Working with your intuitive light team and animal spirit guides

Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals podcast! This week we have a very special episode to introduce you to your personal pet parent light team AND your animal spirit guides!

If you are missing your pet who has passed into spirit, you will especially want to tune into this episode because it offers you a very powerful way to reconnect and keep deepening your relationship.

This episode also introduces you to one of what I call your "pet parenting superpowers." Because your light team and your animal spirit guides can help you work through all kinds of challenges with your pet such as health issues, behavior problems, trauma and anxiety, end of life planning and SO much more.

In this episode, we cover:

• What is your light team?
• What kinds of things can your light team help you with?
• What are animal spirit guides?
• How can animal spirit guides help you?
• How can you connect with your light team and animal guides?
• Is there a difference between animal guides and animal totems?
• How can you simplify the process of asking your light team for help?
• And much more!

Chapters

• 0:12 Animal Spirit Guides and Light Teams
• 17:19 Connecting With Your Light Team
• 31:46 Support and Guidance From Light Team
• 36:52 Connecting With Your Spirit Team

Transcript

Shannon Cutts: 0:12

Welcome to let's Talk to Animals.

Shannon Cutts: 0:14

My name is Shannon Cutts. I'm an animal sensitive and intuitive and Reiki master practitioner and an animal communication teacher for pets, their people and the wild animals of this world, and I'm also, for our purposes here today, your friendly neighborhood host of the let's Talk to Animals podcast. Each week, we tackle different topics on the spectrum of interspecies, communication and conversation, with the ultimate goal of de-wooing and demystifying animal communication. What is it, how does it work, who can do it, how do you begin using it and what are some good ways to use it to deepen the relationships that you have with the non-human beings living out their lives all around you. So this week is a topic near and dear to my heart. We are in season five now and, after several seasons of interviewing wonderful lightworkers and practitioners and fellow communicators and healers all over the world, I'm spreading my wings, so to speak, and sharing from my heart about some of the special experiences that I've had and the tools that I use every single day as I tune in with your pets and with the wild animals you love, and as I teach you animal communication here, there and everywhere. Speaking of which of your interested, please do head over to animallovelanguagescom. Backslash and roll. A new class is forming soon and we are going to have a lot of fun. I just got back from Galapagos, the islands, and I volunteered for two weeks with the giant tortoises, and so one of the special features of this new animal communication adventures I'm going to teach you how to talk to wild animals, as well as to your own pet and to other people's companion animals. So if that is something that interests you, please do head over to the website without delay and claim your spot.

Shannon Cutts: 2:26

But for today, the topic that we are focusing in on, that we're really putting up our microscope to and taking a very, very close heart center look at, is your light team and your animal spirit guides. What some traditions may call spirit guardians, animal guides, animal totems, mystic animal spirits that meet you where you are and help you through challenges, obstacles, uplift you, bring joy into your life, share wisdom that they've learned along the way and offer a helping hand. And, of course, we all have animal spirit guides in our lives, but most of us, especially if you are of a certain generation which I happened to heal from myself, having had five decades on this planet to date you may not have kept a lot of company with other human animals who are actually talking about these things, actually sharing experiences of times when they have felt supported or helped or guided by an animal or the spirit of an animal, or even this collective species consciousness of an animal. So we're going to start there. What is a light team? And then, specifically, what do I mean when I say animal spirit guides? So a light team is a collective of high vibration spirit entities or beings who gather around each embodied human spirit, so each soul, each human soul that's occupying a body, and their job, their mission and their calling is to provide support, and there are so many different ways that these beings and these entities and these collectives provide we human animals who are embodied with support.

Shannon Cutts: 4:41

Now one of my intuitive teachers, sonia Schochette, talks about how, at any given time, we can have up to 33 different entities or light beings or spirit guides literally on call for us, and I've talked about this before where she has a really funny analogy where she asks us to visualize a whole room full of spirit guys just sitting, each one with a telephone, kind of like an old school call center, and they all look really bored and one spirit guide says to another one did you get any calls today? And the other spirit guide says no, I didn't get any. And then they asked their neighbor and that spirit guide says, well, I got one call but they hung up before I could answer. And we don't want our light team sitting around bored because, although it can be hard for our left brain, logical, rational, analytical minds to grasp, it's good for our light team to support us and it's just as good for them as it is for us to be supported. It's part of their mission, it's part of their calling.

