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In this episode, we discuss:

• Reclaiming your power around dream interpretation
• How Mimi uses psychic smelling & Necromancy
• Exploring machine and digital spirits
• Managing energetic boundaries and shining a light on toxic spirituality

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Episode Transcript:

Hello friends. Have you noticed that you can get caught up in consuming content or maybe you noticed you are hyper, hyper-focused on the doing? Empaths we often consume. And I know because that was me too; soaking up information from all my favorite teachers and mentors. But it wasn’t until I started focusing more on the being and embodiment work that the door to massive clarity was finally unlocked and I no longer got confused about what was my energy versus everybody else’s. I was able to become a more clear channel for creation and as a result, transform my life, business, and health. In fact, my meditation and embodiment practice is what helped me have a nearly $40,000 month this past January, see the highest downloaded month of the podcast, and finally release a lot of unnecessary stress. And my clients felt it and saw it in their lives too.

It wasn’t reading more articles; it wasn’t doing more busywork. So I’m inviting you to graduate from the spongy empath consumer into the self-activated sovereign healer. You can take your podcast listening experience from, ooh, I feel seen, heard, and inspired to holy shit, I actually feel different. My being has shifted. I am the embodiment of the woman I desire to be. The Third Eye Collective is a simple way to upgrade your experience and commit, not only to a meditation practice that compliments your healing but also receive personalized coaching so you can be clear on what direct actions to implement into your highest goals. There are two simple ways to get involved at 11 or $22 a month with no commitment. So if this is calling your name, click the link in the show notes to join this amazing and growing community.

Welcome to The Uncensored Empath, a place for us to discuss highly sensitives energy, illness, healing, and transformation. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a life and success coach for empaths who want to create a thriving body, business, and life. Think of this podcast as your no-BS guide to navigating life, health, and entrepreneurship. You’ll get straight-to-the-point, totally holistic tips from me in real-time as I navigate this healing and growth journey right beside you. This is a Soulfire production.

Welcome back to another episode. My guest today is Mimi Young. You guys, we cover so much in this episode. I was so honored to have Mimi on the show and be able to tap into her wisdom on so many different things like dream interpretation and clairolfactance, which is psychic smelling necromancy, communicating with our ancestors, loved ones, and the dead. We talk about machine and digital spirits as well as conversation around toxic spirituality and ownership at the very end of our conversation today.

Before we dive in, I want to tell you a little bit more about Mimi. She is a Taiwanese Canadian, shamanic intuitive, and the founder of Ceremonie, an esoteric brand that helps people connect with spirits through education and mentorship, private readings, and skin and aura care. She works at the intersection of core shamanism, ancestral wisdom, dreamwork, chaos magic, and other Chinese practices to communicate with spirit. Her approach has been described as pragmatic, profound, and responsible. I am so excited to share this conversation with you all today. I know you’ll all take away something slightly different. Feel free to share with both of us and tag both of us after the show and let’s dive in.

Sarah: Mimi, welcome to The Uncensored Empath Podcast. I am so excited to have you here.

Mimi: Thank you so much Sarah for having me.

Reclaiming your power around dream interpretation

Sarah: So I was just telling you that there are so many different topics of conversation that I want to be able to dive into in this one conversation so I want to try to cover as much as possible. I’d love to start by talking about dreaming sleep state, mostly because this has come up in one of the courses that I host lately. A lot of my students, my clients have been saying they’ve been having lots of dreams and they’re struggling with how to interpret them. I’ve also felt in my life, I go through these phases where I don’t remember the dreams and then other phases where I remember them in tons of detail. So I’d love to know just your take on dream interpretation and what magic we can access through our dreams.

Mimi: For sure. So I think let’s define what a dream is first because maybe some of your listeners don’t believe they dream. And I would be very ‘gentingly’ begging to differ. So a dream doesn’t necessarily need to follow a strict narrative outline or a narrative structure. It doesn’t have to have a distinct middle peak point and an end, it doesn’t have to be a story in any way. A dream could be a feeling that you feel in the body that you still remember when you wake up. It could be a single scent, it could be a single word, it could be a feeling more from the heart. So all of us do dream. And then in terms of what I have found to be helpful in my own personal practice and I can talk a little bit about it also in my professional practice, but in my personal practice, what I have found to be one of the best tools, which I’ve shared even on Goop, is keeping a dream spreadsheet. So not a journal, but an actual spreadsheet.

