Do You Even Get Possessed, Bro?

Spirit possession is one of the lesser discussed aspects of being a sacred healer. In this episode, I take you on a captivating journey through my experiences learning the crafts of spirit possession and trance, broken toes, a surprise gift of flight from the spirits for a mean flight attendant, and the valuable lessons learned about different types of spirits that surround us. From ghosts to spirit guides like your great great grandmother or even your higher self, we dive deep into the fascinating world of spiritual beings and their impact on our lives.

As a sacred healer, I share stories from my life being bossed about by my main jerk spirit guide and the rest of what I like to call my Sky Team. Along the way we explore the core features of traditional shamanism, including the importance of having a close relationship with one's Ongod - a sacred kind of spirit guide - and how it can provide protection. I share intriguing stories of dealing with cursed clients, kicking out unruly Ongods, and unconventional spiritual practices that have shaped my journey as a shaman.

Join me as we discuss the power of possession and trance work for healing, and how these potent experiences can help others in their personal journeys. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Not All Spirits Are Jerks
• 8:50 The Core Features of a Shaman
• 14:58 Encountering an Unconventional Onga
• 27:23 Possession and Trance Work for Healing
• 38:25 Possession and Shamanism Experiences
• 46:43 Traveling With Disabilities

Transcript

Frances: 0:45

Hi, i'm Frances. Welcome to Not All Spirits Are Jerks, a podcast named after my main spirit guide, who is a super, duper, duper, huge jerk. Today I'd like to share the story with you about how I became possessed by a spirit which came into my body and pushed me down some stairs at Airbnb in Copenhagen, resulting in me breaking my big toe, and I'd also like share with you why this was completely avoidable and 100% my fault that it happened to me. If you're new here, welcome. Very quick summary about me Previously I was a clinical psychologist. Now I work for the spirits. I spend part-time in Mongolia where I'm initiated into lineage of shamans and they call me a shaman. So before we talk about how I became possessed by a spirit, let's back up a little bit and talk about some of the kinds of spirits that are out there.

Frances: 1:35

Now, if you watch a show like Kindred Spirits with Amy Bruni and Adam Berry and Chip Coffee, then you'll see ghosts doing all kinds of things. Ghosts can actually kind of push into this realm. They can be pushing people, knocking things off of shelves, speaking from like a disembodied voice. But these aren't the only kinds of spirits. Ghosts are kind of to me, a very small subset of spirits. They are the souls or the energy of humans that have passed, but they haven't completely crossed over to the next place. For me, i don't work with ghosts all too often I just. If I'm interacting with a ghost, usually it's to just kind of remove them from the hotel room that I'm in or push them aside while I'm there. They're welcome back once I leave. But the stories that I'm going to share with you today and there are many Primarily, i'm not talking about ghosts, i'm talking about spirits that are actually in these other, i don't know, i want to say farther realms, although all realms are right here with us simultaneously.

Frances: 2:30

And in the other realms, you know, some spirits are good and some spirits are bad. I think the name of the game when it comes to working with spirits is hang out with your spirit guides and keep the rest very far away from you, and you can actually have your spirit guides. Help them stay away from you. So what is a spirit guide? Well, they're all around us. We'll start there.

Frances: 2:50

Not all spirits are guides. Guides are things like you. Almost everyone has guides around them, and it's good to open up, i think, or thinking of what a guide can be. Let's say you have a picture of your great great grandmother, whom you never knew, hanging on your wall and every night as you go to bed you just maybe, sometimes maybe not even every night, but you often find yourself just looking at her and smiling, wondering about her life, maybe saying good night. And then there was that one time, several years ago, where, just as you were glancing over at her, you had this funny feeling of like I need to get a new job. That very well could be your great great granny, who you never know, from the other side passing information to you. She's still with you, even if you've never met her in this realm. When I sit with people past, pets are often with them. Now, they're not usually the ones giving, like lottery advice, but the pets are there And, i think, guiding, we could say, in many ways.

Frances: 3:43

Another kind of guide that we may not think of as immediately as like sort of the traditional guides that lots of cultures and religions have, is your higher self. So if we look at it from one angle, you are your higher self, but if we turn it on, look at it from a different perspective, your higher self is a spirit guide that's guiding you, and you don't have to be someone like me, who connects to the spirits directly and can communicate with them directly, to be able to get this guidance from something like your higher self. Maybe you were looking to move to another city, and every time you find a new place that you feel like, oh yeah, i can sign that lease, it gets scooped out from under you And then you finally get a place and your car breaks down and you have to spend money on getting your car fixed instead of making that move. That very well could be your higher self from the other realms, the higher realms, guiding you in the right direction, because they know that the path that would be waiting for you there is a path that's not going to be good for you. So what is a spirit guide? I would say it's a. It's a spirit that guides. Anything more than that, i think it's just carving meatloaf at its joints. Now, what does matter to me is that I know specifically the spirit guides that are around me.