Shannon Cutts: 5:51

Light team members may be ancestors, they may be twin flame spirits, they may be friendly souls, they may be mentors, coaches, they may have had embodied incarnations here on this earth plane in the past or they may be purely focused on working from the light realm. There is no species limitation. They may be of any species animals, birds, insects, mythical or fantastical beings, as one of my colleagues calls them so fairies, dragons, gnomes, all kinds of different forms that these light beings come in and they each have different roles, different tasks. There can be mentor and teacher guides, spirit evolution guides, joy guides, animal spirit guides, which is where we're really going to focus today healer guides and helper guides and runner guides. This all comes from the work that I've done with Sonia Choket, which is very complementary with many intuitive teachings today, where I've really learned, through studying with her for many years now, how to keep my light team busy and what's important for me to share with you as part of my personal experiences working with my light team.

Shannon Cutts: 7:28

Don't get hung up on the semantics. There's lots of different ways to phrase it. Some of us I grew up in the deep Bible Belt South. I'm here in Texas, born and raised and there can be some pretty strong negative overtones, especially with some of the very strong, very traditional Christian religion that is present here and just in this part of the world. So don't get hung up on that. Rather kind of feel into yourself and see which words really resonate with you and bring you joy. However you wish to frame the concept of a collective of loving, benevolent beings that seek your highest good as a pathway to their own highest good. Whatever words that you wanna pair with that, just choose something that feels really good to you, because that's the whole goal is.

Shannon Cutts: 8:23

We're elevating your frequency and the better you feel, the more open your heart is towards receiving help, the more open your heart will be towards giving help as well, and it reminds me of one of my late best friend's favorite sayings, which she used to remind me often when I was kind of in a stuck place or going why is this happening to me? And she would say we're here to learn how to grow in wisdom and learn to love better, which was a Tara Brock quote. She was a really big fan of Tara Brock and I hold this so closely to my heart. And, at the end of the day, if we need help and help comes, are we really going to be picky about the semantics we assigned to how that help got there or how we explain it to others? Because we have to recognize and I really want you to lock in on this you don't have to explain it to anyone. In fact, if you live in a community that really isn't open to these kinds of concepts and so you're kind of like a secret, let's talk to animals. Listener, by the way, welcome.

Shannon Cutts: 9:32

I spent many years of my life sneaking off to meetings that at the time, were considered new age quote, unquote, not telling anyone around me because I didn't have anyone else in my life that was talking about these things, and so I didn't know anyone else who resonated with them or was curious about them. I would kind of haunt the aisles of our brick and mortar library and read all kinds of books that other folks in my life might have labeled crazy, and I wasn't brave enough to ask them to find out if I was living alongside any kindred spirits. So don't get hung up on any of that. If you're listening to this and you resonate with the idea of light teens or you want to find out about animal spirit guides, do this for you. You don't have to share it with a single other soul. Just have this as your beautiful, open-hearted secret sanctuary that you can visit as often as you want or even dwell within, without having to let another soul in on the secret. Of course, sure, if you are living with pets, they will know, and you may even see their behavior change accordingly to recognize your elevated frequency.

Shannon Cutts: 10:45

But what I really want to focus on here to start with is just the just kind of popping into your awareness. If you're not already aware that you do have a light team, maybe you can look back into your memories of your embodied life today and you can call to mind times when you have kind of felt like mysteriously guided or supported. Another one of my intuitive teachers, jill Fubistor, talks a lot about walking through bookstores and having books like literally fall down at her feet. Or maybe you just got a phone call out of the blue from someone and they just started talking about the exact same issue that you felt so alone with as you were struggling through it and suddenly the support and this someone to share it with and receive inspiration from this just showed up in your life. So these are all examples of ways that the light, the high vibration frequency of evolution, of growing you into a wisdom space where you're really open to new ways of experiencing situations in your life, whether they're wonderfully exciting and full of possibility, or they feel restrictive or challenging or tough or even unfair in some way.

