You Asked, Spirit Answered: Listener Questions With Jenny Shanks

You have been sending questions. Real ones. The kind most people are too afraid to ask out loud.

In this episode Jenny Shanks answers six listener questions straight. No fluff. No vague spiritual speak. Just honest answers from someone who has been doing this work for ten years and is still learning every single day.

Free Resource

The best place to start building your own connection with Spirit is learning to understand and trust your intuition. Check out Jenny's Five Ways to Develop your Intuition. https://www.jennyshanks.com/five-ways-to-develop-your-intuition

Connect with Spirit

If you're ready to connect with spirit on your own, Awakening Your Path is a 3-part self paced course that will guide you to deep the trust with your intuition and create space for you to connect with your own loved ones in spirit. www.jennyshanks.com/ayp

Free Resource

Want to start developing your own connection with Spirit but not sure where to begin?

Jenny put together a free guide outlining five ways to develop your intuition. Because the stronger your intuition the clearer the line to Spirit becomes.

Grab it at jennyshanks.com/five

Learn to Connect with Spirit 

Ready to go deeper and build your own connection with Spirit? Awakening Your Path is a self paced program designed specifically to help you develop your own language with Spirit and start receiving clearly on your own.

www.jennyshanks.com/ayp

Connect With Jenny

Website: jennyshanks.com 

Instagram: @spiritual_medium_jenny 

Book a Reading: jennyshanks.com/services

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Seriously Dead. I'm Jenny Shanks, a spiritual medium, and I talk to dead people for a little bit. This podcast is your beyond the grave look at what your loved ones in spirit actually want you to know. And spoiler alert, after 10 years of doing this work, here's the truth. Your spirit family wants you to know they're okay, and you are too. How do I know? Because the dead are a lot of things, but one thing they're not is quiet. So get comfortable before you press play because we're getting seriously dead with your loved ones in spirit right now. One of my favorite things about building this show has been the questions that have been landing in my inbox. Real questions, honest questions, and the kind that people are genuinely curious about, but maybe felt a little awkward asking out loud or posting on a public post on social media. So today I'm answering them. Six listener questions, straight answers, no fluff. I mean, if you know me by now, Capricorn Energy over here. We don't fluff around. And I'll say this before we get into it. Some of the questions surprised me with how much I had to say. And one of them actually made me laugh out loud when it came in because the answer is so much more simple than people actually think it is. So let's get into it. How do spirits interact with each other on the other side? This is one of my favorite questions to answer because it genuinely brings me joy every time I think about it. Spirit on the other side is gentler, they're softer, and the heaviness of the human world, the ego, the fear, the defensiveness, that doesn't exist in the same way on the spirit side. So the interactions between spirits carry a different quality than the interactions most of us experience in human relationships. But here's what I find really fascinating. Spirit still has a personality. The person that you loved, the one that was here on earth, their humor, their warmth, their way of showing up, that doesn't disappear when they cross over. It actually gets to come through more purely because all the noise that was covering it up on the human side is now gone. And spirits interact with each other, not just with people they knew here on earth, sometimes with spirits that they've never met. The spirit world is not segregated by human relationships. It is much more connected and much more expansive than you could ever imagine. But my absolute favorite thing that's happened in readings is when two spirits show up together. The banter, the laughter, the way they play off of each other. I've had readings where two people in spirit were clearly having the time of their lives showing up together for the person sitting across from me. Finishing each other's sentences, poking fun at each other, showing me moments from their shared history with what I can only describe as delight. It is one of the most joyful things I get to witness in this work. And it is the best reminder that people you love do not just continue to exist on the underside, they continue living. Question number two: Do you follow a spiritual hygiene practice? This is such a great question. And the honest answer is yes. And it probably looks different from what most people would expect it to be. My spiritual hygiene actually starts with my physical body. Because let me tell you, when I first started doing this work, yes, taking care of my physical health has always been of interest of mine. But what I didn't realize is the impact that my mind played with my physical body when it came to connecting with spirit. And so if my mind and body are not well, then nothing else will be. My connection to spirit requires a clear channel. And that clear channel requires a person who is taking care of themselves at the most basic level. So my non-negotiables every single morning are walking and stretching. I find time every day, anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes of walking, to get my blood moving, to get my energy flowing, and quite honestly, to get things that don't need to stay in my energetic field out. And then stretching, because the wiser I get, and by wiser I mean older, the more my body absolutely demands it. I lift four days a week, and as much as I love lifting and being in the gym, my body loves stretching. Years ago, I ran into a lady in an elevator at my parents' condo and I was holding a yoga mat and she asked me if I did yoga. And I said, Yeah, just out on the balcony some mornings. And I said, What about you? And she says, Honey, I stretch my body every single day. She says, I am 85 years old, and that has been one of the best practices I started in my 60s. And from then on out, that has landed with me and stayed with me. I just got back from an amazing trip in the Caribbean Islands, and every morning I got up and stretched. So from there, my mornings start slow. Breakfast, conversation with my husband. Sometimes he's getting ready for work and we're talking across the kitchen. Sometimes we sit down together. But either way, that connection, that grounded human moment before my day starts is part of my practice. And then throughout the day, I find time to check in with my own spirit team. Every day looks just a little bit different, but the check-ins happen. It's a non-negotiable in a different way from my walk and my stretch. It's a little more intuitive, less structured. I also follow six spiritual principles that fall into what I would call my spiritual hygiene practice. I'm gonna save these for another episode because I think they're really important to make sure you do. But the short version of all of it is that it's just not crystals and meditation. It is everything that keeps me grounded, keeps me clear, and keeps me connected. Because I cannot hear spirit clearly if I'm not taking care of my human body and my mind. Question number three: what does a day look like in my life? This one always makes me chuckle because I feel like people have this idea that I have this like mystical life. And I am very human and very 3D. I just learned to allow my spirit body and my intuition to be the driving force in my day, even though, yes, I still have human moments. My days vary a lot. And what I've learned over the many years of being an entrepreneur is that I have to find flow than a rigid schedule. And even though I mentioned being a Capricorn and loving structure, and that is very true, there are time blocks that I block out throughout my day that allow me to have the freedom to have structure and that also allow me to have the freedom to have flow. And I found that if I have every single day be so rigid, that becomes so logical. And really, the reality is that your intuitive body and your intuitive mind and energy doesn't work well in logic. So on the mornings I see clients, I love to get to the farm early and by by early like 7 a.m. I'm an early riser. I'm up between 4:30 and 5 almost every day. And there's just something about arriving before the energy of the day builds up that allows me to settle in and prepare. On the days I have afternoon clients, my mornings are really calm and quiet at my home. And that's often the days that I spend time in the gym lifting, walking. I don't really check my computer. Maybe once in a blue moon, I might check email on those days. But I really allow the mornings when I have afternoon clients to be in flow. So not so structured. I also love the summer. I love the sun. And any chance that I can be outside walking, sipping tea, having a conversation with friends, or really just being with my dogs and family is where my heart is. That's not really separate from my spiritual practice. It's just part of it. So the farm and quiet mornings and walks and conversations with my husband, that is the life that makes this work possible. And I don't take any of it for granted. Question number four: what happens if you ask for a sign and it never comes? So this question comes up so often, and I want to answer it really clearly for you because I think a lot of people are carrying around unnecessary pain that they have connected to this. If you've asked for a sign and you don't feel like it came in, two things are almost certainly true. The first is that you've put a timeline on it. You asked, and then you started watching and waiting and checking. And when the sign did not arrive in the window that you had mentally assigned it to, you concluded that spirit was not listening, or that the connection was not real, or that you're not worthy of receiving. And honestly, none of these things are true. What is true is that when you were looking for something specific at a specific time and spirit does not work on a human timeline, spirit works on their timeline. Spirit works on the timeline of when the sign will land with the most impact. When you are in the right state of mind to receive, you will be undeniably clear that that sign has landed rather than finding a way to explain it away. The second is that you might not be ready to receive it. And I say that with complete compassion because being ready is not always something we can control or rush. Sometimes grief is too loud, sometimes our minds are too busy, sometimes the protective walls we build around ourselves after a loss, the ones that keep us functioning, are also keeping us from being able to receive signs from spirit. The sign is coming, or it's already come and you didn't recognize it, and that's okay. Keep your door open, stay curious, and most importantly, stop watching the clock. Question number five: Do you ever have bad spirits come through? The short answer is no, and here's why. I do not believe in energetically aligning with what most people would call bad spirits. Now, the word bad can mean a lot of different things to different people. But for me, the principle is simple. Like attracts like. Energy works the same way in the spirit world as it does in the human world. The energy I bring into my practice, the intentions I set, the space I hold attracts energy of the same frequency. And I'm not opening a door and leaving it unattended for whoever wants to walk through. I'm inviting specific energy, specific connections, and I do that with intention and with care every single time. The fear around bad spirits is such a human experience. It comes from a lot of cultural stories and a lot of movies and a lot of mysteries that surround this work. But in the 10 plus years that I've been doing this, I've never had a bad experience or an experience that I would describe as bad. What I have had is energy that's heavy, complicated, spirits who carry a lot of this earthly side with them, who are still processing their life review. But heavy to me is not the same as bad. And even the most complicated spirit that has ever come through in one of my readings has come through with the intention of connection, of healing, of saying something that needed to be said. That's not bad. That's human. And human is messy, sometimes even from the other's eye. Finally, question number six. I struggle to trust my intuition. How do I start? Oh my goodness, this is the cornerstone, the pivotal moment in your life when it comes to trusting your intuition and connecting with spirit. You must learn your intuition in order to actually experience spirit. And I want to give you this real answer because I think the advice most people get around intuition is too big, honestly. And let's get specific for you. The first thing I want you to do is get out of your head. Intuition does not live in our analytical or logical mind, it lives in our bodies. This is one of the reasons why one of my principles on my spiritual hygiene is taking care of my physical body. It's quiet, it's in the creative space. So anything that gets you out of your head and into a different mode, walking, painting, cooking, gardening, moving your body in a way that doesn't require thinking creates the condition for your intuition to come through. Because here's the thing about intuition: it is not loud, it does not compete with the noise in your mind, it waits for the quiet moments. And if your mind is always running or analyzing or problem solving, intuition does not stand a chance. The second thing is to start recognizing what fear feels like versus what intuition feels like. Fear leaves you worried, it leaves you uneasy, unsure. It has an urgent quality to it, a tightness and a what-if energy that keeps looping and escalating. On the other hand, intuition feels different, quieter, steadier. It leaves a sense of calm even when what it's telling you is something significant, but it doesn't argue with itself. It doesn't need to convince you, it just knows. And when you sit with it, instead of immediately taking yourself out of it, that knowing becomes clear. The practice is simple. When a thought or a feeling comes in, pause before you analyze it. Ask yourself, does this feel like fear or does this feel like a knowing? Fear is loud and urgent, but knowing is quiet and calm. And the more you practice making that distinction, the more clearly you'll be able to hear your intuition. And the more clearly you hear your intuition, the more clearly you'll be able to hear spirit. Because your intuition is the portal spirit uses to communicate to you. And if you want a guided way to start building these skills, my free guided meditation will help you create this foundation. You can find that at jennyshanks.com/slash discover. If you walk away from this episode with one thing, let it be this. The questions you have been carrying about work, about spirit, about yourself, and whether you're capable of receiving deserves real answers, not comfortable, vague, fluffy answers. Not mystery for the sake of mystery, but real answers from someone like me who's been doing this work for many years. So keep the questions coming, my friend. You can head over to the top part of this podcast and click fan mail and drop me a note. Ask me a question, share a message with me. I love getting your all's messages. This community is the real reason that seriously dead even exists. And your curiosity is exactly the kind of energy that spirit loves to show up for. So if you have a friend that you feel you'd love to share this episode with, my friends, don't keep it in the spirit bowl. Share it with someone who's been carrying maybe one of these questions. I'd love to hear from you. So you can leave me a review over wherever you listen to podcasts, tag me on Instagram or drop me some fan mail. I'd be honored. And if you want to go deeper on any of what we've covered today, especially the intuition piece, make sure to grab my free guide of meditation. Those will be dropped down in the notes below. Because your intuition is the portal that Spirit uses to communicate, and you deserve to understand that. I'll be back next week with another episode of Seriously Dead. Until then, stay open, stay curious, and remember, the dead are not quiet. You just have to learn to listen to the city.