Step into the mystical as Ivo Dominguez, longtime metaphysician, shares his extraordinary journey of “Growing Up Seeing Spirits” with Linda on this episode of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life.

From childhood encounters with helpful spirit friends to deeply felt connections with nature spirits, Ivo Dominguez reveals the powerful and sometimes challenging realities of living in communion with the unseen world. Guided by both caution and encouragement from his grandmothers, his early life was filled with magical—and very real—interactions, helping him recognize the importance of embracing, rather than suppressing, his experiences.

Here are three inspiring takeaways from this episode:

🔹 Trust Your Experiences: Ivo Dominguez emphasizes the energy of paying attention—when we acknowledge the subtle realms, we attract supportive, guiding spirits into our lives. Embrace your awareness and let it empower your spiritual journey.

🔹 Practical Steps for Spirit Communication: Open the channels, not just with loved ones, but with nature spirits, ancestors, and guides. Ivo Dominguez shares simple yet powerful exercises—use visualization, sensory memory, and intentional rituals to create a safe and sacred space for dialogue beyond the veil.

🔹 Discernment and Protection: Spiritual connection should be built on trust and mutual respect. Ivo Dominguez reminds us to observe, test, and validate messages, use protection when needed, and always close your sessions with gratitude and clarity.

This episode is an invitation to honor your own mystical perceptions and cultivate a wise, joyous relationship with the spirit world. Discover the tools and wisdom to enrich your life on every plane of existence. Don’t miss this compelling conversation with Ivo Dominguez—and awaken to the wonder all around you!

 

 

Transcript:

Ivo Dominguez:
You incarnate and all the planes at once and the veils that are separations in your aura are literally the veils between planes of reality. You are already in all the planes at once.

Announcer: Welcome to Exploring the Mystical side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi. This is Linda Lang from www.ThoughtChange.com. We are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. Today, we have Ivo Dominguez with us. Ivo is a longtime metaphysician, an author, a Wiccan, a pagan. Welcome, Ivo.

Ivo Dominguez:
I’m delighted to be here.

Linda Lang:
You have walked such a rich spiritual path. What called you to connect with the spirit realm and open dialogue with them?

Ivo Dominguez:
I’m going to say I didn’t have a choice. Truthfully. I was one of those kids that had a lot of imaginary friends. But over time, I discovered most of them were not imaginary friends. They were spirits of one form or another. And I remember being quite surprised when I discovered that most of my friends, when they talked about their imaginary friends, it truly was imaginary. And I was the sort of child that loved to go outside and read because I love being in nature and I loved reading. And I think being in that state of mind when you’re relaxed and reading made it very easy for “things” to approach.

And I paid attention. And when you pay attention to something, your energy follows that attention. So that I attracted a host of helpful beings. And I know that nowadays there’s this trope of children getting in trouble with imaginary friends that are really spirits, but I will say that all that came to me were actually quite helpful. I had two sides of a family living with me at the same time. I had both grandmothers for a short time, like maybe like a year and a half, both grandmothers lived with us, which is in one way a blessing, in other ways, pretty challenging. One of them was basically, “that’s of the devil. Don’t do it.” And the other was, “I absolutely believe you. I think it’s wonderful. Be careful who you tell.” which was very good advice. And later, I did find out that she had her own experiences.

So, of course, there were reasons why she was warning me to not be too free about telling that. I truly believe that these were real, especially as I got older and I had an encounter with the spirit of the death of my grandfather. We were visiting my grandfather after they’d made moved out and found a place to live, et cetera. And I was absolutely certain that he was going to die the next day. And he did. He died in the evening and at breakfast, he was not at the table. Except when I looked at his chair, he was sitting there… but he wasn’t sitting there. So I had a lot of experiences when I was a child.

So your two options, at that point, are to try to push it away or to try to embrace it and to try to normalize it into your life so that it wouldn’t become a problem. I couldn’t put it out of my mind forever. It takes too much energy to ignore things that you feel and that you experience in a direct way. So I said, “No, I’m just going to pay attention. I’ll just be wise about who to share my impressions with.” Now., it wasn’t just human spirits. There was a walk that I always would choose to do, to walk to school when I was a child.

And I took the long way because it took me past this forest that I really loved. And I just had this strong emotional connection to that chunk of forest. Well, one day I’m walking to school and I get there and they have bulldozed it all down. They’re putting up houses. It hit me hard. And then I felt this rumbling. And from my perception, out of the earth rose up this giant figure. And they flailed their arms and there was this mournful cry that came out. And then they went back down into the soil. And for me, that was like, “Oh, crap, that’s the spirit of that forest.”

So from that point on, I also began to be more open to experiencing connection to different other kinds of spirits. So it really wasn’t so much “how did I get into it?” It’s a “how did I find people to teach me about it?” And that was actually the harder piece of it. But I could find books on spirituality and magic and mediumship and all those things and do the best reading that I could.

But there’s only so far that books can take you. And I was putting out the word internally. You know, I’d read in lots of places, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Blah, blah, blah… And sometimes that’s true. But I have a reason why I don’t think it works as well as it used to.

Linda Lang:
That’s interesting.

Ivo Dominguez:
I think most people listening will agree that in the last, like, three, four decades, the number of people that are being drawn to spirituality, metaphysics, a more expansive version of reality, it’s been like a population explosion. That’s good. Sort of. The problem is that it takes years of experience and access to teachings for somebody to become a Teacher with a capital “T.” We can all learn from each other. That’s true. And there are plenty of people that have the capacity to teach excellent workshops about specific things that are their work.

But there are very few people that have the experience and the background to function as Teachers, capital T, that nudge you, guide you, push you to learn all the things you need to learn, including things that don’t excite you, but they’re really things that you need as part of your background. So the number of people looking for this kind of work versus the speed at which we can create new teachers, there’s a gap. So most of the teachers that I know, that in my book count as Teachers with a capital T, they have no more room on their dance card. Their plates are full. They can teach workshops, they can go to retreat centers and conferences and whatnot. But taking on actual mentorship of people, there’s only so many people before something has to give.

Linda Lang:
Yeah, the quality of the teaching would suffer.

Ivo Dominguez:
And also in this kind of work, there’s also the problem that the teacher has to… Do you know the term compassion fatigue? Well, it takes emotional energy to be the kind of compassionate kind person you need to be when you’re a teacher of this kind of work. And there’s also a certain cost when you have to say something that’s corrective or directive. So you know, you also can’t go at it full bore all the time.

Linda Lang:
So somehow you managed to find the teachers you needed.

Ivo Dominguez:
I absolutely did. And I will say that part of it is timing, because timing is everything. I began to look for teachers in the late 70s and began to find them in the early 80s. And that was before the big population bubble had happened. We didn’t have the Internet yet. We didn’t have as many metaphysical bookstores. So it was fairly early in the game. So part of it was the luck of when I was born.

It’s not really luck, but when I was born helped and my interest brought me to the place where I needed to be. And you are a minor; no coven/teacher/organization worth their salt is going to have anything to do with you until you, you know, become an adult. So he said, “But I will do this much for you. Next week bring back a pile of self addressed stamped envelopes which was the currency prior to the era of the Internet for getting plugged into things.” And so I gave him a pile and he said, “I will make sure that you get our quarterly newsletter and when you’re of age, come look us up.”

Linda Lang:
It was a different world back then.

Ivo Dominguez:
It was a different world in a variety of ways. And in some ways, things were more difficult. But on the other hand, some things were easier.

Linda Lang:
So the path did appear beneath your feet.

Ivo Dominguez:
It did. It took a while to find people that were close enough or that were an X number of hours away so that it was still a reasonable thing to. Because if you can’t see somebody on a regular basis or a group on a regular basis, that begins to lose its efficacy. So…

Linda Lang:
Yet, you could say that a lot of support is needed on the path. Especially when you first start out.

Ivo Dominguez:
Absolutely. Especially when you’re not sure if it’s really happening or if you’re just being loopy.

Linda Lang:
You did say one thing that I thought was very interesting in your story, when you met the spirit of the forest. So this was actually a collective, right? Because each tree would have a spirit.

Ivo Dominguez:
Nature spirits are composite beings. My personal take on it is that they are made out of the life and consciousness of every flavor of being in that particular glen, mountain, hill, river, lake, expanding out in size. And that includes the plant life, the animal life, and also, frankly, the elemental life. The energies that are not organic but make up the world: fire, water, earth and air and spirit. But here’s the thing where it comes to communication with them, they don’t have names or language in the same way that we do. But when it is necessary, they can interface with us in a way that gives us the impression of language and identity. You know, identity is a very slippery thing when you’re made out of the whole place.

Linda Lang:
So rather than expecting a conversation in English, you might almost like get a download that has emotion in it and pictures or symbols.

Ivo Dominguez:
Depending upon what kind of thinker you ar… and people vary dramatically in terms of what their internal life is… it may be more visual, it may be more auditory, it may just be gut feeling. It may be something that… And when you say download, I always like to add the idea that when you get a download, really it’s more like a zip file and it takes a while to unpack it. And patience. They may have to fish around to find a way to connect with our consciousness.

What I find is that if you want to make it easier for them to do that as a warm up exercise or in the middle of it, I will say a couple of lines of poetry in my head. I will remember a bit of a song. I will do some easy math. I will visualize colors. And what am I doing? I’m lighting up all the parts of my consciousness that correspond to different kinds of thought or imagery so to make it easier for them to find the places so they’ll know which buttons to poke out in me.

Linda Lang:
That’s brilliant.

Ivo Dominguez:
And it’s simple. Also, have you ever had an animal companion, dog or cat?

Linda Lang:
I have.

Ivo Dominguez:
Have you noticed how when somebody walks into the home that also has critters, that the animal seems to know that that person is a critter person? I think it’s because we learn to communicate with them. And I know I talk to my dog, and then also I will say the words that I think that she’s thinking back. And at first that’s just a playful game, but eventually you begin to hold your head in the right headspace to tune into them, and it becomes more like real communication. Honestly, the same thing happens with the spirits, whether they’re spirits of people or land or other kinds of beings. And eventually it turns into dialogue. I think the other thing is, “Could you say that again? Could you say that again?” Or, “I only caught part of that.” Sometimes you have to ask them to repeat it because their rate of communication may not be your rate of understanding.

Linda Lang:
I so get that. And it’s especially good if they can kind of shift how they’re communicating it just a little bit. So you get a different nuance.

Ivo Dominguez:
So here’s the thing, it is intimate. It requires a certain amount of vulnerability to have that kind of communication. And sometimes when people realize that it must be connecting to me internally or it must be reading my mind, the less we are worried about feeling safe or about feeling concerned about exposing some part of ourselves, the more it flows. Because, honestly, we clamp down. A lot of times, we clamp down before the communication really gets going.

I think that we spend, as human beings, a lot of time monitoring how we are perceived by others and how we perceive ourselves. And then when you add something in, that has a completely different way of understanding who you are.

Linda Lang:
Maybe a more truthful way of understanding.

Ivo Dominguez:
Yes. Though I think that that when… that one of the problems with spirit communication that is insurmountable, so you just have to do the best you can, is we don’t have the bandwidth to actually understand or hold in our head some of the things that different beings may have. So that there’s no value in focusing on, “I should be able to understand every part of it,” or “I should be able to grasp all of it.” And it’s like, no, be grateful for whatever amount comes through.

Linda Lang:
That’s been my experience too, that sometimes it’s so incredibly more than how I normally think, and I’m probably just getting like a little bit of the communication, right?

Ivo Dominguez:
And the more expansive the being, the larger the being, especially if they’re in the category of divinities… And English is really bad about this because when we talk about gods or goddesses or divine beings, it immediately goes to the largest possible versions. Because most of us were raised, and even if you weren’t raised in one of the big monotheistic faiths, certainly the culture is permeated with those ideas. And they only talk about God or gods or goddesses, but God in particular is the whole universe. And in many cultures, there are divinities that are only as big as that mountain over there or that lake over there.

So they come in every shape or size. And the more expansive and universal they are, the harder it is for us to connect with them in a way that results in that kind of meaningful communication that’s satisfying for both sides. So one of the things I recommend to people is don’t aim for the largest version of whatever it is you’re trying to connect with. Aim for the one that’s the right size to talk to you.