Shannon Cutts: 12:07

It's like it's all about how we receive what's unfolding in our daily life and how we interact with that. So even if you just receive light teams as a concept that you can work with, maybe you wanna assign a color to it. Maybe you wanna think of your light team as a specific color, like maybe if you find the color of silver or sky blue or soft, that soft, warm light of holiday light, or the beautiful pink of the open heart or the green of the earth. You just wanna assign a color to your light team, or a fragrance. I've been doing some work with an entrepreneur coach who talks a lot about assigning scents and textures and colors, and even music, to different experiences that we want to draw into and be able to hold onto and expand into in our lives, and I found this a really useful tool. So if you wanna just start developing a relationship with your personal light team, whether your mind is completely on board or not, if there's something in your heart that resonates with it, that's really all that matters for our purposes here, and so just start just right now. In fact, just think about if you had a light team, a band of high vibration, benevolent, unconditionally loving beings in your life who were so grateful and happy to help and support you in this body because it's good for you and it's also really good for them because it's a part of their growth and evolution. This is something they signed up for to expand their awareness, to grow their wisdom, to learn to love even better as well. So it's good for you, it's good for them.

Shannon Cutts: 14:00

What color would they be If they showed up around you? What color would they be? What fragrance? I love calming fragrances, because I tend to be kind of a more on the anxious spectrum, if you will, and so I love. I gravitate to fragrances like Ylang-Ylang and Frankincense and Jasmine and Lavender that are uplifting and grounding and send a message to my fight or flight system that it's okay to stand down all as well. My parasympathetic can take over for a while and my sympathetic can go on break. So what fragrance would your light team bring with them to let you know that they're with you?

Shannon Cutts: 14:44

What sound would it be? A bell, would it be? I've got these beautiful little chimes I don't know if you can hear that. I'll do it one more time. There they go a little bit louder Little chimes hanging on a light stand near me that I received during an intuitive retreat, and when I hear these chimes it pulls me back into my heart right away. So what sound might your light team use to announce their presence? To say you rang, we heard you. Or would it be a little music, almost like a ringtone on your phone, and this is your spirit guides calling you? Or think of a place, what place really calls to you? For me, I just got back from Isabella Island and Galapagos and so I can very easily call to mind how happy and open-hearted I felt as I was snorkeling with sea turtles in the water and walking along in the forests and just enjoying the natural beauty and then the wild beings who were completely unafraid of me.

Shannon Cutts: 15:51

Now that you're kind of getting a sense of your light team's collective personality, just start thinking about some different ways that you might want to interact with them and just become aware Just kind of park that thought in your heart space and your gut, brain and the place where you feel vibes good vibes, bad vibes, uncertain vibes that you now are aware that you have this collective of spirit frequency helpers there to support you, to give you an extra helping hand, to draw your attention to things that are maybe even right in front of your face and you just don't have the past perspective to easily perceive them and some different ways that a light team might show up. So this is kind of a general overview of my experience to date of what a light team is, why they are in our lives, why they're assigned to us or why they self-select to serve us Some different ways to start getting to know your light team. Maybe you feel particularly close, even to someone, a love who's past and you always just kind of feel their spirit in certain situations I can share.

Shannon Cutts: 17:19

My father passed two and a half years ago and when I was in Galapagos I took the chance of and it really was a chance for me I've never done anything like this before and to rappel down into a natural volcanic crater. And when I realized that my guide only spoke Spanish, of course I only spoke English and he starts pulling out all these pulleys and chains and I had the thought well, I guess today's a good day to die. And all of a sudden I felt my dad's energy all around me and he was like no, that is not going to happen to my girl today. And when we got out of the crater, went back up to our meeting place, my dad's very favorite bird a bird I've been praying to see since he passed away and have never actually seen other than just some flybys the barn owl was actually sitting inside the little meeting house. There was a live barn owl sitting inside the little meeting house waiting for us Light team.

