Welcome to Coffee, Tea & Consciousness

Anne: Four, three, two, one. Hello. This is Coffee, Tea and Conversation — right? Consciousness. This is Coffee, Tea and Consciousness. I'm Anne.

Mel: This tells you exactly where this is gonna go.

Anne: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mel: Okay. Yeah, I'm Mel. And this is us in a nutshell. We've been working on trying to get this thing figured out for a very long time, but that's all right — we're gonna keep rolling. Here's the thing: why would you want to listen to this? We're gonna talk about spirituality, we're gonna talk about awakening, we're gonna talk about trying to live in a conscious manner, and we're gonna tell you all the ways that we cannot do technology.

Anne: Yep. Yeah, I'm a little nervous.

Mel: That's good. That's okay.

Mel: Okay, Annie. Start us off. What are we doing? Why do you want to listen? Other than — we are really a couple of nut jobs. I wanna call us two douchebags just trying to get by in life.

Anne: All right. I think we want to talk about the journey we've been on — our awakening, our healing, the things we've experienced and learned. Things we still have a lot of questions about, because this universe is vast, and obviously we're never gonna know it all. But different things that pique our curiosity.

Mel: And I would like to say — doing this journey alone is hard.

Anne: Doing this journey while being a human.

Anne: We've been friends for 25 years.

Mel: That makes me smile. Yeah. So we've been friends for 25 years. We happened to have our spiritual awakening at a similar time — because my therapist told me I should read The Secret. And it blew my head off. At first it was all about manifesting. But it showed me how connected things are, how big things are. And Annie had hers at the same time. If we didn't have it together, I don't know — I mean, we would have made it, but it would have been much harder. So we're hoping to build a community of people who want to discuss things about their awakening.

Anne: Yeah. And what they're going through, what we're going through, what we've learned — everyone's journey is different. There's always pieces you can see from your journey in somebody else's. But everybody's different — what we come here to learn is different.

Mel: Awakening isn't one-size-fits-all.

Anne: And how — like, The Secret was the piece, but then it doesn't teach you about your beliefs and how they can hold you back from what you're wanting or desiring in life. And how you unknot the knot of your belief — and where it comes from, and healing from it. Most of it comes from childhood.

Mel: And some of it comes from a past life — that we did not know about until our awakening in 2010.

Anne: Was it then? I still can't remember.

Mel: My youngest, Walter, was born in 2009, and we had it the following year.

Anne: Okay, I'll go with that.

Mel: That's the only way I remember — he was like one. And in the last year, I would've thought I'd be a master by now. Nope. We are still in the f*** shop show.

Anne: Yep. This last year — for me it's been the last two years — has been a complete ramp-up. It's almost like what people call a midlife crisis, but it's not. It's finally coming back to yourself and discovering who you really are, taking the mask off.

Mel: So Spirit showed it to me like a swing. You're born and your swing is swinging, right? Like an old school metal swing. And then life, and everyone else's beliefs, and school, and friends, and society jinx your chain up — where the rubber part of your swing is stuck at the very top of the bar, and you can't swing. And then when you start to let it unravel, your kinks start to unkink — but then you feel way off balance. Because one side might be longer than the other. And it's hard to keep your focus on where you're heading instead of how off balance you are.

Mel: I had a big kink in my chain drop last year, and it sent me into a tizzy. So we're here — hoping to build a community of people going through some things, doing it in real life.

Anne: Yeah. Because unless a person has similar beliefs — we like to call it "the woo-woo" — it's hard to deal with the outside world sometimes. Your kids look at you like you're f***ing nuts.

Mel: Or your husband, or your partner.

Anne: My husband thinks I'm whatever, and I don't know that I care anymore — I think I've gotten over that. But it does change relationships. This last year's been a big marriage shift for us. So anyway, it's nice to have people to talk to.

Anne: We like to talk about a lot of stuff, and some of it might be trying for you to hear, because we are a little — I don't know.

