Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

It's that time again where I answer a bunch of your questions instead of doing one in-depth reading. And if you stick around till the end, I'm going to give you just a little bit of advice about how to ask a question that actually gets answered on the podcast. You know what I'm saying? So stick around till the end for that.

But let's start off with what I think is a really great question, which is, what does it mean to surrender? The questioner says, "I find myself perplexed by the idea of surrender. I often hear the concept associated with manifestation, but I don't understand how to enact it or authentically trust in positive outcomes. In my personal life and this moment of national global crisis, what does it mean to surrender?"

So I love this question because I also have had a really hard time with surrender, and I think a lot of people do. So let me speak to it. When we speak of surrender on a spiritual level, it doesn't mean what it would mean in a war, like giving up. What it means is releasing control and attachment. And so this questioner says, "I don't know how to trust in positive outcomes." The truth of the matter is surrender doesn't mean that you trust in positive outcomes. It just means that you trust. You trust that you don't need to hold on or direct things in order to have them go well, and they don't need to go well in order for you to be okay or even to thrive.

Surrender is a spiritual attitude of nonattachment, and nonattachment does not require that you have faith and trust in something positive. It does mean that you are not attached to your ideas, your hopes, or your fears, whether they're positive or negative things. Being too attached to a specific outcome or idea can get in the way of surrender and presence and openness.

In this time where there's so much crisis happening in the world, as you say, nationally and globally, and as the pressure of that kind of finds its ways into the nooks and crannies of our relationships with all people, it's important to stay connected to your values, to know what it is that you value, what it is that is important to you, and to, to the best of your ability, live in ways that reflect that. And that is actually separate from the concept of surrender. If you are living in alignment to the best of your ability, in integrity with yourself and your values to the best of your ability—and when I say to the best of your ability, I mean you're not always going to do a great job. You're sometimes going to mess up. Things are going to happen, and you're not going to be able to even come close to your best. The best of your ability means you set the intention; you do your best to follow through.

So, if you are doing those things and you surrender—you release attachment—then it doesn't matter, ultimately, what you feel at noon today, what happens tomorrow afternoon. Those things are not conclusive of your value or of what's going to happen next. They're simply things you're experiencing in this moment. And as you practice being present in the moment and you practice not having a judgment or even too ironclad of a narrative in the moment to whatever it is that's happening, you are in the practice of surrender.

The reason why the concept of surrender comes up so much with manifestation work, which—as a gentle reminder, I am recording this during Eclipse Season, and we are not manifesting. We are not manifesting during Eclipse Season. That's poorly starred. But back to the question, the reason why surrender comes up so much with manifestation is because when we are truly opened up and we allow the Universe to use its own divine discretion, things will show up at a different pace than you would have planned. They will look and feel different than you might have imagined. And that's okay, right?

When we're not so fixated on outcomes, we are closer to a state of surrender. When you are practicing radical acceptance and presence—and I say radical because we are all nurtured to be very attached to outcome and to be really hypervigilant and tracking things all the time. When you are in a state of surrender, you are more adaptable. Your ability to be resilient is stronger. When you are attached or fixated, you kind of put the fix in fixated. You know what I mean? You're too attached. You're not pliable and adaptable. And that can get in the way of your own happiness and your success.

Now, there is a time and an application for all things. But in this time where things are so frightening and so not stable, practicing surrender is ultimately about practicing being present. What are you feeling today? What are your realities today? Can you surrender to the moment and be present? If you feel overwhelmed with the need to do something, to help someone to be a part of a solution, can you, as the expression says, plant where you grow? Can you find something to do to be of support in some small way? Can you find something to do that is constructive, that moves forward progress of something in your personal life, in your own evolution, in the world, for your community? And if the answer is no—you can't do that—can you be okay with that for today, keeping in mind that if your values say, "It's important for me to mobilize. It's important for me to act. It's important for me to act in these varied ways," that you don't confuse giving yourself permission to be where you're at with not challenging yourself to rise to the occasion?

Being able to sort through all of these things is hard, and that's why lots of people don't do it. But it's really good work. We are in transformative times. The astrology of this month is bananas, and it stays bananas for a long time to come. Cultivating the willingness and ability to be spiritually present and spiritually motivated, to practice surrender paired with healthy boundaries, to be a participant in the world and to participate with intention, to participate in ways that reflect what you care about—that's the move. And it can be done from a state of surrender. Surrender is not passive. Surrender takes will and effort. It is an act of love, as is nonattachment. And it's worth exploring.

My next question is called Preparing for Pluto, and it comes from somebody who was born in 1983. So they are 41 right now. The question says, "I recently learned about the weight of Pluto transits through the houses and was floored to see how clearly they've lined up with big themes throughout my life so far. Around the time I turn 60, I will have Pluto transiting my second house. And unless I'm really lucky or become some sort of science experiment, this transit will round out the end of my life. This seems really scary. My question is, should I be scared? Could you give me a little more context so I can start preparing in the most productive way possible?"

Okay. Here's the thing. Astrology is a spectacular tool, and it is possible to see 20 years in advance. It is possible to see 70 years in advance. Depending on your age, that may or may not be practical. However, so many things are going to change in the world—forget in you. Forget in your life. The technology is going to change. The social services are going to change. The world order is going to change. The environment is going to change. There are so many factors that are just social and global and impersonal to you—let alone the radical and meaningful personal change that a person goes through over the course of 20 years— that trying to prepare for something that's going to happen in 20 years or trying to understand astrologically what it all means is a colossal waste of energy and time.

I don't say this to shame you. I say this because everybody does it. When you first start fucking with astrology, you start looking forward. But my general rule is I'm not going to look more than three years in advance. It's hard enough to stay present in life. When we use astrology to future trip over things that are truly inconceivable, like a transit that's going to happen in 20 years, there's really no value in it.

A great thing to think about for my Preparing for Pluto friend, at 41 years old, is your life what you thought it would be at 21? At 21, could you have prepared for 41? Probably not so much, because again, the world changes too much. But, that said, here's the thing that I can tell you as preparation. Live a good life. Live in integrity with your values. Prepare as much as you can financially. Pluto in the second house will help. That'll be helpful.

But when you use astrology to focus, honestly, much more than six months in the future, you're robbing yourself of the present. And the present is your past in a couple of minutes. The present is the foundation for all of your successes and struggles in the future. So tend to the present. Do not worry about astrology that is happening to future you when present you is probably going through transits as well. Pluto's got to be somewhere in your birth chart right now. Focus on the present because that's where you have the most agency and power. And they call it the present because it's a gift. I know that's as cheesy as it comes, but it's true. It's a gift. Don't turn away from it by future-tripping on something that is not in your control and really far off.

My next question is called Why Am I Only Psychic When I'm High? And it says, "A few years ago, I started smoking weed to deal with chronic pain and anxiety. When I'm high, I can see things that are coming, such as seeing my now partner a year before I even met them. After lots of therapies and surgeries, I feel like I need weed a lot less, and I might even be a bit sober-curious. But I'm worried about losing my ability to see."

This is a really great question, and there's actually a pretty common-sensey answer. Nobody is psychic when they're high. Either you have psychic ability or you don't. However, when a person imbibes—and there's only really one reason to imbibe a substance. It's so that you feel differently. So you started off with weed to deal with pain and anxiety, and it made you feel different. And it had this unintended added bonus of helping to open you up to your ability to see into the future. And the questioner wrote the word "see" in quotes, and I am just using your language, "see," to be a seer—that kind of see.

Here's the thing. If you're psychic, you're psychic, and the only reason why you can access that knowledge and that knowing when you're high is because you're really relaxed. That's why. It's just because you're letting go of control. And so there is a little bit of a theme here. Smoking weed, for some people, can help them surrender and release attachment and control. And when that happens, a lot of times, there's these positive benefits that happen, whether it's a lack of pain, an easing of anxiety or depression, or the ability to access your inner knowing and your ability to see into things.

So I want to encourage you, if you're feeling sober-curious, to really explore that while pairing it with mental and emotional support so that you can practice slowing down and getting really present with your feelings and getting really present with your sensations without trying to control or do anything about it and see what emerges. Now, this might mean meditate. But there's a lot of different ways of meditating. There's sitting meditation, but you can take walks and do a moving meditation or use dance or listen to binaural beats. I think I said the word wrong, but hopefully you know what I'm saying.

There are so many ways of shifting the station inside of you that don't require you to imbibe, and they're worth exploring, as long as you don't explore in too goal-oriented a fashion. If you have this ability, which it sounds like you do, it's your ability. You only need to figure out how to create space inside of yourself that is safe and conductive to being able to experience it and access it without the use of a facilitator.

My next question is from Invisible Self, and it says, "I've always found it easy to see and know other people. I've even made it my career to do so. But I feel there is some mental, spiritual, or emotional block to truly seeing and knowing myself. Lately, I've been experiencing this aching feeling to get my head around who I truly am and, as you always say, define my values. What does my chart say about why this is so difficult, and what are some tangible ways I can begin the process?"

Now, Invisible Self was born November 14th, 1991, at 2:05 p.m. in Houston, Texas. So there's two really important things that I'm going to say to answer this question. The first one is that it is very common for folks who find it really easy to "see" and "know"—and both of those words were also in quotations—other people, who really get other people and can read other people—it's really common for folks who have that kind of natural ability to have a hard time knowing or accepting themselves, and there's a reason for that.

