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Can we ever be truly free?

I have been sitting with that question since hearing Dr Gabor Maté speak in London. He spoke about childhood, attachment, the body and the experiences that shape us: what we were praised for, what was allowed and which parts of us seemed to threaten our belonging.

It left me wondering how much of the life we are living today is genuinely being chosen by us—and how much is being chosen through a lens we learned to wear long ago.

As babies, our needs and responses are immediate. We reach, cry, turn away and make ourselves known. But somewhere along the way, many of us learn that self-expression has consequences. Do not be too difficult. Do not ask for too much. Do not become angry. Be good, amenable and easygoing. Preserve the relationship. Keep the peace.

For a child who depends upon attachment, this adaptation makes complete sense. Belonging is not a luxury; it is survival. Yet the strategy can follow us into adulthood, long after the original conditions have changed. We call it our personality. We say we genuinely do not mind. We rise above anger, soften the boundary and swallow the no—while resentment, tension or exhaustion gathers inside us.

Then one day, self-expression begins to matter more.

We set a boundary. We name what is true. We stop volunteering for the role everyone expects us to play. And because our nervous system remembers that authenticity once risked rejection, even a healthy act of self-loyalty can feel dangerous.

This is the painful choice beneath so many apparently ordinary moments: do I risk disappointing someone else, or do I continue abandoning myself?

Freedom may not mean becoming free of everything that happened to us. We may always have a history, conditioning and a body that remembers. Perhaps freedom begins in the moment we recognise: this happened; this is what I made it mean; this is who I learned to become because of it. Then a new question becomes possible: do I still need to be that person now?

That awareness is not an instruction to blame our younger selves. The adaptation protected something precious. Nor is it a demand to express every feeling at another person. Self-expression can begin privately—with the courage to admit what is actually here. What is true for me today? What wants to come through me? If I did care, what would I choose?

One of the most beautiful parts of the evening came during a question about supporting children through painful circumstances. The response Melissa heard contained three simple invitations: care for yourself, allow their full expression and delight in them.

What if those are also instructions for our own healing?

Can I care for myself and tend to my emotional state? Can I allow the anger, grief, desire, joy, guilt, ambition and mysticism to exist without immediately correcting them? And can I enjoy myself—not merely treat myself as an endless healing project, but become available for my vitality and aliveness?

Perhaps healing is not becoming better at holding pain. Perhaps it is becoming more available for truth, authenticity and life.

This is spiritual intelligence: not collecting more knowledge about why we are the way we are, but developing the capacity to meet our mind, body, emotions, Soul and history consciously enough that we can participate in what happens next.

What happened to you matters. The meaning you made was intelligent. The person you became helped you belong or survive. But what are you doing with your story now?

Join AWAKEN, Melissa’s free three-day live Spiritual Intelligence experience: https://melissa-amos.com/awaken

Learn more about Melissa: https://melissa-amos.com

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

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What if the chapter that feels like a detour is not evidence that you have gone wrong?

What if it is part of what is preparing you to arrive?

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see The Odyssey with a friend. Three hours later, I left the theatre with the feeling that I had witnessed far more than an ancient adventure story. So I went back. The second time, I took a notebook.

Odysseus begins with a destination: Ithaca. He knows where he wants to go, but the journey home refuses to become a straight line. There are storms and monsters, temptation and loss, magical helpers and moments when the way forward disappears completely. Again and again, he has to meet the chapter he is actually in—not the one he thought he should be living.

That is where the myth began to feel like a mirror.

It is easy to believe we are supported when life is flowing. The signs appear, the right people arrive and the ship seems to be travelling directly towards the destination we chose. But what happens to our faith when the feathers stop—or when we are too frightened, tired or disappointed to notice them? What happens when the map disappears and we cannot understand why life is asking so much of us?

