kind of agitating me and then like, oh my God, it looked terrible. And then I started to go into a happy place and I was like, oh, it looks so beautiful now. So really it's so reflective of the inner workings. 

[00:23:28] Laure: Yeah, it's a real, real mirror and it's a real good. I guess container for intention, I feel, you know, I like the threads aspect of it because you can literally bind your intention into whatever you're making. And I find that's really powerful.

[00:23:45] Doris: Fibers hold so much. They hold so much. I know you know that, but I just, I'm sort of amazed when I say it and think about it. If you look at something you can kind of discern the mood of someone or. I can see, like in a sweater or something that I've net I can see , oh, that was the week I was at the beach. And this is the week I was like in the middle of winter where there was no light, you know? So I could kind of tell where

[00:24:13] Laure: You have like stripes of energy sweater.

[00:24:17] Doris: Oh, that would actually be great. 

[00:24:20] Laure: Yeah, I've knitted a lot of stuff with energy in them and it works really well I find. What's interesting is that I knit a lot of stuff for people with people's intention behind it. And it works really well if the person's intention is clear. And when the person's intention was unclear, the finished object never looked good. It didn't matter if I'd like followed the pattern , but if there was something in the original intention that was not quite engaged, not quite completely invested. Then the objects, through me, through my hands, not my own intention, but like through my hands, it would still come out... 

[00:25:03] Doris: Yeah. Like Laure, laure, what do you want? What do you want? 

[00:25:07] Laure: I'm like it's not for me. I don't want anything. Like I channel for this person, but they don't know what they want. 

[00:25:14] Doris: Yeah, well, intentions. So big. I mean, everyone talks about intentions, but that's a really multi-layered... again, that's something we could talk about for hours. But threads. Yeah. Threads hold a lot. They build a lot. There's so many stories.

[00:25:31] Laure: Yeah. What's your favorite textile piece that you own? I know it's like children 

[00:25:36] Doris: Oh, it is. It's like, what's my favorite plant in the garden. What's my favorite tree. I would say interestingly, they're all decorative hand-woven ones. If I'm going to think about two, one was a present from a family friend who's a weaver. And when you first look at it, it looks very simple, but there's a lot of intricacy in this and it's beautiful.

[00:26:01] I appreciate it because it's so utilitarian in the sense that it's on a dresser. I see it every morning when I wake up, it's sort of part of my landscape. And it it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. I have another hand woven one that's hand dyed that I bought in the Andes and it has representations of water and sky and earth. And it's just a beautiful ancient pattern. Again, it's someplace where I see it in my living room. And again, I like it that I make it part of my daily life. It's not like, oh, it's fine China and I can't enjoy it or bring it out. I want to see it and enjoy it. 

[00:26:41] Laure: Yeah, that's what I love about textile is that you can wear it and you can use it. And it's something that's really part of your life. And that's tactile, you know, that you can touch, there's a real physical relationship to it that I really enjoy. 

[00:26:56] Doris: I'm just thinking about the tactile, because I love touch and I don't consider myself a hugely tactile person, but the different wools and cottons and love that. 

[00:27:05] Laure: Yes, sensuality. Let's say that your life is a tapestry which threads are you using to weave it? What are the main threads?

[00:27:21] Doris: I'll say the ones I hope I'm using the ones I intend to use. I would say curiosity and joy. 

[00:27:32] Laure: Those are great.

[00:27:34] Doris: Yeah. I mean that doesn't mean I'm delusional or I want to stick my head in the sand, you know, life happens and sometimes it's a little bumpy, but those are the ones that I want to be able to feel in a way that's not only visceral, but anchoring. 

[00:27:51] Laure: Yeah. I resonate, curiosity and joy. I don't know that I weave with them. Curiosity for sure. Joy is a little more elusive for me, but definitely is something that I want to bring in. And I actually did a textile piece a while back that was appliqué and embroidery to bring in more joy. That was my intention. It was like joy, joy, love, peace, all of those things.

[00:28:20] Doris: It just reminds me when one time I asked the Norns on a high seat, well, what can I do? I was feeling a little stymied on some creative stuff. And I was like, what can I do to bring in more creativity? And they started laughing and they were like, it's not about bringing it. It's about opening it up. 

[00:28:39] Laure: Yes, yes, yes. 

[00:28:42] Doris: I'm Not trying to correct. You, I'm not correcting anything. I'm just saying like, that's one way to look at it, you know. 

[00:28:47] Laure: No, that's definitely. And then that's also the way that I think about it. And I'll just tell whoever's listening that the NORNS are the Nordic equivalent of the Greek fates and the high seat is I guess a ceremony you could say. 

[00:29:01] Doris: Yeah. It's like a Völvic tradition. 

[00:29:03] Laure: Tradition through which you ask questions 

[00:29:06] Doris: like an Oracular. Yeah. Asking questions, community ask questions and can ask personal questions. Yeah. 

[00:29:15] Laure: Yeah. I feel that about opening things in yourself. Of course it's not coming from the outside and especially not joy. There's something about, I guess for me, I anchor the intention with thread that I want this, I want this. This is my intention, this is the direction that I want to go. I'm informing my body as I'm doing it. Every stitch I'm like, I want this, this is where we going, so you better collaborate.

[00:29:41] Doris: I would add to that, at least my caveat would be: not trying to direct all the steps to it, like just being open to, well, I have the tendency to want to personally be, you know, we, we say like, oh, I want to be on top of things, but I don't know sometimes there's a real grace in stepping back and saying maybe my expectations are part of what got tangled up here. If we're going to go with the threads, right? 

[00:30:11] Laure: Wow. If you're going to untangle your expectations from things, that's... I immediately have this vision of this huge skein of yarn. 