I like to have it on my phone simply because it’s the most immediate thing. My phone’s usually always with me and I’ll just keep it there. And then I’ll input date, the key fixtures, as in who was in the dream, what was in the dream, and more of the instinctual interpretations. And I have them spread out in their own individual columns. And then what happens is over time, you start seeing patterns and then you can start making deeper meaning and very accurate, personalized meaning based on what themes or what people, or what big emotions that are coming through. If you wanted, for your listeners if they are interested in planetary bodies, you can even create a separate column that basically indicates the lunar phase. This happened during a full moon, this happened during a new moon, why is it that every new moon, these are the certain things that come up? In that way,  by having a spreadsheet rather than entries in a physical journal you get to really glance at everything quickly and you can see patterns. And I find that that is an easy way to get into the depth of it faster because we do dream in a way that is often cyclical or it’s hermetic.

And then in terms of in my professional practice, because typically a client will present one dream to me and then I interpret it, so I don’t necessarily have the luxury of seeing bigger patterns in the history of their dreaming. I do zone-in to what were the big fixtures, what were the key feelings? Because I have developed my own visual encoding of symbols, I would then start to go back into my own reference point of, okay, well, this is what it would mean and then I just provide the interpretation.

Sarah: I love that. And a spreadsheet sounds so helpful in that it’s also a way for you to customize or individualize what certain things that show up in your dream or a feeling in your dream mean to you versus obviously there’s lots of books that can be fun, resourceful guides. And at the same time, you may open the page up and there is a animal, a specific animal in your dream and you open the page up in the book and that doesn’t resonate with you, right? So the tracking of how you interpret it feels like a much more individualized, customized experience. And I’m curious what your take is on what information or what’s the source of information that comes to us through our dreams. So, you know, some people will talk about it’s our subconscious mind, others will say that spirit or past loved ones can communicate with us through our dreams or that we astral travel through our dreams. Super curious, because that’s something that I haven’t dove into, what your take on that is?

Mimi: Yes, I think it would be all of the above and more. So for instance, it could even be, if you have a child in utero, it could even be the child speaking to you through a dream. Yes, so absolutely it could be more external sources, meaning ancestors or other spirits, or a child in the womb or a lost pet. It could be the land itself speaking to you. For instance, I’ve had dreams from the land saying there’s going to be an earthquake, things like that, that is totally real and I think it needs to be recognized as an external source. And then there’s also that deeper inner self that’s speaking to us that could also happen. I would say that it really depends on the dream. And generally, if you were to go in and ask, you’ll have some inkling in terms of what the source is. Like, I typically tend to know when it’s my deeper self that’s saying, hey, there’s the shadow that you’ve been avoiding or whatever. And other times it’s very clear that that was an externally sourced message.

Sarah: I’ve found that usually, I can tell as well when I just tap into intuition and the feeling behind it. I’ve lost both my brothers. And so I’ve felt especially, one of my brothers come in more recently and been like, oh, okay, that was Joe’s energy and he was showing me something in the dream and then other experiences where it was more like Starseed origins coming to visit me and give me these amazing downloads and messages around my work and healing. And that’s been really powerful as well. Another thing that you practice that you utilize within your work, Mimi, is necromancy. And so, this is the art of connecting to our past loved ones, to our ancestors; you mentioned even deceased pets. I’d love to…and just personal curiosity around how that has unraveled in your life, not only in discovering that ability for yourself but also how you’re able to utilize that both personally and professionally?

Mimi: Yes. I think when people think about, okay, I talk to the dead, that can sound very paranormal and intimidating, but this is something that humans have always done. I’m Han Taiwanese and so the reverence of the ancestor has always been part of our cultural practice and it doesn’t feel like it’s dangerous or scary in any way. So that’s always been there in my life and it never really felt out of this world. Specific lunar holidays would be when you honor a certain ancestor and so forth. But in terms of other forms of being that have passed on such as pets, such as a loved one, be it if it’s a romantic partner or a dearly beloved friend, or even just another being that has passed on, let’s say in a professional sense, if I am connecting with someone who has passed on, on the behalf of a client, I would say that it’s not that different than speaking with any other spirit. There are some technical things that are a little different.