We can begin to treat divine guidance like a guarantee: if I am aligned, things will work out in the way I want. If I am supported, the path will be smooth. If something goes wrong, perhaps I have missed the sign, made the wrong choice or somehow fallen off my soul path.

But support does not always look like ease. A sign may be an invitation to pay attention, not a promise of a preferred outcome. The difficult chapter may be developing the strength, wit, resilience or discernment we will need later. The detour may introduce a helper, reveal a truth or return us to a part of ourselves we had left behind.

This does not mean every painful experience was deliberately sent, or that harm should be spiritualised and endured. Some chapters ask us to leave, seek help, set a boundary or name clearly what has happened. Finding meaning is not the same as justifying suffering. Spiritual intelligence asks us to stay awake to that distinction.

Nor is faith the same as passive waiting. Odysseus receives help, but he still has to build the raft. He has to listen, choose, act and sometimes begin again. Perhaps our work is similar: to remain open to guidance without handing over our agency; to notice what life is showing us while still taking the next honest step.

So perhaps the question is not simply, “How do I get home?” Perhaps it is, “Where am I in the Odyssey?”

Am I in the storm, being asked to hold my centre? Am I with the sirens, learning what can pull me away from my true north? Am I on the island, mistaking comfort for belonging? Or am I building the raft—working with the materials available instead of waiting for perfect conditions?

We do not return home unchanged. The person who arrives could not have existed without the journey, and the home we return to may have changed too.

What might you do differently if you knew you were not lost, but navigating a necessary detour? And what might this part of your spiritual journey be asking you to become?

Listen to this episode of Mystic in Training for a reflection on the hero’s journey, faith, divine guidance, discernment and the conscious choices that help us find our way.

Join AWAKEN, Melissa’s free three-day live Spiritual Intelligence experience: https://melissa-amos.com/awaken

Learn more about Melissa: https://melissa-amos.com

Follow Melissa: @themelissaamos

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when the person who helped deepen your spiritual practice also leaves you questioning your own knowing?

In this deeply personal episode of Mystic in Training, Melissa shares the story of a five-year spiritual apprenticeship that contained powerful teaching, genuine magic—and a gradual shift that left her questioning her practices, relationships and inner authority.

After the relationship ended, Melissa discovered that she had carried a hidden agreement into her own work:

What if I lead them wrong?

That fear did not make her more responsible. At times, it made her soften her beliefs, over-explain herself, hesitate around her work and dilute her leadership in an effort never to control another person.

Years later, words written by clients for the Business Ascension Awards reflected something back to her that she had struggled to see from the inside: her work was helping people trust themselves, discover their gifts and find their own rhythm.

In this episode, Melissa explores:

• How a mentoring relationship can contain both valuable teaching and a damaging dynamic
• Why access to supposedly hidden knowledge can make us feel special
• What happens when questioning a teacher begins to feel like disloyalty
• How losing trust in a mentor can also disrupt trust in yourself
• The hidden agreement that made Melissa afraid to lead fully
• The difference between responsible humility and leadership shaped by fear
• Why influence is unavoidable—and what healthy influence should strengthen
• How spiritual guidance can offer a map without replacing someone’s compass
• Why psychological, spiritual and somatic understanding belong together
• The questions that help us assess whether mentorship is strengthening our inner authority

For leaders:

Does my influence make people more dependent on my certainty—or more able to recognise their own?

For anyone receiving guidance:

Is this relationship helping me strengthen my own inner authority?

Over the coming weeks, Mystic in Training will explore Awareness, Discernment and Coherence as Melissa prepares to open AWAKEN, a free three-day live Spiritual Intelligence experience beginning 29 September 2026.

Learn more about Melissa: https://melissa-amos.com

Follow Melissa: @themelissaamos

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

Send us Fan Mail

We can understand the pattern, receive the breakthrough and know exactly what needs to change—then find ourselves standing in the old position again.

In this episode, Melissa explores why insight feels like progress, why our bodies and routines may not immediately catch up, and how the real transformation happens through the uncomfortable practice of returning.