Mel: No, we're batshit crazy. We fall into the other side completely, and we'll talk about it.

Anne: Or it might expand your way of thinking. Who knows — it'll be fun.

Mel: It is gonna be a good time. So that's Coffee, Tea, and Consciousness — or Coffee, Tea, and Conversation. Annie loves coffee, I love tea. I'll tell you a story about how I used to love coffee. When we first had our awakening, we listened to Hay House Radio.

Anne: I do, I actually still have some.

Mel: And Louise Hay — now apparently she did some real naughty stuff, but humans are still humans, we're humaning, I ain't judging. I'm standing at my kitchen window washing dishes, listening to a show on Hay House Radio about addiction. I love to eat, I love treats, I love bread. So I said, in my little heart, my little mind: Spirit, if there's anything I'm addicted to, have it. I don't want it. And what I found out was — I was addicted to coffee. From that day on, I have never been able to take a sip of coffee since. That was 2012.

Mel: I used to have my own carafe I brought everywhere. I loved coffee. I didn't know what to do — at first I didn't even know what was wrong with me. I was seeing a therapist, and I called him — emergency, emergency, something's wrong with my brain. He asked what was different in my day. I said, well, it used to be I could drink coffee, but Jimmy decided to change my coffee beans to something yuck, and I can't drink coffee anymore. He asked if I'd asked Jimmy whether he did that — of course, he said no, he just didn't want to spend money on good beans. And I thought, that motherf***er. I talk to Spirit like we're best friends, and I say f***er all the time. I remember pausing in that therapy session, saying out loud: motherf***ers, how could you take coffee away? I have five kids, coffee keeps me going. I was going through withdrawal — I didn't know it, but I was going through caffeine withdrawal, and it makes you actually sick.

Mel: That was 2012 — I know because that year we took the kids to Disney, to Animal Kingdom, and all I wanted was a warm cup of coffee. I couldn't drink it, and I didn't know what else to drink.

Mel: Sometimes you get what you wish for. Spirit took that away — those bitches took that shit away. Years later, at a blueberry farm, they had blueberry-flavored coffee, and I thought, surely I can drink coffee now. Nope. Never again. So our experience was pretty intense sometimes.

Mel: Sometimes fun, too. Annie, at the beginning, we were finding things everywhere. I couldn't think of something I wanted without it dropping in my lap. It was bananas.

Anne: I started walking the beach — we lived in Michigan at the time, walking Lake Michigan — and my big thing was, "show me sea glass." I'd walk out of there with pockets full of glass. It's still in my cupboard.

Mel: She'd lose whole days on the beach. We'd be like, how are you still down there? It's been eight hours.

Anne: Yeah, I'd go from when the kids left for school till I had to get them. That was my happy place.

Mel: She and her spirit dog, Riker — who's now tapping his fingers at her other dog like, "hey, listen up, we've got work to do, behave for Annie."

Anne: And they're like, "f*** off."

Mel: Riker's up there like a spirit conductor with his little conductor sticks — I don't even know what they're called.

Mel: So, yeah — we want to share that stuff with you. We'd love it if you're interested, and we'd like to build community. I'm thankful I had Annie to go through this with. It would've been horrible to go through it alone — my heart breaks for people who do.

Anne: Yeah. Me too.

Mel: That was a ride.

Anne: Yeah — because there'd be times you'd feel disconnected completely, even though you know you're not. It was like a whole new world opened up — the possibilities of what could be, because I never thought of it like that.

Mel: Someone explained it like a rubber band stretched so tight, and then you have an awakening and it lets go — and everything flashes into color. Like we were living in a black-and-white world and then it's technicolor.

Anne: Well, I kind of wonder if my husband went through it too — he remembered saying, "my god, the leaves, they're amazing." We thought it was panic attacks, thought it might be bipolar. Now I wonder if it wasn't an awakening. He didn't think there was anything other than that, because he was raised in the church, so he had those beliefs. And that's fine.

Mel: So our episodes will be some structured — things we've learned, like Annie and I having a soul contract, soul families. Annie and her husband are in a soul family, from our understanding. And sometimes just life stuff — trying to stay conscious in a world that isn't always.

Anne: Or I want to see it from a spiritual side, but also the human side — and how they're contradictory, working through that, because you still have emotions. That's why we came to Earth, to experience emotions. But you try not to get too caught up in them. You try to see that there's a reason for most things.

Mel: Like the day Spirit said I'd win the lottery, and I didn't. That made me mad. Or the day Spirit said I'd win, and I did — ten dollars. I was appreciative, and also — sent to this very specific gas station, all the things. You've gotta be joking.

Anne: That was — when we first had the awakening, I wanted to win Publisher's Clearing House. Last year, they said look out your window, it was supposed to be the day. I thought, should I even take a shower? I should wait. Nothing happened.

Mel: So Spirit has quite the sense of humor. And I've discovered guides can be really stern — not very playful, in my experience. I experience them by seeing, hearing, knowing things — connecting with people who've passed, guides, your higher self, and the energy of an experience. Annie can too, in a different way than I do.

Mel: When guides talk through me, I sound like such a dickhead. Annie's been like, "can't they loosen up, can't you get funnier?" So they try to make a joke, and it just comes out really wrong.

Anne: They're not comedians.

Anne: So — one thing that happened is a cat came into my life named Eddie. My daughter and I were driving down my road, and there's a kitten sitting in the middle of the street. I'm like, why the hell didn't it move? I stop the car, get out, he just sits there, so I pick him up and go to the neighbors to see if it's their cat. No — it was a feral mom's litter. And I realized he's blind. I never wanted a cat, I was allergic, I take allergy medicine every day. We took him to the vet and thought, well, I guess we're keeping him, who's gonna want a blind cat? He's the most amazing thing. Come to find out, their message was: he's here to show me that you don't have to see where you're going to get where you're going. I always want to see and know things before I do them. He's my guide, to show me that isn't necessary. Who would've ever guessed that?

Mel: All I want to say is, they really need to come up with a better plan than that. If they're gonna send the cat, they should send the cat with a billboard, or a note that says "this is what the cat's here for" — because we don't know what that means.

Anne: He's incredible. There are times you're like, is he really blind? You look at the whites of his eyes — no eyeball. So yeah, they send you stuff like that and you're like, I don't understand.

Mel: We're not laughing at the blind cat — that just didn't make any sense. We need Cliff Notes, a dummy's version of how to live life.

Anne: Yeah. I would've never gotten there on my own.

Mel: No, of course not. That's bananas. So — we have the ability to communicate with Spirit and get answers, in ways that have shown us they're correct, in real life. We'll talk about some of that too. Like when Annie learned how to use dowsing rods, and we began to trust them.

Mel: I used to own a pizza shop, and they'd give us sales numbers every day. I trusted those numbers so much, I'd make dough balls based on what Spirit said our sales would be. So we've had experiences accurate in the human world — and then things we can't know are true, because we're not dead. We only know what Spirit gives us. And sometimes they said I'd win the lottery, and I didn't. So — we're willing to be right, willing to be wrong, but we're curious, and we try to follow our purposeful path the best we can, in a world where people believe in God and going to church, but not in things you can't see. I don't understand — there's a contradiction there, which is fine. We'll talk about religion too — I was raised in the church, I've got lots to say about that.

Anne: Yeah, I don't get it either.

Mel: So — welcome to Coffee, Tea and Consciousness. We're gonna sign off for now, come back with another episode. Annie, what's our first one on?

Anne: I don't know.

Mel: Annie likes to fly by the seat of her pants, and I'm just gonna follow along. We don't actually know — we'll figure it out when we get there. Because Annie's following a blind cat named Eddie that Spirit gave her.

Anne: That does sound so crazy.

Mel: Super crazy. So if you love this kind of crazy, follow along — we'd love to have you. It'll be super fun. Okay — signing off.

Anne: All right, see you.