Frances: 4:56

As a shaman, i am part of the very small subset of humans that I would call sacred healers. So, sacred healers, we work with the spirits for the benefit of all, and the benefit of all includes humans, animals, the land and spirits. Maybe, perhaps not in physical form. Secret healers were nothing new. We're found in all cultures throughout the world. We're not of the past. We don't live behind glass and museums. We are currently still in cultures all over the world. So shaman is just the term for the sacred healers of Mongolia, and then we have other terms like Anga Coke for the sacred healers in Greenland.

Frances: 5:31

I think we could think of us sacred healers as, like, our souls are the same. And when I say our souls are the same, what I mean is we're kind of weird. I mean, we're just different than other people in ways that are pretty hard to capture, unless you know one of us or you are one of us, but our methods differ. So, while we are rare, we exist everywhere, and even in spaces like the dominant culture of the USA, very colonized spaces, where they try to erase us. They no longer burn us, but what they do is they diagnose us. It doesn't matter, we still exist, although unfortunately, a lot of us fall into that thinking and that's why we lose our healers. That's why sacred healers don't exist in colonized spaces. It's not that we don't exist, it's that we can't. The soul is there, but we can't fully well, we can't get our shit together because everyone around us is telling us we're mentally ill. We should be having elders around us that are helping us and instead our elders are telling us that we're sick. So we still exist truly in all spaces and all cultures, it's just sometimes we can't find our way.

Frances: 6:32

Sacred healers are different than sort of the ally discipline. So there are like mediums, maybe rakey practitioners, people who do tarot card readings, people who hold like ceremonial drumming circles for journeying. They're similar, but they're not exactly the same thing as us. We're odd, we're different, we're rare and we are everywhere. Now, what you will find in common, or what I find in common and I think I can say with some confidence what all sacred healers have in common is we have a more formal relationship with our guides. We don't just work with guides, we have our specific team. I often call it my Sky Team or my Sky Council.

Frances: 7:10

So I'm going to talk to you about my own lived experiences of working with my primary spirit guide, and this is coming through. You know my story is so out there. You can try to categorize it. Let me know if you figure it out. I'm going to share my story as someone raised in the West non-indigenous now recognizes a shaman in Mongolia. So I'm talking about Mongolian ways, coming from someone who's raised in a different culture. Take it for what it is It's valid, but it's not common.

Frances: 7:42

I'd also like to point out that you know I'm not a researcher and I think that's to my credit. Almost every single piece of information that I have consumed reading or watching videos about Mongolian shamanism varies from just absolute garbage to close, but wrong enough that it's really misleading. There's almost nothing out there that I see or have consumed about Mongolian shamanism where I think, yeah, that's accurate and true almost nothing, and I think the reason for that is because the people who are producing the content they're not having the lived experience of it And perhaps this is something that you can relate to. It happens all the time, like, let's say, maybe you're part of an Indigenous community and you've had, like a reporter or a researcher come in, share some stories in time and leave, and then what they write about it, the content that they produce, you look at and you think, well, that has nothing to do with my lived experience as an Indigenous person Or like my sister who's a pilot. I was hanging out with her the other day and a meme came up and she was about the airline industry and she was just laughing like gosh. This is absolutely not how it works. It's sort of slightly adjacent.

Frances: 8:51

But another example is there's some Indian food that I've had in South Carolina actual experience that's been described to me as the best Indian food around And I have a feeling perhaps if you're from India, if you try to do this food, it's not going to taste like the food that your mom made. So what's going on? It's just human nature that the ways that we are raised are ways of knowing, doing, being relating and perceiving can never be replaced by consuming any content about it. If you don't have that lived experience, it's never going to be exactly the same as being part of that culture and community. So you perhaps are not a shaman, but even if you're not a shaman, i think you get what I'm saying.

Frances: 9:35

When I'm saying most of the stuff out there, i just think, oh my gosh, this is so misleading at best, if not harmful, and it's from people who are doing their best, but they really want to, even if their heart is in the right place and they're trying to produce the best content possible. You know we don't see with our eyes. We see with our hearts and minds. Unless you're a newborn, there's always already some structures in place. And when we go on with preconceived notions or, more importantly, when we go on with huge files missing of what can be, of other ways of being from our own experiences, we don't fully see what's going on in front of us. I believe this is also why my experience has been, wherever I go all around the world, when I meet another sacred healer.