You had the insight.
You understood the pattern.
You found the book, practice, teacher or explanation that made everything click.

So why are you still finding yourself in the old response?

In this episode of Mystic in Training, Melissa explores our attachment to the breakthrough—and the part of transformation that is far less exciting to sell: the follow-through.

Drawing on a simple adjustment to her yoga practice and a recent experience of losing her own centre during a tense situation, Melissa examines what happens when the mind understands a new possibility but the body, routine and protective patterns are still organised around the familiar one.

Inside this episode:

- Why insight can make us feel as though the change has already happened
- The difference between receiving new information and integrating it
- Why familiar physical, emotional and relational patterns return automatically
- What happened when Melissa realised her centre had moved into fear and a worst-case scenario
- How returning to centre created clarity without magically changing the circumstances
- Why discomfort can be the signal that a new pattern needs conscious practice
- The difference between shaming yourself for “knowing better” and compassionately rehearsing a new response
- Why Soul work reveals possibility while the human needs repetition, support and lived experience

This week’s reflection:

Where do you understand the new way but still find yourself automatically standing in the old position?

When you notice it, ask:
If I were implementing the new pattern now, what would I do?

Then take the smallest available action.

Soul Space is where we take insight into our relationships, decisions, businesses, bodies and ordinary lives. Doors close Monday 31 August 2026.

Explore Soul Space: https://melissa-amos.com/soul-space

Learn more about Melissa: https://melissa-amos.com

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

Send us Fan Mail

I wasn't expecting the Daily Mail to become one of my greatest teachers.

When I agreed to share my Invisalign journey, I thought the story would be about how aligning my teeth unexpectedly became the beginning of aligning my life.

Instead, the headline became about obesity and weight loss.

Then came the comments.

Hundreds of opinions from complete strangers about my body, my choices and, indirectly, my worth.

Only... something had changed.

As I sat reading them, I noticed something quietly remarkable.

I didn't feel the familiar pull to explain myself.

I didn't feel the need to defend my decisions.

I wasn't desperately searching for evidence that they were wrong or that I was right.

Instead, I found myself asking a very different question.

What if visibility isn't about learning to tolerate criticism?

What if visibility is actually about becoming so deeply rooted in yourself that criticism no longer requires you to abandon who you are?

That realisation became even more profound as, over the same few weeks, I began publicly sharing my live channeling for the first time. Unsurprisingly, that brought opinions too.

Some people were curious.

Some people were sceptical.

Some people questioned the work entirely.

And once again, I found myself returning to the same place.

Not defensiveness.

Discernment.

Because there is a profound difference between asking,

"Am I enough?"

and asking,

"Is there something here that wants to refine my expression?"

One question comes from fear.

The other comes from alignment.

This week's conversation explores visibility, criticism, self-trust, identity, Spiritual Intelligence and why the inner work always shapes how we meet the outer world.

Perhaps the greatest gift of healing isn't becoming fearless.

Perhaps it's simply becoming someone who no longer walks away from themselves when life gets loud.

✨ Continue the journey in Soul Space – The Home of Spiritual Intelligence

https://melissa-amos.com/soul-space

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https://themelissaamos.substack.com

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

Send us Fan Mail

Have you ever had a moment that felt too perfectly timed to be a coincidence?

A feather appearing exactly when you needed reassurance.

A stranger saying the very words you've been thinking.

A song, a number plate, a bird, a chance encounter that somehow feels deeply personal.

In this episode, Melissa shares one of the most unusual experiences of her life after attending a retreat in Findhorn, Scotland. Finding an eight-inch feather lodged inside her trousers should have been impossible... and yet there it was.

But the story isn't really about the feather.

It's about what happened inside her.

As a psychotherapist, Melissa understands confirmation bias, pattern recognition and our tendency to create meaning. As a mystic, she's spent years experiencing moments that seem to point towards something greater.