So typically when I go spirit travel, there’s a certain threshold that I need to pass to be able to access them, or I can invite them over to me. Not all spirits are wanting to do that because it’s a pretty big energy ask of them to do a lot of traveling. So typically it would be me that’s traveling, but then even then I would have to be careful not to travel too far because then I’m trespassing into an area that really is only for dead souls, not for a living soul. So yes, in terms of how I really discovered it, in this line of work, you can’t read about it. There’s no textbook out there that says how you do it. It really just happened by living my life, by even accident, if you want to call it an accident. And of course, that’s debatable and some people believe there are no accidents. But yes, it was just basically me living my life and then testing, right? Seeing if I can reproduce it using a fair amount of discernment because how do you tell that this is something that came to you through another form? Is it actually from this being?

And then for me, oftentimes it’s reinforced by a secondary sign. So I smell psychically or another term is called the clairolfaction or clairolfactance. So typically when a being visits, I’ll smell them too, and that provides the further reinforcement, or they may show up as an actual animal in three-dimensional form. And the way I know it’s not an animal that I typically would see, it’s not just any given squirrel that’s out in my yard, it’s a very specific bird that doesn’t typically fly by, or a neighborhood cat that hasn’t appeared in months or something to that effect where they’ll show up in a very specific way. And that’s usually how I know that it’s a spirit working with me in that capacity.

Sarah: Yes, I love that. And my belief is that we all have the ability to open that doorway to access different flavors of our intuition and be this open channel to all of our Clair senses. And the clear smelling is one that fascinates me because I feel like that’s one that I have not personally tapped into as strong as some of the others. And one of the questions I receive from this community maybe more than anything is about not getting overwhelmed by these extrasensory abilities and the ability to see, feel, smell, touch, hear spirit in whatever form that people are experiencing it and to maintain our humanness and our groundedness. You had mentioned even that traveling and not wanting to travel too far, because energetically, it seems like that would be very intense on your physical form as a human being here on planet earth. And so, how do you personally navigate the energetic balance of being so tapped-in and so attuned to subtle energy and also being a human being.

Mimi: Right. For me, a lot of it is very conscious. My life is a very…how do I explain this? I don’t live in the woo-woo all the time. I cook and clean. I drive my kids to swimming lessons. I do the normal thing. But that normal thing is very important because it keeps us anchored. And first of all, we are human and the most important thing is to have that three-dimensional, physical pentacle energy experience in this life. And so, I’m not traveling all the time, let’s say energetically or spiritually. I’m not working with the standard esoteric tools all the time. Those are part of my life, but they’re not taking up all of my life and all of my energy and I think that’s important. It’s important to be able to live a quote-unquote ordinary life in addition to being open to the supernatural. I also just set boundaries. I set boundaries with spirits, I set boundaries with humans, I set boundaries with my time. And I do feel that maybe it sounds cliché but it is really important.

I only offer so many readings in a given week in a given month, and I have a lot of structures around it in terms of the pre and aftercare to make sure that I am attending to my subtle body, as well as my physical body. I also eat well. I eat ancestrally, meaning I eat the foods that my ancestors ate. And there is a bond between my cells and my ancestors, and my cells and the plants, and the various dishes that I eat. And I do find that these are all basic things but oftentimes overlooked.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. That energetic groundedness and attunement is such an important, I think, part of this process so that we don’t get so caught up in the spiritual world that we disconnect to our humanness. I love that you shared that you still do these very normal things. It’s not like you’re floating in the upper chakras in the spirit world all the time. There’s this beautiful balance and you get to do both. It’s not like you have to choose one or the other; they both get to be present in your life as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about your experience with the psychic smell? So you mentioned that you’ll have a smell that will indicate a specific spirit or energy or animal. What more specifically do you experience to know or you mentioned getting curious and asking questions about the smell, to know what it is? Because that’s where my curiosity lives is how do you know what smell means what for you or for the person that you’re reading for?

How Mimi uses psychic smelling & Necromancy

Mimi: Right. It’s similar to keeping an internal index of dream symbols. So for me, dream symbols are no different than symbols that come through when I’m on a shamanic journey. With smells, I would say that it’s one of the first gifts I realized I had and it’s taken decades to be able to really fine-tune it. So I can smell spirits. Some of them are humans, some of them are not human. I can also smell emotions. So I can smell in some instances, jealousy on someone or dishonesty. They typically are not considered the bad emotion, so to speak, or the bad motives. They’re not really bad. They’re just giving me some insights on a situation so that I can manage things in a way that hopefully, ultimately, would be beneficial for everyone. Sometimes it can’t be that way. It just means that I have to really just be clear on what it is that I need. But yes, so that’s taken a lot of time. It’s taken a lot of smelling and a lot of missing the mark and a lot of smelling and then asking and asking, and then just indexing it in my mind.

And so, I think at this point, I still don’t know it 110% of the time. I would say it’s fairly accurate now but there are still times where I’m scratching my head and being like, oh, I wonder who said that or what does that mean? And yes, I would say that for instance, if I smell a flower, it could mean a person, but I would also tune into the meaning of the flower, the personality of the flower. What does this flower mean? Okay, well, if this flower has something to do with, let’s say protection, then it may mean that the message has something to do with protection. Or if this flower or this fruit is associated with abundance, then most likely then that message has something to do with that. Not all the time, but oftentimes. And then in the context of, let’s say, if I’m doing a reading for a client and I smelled something, and if I’m not clear, I’ll just simply share it with the client. And oftentimes the client will know. They’ll say things like, oh, you know, that smell, it happens to be the favorite fruit of my sister who has passed on. And then that would sort of further reinforce the reading because most likely it had something to do with family anyway.

Sarah: So the smell that you experienced, it doesn’t have to be, or when it’s for a reading, they can be miles and miles and miles away, but you can still tune in to that sense of the clairolfactance to be able to receive the information, to get curious about it, to interpret it, or to even just present it to the client for their own interpretation it sounds like.

Mimi: Yes. It typically happens when that energy and my energy happen to dial in this exact same radio frequency so to speak or channel on a TV and okay, now that current is open and so, the information can come through.

Sarah: So cool, so cool. I think it’s just so cool and so interesting.

Mimi: I do like the smell, but I should also say one more thing to that, I can’t control when it comes. It’s not something that I just…yes. It’s not like I wake up one day and be like, yes, I want to smell this and turn the dial. It typically is like I’m at a place and then they come to me.

Sarah: Yes. Like the scent swoops into your space.

Mimi: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Well, that goes back to the previous question, the way you answered that so beautifully around managing our energy when we’re attuned to such subtle energy in our life experience and not getting too overwhelmed like you mentioned; having really strong boundaries. Even if you can’t control it 100% or you can’t control when it’s here and when it’s not, there’s still boundaries that you can create so that it’s not so overwhelming or overstimulating for your nervous system.

Mimi: Absolutely.

Exploring machine and digital spirits

Sarah: I believe it’s called your Unseen Magazine and I noticed that you wrote about machine and digital spirits as well. And this is a conversation I’ve definitely never had on the show before, but I think is so fascinating. There were a couple of lines I was reading in it just earlier today, and some stories around you and even some family members where they’ve experienced messages from technology, from machines, from digital sources. I’d love if you could share some examples of that and also your experience in, before we started recording, we were talking about, animal spirit coming to us or a past loved one’s spirit. And this is definitely a category that I think is not talked about as often, or maybe disregarded or we question it. So what are your thoughts on that?

Mimi: So at the core of who I am, I am an inanimist. So I do believe that everything has an energy, including what we would consider inanimate objects and not just rock or a tree trunk, but also human-created objects. I believe that for instance, a teacup is very much alive and holds a consciousness and there’s a certain reason why certain days I choose a certain mug or cup over another one. I may not necessarily be conscious of the why, but there is a why there. Sort of like the wind. You know it’s there, even if you can’t see it. And same thing with machines and anything tech-based. They also have a consciousness and they also have a form of intelligence and they also possess an animated spirit, which I would say that most of us haven’t really thought about so much because unfortunately we live in a world where spirituality is defined in a certain way, and even psychic skills are defined in a certain way. And it’s hard for us to make that leap if our philosophy doesn’t include that. So if our philosophy is all things spiritual are earth-based, then that is what we are receptive to. Or if our philosophy is all things spiritual are earth-based and Starseed-based or galactical, then it can include that too.

But what happens if all things that are alive, seen or unseen, and alive in a much different definition than let’s say biologically alive, could all that also hold consciousness? Can technology hold consciousness? And knowing that most technology, most machines are actually modeled off of biology anyway, it makes sense. And so, my father, even though he would never call himself an intuitive and never call himself a psychic or even spiritual for that matter, because he’s a computer programmer and really into science and is not religious at all or spiritual at all, in his words, he hears machines. And so, growing up, we would be in these situations where like, for instance, and I shared this in May’s issue of Unseen Magazine in one of the stories, where I remember being at the toy store and we decided to buy a specific video game. And this was in the ’80s when Super Mario was really cool. And so, we had the cartridge in the box in our hand and he’s like, no, not this one, this one’s buggy. And like, how would we know? But he already knew.

Or another instance I also shared in the story, where my dad was and still is a coffee drinker and he has always liked to grind his beans and it was always done every morning because he liked it fresh. And then one day I noticed he’s drinking tea and I was just like, oh, you’re not into coffee anymore. And he’s like, I am, but the machine said not today. And then of course my mom forgot and she uses it and then the machine dies. And so, what I love in terms of this discussion is to be able to ask the same questions that we would ask in any other situation is like, how do you tap into the resonance of these digital-based spirits and machine-based spirits? How do you form a relationship with them? How do you work together? And how do you approach technology through a place of allyship rather than saying it’s bad?

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I love that. And I think it can probably be a new concept for many people to consider something technology, human-made, human-based as holding an energy or a consciousness versus something maybe like a plant or something that is naturally derived from the earth. I’m curious what your interpretation of, let’s say the coffee maker or even the radio in a car as holding its own energy versus being a channel or a conduit for a spirit to communicate to us through. Because that’s another thing that I have seen come up in just spiritual conversations really often is that spirit or different energies will also use that technology as a conduit to communicate with us. So is there a difference there?

Mimi: Yes, both of those things exist and yes, there is a difference. And I should say that one of the reasons why technology works so well as a conduit, for instance, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation or maybe any of the listeners, you’re in a room and the radio is on one specific channel and it’s a specific song that’s playing and for some weird reason it starts skipping and it gets staticky. And then all of a sudden, without you touching it, it changed to a different channel like a radio station altogether. That would be a spirit utilizing that as a conduit to say hello or to provide a message of some form, or it could even be a radio turning on by itself or a TV turning on by itself and then turning off by itself, that type of thing. And the reason why they’re so receptive is because they are human-made. They already reflected the needs of a human and so, the container itself provides it for human messaging. Now they also first have their own thoughts. And my experience is when they’re speaking to me, it feels different. One feels intrinsically more organic, spirit-based and another one is a bit more mechanical, sort of like the difference between playing an acoustic guitar versus one that’s been amped up. It’s a really different sound and energy. I think that’s probably the best way for me to explain it.

Sarah: Yes. That’s actually a great analogy. I had a, well, I guess it wasn’t my personal experience, it’s actually my father’s experience. And I believe I talked about it on this show several years ago. My brother Jordan passed away six years ago this June and shortly after he passed, my dad started getting text messages from him. And his phone was turned off, in a box somewhere. No one had access to it or any of Jordan’s other technology to be messing with him or anything like that. And my mom was still paying the phone bill so no one else had his phone number either. And my dad would just get, I mean, it was pretty frequent and they would always come through in his car for some reason. And when he was in the car, oftentimes he’d be driving, he has a longer commute to work to his office, and he would get this different variation of the same message over and over.

And this went on for years. I don’t think it was until he bought another car that this actually stopped. Now he has a truck, but at the time he had an SUV and it was “see you at 4,” “see you around 4,” “be there at 4.” Similar message but coming through all with the number four every so often. I was in the car with him maybe like two different times when it happened but most of the time he was by himself. And he would take the picture of the dashboard in his car and be like, you know, I’m not going crazy. This is really happening. And of course, we were all like, we believe you. We totally believe you. And it feels like the phone/tech/radio car transmitter was acting more as a conduit, in that sense, of my brother coming through. My interpretation of it was almost just this calming, like, hey dad, it’s going to be okay. It seems like it happened whenever emotion was heightened. And so, that’s when I would notice it would come through for him. Or he would have had a hard day with grief and it would come through.