Shannon Cutts: 18:22

No doubt about it Now, not all of your experiences are going to be so obvious. In fact, I've been working with my light team for many years and there's still times I totally miss that they're with me until afterwards, or even there's been probably many times I have totally missed it. So I just make a practice of thanking them every day. But I'm jumping ahead of myself, because where I want to anchor back to for our purposes here in a podcast called let's Talk to Animals, is that if you have an animal who's passed into spirit, if you have a beloved pet who's passed into spirit, just know that they are at the very head of your light team. Why do I say this with such confidence? Because I'm very well aware that not all intuitive teachers would agree with me on this point. And here is why it's because the love bond that we share with our animals, with our companion animals, with our pets, and, of course, if you've been listening for a while, you know that when I ask the animals what the word pet means, they told me it means partner, empathic, friend and teacher. So this is a very pure, very strong, very high vibration connection, almost like our connection with our own soul, with our own spirit connected to source energy. It's there, for most of us will never love more deeply and purely in our whole embodied lives as the love bond we share with our animals and so our pet. When they pass into spirit, they automatically assume the responsibility for directing your light team All 33 plus members of them. They are at the helm, they are, they have the CEO. If you will, if you come from a business background, like I do, they are the CEO of your light team. And so, if you find, as I certainly did when I started working with my light team and really learning about light teams and getting to know my light team, my collective, and how to work with them and how to ask for help and how to feel connected with them and trusting of them and and just getting into the habit of asking for help, which we'll get into One of the things that really helped me was anchoring back to the unconditional love bonds that I have had with my companion animals.

Shannon Cutts: 20:55

I've always bonded with my pets, my partners, empathic friends and teachers very, very deeply, to the point where I'm not what you would consider a crier per se. I'm not someone who cries easily or often, but if anything ever happened or happens to one of my personal companion animals. I am, I am like, I am like the ocean. I just dissolve because that love bond is so pure that, whatever's going on with them, it's like it's going on with me. So if you've had an animal that you've had that depth of connection with, that purity of connection with I'm not saying you have to cry and that's how you know, but I'm saying you just know, that's how I know, but you just know that you've never loved any being in your life as much as this particular being or these beings that you've shared your life with, then that is automatically the highest vibration frequency that you've experienced in your life, which means it's the easiest frequency that you have available to connect with your spirit collective, with your light team. And so if you find all of this confusing oh my goodness.

Shannon Cutts: 22:11

Runner guides, helper guides, spirit guides, teacher guides, animal guides, joy guides, healer guides what the heck? You can just focus your energy on your pet and spirit. You can ask them for help, you can connect with them. That automatically opens your heart, that automatically places you into a frame of mind and a heart-centric awareness of is there any help coming in? Well, what kind of help do I even need. Well, who can I ask for that help? Oh, that's right, I can ask my pet.

Shannon Cutts: 23:48

For those of you who may come from a background where prayer has been important, you can think of it as praying. For those of you who don't resonate with that word or that concept, you can think of it as a contemplation. Well, what kind of help would really be beneficial to me right now? What's missing? Why am I confused? Why am I? What's going on that's creating a sense of struggle in me? Or why am I so anxious when this great new opportunity has arrived in my life, and what would make me feel able to really step into that with an open heart and confidence? Just think about, or, what's missing and what would I like to attract into my life. This will give you some ideas about how you can use your light team. You don't have to be like okay, I think I need a helper guide for this one and I think a runner guide for that one.

Shannon Cutts: 24:43

You can just ask your animal in spirit. My soul bird of 24 years, pearl, passed into spirit a year and three months ago. This month, he just joined my light team right away, and not only has he reincarnated, he's reincarnated as Petal, which is a story I share in two earlier episodes this season for season five. But he's also his spirit aspect has remained in charge of my light team. So I can just I've got his picture right behind my laptop as I'm recording this episode so I can just ask him find me someone in my spirit collective, a mentor, a teacher, a new guide, who can help me with this particular challenge. And he just, he's on it, he takes care of it.

Shannon Cutts: 25:31

These are all just concepts, really to help your left brain mind, that rational, logical, analytical, intellectual part of you, kind of get on board with the idea of light team. So you don't have to work so hard to invite this high frequency, high vibration, loving support into your life. At a heart level, at a gut level, you probably can ponder back over your life and feel for times when you've just known that someone's right by your side. You've just known with a part of you that your mind can't touch, that your animal and spirit visited you or that you just received a sign and you just know that. You know that. You know and your mind can. Your left brain mind can argue all at once and it cannot talk you out of it.

Shannon Cutts: 26:23

So just understand this really the most of this, this episode, just like most of how I teach animal communication, outside of the actual hands-on practice we do, which is the most important part and the heartbeat of it but the rest of it is really to get your left brain mind on board, get it going in the direction of the program of the journey that you want to be on, so, instead of fighting you, it understands its role and how to support you and it actually becomes your friend, your ally, your partner in that, and so that's something that very few human animals learn. As we go through our formal education, even our workplace and our relationship training If we get any we do not learn how to work with the left brain mind. So that is a huge aspect of unfolding our intuitive awareness is we're not trying to tamp down on the left brain mind, we're not trying to distract it, we're trying to include it in very productive ways, and that's really a huge focus of the work that I do because, as I've learned how to do that, it has jump-started, it has skyrocketed my intuitive journey, and I want that for you too. So if you've had multiple pets who've transitioned out of their bodies and into a spirit space. You've got a pretty robust light team. You've got a lot of beautiful, high vibration, loving energies that you can call on. You don't have to pick, you can just address the collective of your pets and spirit.

Shannon Cutts: 27:55

And this is a great way, too if you're struggling with any kind of guilt or regret or a feeling like there are loose ends to your relationship, things that didn't get said, expectations that weren't met, and this tends to be something that we as pet parents really struggle with around how our pets pass out of their bodies. It's something that I work with a lot one-on-one when I have animal communication sessions for pets and spirit is really understanding why your pet left their body, when they did and how they did, especially if you had other plans. That's something that we really focus on a lot in the animal communications sessions, the one-on-one sessions that I do. If that's something that you're struggling through, please do reach out. Just head over to animallovelanguagescom and click on the green schedule button in the top right corner and you can get on my calendar and we can talk with your pet and spirit and get you the information that you need, that your mind needs, that your heart craves, so that you can start to feel better and reconnect with them, because that disconnection of not understanding can be a powerful force to interrupt the bond that you still have with your pet. Who's now in the spirit dimension. We say on the spirit side, but it's not so much a side, it's a different dimension that supports much higher vibration frequency than most of us can achieve while living in these bodies.

Shannon Cutts: 29:28

We've covered what and who your light team is. Some of the different ways they can help you with everything from finding your keys or your wallet or your shoes or whatever you're looking for, all the way up to navigating your way into a new supportive relationship or a different career path or healing after any type of injury or illness or a separation or a loss. There are no limits to how your light team can show up for you, other than the limits you place on them. So if you decide, oh, I don't think my light team can help in this area, or I'm not going to ask my light team for help in this area, then they cannot act. They do need your permission. They need you to act first to say I need help Sometimes and this is something I borrowed from the writer and Lamott. Sometimes I don't even know what help I need and so all I do is I call it to mind, the pure, high vibration love bond that I share with Pearl and my pets in spirit, and I just say help, and that's all you need to say. If you don't know what kind of help you need, that is no problem. Just ask for help and trust that the right help in the right moment will appear, and also watch for it. Here are some ways that you can start building a daily relationship with your light team and specifically with your animal spirit guides. And one more thing I want to say before we get into that is, in addition to your pets and spirit, who are always going to head up your light team, they're always going to be in charge of it because you have such a strong loving bond with your animals that have passed into spirit, you can also have animal spirit guides who are not pets, partners of Catholic friends and teachers who passed out of their bodies into spirit, but are also spirit entities, separate and apart, who enter your life to bring certain energies, to bring certain kinds of assistance, to bring certain types of inspiration. Here's a story to illustrate that Before I went to Galapagos.

Shannon Cutts: 31:47

I hadn't traveled out of the country in several years and I was really out of practice with visas and passports and all of the logistics and the language barriers and I got myself kind of worked up about it. I'm not exactly what you would call, even though I have been all over the world. I'm not what you would call an easeful traveler and so, even though I was super excited to go work with the giant tortoises and experience so much amazing wildlife living in unafraid natural state, I was very intimidated by the logistics and it did not get better even after I got everything sorted out and charted out and I wrote down step one, step two, step three, all that stuff. And a couple of nights before I left I had a meditation and I saw a wild wolf, a really large male wolf, show up in my meditation and said I will guide you through it. A couple of days later I was on the plane I was about to land for my connection in Panama City, before you traveled on to Ecuador and then to Galapagos, and the woman in the seat beside me on this totally full flight turns her phone case over and there is a picture of a wild wolf on the back of her phone case and all my fear just dropped away at that point.

Shannon Cutts: 33:13

What are the chances? And of course your left brain, just like mine, will argue all day long that there are plenty of chances and that was just a coincidence. But what the left brain mind calls coincidence, the right brain, heart-centric mind, the mind that's connected to creativity and intuition, calls serendipity or spirit assistance. And I just knew, because I've had enough experience and I've made enough deposits into my trust bank to know how my light team works with me. And that was just a miracle. And I felt so loved and so supported. And even though I did run into some travel nightmares I lost my luggage, I almost missed my connection, they didn't have my name on the ferry, I couldn't communicate. Every step of the way on that trip Somebody showed up or something shifted just at the right moment so that what could have been a nightmare actually became part of a wonderful, supported and supportive story. I just knew everything was going to be okay and it was, and that in and of itself also shifts our frequency and our awareness into well. Now I'm looking for reasons why everything is going to be okay. Now I am expecting support and help.

Shannon Cutts: 34:41

So just starting to notice this is the most important thing is what we're talking about today just being aware that you have a light team, being aware of how it feels to be supported, just starting with becoming aware you have a light team. You have lots of supporters, lots of helpers. If you have a beautiful relationship with a pet in spirit, you can just tune in with them. If the rest of it just feels too complicated right now because they're at the head of your light team anyway, or a beautiful human who's passed into spirit that you had a really unconditionally loving relationship with Look for the highest vibration frequency, the closest love bond, most unconditionally loving love bond that you had, and that's the being who is sitting at the head of your light team. So you can just direct. Find me a spirit guide to help me find a new microphone to record my podcast with. To help me find a new physician, because I'm having this issue and I don't know who to ask. To help me find the perfect class to take, because I want to learn about something that I don't know who the best teacher would be. Some comfy shoes that match my outfit for this special event that I'm going to. There are no limitations. So just start to build your awareness how your light team feels to you, how they might show up to you. Start to notice especially for the purposes of our podcast noticing your animal spirit guide. Start to notice if animals just come into your space.

Shannon Cutts: 36:16

Right after I got back from Glopagos, I was having a really, really hard time reintegrating because it's very primitive there and we were just out in nature all day, every day. We were with animals all day, every day. It felt like just being in this wonderful, supportive, eden-like community where no one was afraid of anyone else, no one was trying to predate or harm or hurt or take from anyone else. It was a very safe place. And then I come back to the enormous city of Houston, texas, where I live, where everything's under lock and key and there's not much green space, and it was really hard for me.

Shannon Cutts: 36:52

And one day I looked out the window and there was a crow sitting on the neighbor's roof and the crow walked closer to me and then there was a dip in the roof and he disappeared from sight and I thought, if he keeps coming closer and makes that extra effort to come closer to me, then I'll know it's one of my spirit guides coming to let me know that this too will pass, it's going to be okay. And wouldn't you know it, this bird climbs up, even though he could have easily flown. He climbs up, he comes closer and closer and closer to the kitchen window, until he's right at the edge of my neighbor's roof, closest to me, and then he starts calling, and then he flies off, and to me, the sound of the crow calling reminds me of one of my favorite places on Earth, cape Cod, and so it brings me right into my heart every time I hear it. And I just knew this was no accident, this was a messenger. So it's like there's got to be some level of awareness and then there's got to be a willingness to receive it, as if it truly is a spirit guide message or just a little moment of inspiration when you really need one. An add a girl or add a boy.

Shannon Cutts: 38:09

And I also want to just pause for a moment and say, when I use a gender pronoun like he, it's because I got a male energy, like it was very clear that that wolf who showed up in my meditation was male, even though often when we see wolves in the intuitive space, a lot of people receive them as female. I knew that I'm getting some male energy, because that's what I need to balance out this very emotional feminine energy place in my heart that I've been living in for the last two weeks. And so, even noticing the gender because we don't always know the gender that you assign to a wild animal who shows up in your space just start to trust those inner knowings and start to interact with these members of your light team and specifically your animal spirit, guides or what in the Native American tradition I'm part Native American we call them the animal totems. These may be animals that are with us throughout life and in ways that we really don't intellectually understand. For me, ladybugs are a huge animal totem.

Shannon Cutts: 39:15

For me, I see them in the strangest places. I've talked about this on the podcast before often at a time when I haven't seen them for months and I'm just really struggling with something, and then I'll see a little ladybug messenger just show up somewhere crazy, like inside my guitar case or on my comforter when I'm sick, or underneath a stairwell when I'm in an office building, I'm sick, shown up in some of the craziest places and I just learned to receive that as that's the beautiful gift of my light teams. So that's really where we start. We start by noticing that we have a light team starting to draw our attention back to times in our life when we felt kind of mysteriously or just intuitively supported or loved or guided or helped out just right in that moment and often when we have had the least expectation of getting any support at all. That's when it comes and that's why it activates our awareness and then just kind of getting to know their energy and interacting with them and just inviting them into your life, starting to give them small jobs to do, and as long as your intention is that you're addressing your highest vibration light team to come and support you, that is the message that we'll get conveyed. It's this is really a very emotional space. It's a high vibration intention space of intention, and so if you don't have the right words, don't worry, that isn't going to jinx the whole thing. Watch and notice when your light team, your spirit team, shows up, and you might even want to keep a little notebook for this.

Shannon Cutts: 40:53

Instead of keeping a notebook, I gravitate towards doing a gratitude practice at the end of each day, where I look back at that day and notice times when I just felt extraordinarily grateful whether it was something large or small or doesn't really matter and just recognizing and saying thank you, so, so, so much, and just really having that genuine gratitude, and then start playing around with asking for help with bigger tasks, things that are longer term projects that maybe you're going to need to take one step and then another, and then another, and then another. Maybe here's a great example for let's talk to animals podcast. Maybe you want to learn animal communication and right now you don't feel like you really have any sense of inner trust or any experience that this is even something that is possible for you. And, trust me, I totally relate to this because I hired animal communicators for years because I honestly thought, if I took the risk of signing up for a course, that I would be the only one who couldn't hear anything and it would be so embarrassing for me and I would feel even worse about myself than I did at that time. So I just really wasn't willing to take the risk. Of course, when I did finally sign up for a course and the animals really had to get loud with me and call me to it, because I was so resistant and so afraid, but I found out that I absolutely could.

Shannon Cutts: 42:23

But maybe you're kind of in this space where it's like you're like me, your heart was calling you to this, but you just had this really strong fear factor or just this self-limiting thought process that was saying, oh no, that's not for you. This is a great place to ask your light team for support, because if you're being called towards learning something, especially something so heart-opening as animal communication, then this is definitely a call from your spirit and from your light team, saying this is a good next step and it may not be for the reasons that you think. It's like we have a very Western mentality of if you learn about this, you must go and do it and make money at it. It's not really about that. Most of my students don't have any desire to hang out a shingle like I've done, and I just feel a really strong calling to do this publicly and to do this for other pet parents and their animal loves, because it's something that has been offered to me for so many years and it's helped our family so much, and so I really want to be in that energy, in that space. But we have all kinds of callings in life and you don't have to have a reason.