Frances: 10:18

We can come from such vastly different lived experiences, totally different cultures, but we see each other immediately. I mean first of all because we literally see each other. We have more sense as the most people and we see each other. We sense each other with our spirit eyes. But at the same time I think we all feel a sense of relief of like, ah, someone I can just hang out with at the fire. And the stories that we share with each other, often through translators, are some of the best stories. But I won't share this publicly because if you don't have these shared experiences, they're too far out there. I think we all like to relax and kind of let our hair down when we're alone, sharing space with each other, even if we've never met before, because every single sacred healer I've ever met.

Frances: 10:57

We all know that in the more dominant spaces, when we're moving through institutionalized spaces, we are being pathologized rather than understood, although a lot of people who are coming from spaces where they don't exactly understand, they're actually just very interested and curious. But even then the stories that come, they're not coming from a place of accuracy And that might even be well-meaning people that want to go and see a miracle, and they report back the miraculous work of shamans in Mongolia, which for me, is just a regular workday. So I'm not a researcher, and that's to my credit. At the same time, i am absolutely, probably, quite obviously, but I'm not speaking for all shamans or sacred healers for that matter. I have some very close relationships with mentors in Mongolia and I have had a shaman teach me how to do a ritual And then sometime later, another one of my close mentors showed me how to do a ritual for the same purpose, but their methods actually contradicted each other.

Frances: 12:05

For me, this is no problem, because when you're working with consciousness, what's important is the intention, and then the objects get fueled by that intention, it doesn't matter. But at the same time, i think it goes to show that shamans, we differ a lot. We differ a lot in the ways that we work, but there are three core features of every shaman that we all have in common And those three things are found. I think it's kind of now we're starting to get down into like specifics of shamans as compared to other sacred healers who might have similar methods but not entirely the same. So, we shamans, there are three things that we all share. The first thing is that we all have an onga.

Frances: 12:45

An onga is a very specific and sacred kind of spirit guide. In fact, this podcast is named after not just my spirit guide, but he is my onga. Now, my onga is someone I'm kind of, more than kind of that I'm bound with in this lifetime. The reason why I can do what I do is not because of anything that I'm able to do. It's because I'm able to have this connection with this very powerful onga And he's the one that is helping me doing the healing work, doing the divination work, removing the negative entities. I'm not really doing any of it, i'm just good at connecting with him. So you really have to have an onga and not just have an onga, but have a very healthy relationship with them in order to be a healthy and powerful, powerful shaman. Now, you don't get to choose your spirit guide any more than you get to your onga, any more than you get to choose to be a shaman. All this just seems to kind of happen to you, but they're really handy to have, not just because of that they're helping you, but they provide an incredible amount of protection.

Frances: 13:56

So let me tell you a story about how my onga, while he is a jerk to me and he's almost never a jerk to other people occasionally he is a jerk to other people. One of the things that my onga has said to me again and again is you show me someone who's had no difficulties in their life and I'm going to show you an asshole. Now, in Mongolia there are certain spaces where some people have a tremendous amount of privilege, financially and otherwise, very little difficulty in some of these people's lives, and I actually have two stories of people coming from these sort of upper echelons of Mongolian society coming to ask me if I could do some work for them. I'm gonna tell you a story, in an exceptionally de-identified way now about one of these experiences. So one time someone within like kind of the diplomatic community there came to me and asked for me to remove a curse from him.

Frances: 14:59

Cursing is so prevalent in Mongolia And, jokes aside, it's real People really do curse each other out there, and so curse removal is something that you need to learn how to do. But people aren't always cursed. Sometimes it's just their karma coming back to them Anyway. So this person from within the diplomatic community came and he said he would like to have a curse removed, but I just got a really icky vibe from him. Now I know how to curse, because if you know how to heal, you know how to curse. But I don't curse because I don't believe in that. I think you're just gonna end up cursing yourself in some ultimate kind of way. But he just gave me a really bad vibe and, knowing the minds of some Mongolians, i understood why people were cursing him And frankly, i wanted nothing to do with him.

Frances: 15:43

But when you have an onga it's not really like a mutual relationship of equals. I often just have to do what he tells me to do, and my jerk onga said you have to work with this guy. Oh my gosh, and I really didn't want to. I just I don't know that. I even felt safe. And my onga said don't you worry, this is gonna be a very short session. So we set up a time and he was running late not unusual. I love the way that time is experienced for me much more realistically in Mongolia, it's not such a rigid thing. So, yeah, he was running a little bit late, but then time was passing on and on And I thought, well, maybe he's not gonna show Hooray.

Frances: 16:23

And then he came, but he was really shaken. And he was really shaken when he came in And he looked at me and he said are you cursing me? And I was like no, i'm not cursing you. And he said I just got in a car accident on the way over here. So he had been taking a taxi and he wasn't hurt, but it was a pretty significant rear-ending of the taxi that he was in.