[00:30:18] It's completely tangled and I'm like, oh my God, how am I going to take my expectations out of this. Yeah. 

[00:30:24] Doris: Exactly. 

[00:30:26] Laure: It's really interesting. I'm writing the first draft of what maybe will be one day a novel right now. And it's really interesting. It's so bad, it's really, really bad. Which is normal. I know it's normal for the first draft, but it's really interesting to kind of have to pull back my expectations every time I sit down to write, as I'm writing, I have to hold my expectations, way in the back over there, because if I let them forward, I'm going to stop writing.

[00:30:54] And I can't, I'm not ready to do that. Maybe I will. If after the third rewrite I'm like, maybe fiction is not my forte, but it's too early for that. And so definitely expectations mess up your ability to let things happen.

[00:31:08] Doris: Well, yeah. I mean, it's expectations, it's stories. It's whatever word we want to call it. But obviously there's the basic necessities of safety and, food, water, shelter, and being physically safe. And then maybe there's some things that we think we have to be on top of, but we can step back and see, well, is there a flow to this that maybe I've kind of been interrupting?

[00:31:36] And like, when you talk about that big skein of yarn, which is like like, oh my God, how am I going to untangle this? Well, maybe there's a way to do that we hadn't thought about it before and put it away for a little while. I don't know. Try different things. 

[00:31:51] Laure: Or maybe just, if you find the end of it and you pull on it, it's going to magically detangle.

[00:31:57] Doris: Stranger things have been known to happen. 

[00:31:59] Laure: I know, right. I've seen them with my own eyes

[00:32:03] Doris: Yeah. 

[00:32:04] Laure: Around you. And that's another thing, maybe it's going back into story territory, and maybe you always knew this, but what happened? What was your, what did it do for you when you realized that magic was real? Like stories were not just stories.

[00:32:21] Doris: I would say it's more of a remembering because as children, we know it until people tell us that it's not real. So I think it's a rediscovering and a remembering. And for me, it's been a bit of a process and a bit of a layering. Oh, that's possible. Oh my gosh. I think my head just exploded. And like, just when you think it couldn't get any bigger with the realization the next week, something else happens that you're like, oh magic.

[00:32:52] So it's not just reconfirming, but it's more nuanced than that I think. As a child, I was doing all kinds of crazy magical stuff. I was kind of the weirdo kid in the neighborhood where everyone looked at me sideways, bringing in a bunch of spirits when you were 10 years old at camp and scaring the bejesus out of people that doesn't earn you a lot of friendships, you know? And no one told me like, no, that's probably not the best idea to do. I think for me it was this sort of like, stoppering it and sort of putting a little bit of a hold on it, but that doesn't mean it erased it, it just sort of stoppered things for a little bit. I don't know. Is that even a word Stoppard? I don't know,

[00:33:36] Laure: I don't know. Maybe don't ask the French girl. help you. But yeah. It's like, I think there's different levels of knowing. And when I was a child, I did have a sense that magic was real in the physical sense of it. And because I was raised in a very magical kind of place and also my parents, I think my dad who was raised in the same house had a remembrance for it as well. And then after that, I was always aware that there was an invisible world. Right. That I never forgot in the sense of like, Hey, there are beings out there like angels and fairies and that's one thing. That's different from seeing a physical manifestation of magic, I feel. That's harder for the brain to kind of reconcile and like, oh, okay. 

[00:34:32] Doris: Right, right. Versus like, Yeah, that happens to my house, but oh yep. There we go. That's just whatever, but yeah, this is a normal thing. It doesn't have to be the separation between, like there's no us and them. 

[00:34:46] Laure: Yeah. And they're not confined to the non-material world and then we are in matter. Something can happen in the material world where you're like? Oh, okay. That things just transformed in front of my eyes. There's not any possible way that that could have happened other than, you know, magic's real.

[00:35:03] Doris: This beautiful, beautiful, mysterious... I always tell people, it's not scary. It's beautiful. If you have like, oh, how would a four year old look at this or view this? Like that's, 

[00:35:16] Laure: Normal. It would be normal. Yeah. I like that. 

[00:35:21] Doris: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:23] Laure: Magic is normal, people.

[00:35:24] Doris: It takes the fear out. Cause sometimes, you know, in my everyday practice I meet people who are a little afraid for whatever they've read, whatever's in the media, life stories, you know, there's fear. So to me, it's all about being curious, yeah. 

[00:35:43] Laure: So we're coming to the end of our talk already. 

[00:35:48] Doris: Wow. 

[00:35:49] Laure: Yeah. All right. It went by like a blur. And so I'm gonna ask you the question that I asked to everybody before they leave, which is when do you feel closer to your own soul and when do you feel closer to other people's soul?

[00:36:05] Doris: To me, that's the same question. 

[00:36:07] Laure: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:36:09] Doris: Hm. When do I? I think when I feel closest to my own soul, as well as to someone else is when I am as open and expanded as possible. That's the short answer. The longer answer would be in the expansion, what I'm sensing into what I can around me, and feeling that connection to whatever I can feel the connection to and having that curiosity and joy for that expansion. 

[00:36:43] Laure: that. Expansion and connection. 

[00:36:48] Doris: To me, that's pretty central or at least I try and make it central. Give myself gentle reminders, but yeah. 

[00:36:58] Laure: Great, well. I let those words be the words of the end, the last words, expansion and connection. And thank you so much for coming on this podcast. 

[00:37:13] Doris: Thank you for inviting me. It's a lot of fun. 

[00:37:16] Laure: Is a lot of fun. And thank you for bringing your magic to this place.

[00:37:21] Doris: Always happy, always happy to. Anytime, anytime you know that. 

[00:37:26] Laure: Yes. Thank you, Doris. 

[00:37:31] Doris: Bye.