So where do we draw the line?

Perhaps the real question isn't whether the universe is speaking to us.

Perhaps it's whether we're paying enough attention to hear it.

This episode explores the beautiful intersection of psychology, spirituality and presence, introducing the idea of Micro Mysticism—the tiny moments that quietly remind us we're part of something much bigger than ourselves.

Read the companion essay:

https://themelissaamos.substack.com/p/the-feather-up-my-trouser-leg?r=2cwz2j&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Soul Space is where mirco mysticism is part of the everyday conversation. Join us here: https://melissa-amos.com/soul-space/

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

Send us Fan Mail

The Spiritual Support Every Business Owner Needs (That Nobody Talks About)

Over the last few weeks, I've had the privilege of speaking with business owners from all kinds of industries.

Some are just starting out. Others are leading established businesses. Some want more visibility. Others want more freedom, more impact or simply to fall back in love with the work they do.

On the surface, their businesses look completely different.

But underneath, I kept noticing the same pattern.

Almost everyone had invested in strategy. They'd worked on sales, marketing, branding, offers, positioning and messaging. Many had also done mindset work and understood the limiting beliefs that had held them back.

Yet there was a clear difference between the people who seemed to be building momentum and the people who felt as though success was always just out of reach.

It wasn't intelligence.
It wasn't talent.
It wasn't even confidence.
It was the level of spiritual support they were receiving.

That observation has stayed with me because I think we've unintentionally separated business from the person building it.

We spend so much time asking What should I do next? that we rarely ask Who is this business asking me to become?

For me, that question changed everything.

Several years ago, after receiving criticism for launching a £22,000 offer, I found myself questioning whether I was even meant to continue. My nervous system was overwhelmed, my mind was spiralling and I seriously considered walking away.

When I entered my Akashic Records, I asked a simple question.

"Why is this so hard?"

The answer that came back has shaped every business decision I've made since.

"Melissa, your business is not meant to keep you safe. Your business is here to help you evolve."

That single sentence completely changed how I viewed challenge.

Instead of seeing obstacles as signs I was on the wrong path, I began to recognise them as invitations into greater capacity, deeper leadership and more authentic expression.

In this episode, I explore why I believe strategy alone is no longer enough.

We need support that helps us develop our discernment, our relationship with uncertainty, our nervous system, our hidden agreements and our connection to something far bigger than ourselves.

Because business isn't simply about creating success.

It's one of the greatest spiritual teachers we'll ever have.

And perhaps the question isn't just...

"How do I grow my business?"

But...

"How is my business trying to grow me?"

We'll explore:

• why business is one of the greatest catalysts for personal evolution
• why your nervous system determines more than your marketing strategy
• the difference between mindset and Spiritual Intelligence
• how your business reflects your hidden agreements
• why coherence creates authentic power
• how spiritual support changes the way we lead, sell, create and serve

If you've been feeling like you're doing "all the right things" but still aren't creating the business you know you're capable of, this conversation may completely change how you see your work.

Because perhaps your business isn't trying to keep you safe.

Perhaps...

it's trying to evolve you.

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms

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When we're facing big decisions, our instinct is often to ask:

Should I stay?
Should I go?
Should I launch?
Should I trust myself?

But what if those aren't actually the questions that matter?

As I prepare to return to Scotland for the final part of Dr Robert Holden's Shift Happens mastermind, I've been reflecting on what has made this experience so transformational.

It hasn't been the answers.
It's been the questions.

In this episode, I explore why the quality of our lives is often shaped by the quality of the questions we ask, how great mentors help us remember our own wisdom rather than giving us theirs, and why asking deeper questions can completely change the direction of our lives.

In this episode we explore:

• Why our minds naturally ask limiting questions
• The difference between information and transformation
• Why the best mentors don't create dependence
• How asking better questions creates better lives
• The questions that have changed my own life this year

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired.

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms