Sonia Choquette discussing her book The Wise Child
The Wise Child: A Spritual Guide to Nurturing Your Child's Intuition
Sonia Choquette came to the Bodhi Tree in 1999 to discuss her book The Wise Child: A Spritual Guide to Nurturing Your Child's Intuition. She is a world-renowned author, storyteller, vibrational healer, and six-sensory spiritual teacher in international demand for her guidance, wisdom, and capacity to heal the soul. She specializes in helping others recognize that we are all endowed with a sixth sense that we can count on.
A highly trained intuitive, with extensive background in the mysticism of East and West, Sonia was educated at the University of Denver and at the Sorbonne in Paris, and holds a Ph.D. in metaphysics. Sonia says, "I am intuitive because I was encouraged at all times to be awake, aware, and guided by my sixth sense. I grew up in an environment that treated intuition not only as natural, but actually essential to successful navigation in life. Intuition is a gift that we all have, that we can all experience, that we can all trust and that we all need!"
She resides with her family in Chicago. For additional information about her, see www.soniachoquette.com
The Wise Child: A Spritual Guide to Nurturing Your Child's Intuition by Sonia Choquette, Ph.D. (243 pp.)
Sonia Choquette counsels a steady stream of clients, many of whom are parents. Invariably, they ask her one question: How can I help my children to thrive and prosper? How can I ensure that they will not become as unhappy and frustrated as I have been? Her answer appears in this book. Not only does Choquette guide us into opening-or at least keeping open -- the intuitive, spiritual side of our children; she also shows us how to rediscover the intuitive child we once were ourselves. The book is divided into three parts. The first focuses on heightening awareness of your intuitive nature by, for example, creating intuition-friendly attitudes among family members. Part two introduces the world of energy and vibration. It covers acknowledging and expressing intuitive feelings, establishing psychic boundaries, and dealing with blind spots that interrupt the unfolding of a family member's intuition. Finally, part three discusses ways we can create an atmosphere of wonder and discovery in the home, use art to reach the intuitive heart, and encourage children to receive guidance from their souls by looking inward. It's a wonderful book for those who have children, but it serves former children equally well. Surely the greatest gift we can give our children is an awareness of their own spirit which is, in fact, an awareness of their God given power. – CD
"In my family we were taught that the sense of vibration was the primary sense. It wasn't the sixth. It was the first." - Sonia Choquette
The following is an edited version of Sonia Choquette's Bodhi Tree Bookstore presentation.
Sonia Choquette: In response to my work as an intuitive, or psychic, many people say to me, "I wish I had your gift. I wish I could look into someone's eyes and see their soul, or their spirit. I wish I could sense danger and actually step away from it before it occurs. I wish I could feel the energy and the flow of things in a way that would help me know where I'm going at all times. That must be such a gift." When I think about those comments, I have to agree -- it is a great gift. But the truth is that I have no more sense than anyone else. The gift in my life is actually that of being born and raised in a family atmosphere that recognized all of my senses, and created a framework where I could use what I was born with. That is my gift.
My family centered around my Romanian mother, who was from an ordinary family and lived an ordinary life until World War II. During an evacuation, she was separated from the others and ended up in a concentration camp. In the midst of this crisis, she developed and honed her intuition for the sake of survival -- she had to use everything she had just to stay alive. Not only did she literally save her own life, but she transcended the most awful of circumstances.
My mother referred to her intuition as her "spirit." Her spirit revealed things to her that her eyes couldn't. She always said, "Never say never because your spirit will show you the way." She married my American father when she was fifteen, and I was the second girl of their seven children. Although she never had the chance to be educated, she taught us something that became the core of our lives: "No matter what happens, and no matter what people say, and no matter what you read about, trust your insides," she said. "You have a spirit, and it will keep you safe. Your spirit will always tell you the truth."
I remember being oriented that way from day one. Being wired not to look outside and ask other people, "What do you think?" but to go inward and ask myself, "How do I feel?" In fact, my mother created all kinds of opportunities for us to do this because the basic theme in our family was, simply, "Follow your vibes."
So we turned inward and listened for vibes. We tried to sense them and catch them and follow them like falling waves or navigate with them the way birds navigate with sound. My mother invited us to call up our vibes in all kinds of creative and fun ways -- partly because there were seven of us, and it was a free form of entertainment. For example, if the phone rang, my Mom would say, "Wait! Who's on the phone?" And we were required to intuit: "Is it Dad? Or Mr. Lawrence next door? Or Grandmother?" When she picked up the phone and crowed excitedly, "You're right! It is Grandmother," we all danced with joy. When we were wrong, she would put our minds to rest: "Grandma's thinking of calling," she would say. "She'll be next."
We were invited constantly to reach, stretch, explore, and try on our inner experiences and throw them out into the world. We never felt it was a test, but rather a wonderful opportunity to play. My mother taught me -- correctly - that the pathway to spirit is the same pathway as play. Your inner self wants to come out and express itself, and all you need do is lay down the welcome mat. The only reason I made a career of it is because -- as one of seven kids -- I wanted Mom's attention. And I figured out early that the way to get it was to be good at the vibes! I kept reaching and stretching and trying things on. And do you know what I have learned in thirty-two years of reading for people around the world? That I'm not the only one that senses vibes. Everyone feels them. The difference is not whether or not you feel vibrations, but what you decide to do about them.
In my family, we were taught that the sense of vibration was the primary sense. It wasn't the sixth. It was the first. It was the one that you went with. When most people get a vibe, they shoo it away! Or they wrestle with it: Should I or shouldn't I? I don't know, what should I do? Back and forth. In our family we were taught to reach out and take our feelings like a gift and then say thank you to them.
Thankfully, it doesn't take much to invite your spirit back because, frankly, that's all you are. One of the tools in The Wise Child is called "the language of spirit." In our home we were able to describe our spiritual experiences in a way that made it possible for us to acknowledge what we felt. Our basic word was "the vibe." Whenever someone had "the vibe," you knew something was up, and everyone was expected to pay attention.
When I was eleven, my siblings and I met a girl who had run away from her parents in Illinois to come to Colorado to look for an aunt. She was no more than fourteen years old and we met her on the street. We really liked her. Every day we went out to play with her, then at 7:30 pm, we put on a big show in front of my Mom: "Bye, Colleen, bye." Only we didn't say goodbye to Colleen. We snuck her around the back, and hid her in our closet. After about four days of this, my Mom was on to it. She barged into our room and snapped the lights on. "Okay, you're busted. Who's under the bed?" And as we pulled Colleen out, shaking and quaking, we all chorused in unison, "Mom! She has good vibes!" Those words saved our butts. My Mom checked Colleen out and said, "You're right. She does have good vibes." She let her stay with us, and actually helped to get her connected to her own Mom again.
Of course we also had "bad vibes:" We could actually say to my mother, "She has bad vibes, or he has bad vibes, or the teacher has bad vibes," and she believed us. And she would help us come up with another way. She even took people on if they had bad vibes.
Have you ever met someone and for some reason they just get on your nerves, and in about five minutes you want to slap their face and tell them to get out of your life forever? We had a term for that energetic assault. We called it "the woolies." You know the feeling -- it's like wet wool on your bare skin. I remember when a lady down the block began to call my Mom every day and say, "Can your daughters come over and play with with my girl Lucille?" And we said, "Oh, no, Mom! She's got the woolies." So Mom responded, "Oh, gee, I'm so sorry, the girls are busy today." She understood.
And have you ever met somebody and within two seconds their energy seems to start ballooning while you start to go, "I'm melting, I'm melting?" There's this transference of energy going on, and they're feeling better and better, but you're getting ready to hit the floor? Well, we had a term for that, too. We called it an "ick attack." Then we shortened it to "ick." You know, that's an "ick."
When you name your vibes, you name that unseen world. So many people say to me, "You know, I had these feelings, but I didn't know how to explain them." And because of the struggle of trying to fit those feelings into a framework that never included them, they threw them away.
Think about some of the terms you already use. What about "put it out there." That invites your spirit in. Once you name it, you own it. And until you name it, you don't own it.
If you want to live with spirit, if you want to let your spirit direct your life, you have to be extremely flexible. Spirit starts in the heart and moves to the hips. In fact people who are really psychic are also pretty good dancers! This is because it is like a dance. You've got to go with the flow. Kids do. They're down on the ground and can reverse on a dime.
I grew up in Denver, and every Sunday we went to the mountains. Because we each insisted on bringing a friend, most often there were fourteen kids piled into the car. Once when we were coming home after a long, tiring day -- we kids are all squabbling, my dad's trying to concentrate -- my Mom suddenly turned to him and said, "My spirit says we should take the scenic route home. We all looked at her aghast: "Are you out of your mind?" To which she replied, "Humor me." In other words, we did not have a choice.
Everyone protested, but my Dad went the back way, and by the time we got home we all hated each other. Even my poor Dad said, "Don't come near me, I'm going in the house." He went into the living room to recover his equilibrium, turned on the TV and saw right at the top of the 5:00 news, that at the very next exit after we turned off, a chemical tanker had turned over on the road and shut down the highway for seven hours. My Mom said, "See, spirit knows what it's doing."
We come in to this world with that kind of energy. We come in that conscious. The Wise Child is not really about teaching your kids to be psychic, but about letting them reawaken their parents!
Sadly, the attachment to spirit energy dies by a thousand tiny pinpricks of suggestion till you end up feeling that you can't trust yourself. "Oh, no, Mommy's fine," or "Daddy didn't mean that," or "So and so's a good teacher." In other words, the inference is, "Don't be that conscious because it makes me uncomfortable."
On a recent plane trip, an eight-year-old boy and his Dad took the two seats beside me. Ten minutes after take-off, the boy piped up, "Dad, I forgot to tell you, I saw an angel in my room last night." Without missing a beat, his dad responded, "Oh, honey, you were dreaming." He didn't even look up from the newspaper he was reading. After a minute the boy tried again. He took a deep breath and said, "Dad, I wasn't dreaming, she was real. She was in the corner." Whereupon his dad snapped again, "Oh, honey, that's nonsense," and carried on reading. Finally, after another pensive two minutes, the boy tried yet again. "No, Dad, she was real, she was in the corner, she was beautiful." This time his dad folded the newspaper, glared at his son and said, "Honey, that's not something that exists, so why don't you just put it out of your mind and if you do, we'll read a book." After a good thirty seconds trying to figure this all out the boy said despondently, "Okay, let's read a book." My heart sank. Because as much as he wanted to have that connection with his spirit, what he wanted more was a connection with his dad. It was important enough to deny his experience. So when his dad went to the bathroom, I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "I believe you."
The Wise Child looks like it's a book for kids, but it is also a book for the kid in you that was not listened to. It is about bringing spirit back into the family. Doesn't it seem peculiar that we all have these incredible experiences and no way to talk about them? Or to celebrate spirit as a testimonial to our magnificence? You have to champion your own spirit, you have to parent your own inner wisdom, because kids come in bright-eyed and clearly conscious. The gift in my life is that I had a mother who set up a framework that said, you probably know more than I'll ever know. That's how we should all parent our children.
One day, when my daughter Sabrina was three years old, her teacher came to me and said, "I couldn't get the children to cooperate today. In fact, I lost my patience, and put them all on time out in the corner. There they sat, hanging their heads in shame, until your daughter leaned over and whispered something to others. I saw them all shake their heads enthusiastically, so she turned around, stood up, straightened her dress, walked up to the desk and seriously said to me, 'Teacher, we're all feeling pretty good in the corner, and when you feel better would you like to join us?' Can you believe it? She busted me. I was having a bad day -- I had a fight with my husband before coming to work -- and she called me on it. It was my own funk! And how impressive that Sabrina could name it!"
What a gift you can give the children in your life to let them name and own their experience. It's not about always indulging them. I remember a thousand times I said to my Mom, "Mom, I have a terrible vibe, I have to tell you, I really shouldn't go to school today." And my Mom would look at me and say, "Sonia, I hear you. Now get dressed." It wasn't that I could do whatever I wanted, but it was about having the freedom to say what I experienced. Can you imagine how powerful that is? Can you hear your own spirit? What if you said that to yourself, "I hear you. Okay, okay. I'll consider that?" It's about moving in the hips, and about naming that tune. It's about putting the welcome mat out. When you look from that clear eyed space -- like children do -- you begin to see the truth. The truth is, this is a beautiful world, and it has a place for you. In fact, it wouldn't be whole without you. The truth is that every single one of you belong here; you have a purpose and you have help. I think the most incredible gift I ever received from my Mom is that I do not remember a day in my life that I did not expect spiritual help. I've always had my guides, my angels, my saints. I always felt the beloved arms of God and all my helpers around me every day. That's what this is about. Waking up and being bigger and allowing ourselves to have all that we're entitled to have, and to be as conscious as we genuinely are. When you're that conscious, you can begin to manifest your full experiences as a vital being. You can contribute to the world. The world needs you. It needs your gifts. It needs your contribution. It needs your voice. That's what this book is about. It's about sharing with the universe all that you're entitled to have. Every one of you can be that wise because you were born that way. It's simply an act of remembering and being more generous with who you are. So, share it with your kids, share it with your mother, and send it to school with your kids. We need to create a bigger space to welcome our wisdom, and that's what this book is about. Bring it into your home, and bring it home to you.