Part of that reason is that, for many people, that ability actually comes from having unsafe circumstances in childhood. And those unsafe circumstances train you to become hypervigilant or hypersensitive to the behavior of the people around you, especially of the adults, and being able to know them and to know what they're going to do next is a survival mechanism that is so well adapted to living in the world that it becomes something that can become like second nature.

Now, that might not be your experience, but this is one thing that I think is pretty universal. The ability to really get other people is intuitive. It's intellectual. It can be spiritual. But it's not deeply emotional, even though you may be deeply empathetic and be able to really connect emotionally to others. It is being able to kind of quickly get others that allows a person to understand lots of layers of what's happening with their friends or their clients or their colleagues or whatever. But that's really different than seeing and knowing yourself or seeing and knowing your partner, somebody super close to you, because those forms of knowing are slow and nuanced and riddled with your issues that are inherently deeply emotional.

All of this to say it takes time and patience and kindness to truly know yourself. And that brings me to your birth chart because I think the rest of that stuff is pretty universal. But to your birth chart, you've got the Moon hidden in the twelfth house where it is hard to know what you feel, and it's square to your Sun/Pluto/Mars conjunction in Scorpio in the eighth house. So, again, knowing other people, knowing their motives, knowing their actions, being able to really get them, is a survival mechanism. And it's a powerful one, not one you need to let go of.

However, knowing the self out of a sense of fear or survival or defensiveness doesn't really work. We have to be kind to ourselves in order to create the safety that allows our more vulnerable parts to emerge. Another thing about your chart is you have Venus in Libra intercepted your seventh house. And so this further reiterates that being kind to other people, getting other people, taking care of other people has been a way that you have been able to navigate safety for yourself—and also to be kind to other people and connect with other people and all the things, right?

But there's also an element where it's really about centering others as a way to make yourself feel safe. And all of these external behaviors, all of these coping mechanisms, can sit in opposition to you being able to really nurture and care for yourself. And that's how you get to know yourself.

So the answer is really simple. Sit with yourself alone. Hang out with yourself. Have conversations with yourself. There's lots of ways of doing that. You've got Mercury at the top of your chart in Sagittarius, so maybe you like talking, in which case maybe therapy is a good option. Maybe writing is a better option, or you can have conversations with yourself where you can write out your thoughts and your feelings. You can track your experiences, but then return to your writing, or maybe you record something and return to an audio-recording of your own voice and really listen with empathy and kindness. Get to know yourself in that way. Talk to yourself.

Developing a healthy, kind relationship with the self—it is hard. That's why a lot of people don't do it. And it takes time, and it's not totally organic for most of us. So be patient with your process. You don't have an invisible self. That's not what it is. It's that you have self-defense mechanisms that sit in between you and accessing yourself. So be gentle. Be kind. In that way, you create safety with your adult self and your younger coping-mechanism self. And that safety will allow you, in time, to gently cultivate a more intimate and caring relationship to the self. It's hard work, but it's absolutely worth it.

My next question is called, Am I Gay or Is It Me Calling? It says, "I've been feeling an intense yearning. It mostly feels extremely Queer and sapphic, but my Tarot and astrological transmissions have been pointing to a self-love-type message. I have been engaging in a return-to-self healing mission. Are these Gay dreams a distraction, a temptation to focus outside of myself, or a special treasure rediscovered as I clean self house?"

So there's a couple parts to this question. The first one is, when the Tarot speaks to self-love, I think it's speaking to Gay love because in a homophobic world, self-love is choosing your Queerness if you are Queer. In a misogynistic and transphobic world, choosing the authenticity of your gender, regardless of what it is—whether it's super femme, masc., something in between—it doesn't matter. Choosing what's authentic to you is self-love.

So I wouldn't say it's either/or. If you're feeling super Gay, my advice is get Gay. Explore that. If relating to other people, having sex with other people, talking to other people, flirting with other people, really takes you outside of yourself, then the message that you're getting, according to you, is simply to not stop centering self-love—which in my mind is about boundaries and presence—while you connect in as sapphic a way as you know how.

Gay dreams are great dreams. Don't let your astrological interpretations or your Tarot readings stop you from embracing love and joy and pleasure wherever you can get it, as long as it's not at the expense of your integrity, your values, and your welfare.

And finally, to my last question, called Synastry is Lying—this person says, "Synastry says me and hubby are very compatible. However, we both seem to hate each other most of the time. Over the years, it is getting worse, not better."

So, first of all, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that you guys hate each other. It's just terrible to be in a relationship where you feel lonely and unhappy. To the astrology, listen. There's a couple things. The first thing is I'm not a fan of synastry. I don't use synastry. I don't think it's especially effective. And also, I know a lot of astrologers do use synastry, and they do find it very effective. So I'm not shitting on the practice. It's a perfectly respectable process. It's just not one I use.

I use something called composite charts. So synastry is taking your chart and his chart and looking at the way that he affects you and the way that you affect him. That's not really what relationships are. Relationships are how the two of you come together. What is the synergy between you and this man? And what a composite chart is it's the midpoint between you and him. So your Sun and his Sun—we find the midpoint between the two, and it becomes the Sun of your relationship. Your Moon and his Moon—we find the midpoint of your Moon and his Moon, and then it's the Moon of the relationship, and on and on it goes. And this creates a whole third chart. I find it to be significantly more effective and more accurate. So there's that to play with.

Now, the other thing is, a lot of times, people will use synastry, or astrology in general, as a way to look at compatibility, which I think is a sticky process. If you know you're not happy, if you know you hate each other and you are not compatible, then it doesn't matter what the astrology says. What matters is what you're going to do about it. Do you accept it and continue to live with someone you really don't like and don't get along with, or do you say, "Either I'm going to do my damnedest to work on this relationship and figure out a way to like this person, or I gotta get the fuck out of here"? You always have a third option. You can stay and be unhappy. That is valid and real. It's not my recommendation.

But if, year by year, things are getting worse, do not let the astrology of synastry keep you in a relationship. I have, over the years of my practice, had people come in and they show me the synastry between them and someone they do or don't know—that's the most dangerous thing. If you have a parasocial relationship with somebody, if you don't know somebody personally, never look at your synastry or your composite. It is, I think, a violation, and also, it will not help you. It doesn't truly matter how compatible two people are in theory. What matters is what your actual lived experience is. It is tempting to use astrology as a way to intellectualize or understand ourselves and other people. But when we use that very tool to try to explain away our experience, when we aren't actually cultivating a kind of emotional presence for whatever is, then it's kind of like a—it becomes a junky tool.

And so whether or not synastry is lying I don't know. But I like the title. Whether or not a composite chart would accurately describe the problems you're experiencing I don't know. But I do know that you are clear that you're not happy. And my greatest hope for you is that you give yourself the gift of moving on. And I know that's not always possible. But I am a huge fan of divorce. I'm a huge fan of breakups, not because they feel good—because they don't. They can be really costly in a lot of ways, on a lot of levels. But when a relationship requires that you stop choosing yourself, that you abandon yourself, that you be unhappy, I think it's a great success to say, "No more," and to move on.

And so I don't know enough about your circumstances to emphatically wish that for you, but I'm going to gently wish that for you. And to say that a relationship didn't work out in the end is not a failure. Things work for a while, and then they don't sometimes. That's not a failure. That's evolution. At the end of the day, my perspective as an astrologer is that you and me—all we can do is strive to embody our own birth chart. The best that we can do is be the healthiest, best-adjusted version of ourselves that we know how to be.

So, if you know you're unhappy, you have choices to make. And those choices are yours to make. Breaking up with somebody doesn't mean you're happy when you first break up. I mean, sometimes, you are. Sometimes, you for sure are. But again, breaking up is hard. Divorce is painful and expensive and all the things. And also, this is your one precious, wild life. Don't let astrology or a shitty match for you romantically stop you from choosing life.

Now, I promised you at the very end of this episode that I would share a little bit of hot tips for how to get your question chosen when you write in to the podcast. This is something I've shared much more in depth on my Patreon. You can go find it there. But here's a couple very important hot tips.

The first thing is there is a contact form on my website where you can write in your question to be chosen so that you can get a reading with me or have your question centered in an episode like this. Fill it out, and then double-check it before you hit Send. If you don't include the state or province of your birth, I'm not going to choose your question. If you don't share your pronouns, I'm not going to choose your question. So those are some really simple things you can do.

If your question is very long, I'm probably not going to choose your question. Because I get so many questions for the podcast—thank you very much; I love you all—it is hard for me to read really long questions. Also, I don't need all the backstory in an individual question. If I do need it, I'll ask you during the reading.

The other thing kind of related to that is don't ask multiple questions at once. It becomes too much for a podcast episode reading. So, if you have four different questions, send me four separate emails, and maybe I'll choose one of those questions, but not all of them. Okay?

And then finally—and this one may surprise you—is if your question contains the sentence, "What does my chart say about"—insert anything—I'm never going to choose it, because it's too broad of a question, and it's actually kind of too astrological of a question. I tend to choose questions that are about you, that are about your feelings, your experience, your thoughts, your past, your present, your future. So ask me a question about what you're going through instead of about the astrology of it all, and you're more likely to have your question chosen.

And that's it. Those are your hot tips for writing a question to me through the contact form on my website over at ghostofapodcast.com that actually gets chosen.

As always, I want to thank you so much for joining me here on Ghost. And if you get value from my work and you are interested in learning more with me, join me over on Patreon or check out the classes I have for sale and my website. There are some goodies in there.

All right. Take good care of yourself and others. Bye-bye.