Frances: 16:46

And as soon as he said that, my onga said to me you tell him that was me, that was me just saying hello and letting him know I'm around you And if he does anything to try to hurt you or scam you, i'm gonna be right there, wherever he is, and he's gonna get it. So I told this man what I had been told. His eyes were as big as saucers And I said should we get going? Go ahead and lie down. I did the cursor removal and he scurried out and I never saw him again And my onga just laughed.

Frances: 17:20

He said sometimes, assholes, they need their experiences. It's all for the better good. These are not my methods. I don't put people in situations of being in car accidents, but we don't always get to choose our coworkers. You know what I mean. So, all joking aside, this is an example of why, outside of just having the guidance from the onga of how to be doing the healing and what I'm doing when I'm sitting with people, he's an incredibly powerful protective energy around me and I'm, reluctantly, incredibly grateful to the protection that I feel from him, but his methods are what I would say unconventional. Even for some of it's not unheard of, but definitely not all onga in Mongolia are as much of an a-hole as mine is.

Frances: 18:10

In fact, what happened was I had met him years and years and years earlier And I talk about this in a previous episode but I just reached the point where I was like you are no good for me. This is long before I'd ever heard of Mongolia or thought about shamanism, or certainly never heard of onga. All I knew was I had this primary guide around me and his guidance had reached the point of just causing complete havoc in my life. And what I ultimately did is I kicked him out. I just was like I'm done with you, and so I didn't encounter him for years and years.

Frances: 18:41

In that time it's a different story, but I did find my way via Siberia into Mongolia and there everything came together. Some years of mildly put chaos finally came together and I understood that this was what I was being called to do. Unbelievably to me, it wasn't exactly as easy as getting off the train and being initiated, but it almost was. It's just still to the stake. Kind of hard for me to wrap my head around, but I was quickly finding myself in to the pathway of initiation.

Frances: 19:19

And so I found myself on my first time to Mongolia, preparing for my first ceremony. Well, it was explained to me that in this first ceremony I was going to be paired with my onga, and it's something like a I mean it's not a wedding, but it's the closest I can think that comes to mind. It's just you're paired for life. And so I went back to the flat that I was staying in in Usambatta the night before and guidance came around me and they said okay, this is a little unusual, but we're actually gonna let you choose your onga. So we're gonna spend some time right now in trance and we'll let you kind of like interview I don't know how else to say it. It wasn't exactly that but like, have a lineup of a few spirits come through And when you find the one that you want, that will be your onga. Whoa, now was that a night.

Frances: 20:06

So I lied down, i put myself into trance and these different healers came through. Some of them came through in very like human form. They've clearly had been a shaman in their past life, some quite recently, some from several hundred years ago. Some of them came through more as an energy. They would tell me just a little bit about themselves, like these are my gifts, this is what I do. This is like not necessarily how I would train you, but like this is what I want for you, these are my aspirations for you, and it wasn't like a pep talk, but it was more like this is sort of like my profile. This is what it would be like, and every single spirit that was shown to me had an energetic signature as well.

Frances: 20:47

Now I was feeling picky because, after the last several years of having turned my life too much over to the spirits, i was getting really savvy, and I knew that no has become a very, very magic word for me in all the realms, and so I was really thinking you know, francis, this is one of the biggest decisions you're gonna make in your life, and so I'm gonna wait until I see the right one. I don't care if I'm here all night. So it's a no and it's a no, it's a almost yes, no, it's a no, just pass, pass, pass. I get this image of like if you could make like a tinder for choosing your spirit guide. You know, i was just swiping right, swiping right, and then, as I'm lying there, this incredible energy came over me. It was almost like orgasmic. It was so blissful. My whole body was just radiating with this, almost like incandescent light and this like high vibration. There wasn't a being associated with it, it was just one of the most beautiful feelings I've ever had washed through me, even to this day.

Frances: 21:50

That's how this great spirit guy came and introduced himself to me or itself to me. There was certainly no gender or any sense of being around it, and I just sat there. It was so peaceful, it just brought tears to my eyes. It was so otherworldly and it felt like all of this human drama and muck that we find ourselves in, stuck in this dream. Ah, maybe this is where we go to after.

Frances: 22:11

There was just something so one about it, and so I thought about it, though I kind of poked at it and I asked some things, and it was communicating with me in a different way, very different than the spirits that have been communicating with me before. It was showing me things, um, not exactly speaking directly, but just giving me a sense of like you know, those other beings were incredible, but this being is coming from somewhere else. And so I thought, and there was just something in me that thought this is it. I've never felt anything, anything like this. I feel so safe, i feel so protected, i feel so, um, serene and at peace. This is, um, this is something remarkable and this is the one that I want. So I said with my heart okay, this is the one.