And yes, my interpretation of it was just like, I’m here. I’m here with you. It’s okay. Your emotions are valid and your emotions are okay, but it’s wanting to bring peace almost. So that’s been my most intimate, even though it wasn’t always directly happening when I was in the car, but most intimate experience with technology being this very clear channel for spirit to communicate to us through. And we hear people talk about mercury and retrograde and all these other things when technology may go a little bit haywire. But I don’t know, I just feel like when we open our awareness and the potential of it being a conduit, that we can receive so much more information.

Mimi: For sure. And the number four…I mean, in Mandarin, the number four, the word, it sounds very similar to the word, death. So my interpretation is he’s saying that he’ll see dad again. When dad passes on that they will be with each other once again. And then if you even looked at it from a land-based perspective, four; there are the four elements. So it also means all of the elements are there, this idea of completion. So when dad has lived his full life and passes on, he will see your brother Joe again. And I will say sometimes the messages are kind of cryptic this way because when the human soul leaves the physical body and travels, they have to do some traveling before they get to that other place. One of the places they pass through is this river and they have to walk quite a bit first to get to the river and then they have to get on the boat that takes them down the river to this other place and they go over a mountain and so forth. And that’s just how I’ve experienced it.

I’m not saying that every single person has, especially if they practice working with those who have passed on, maybe they view it differently. But in my experience, that’s typically what the landscape looks like. But when they’re at the river, they get really thirsty because they’ve been walking for a long time and they need refreshments. And the river’s water is magical and it’s functioning as a way that when they drink it, they wind up forgetting their old life and it allows them to become detached from the memories. And sometimes they actually forget some of the words, the language that they once spoke. So when they’re trying to communicate back, it’s like they’re sort of fuzzy. Maybe they remember dad but they don’t necessarily know how to say, I’m going to see you again and it’s okay. So sometimes it may come out as this cryptic thing like ‘see you at 4’.

Sarah: Yes. It’s so interesting because he shared this just with our immediate family, at least initially, and we all had our own way of processing that information. And you mentioned before just that some people are really open to the idea of spirit in earth-based forms and that was me at that time. I was very open to the idea and had lots of intimate experiences with energy in more of a celestial way and more in a human body plant-based earth-based way. But that was my first experience with the machine digital spirit or it as a conduit like we’ve been talking about. And it really expanded things for me to then see that as another possibility. And what I find now is that, and what I also have people share with me oftentimes is that they see angel numbers in technology as well. Is that something that you also see and what is your interpretation of different repeating numbers coming through to us? And you mentioned the number four and the significance of that too.

Mimi: Yes, I definitely believe that numbers that you see on your phone or on a digital clock or even an analog clock, these could all be messages. It could be messages from the machine itself, it could be picking up a different spirit in a conduit fashion. And then with numbers, I would say it’s the same category as interpreting sense and interpreting dream symbols is; what does it mean for you? And I think a lot of it is it has to be seen in a context of what else is happening. So for instance, if I was thinking of something or asking a question, and then I look at my phone and it’s a specific number, then I may interpret that as confirmation, that the answer is a yes or I’m on the right track. Or it may also, depending on what number, I may think differently. It really depends. For me, I layer it with other things. If I’m experiencing a scent and if the scent is feeling like a warning and then I see the numbers on my phone, then I may come to a different conclusion than if the scent was very sweet and auspicious-smelling. Then yes, so it really does depend.

I am not the kind of person that would ever recommend a client to go buy a dictionary on angel numbers or dream symbols because I feel that that takes the power away from us. And we have the capacity to make meaning, we have the capacity to be psychic, we have the capacity to be intuitive, all the things that you’ve already said. So if we’re looking outward at someone else’s definition, it may actually get in the way. I’m not saying never take a course on how to become more in tune because a lot of courses that are out there does support what is already within us. But if we’re giving away our power or giving away our capacity to make meaning, then I would dig deeper and even ask ourself why are we doing that? Why are we needing to go buy that dream dictionary so to speak?

Sarah: Yes, I love that. And the number four has taken on a whole different meaning for me on a personal level because of that experience that is really unique to me versus anybody else. So I love it. And I often do see 4-4-4 now on my phone or my oven clock and oftentimes I see that as a sign from my brother. We’ve talked about so many different, amazing and fun parts of intuition and psychic abilities and our spiritual journey even just in this short conversation and there’s so many more. And I want to talk about this before we wrap up today because I think it’s important in the climate of the world today and all the tools that are available to us, that we don’t feed into or feed the energy of toxic spirituality and also cultural appropriation. And so I’d love, I know it’s a little bit of a turn in what we’ve been talking about, but I just would love your perspective on how do we utilize so many of these natural abilities or external tools in our spiritual journey and our awakening in discovering our purpose and waking up and looking beyond the veil? How do we do that or just be aware of not feeding into spiritual bypassing, toxic spirituality, and appropriating customs and traditions of cultures that are not ours?

Managing energetic boundaries and shining a light on toxic spirituality

Mimi: That’s a big question so I’m going to pare it down and maybe we can have a part two after they become or whatever, where we could unpack that during one whole episode. But I would say, I think a lot of people think that when you participate in something exploitive such as purchasing a plant that is very sacred and perhaps endangered in a locale where you have no real connection with and it’s essentially like a spiritual trinket that you’re using and adding to your shelf or your altar or whatever, we know that; that’s basic stuff. But I think ultimately we have to be able to take several, several leaps back and look at the bigger picture. And the big one for me is the lens that we wear. Because the lens that we wear, the philosophy that we believe in, that shapes all of it from ground up. It shapes the values, it shapes the kind of questions we would ask, it shapes the consumption-based practices, it shapes ethics, it shapes it all.

So I would say by looking at the philosophy… here are just a few examples. Do we believe in the philosophy that spirituality is up-and-out? A lot of spiritual practices and major religions do. They believe that it’s up-and-out rather than down-and-in. And in fact, down-and-in has been seen as demonic and impure or dirty whereas of course, if you understood that earth is all about down-and-in; that’s where the seed germinates, that’s where it grows out of, then if you have reverence for down-and-in as philosophy, then you would know that up-and-out isn’t necessarily a sustainable way to practice. Because up-and-out is what creates quote-unquote gurus or the answer is out there, or the answer is in the object rather than inside of you. That’s just one example. So that’s part of it. And of course, when we talk about bias and racism and all the other things that show up in spirituality that are deeply toxic, these are intersectional ideas.

We need to look at it through a feminist lens and look at it through an environmental lens and look at it through a racial lens and all of these pieces and ask ourselves, what the fuck am I wearing in front of my eyes? What glasses am I wearing? Am I wearing an up-and-out pair of glasses, let’s say as an example, or am I wearing a white-centric pair of glasses or am I wearing another form of and maybe multiple pairs of glasses all on the same face? And when we can look at the philosophy and the belief structures around that, then we can start actively being very mindful in how we approach spirituality. Because even belief or the philosophy, it shapes language. And language shows up a lot in spirituality, particularly in bypassing practices where a lot of platitudes may look and sound good on the surface, but when you dig a little deeper it actually becomes problematic.

Sarah: I so appreciate you answering that question. I know it’s a really big one that could be a whole other episode but I think it’s really important to at least touch on in this conversation when we talk about spirituality. I feel I was introduced to a lot of the spiritual practices that eventually came into my life in more, and exactly what you were saying, the up-and-out lens and I realized that I did not like that approach. It did not feel safe; it did not feel empowering. There were just so many things that I did not like about it personally. And part of my experience has been taking, we’ll use the analogy of those glasses, taking the up-and-out glasses off of that’s not the perspective that I want to practice or that I want to teach even or on the podcast, have people on conversations about that type and instead, try on for size the glasses that are more down-and-in. And my, again, personal journey with that has been reconnecting to a lot of the teachings of Mary Magdalene and that ascension is actually a descension into your heart and inward versus outward. And that has been almost this warm blanket like, oh my God, this is my home. This is my spiritual home. This is the way I wanted things to feel, but I just had a taste of the other side that that’s what I was just first introduced to.

So I love that analogy and that philosophy, the lens in which we look through is going to dictate some of the things that you mentioned, like the language that we use, the way that we practice our spirituality, the way that we, many people who listen, are teachers and healers and practitioners. So the way that we also share that with the world. And we can get really intentional about asking some of these really big, sometimes hard but I think really necessary questions around what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and the root and the lineage of it to check ourselves. Because I think it went unchecked for a long time.