Shannon Cutts: 43:31

So if you're kind of at the beginning of a journey like this one and you're thinking, oh, I don't have a reason, or oh, I don't think I can do it, or oh, I've tried it before and it didn't work, don't let that be the end of the story. First, let's try something new and ask your light team for help. Just show me the next step. What's the next step I can take towards this dream of mine? Even if I feel like it's impossible, I'm still willing to take one tiny step towards it and ask your light team for help and then notice when they show up and how they show up, and notice if something crosses your path, or notice if you keep seeing the same species of animal or the same exact animal in your space over and over again, or if you have a dream, or if you're reading something or a particular show comes on or the YouTube algorithm kicks out something that seems so fortuitous and coincidental and you start to recognize that it's not. It's your light team using the energy of the algorithm to catch your attention with something that you needed to hear. Maybe it's this podcast that you run across and you're like, oh, that's very interesting.

Shannon Cutts: 44:47

I asked my light team how I could take a step forward and they produce let's talk to animals on the YouTube algorithm who knows? But just start working with it and then start adding in slightly bigger, more expansive requests for help and for assistance and for insight and for support, and keep noticing what shows up and this is really important If you don't know exactly what you need. Again, it's not like a Western left brain logical mind where it's like if you can't completely outline the problem and give me the solution, you're not allowed to ask for help. It's like you're asking for help because you don't know or something isn't working and you feel like you're at the edge of your awareness of what else you could try. So you're inviting new, fresh energy in your job is to stay aware and open to it and curious. These are also the foundational tenets of animal communication, of noticing, getting curious, wondering, asking questions.

Shannon Cutts: 45:52

One of my daily practices since I was first introduced to my light team and really started to develop a relationship with them has been to put myself in a regular daily space of asking more questions than I have answers. It's good to ask questions. It's good to step outside of our comfort zone. Even when we think we know, even when somebody is telling us something that we think we already know, instead of finishing their sentences and detaching from the conversation as it's unfolding, we can actually listen to them. We can actually receive maybe something new. So that's been a practice for me. Instead of feeling, like in that left brain Western mentality we have of the individualists, it's got to be the expert on everything. Even if somebody is telling me something that I think I already completely understand and even know better than they do, I just stop myself and I say let me just listen, let me just receive what they have to share. And it's such a relief. I don't have to know everything, I don't have to know all the steps, I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to do this all by myself. And so that's where I want to conclude.

Shannon Cutts: 47:06

Today's podcast episode is just to remind you. You do not have to do this, this life thing, this relationship thing, this pet parenting thing, this wild animal advocate thing, this animal communication thing, this career thing, this partner thing, this caretaker thing. You don't have to do it by yourself. You have so much help, you have so much support. All you need to do is ask. So that's it for today's episode.

Shannon Cutts: 47:40

What questions do you have about light teams, about animal spirit guides, about your pets and spirit who are now available and eager to support you through your embodied life journey? Let me know in the comments. And if you have a moment from my heart, it would mean so much to me if you would leave this podcast or review wherever you're listening, if you would download it. That really helps. Our little algorithm and our little corner of the podcast or a sphere Also pop up in more people's serendipitous search results so more people can find us and learn about animal communication and intuitive pet parenting and really deepen their relationships with their pets.

Shannon Cutts: 48:23

And if you have someone in your life who loves companion animals and wild nature as much as you do, please do consider sharing your favorite episode of let's Talk to Animals with them. They might enjoy it just as much as you do. So send me your questions, leave me your comments. I look forward to connecting with you in another two weeks. We've had a little break because I've been out of the country and just have not been organized, since it's a team of two me and Miss Petal and I will leave you to guess who does most of the manual labor to get the podcast episodes out. One of us is in charge of all the behind the scenes tech, while the other one of us is in charge of chewing the microphone cable and looking very cute. So I'll leave you to figure out which one wears which hat. But thank you again for listening and being a part of the let's Talk to Animals community and I will see you back again for a fresh new episode very soon. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.