Frances: 22:58

The energies came around me and said are you sure? Yeah, yeah, this is the one. Are you extra sure, francis? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let us just remind you there's no backing out of this. This is even more serious than any of your earthly contracts, because once you are bound with your own God in this lifetime, this is it. Are you certain? I took a deep breath, exhaled and I said, yes, this is the one. And bliss just rated, like, pulsated through me. It was like coming out of my hands, this healing energy just pouring out of me, and I was so happy and so at peace. You guys, all of a sudden, this energy kind of like coalesced into something more of a form of a being and the energy itself kind of had a hand come out and reach around and pull off part of its energy, as if pulling off a mask. And who should be behind this mask? But this jerk spirit guy, and he's just like got this face of like gotcha. I had kicked this dude out years before, sacred dude. And so this is the story of how that jerk spirit guide became my jerk, oh God. And then we did the ceremony the next day.

Frances: 24:20

I don't know. I mean, i do believe in past lives and I've tried so many different ways to get rid of this jerk spirit guide. I think I tell people, you know, we get to pick our guides and in some ways that's definitely true. There's a chosen family and there's chosen spirit family. But this guy, i think, might just be a package deal, and you know the way he torments me. Maybe it doesn't feel familiar to me, but it does remind me of a relationship that isn't new. So that's how I got my own gut. Now, why even have an own gut? you know?

Frances: 24:53

And this one guy is like. His methods are so intense, even if, like your spirit guide, was like Mr Miyagi, but sort of sadistic. He's constantly having me do things with no explanation and no interest in hearing my opinions. And if I'm tired, i remember one time, way, way early, he said, okay, i need to like straight up you guys, i can't believe I'm sharing this. But he said I need you to go buy a hundred gallons of water, and so I protested, protested, protested, for whatever reason. This is long before he's my own gut, but this is one of the reasons I kicked him out. He said no, this is like what you're going to have to do. And he started just like saying I don't remember. It was like just saying something in my ear just like water, water, water, water, water, and I try to tune it out.

Frances: 25:40

And it was to the point that it was like I got to work. I'm a psychologist, i got to be able to listen to my clients. If buying a hundred gallons of water is what's going to get you off of my back, you got it. So, like a modern day Milarepa, i go out and I buy these hundred gallons of water, a hundred individual gallon size containers. This is in the USA at the time, in North Carolina, so I'm using gallon metric And I think I had to do a couple of rounds and I was married at the time.

Frances: 26:12

So I'm like hiding. I don't want him to think I've lost my mind. I mean, like you know, good luck. So I was like taking them in while he's at work And I think I like put them under beds and stack them in closets. I have no idea And I was exhausted. I never found out what he wanted me to do with that water Never. I have no idea. I suspect it was something about.

Frances: 26:34

There were lots of like physical things that I need to be doing with my body to condition my body in a certain way And I suspect now, looking back and starting to understand his methods, i probably had like a kinked up meridian or something in like the shoulder area, and lifting all of that water and going up the stairs It probably worked out some energy thing that I needed, like I'm pretty sure now that was at least part of it. Another part of it was probably just to continue to break down my sense of like, self and identity. But these are the kinds of methods that he uses. So now that I do have an onga well, this is where the other two of the three things come in the all shamans we have in common with the onga. What we also have in common is we become really good, really, really I'd say skilled, hopefully at trans work and the lesser known, or at least spoken about, skill of possession.

Frances: 27:24

It's really important for the work that we do that we know how to possess you. Totally messing with you. That's not what I mean at all, mostly. No, i'm kidding, i'm totally kidding, my apologies. I don't mean possessing you, i mean actually being really practiced at allowing a spirit to take over our own body, to possess our body. So trans is something that I think is more familiar If you have ever done something like journeying to like a repetitive sound, most commonly a drum, but it doesn't have to be a drum that is going into trance, which can allow you to move your consciousness to other realms.

Frances: 28:02

Personally, more and more, i think that all humans, we have some ability to be able to do things like trans work. It's just part of the human package. But a lot of us lose it when we're in these like sensory overload environments that were just bombarded by so much. We lose the more subtle pathways. But we shamans, what we do is we practice being able to go into trance in like a repeated, controlled fashion, being able to move our own consciousness. But you know you don't want to just be hanging out in these other realms as a little human, because there's a lot of icky stuff out there and that's where the on got comes in handy. So even if I well like there's just so much going on because not only do I want to avoid the bad parts, you know the bad alleyways that everyone knows not to go down If I'm doing something like soul retrieval work, i don't know where this person's soul is hanging out.

Frances: 28:57

You know, something difficult happened to them something traumatic or a long period of loss Parts of our souls. They drift out from us and to be fully healthy, sometimes soul retrieval is needed and that means gathering the pieces of our soul that took off and bringing them back home to reside in the human, in the human form, for the continuation of this lifetime. I don't know where their soul went. So if I'm doing soul retrieval work I'm completely dependent on my own God but because he knows the address, he can take us there and help us bring that piece back safely. Not just bring back the piece safely for the person that I'm working with, but one of the things that one of the like the biggest mistakes that I see honestly in sacred healers make, but a lot of people doing this kind of work is uh, y'all don't always bring all of yourself back, because it feels really good sometimes, especially when you find the good fun realms, it feels good to hang out there. It's very spacey sometimes And we come back here and we have traffic and bills and difficult relationships and it's really tempting, as a sacred healer to allow part of your soul to hang out in other spaces. Personally I really, really, really try not to do that. My own God is the one that makes sure that everyone everyone comes home safely and is back in time for dinner.

Frances: 30:08

So I think that trans work if you're a little bit familiar with people who work in um, kind of like shamanic ways, i think trans work is something perhaps familiar to you. It's even what you're seeing people do like uh, when I see someone, um, like mediums, when they're connecting with past loved ones on the other side, for me what I would say is that's trans work, that's going into a light, mild trans. Trans isn't just on and off. In my experience, it's a spectrum. You can go full trans and completely leave your body, and there are stories of healers who leave their bodies for days on end So they hopefully have would they have someone around and they'll say look, i'm doing spirit flight, take care of my body, definitely, don't bury me, i'll be back. Um, that's full trans, but you can go into partial trans as well And that's often what more commonly the kind of work that I do. So that one is a little bit more familiar.

Frances: 31:01

But possession, i think, is I don't know if it's less familiar because it's just so freaking weird to talk about, or if it's just less or done or known, i don't, i don't exactly know but possession is a core part of what I do And it's really really really handy. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without possession because, like I said, i don't know what a person needs to heal, but my own God does. So after years of practice and training I'm able to really really seamlessly bring this on, got into my body. A common healing session with me might look something like this. So like when that comes to mind, uh, nothing. This is a pretty common experience is.

Frances: 31:41

I had someone come recently and he He didn't know exactly what was off, but he just felt like his energy was off. And I had worked with him for some time and he trusted me and he said Can you just take a look? Is there some energetic work to do? so he lied down and I opened sacred space and then what he wouldn't know. But what I did is I opened up and I allowed my own God to come partially into my body. So at that point I am now the observer. I'm no longer the one moving my body And in fact, i'm no longer the one speaking either, although I look just as common as I would driving in a car.

Frances: 32:15

So I Saw my left hand reach up and my middle finger and index finger pushed with some like firm pressure on a point kind of on his Right shoulder, just below the collarbone. And then I saw my right hand go up and my middle and index finger pushed On a spot closer to his hip area. So it was this diagonal line across the body and I said but it wasn't me speaking I said There's a kink in this energy line. There's like a kink in the energy that's wrapping, curling around the heart, and It's related to grief. So we're gonna work on this energy line, release some of that grief and get the energy flowing again. And that has. That's what's been kind of like the kink in the system That has been blocking the healthy energy flow for the whole body. So by working on this line, we're gonna work on your entire energy field. Now for him, what he would see is some like very knowledgeable healer. But in fact what was happening is it was I was no more doing it than watching a football match. I I literally was learning as I was speaking.

Frances: 33:20

That is the kind of work that I'm able to do, using possession as a skill, after years and years and years of training. But of course, at the beginning, um well, i remember the like. Thinking back, the first time I remember what I would now say was evidence of possession was pretty early on, i was uh meditating just like not super intensively, but I would meditate like once a day while I was still in private practice and Uh, hoping that it would kind of stabilize things. But of course it wasn't stabilizing me, it was just opening everything more rapidly, maybe in a, um the correct way, but it was still going too fast.

Frances: 33:58

But I remember I was sitting in just a very classical Meditation pose, sitting on a zafu with my legs crossed, and I had, you know, each hand palms up on a knee, just doing some really basic sort of insight meditation, and all of a sudden my thumb and index finger closed and it, in a moment, was just absolutely just like Reality shattering for me, because I was a hundred percent clear that something had come in and closed my fingers. It was not the sensation of someone coming from the outside And it was not me that had done it. Something had come in. And for that to happen, for that to be possible, even if you didn't believe in it before, when it happens to you. It was a small thing, but it was enough to shake me to my core. So I think, like my soul, like I said, sacred healers, we just have these odd souls and it's part of my software to know how to do it. But, just like an athlete, they may have natural abilities, but they have to train.

Frances: 34:54

It's taken years and years for me to be able to train myself to the point that I can do possession safely. And the number one thing that, uh, like I don't, i don't think that I could teach possession work to someone, to just any person. But if you feel like this might be something that's happening to you More than the possession work, the number number, number one thing is Have a tight, healthy team of good spirits around you and keep your vibration very high and clean. So, throughout my journey from the beginning of this opening, one of the things that I feel so grateful for and so lucky to have is It does seem like there's always things around me that are just protecting me. It's like I've learned a lot by they. Let me fall down, but they're not going to let me fall down a well. So, and that's not true for, i would say the majority of people who are beginning to open. I think most people open and some of the first experiences can be really scary and challenging. Experiences can be really scary and dark and then it's just a matter of learning how to like clean your energy, raise the vibration And then keeping your energy high and protected.

Frances: 35:56

But for me, so, as this possession kind of ability was growing in me, i I wanted to play with it. I wanted to figure out what was going on. And I remember I was in a grocery store one time and I kind of was aware of a spirit around me And I thought, well, i wonder what happens if I just let the spirit into my body. Now, boys and girls and all the rest of us at home, do not do this. This is a super, super terrible idea. This is how we get movies like the exorcist. This is how we get people like me doing exorcisms. Like don't just let random spirits in your body. I can't believe that I did that. Looking back, it's unbelievable. Uh, but I did let the spirit into my body and I don't know what it was, but it was just kind of curious and I think it enjoyed playing with one of these. Like humans That it probably is watching all the time, and it just spun me down. It spun me around in a circle And then when I went back home I got quite a talking down to of, like, okay, so that's what we don't do, like, do not do that again.

Frances: 36:51

So if you happen to uh feel like working on possession work, my very, very first thing that I say is, more than working on how to open, you got to make sure you know the spirits around you. You got to have a really tight team. I think Um preferably know them by name, but you know what you might. You might not know your closest spirits by name. That's certainly true for me. I have my own god and I trust him to be sort of the bouncer even for the spirits that I work with. But Traveling through all of these lands and going to all these some of the most sacred places in the world, there's spirits around and they're really helpful and they just kind of jump on the caravan. It seems I have so many spirits around me I couldn't I honestly have no idea how many I have around me And different situations, different spirits come in. So my own god is kind of like the, the stage producer, the manager he's figuring it all out, but it is true I don't know them all by name, but I know that the practices that I use, i'm safe and I'm protected and that is number one first step for learning how to do Possession work. The second thing is I just practiced for years and years I just practiced and one of the best ways I uh was guided to practice is dance, actually Dancing. Even now I love listening to like psy trance, um, and just dancing, and I think that's true, like if you go to like festivals, some of the more higher vibration festivals, i think a lot of, a lot of possession is going on with beautiful land, spirits and fairies and allies and all the spirits that everyone's bringing together. But, yeah, so there's a lot of dance and, uh, one of the most beautiful moments in this training oh, it was so lovely.

Frances: 38:25

I was in community in Iceland. I wasn't in Reykjavik, it wasn't too far outside. I was at this sort of like wild, mystical sort of like farmhouse, about just maybe under an hour from Reykjavik, and I was staying there for I don't know a month or so And I was guided to just go out into the land and to dance And I mean you have to imagine, on one side there's like the moody sea. It's like it was like late fall, you know, kind of dark, stormy clouds, not snow on the ground, yet The foam on the waves. It's kind of almost angrily crashing up on the shore. It's my favorite kind of mood. And then on the other side of me there's this huge mountain side, like just going straight up. It was an absolutely stunning space. And then there's lots of like moss on the ground. It's really spongy ground.

Frances: 39:22

Where I was, it was a perfect place to practice full possession. So what? and I knew who I was working with. It was my own God. I did know him as an own God by them. So what he said is okay, go out. And I just I think I just put my headphones on. No, maybe I had a speaker with me. I was just alone out on the countryside in Iceland.

Frances: 39:41

And do you ever play? remember playing like musical chairs, where you're like dancing, dancing, dancing, and then the music stops and you have to run and get a chair. It was kind of like that sort of game where what he would do is I would just let him into my body and he would dance me, but I would full. I would practice going from 80% to like 100% full possession And then bam, i would totally collapse and just fall like faint onto the ground, onto the soft, mossy ground, and the first couple of times it was terrifying, but then it became absolutely thrilling. It's one of the most beautiful experiences I've had, just dancing out in the nature and the spirits of the land that were there with me And I was just giving myself over in a way that felt so safe and clean and pure. It was wonderful. So that's the training. It was a very magical, magical path to get here. Oh, that's right. I have another possession story coming out of this same journey in Iceland. That time.