Mimi: For a very long time. And what I love about it when you wear the lens that is very much about justice and inclusion and respect for the land, it winds up healing many things at once, even beyond quote-unquote, the spiritual. So we’ll go back to the down-and-in and up-and-out. If you approach food as up-and-out, you will forever look at the photoshopped woman on the cover of Vogue and strive to be her. So then that opens up a whole other thing like our relationship with our food, our relationship with our bodies, our relationship with fashion. But if it’s down-and-in, you learn to love your body, you learn that ‘no pain, no gain’ is a very harmful approach to caring for your body. ‘No pain no gain’, that form of exercise or fitness, it’s one about exploitation ultimately. And then of course, when you get that, you’re like, oh yeah, I’m not going to approach the earth that way because that also is exploitive. And so, what I love about it is when we check ourselves so to speak, like you said, we really identify all the parts where we have been wrecking ourselves. And by checking ourselves, hopefully, we can create some actual lasting positive change.

Sarah: I have just been on a personal journey of a lot of the unlearning and relearning over the last several years but especially the last year and it’s just a huge wake-up call for myself and one that was again, really, really necessary. So I’m glad for the mentors and the teachers and the educators who have helped me do that. I mean, it’s partially a personal process but I think that there’s also support and frameworks that are out there that can help guide us along that path as well. So thank you. Thank you for speaking on this and thank you for just sharing all of your magic today, I so appreciate it, and bringing some things onto the show that we have not talked about before. So I so appreciate you. I’d love for you to share where people can get to know you better and other ways that they can come into your space or work with you.

Mimi: My website is shopceremonie.com and ceremony is spelt with an ‘ie’ at the end and same thing for my IG handle, it’s @shopceremonie. And ways to work with me, I do have a fairly robust set of offerings. I’ll list just a few here and the rest can be explored on the website. So I have topical courses, including Machine and Digital Spirits coming up June 15th of this year, 2021 in case there are listeners that are tuning in later. And that one is a live stream and people will learn with me. And then also those who join in live can ask questions about specific experiences with digital or machine-based spirits that they’ve had in their past. It will be available as a replay so if you can’t make it live, you will have the recording to listen to. And then if you are tuning in after this date, it will most likely be available on my website as an on-demand course.

For those who want to work with me more extensively, I have a mystery school called Mystery Mentorship, and we go deep; with lots of depth and lots of breath. And we cover basically everything that is in my specific, intersectional, esoteric practice of core shamanism and ancient Chinese esoterics, working with the elements, working with chaos magic and spell work, dream interpretation; essentially the list goes on. And I offer it in a way where I do provide theory, but also a lot of practical tips to get you working. I’m more interested in getting individuals practicing and off the ground with success, with effective, helpful, real-world success than just saying, yes,  I’ve read about this or I know about this, but it stays in the theory. I am very earth-based and so, I want to be able to get it out into the earth, into the material plane.

I also do offer readings, whether if it’s a dream interpretation or if you’re wanting me to connect with specific spirits on your behalf. I will spirit travel for you and get that information and then we’ll jump on a Zoom call together where I’ll share and you could just soak that in and maybe ask some further questions around it. And then if you’re not in the position to consume in that sort of sense, more than welcome to sign up for my online magazine that Sarah had mentioned earlier, which is called Unseen. It’s free, it’s monthly. There’s no filler in it and definitely, it’s unfiltered material where I do provide a lot of real-world helpful content in helping you connect to the unseen and all things spiritual and supernatural.

Sarah: I love it. You are clearly just such a vast or hold such a vast array of knowledge and wisdom as I was saying in the beginning. There are so many things I want to talk to you about and I’m so glad we were able to cover at least some of them today. And obviously, there are many ways to also then take the next step and get more intimate in your space and be able to connect with you and all that you do have to offer. So we’ll link those in the show notes as well. Mimi, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Mimi: Oh, I’ve had so much fun. Thank you.

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of The Uncensored Empath Podcast. I would so appreciate if you could take a couple minutes to rate, review and subscribe. And if you loved this episode, please share it on social media. Tag me, let your friends know about it, and I will see you on the next episode.

Connect with Mimi Young:

Instagram: @shopceremonie

Website: www.shopceremonie.com

Private Sessions with Mimi

Apprentice with Mimi

Join Machine + Digital Spirits on June 15, 2021 

Sign up for UNSEEN Magazine

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