Frances: 40:42

So, as I was leaving Iceland, i was at the airport and kind of out in the distance a flight attendant is walking past and my own God just sort of turns my head. Again, that's mild possession work, because I always have. This is me and this is my choice, and not everyone does it this way. I sort of always keep my door halfway open. I just like to do it that way because it keeps me really up and trained, even if I'm not doing a lot of sitting with people. So I was at the airport and my head just kind of turns and he says to me that woman is an asshole. She's just a flight attendant walking through. She looks perfectly fine and lovely. There's no outward signs of asshole-ness on her. Okay, so I'm just going along, i check in and then I'm in the waiting area. It's so funny. So I'm in the waiting area just as you do, after going through security, all of a sudden my body kind of just like swivels around, just like a little bit less than 90 degrees, and my right leg just kicks up. And this flight attendant that I had I swear to goodness gracious, this happened this flight attendant that I had seen earlier on the other side of security happened to get tripped by my leg And she fell down. She gave me the meanest glare, like ice cold. If she could have frozen me she would have. And my spirit, my own God, just laughed and laughed and he said show me someone that's never had anything difficult happen in their life. Oh my God, i was mortified. That's a story of sort of the downside of allowing the door to always be halfway open, and these days that's just how I roll.

Frances: 42:27

Another story that comes to mind is most recently where I was really grateful to have this for my personal journey, not just for being with others. I was driving from Asheville back to Charlotte and it was a Friday afternoon And I found myself, as I was getting closer to Charlotte North Carolina and the traffic was getting heavier. I don't know if it was like happy hour for people like wanting to like take their cars out on the road, but suddenly it seemed like not only was the traffic getting heavier and heavier, but there were lots of people doing kind of like this is like show off driving, like going really fast, swerving in and out of other cars, and it was getting really dense and I was not happy about being in this kind of configuration. It didn't feel safe And I just was like blink, i felt my body relax and I felt my spirit partially come into me, less than the one with the flight attendant, but he was jointly helping me drive. It was like and now we move over Elaine, swear to goodness, i'm not saying I was gonna be in a car accident, but it was nice to have him there to help me just be like right, relax, drive smoothly.

Frances: 43:31

Let's just take a different way, and I share this to explain that when I say that, like possession is part of shamanism, i don't experience it that way. I experience it as part of this weird soul that I am. It's now just something that I do. I don't know why, but lemons are the thing that I'm always using as like kind of a check-in, tune-up. Like if you ever see me at the grocery store picking some celery, that's probably me, but if you happen to see me reaching for a lemon, that's 100% not me. That's just an understood, shared upon time where I relax and my spirit comes in and he grabs the lemon for me. He's gonna always pick the best lemon, but every once in a while I'll turn the lemon over and it's like the one lemon that had been moldy on the other side, just another way for him to let me know he's always by my side. And this brings me to the story of how I got possessed by a spirit and was pushed down some stairs in Copenhagen. Can you guess who did it? I bet you can.

Frances: 44:37

So what happened was I was leaving Nuuk, greenland, and I was actually going back to somewhere in North America. You can't actually get from Greenland, you can't go direct, even though it would be like, i think an hour or two hour flight from Nuuk to Boston. But you can't do it because Greenland at this time still doesn't have independence and it is still occupied by Denmark. So to get out of Greenland you have to go through the European direction. You can either go through Reykjavik or you can go through Copenhagen, and then you have to fly back to the East Coast. It's ridiculous.

Frances: 45:08

So I found myself on, just I thought, well, i'll just take a couple of days in Copenhagen. It's not a city I'm familiar with. I think I had like three nights there, and so on my second night I'm going downstairs and it's dark and of course it's not familiar. So it's really easy for me to be messed with because I have no routine to go back on. It's a staircase that I don't know and I've only been down it a couple of times, and it's late at night And I'm just about to be at the bottom. I have a couple more stairs to go.

Frances: 45:36

Bam, my spirit comes in. I think I'm walking down a stair. He basically does kind of like the same thing. He kicks my leg out and I totally eat it. I land. I don't want to be too graphic, but I land in a way where I heard the snap of the big toe on my left foot, just like that's not the direction it's supposed to go. And as the pain shot through my body, what do I hear him say? But nailed it. If he had a back to pat, i'm sure he would have been patting his own back. He was just pleased. His punch at his nailing his landing.

Frances: 46:12

So the next day I had to hobble. I mean, i didn't know that it was broken, but it became pretty evident the next day when I'm hobbling through the city trying to get my COVID test. And then, by the time the following day came around, it was time for me to have my flight. I knew I couldn't be walking on this toe. I needed to have a wheelchair going, not just on one flight, but four flights, going through three different countries. Oh my gosh, it was such a pain in the you know what.

Frances: 46:44

And as I'm going through these airports, grumbling, being like why on earth are you breaking my big toe? Like what does this have to do with anything? I am also seeing all of this travel that I'm doing through different eyes. You know I'm learning about what it means to be traveling internationally when you're not able-bodied. And boy was I opening in a completely different experience. And you know what my spirit guide said to me, My jerk-on-got. He said show me someone who hasn't had difficult things happen in their life and I'll show you an asshole. You're welcome, francis. Thanks for sharing this journey with me. I'll see you on the next podcast, if not before, in the dream time. Dream well, friends.