Linda Lang:
Because we can get into our egos about connecting with some of these high-powered

Ivo Dominguez:
Well known, famous beings.

Linda Lang:
Absolutely. So, Ivo, when you teach people how to speak with spirits, it’s not just crossed over loved ones per se?

Ivo Dominguez:
No, no, it’s not. And I’m going to say that in the same way that people vary in their capacity for musical talent, we vary in which things we’re good at. But anybody can sing. I absolutely believe that anybody can sing. Anybody can sing well enough to feel it in their heart and feel energy, right? So you may not end up being a medium or a channeler or somebody that works with spirits in another way, but you will be able to open enough so that it is valuable for your personal life and practice. So that’s the first thing. The first expectation is this will be useful for enriching my life and perhaps, if I’m lucky, perhaps the life of a couple of other people around me.

So if you go from that perspective, that begins to open the door because you’re not expecting yourself to be open to more. But the other bit is, the more you become aware of your senses and the more you become present in your physical body, the easier it is to actually get coherent and lucid information. So, for example, I may say, you know, here, hold an orange in your hand and I’d like you to sniff it. I’d like you to run your fingers over it and feel the texture. Get out your glasses or magnifying glass. I want you to see the pores on the skin. I want you to feel the weight of it, feel how it squeezes a little bit. And I want you now to set it aside on the table.

And I want you to recreate in your mind the smell, the color, the texture, looking at it from a distance, close up, have an entire whole memory of it. Because the more you become comfortable with believing… and by the way, if you are one of those people that doesn’t do visualization in their head or doesn’t have an internal monologue voice, and because people are built differently, we’re wired differently. I have a friend that I suggested that they create a little three ring binder with pictures of flowers and hillsides and scraps of poetry. For another person. I said, “I want you to be doodling and scribbling the whole time. Not because you’re going to do automatic writing, but I want you to engage your consciousness, but more importantly in your capacity to perceive.” And if it means perceiving in the moment and noticing that that page, “Well, normally that, that looks like a blue to me, but today it looks green. And now I’m seeing a little wiggle in it.”

My point is, you can learn to use your senses as the door into listening for them. The other bit is that if it’s a being that is known to others, whether that’s a nature spirit or a fae or an angel, or a god or goddess or whatever, then you also have the capacity of using the cultural lore about it as a way of tuning into that particular channel, if you will.

Linda Lang:
They can use that mythology to connect with us too, and get their message across.

Ivo Dominguez:
So humans build beautiful temples, mosques, synagogues, cathedrals, icons, statuary. We create music. There’s a whole range of cultural artifacts that are created in support of spiritual expression. Mandalas, you know. You name it, right? Those don’t just exist as physical objects. The amount of time and energy that the creatives that created them put into it still exists as an imprint elsewhere. And you can decide what you want to call that, whether it’s the astral or the Akashic Record or none of the above and all of the above. But it still exists as constructs made of energy.

And every person that is still experiencing those images or those words or those stories is reinforcing it, so that there are temples made out of energy that are frankly more comfortable for them to visit than the ones made out of stone. And energy calls to like. Like calls to like. So that when we tune into what other humans have done to communicate with this being, and you’re standing in that mental space and in that alternate plane where that work exists, then you’re lit up like the spotlight on you, which makes it easier for those beings to notice, “Oh, that one’s trying to get my attention.” So one of the values of using the cultural richness – both the physical stuff and the energetic stuff that’s built up around it – is that not only does it allow you to tune in, but they know to look if somebody is doing those things or being in those places.

Linda Lang:
Now, you use the term beyond “the veil” a lot. Can you define the veil for us?

Ivo Dominguez:
I’m going to define it in three different ways. Simplest one is the idea of the veil being the veil that is drawn to obscure what the, what the Universe beyond the physical looks like. And there’s the classic medieval image of the guy that’s crawling on all fours and pushing through the ring of the outer stars and discovering what’s beyond. But the first level of the veil is it’s simply the world around us is real, but it’s not complete. I kind of get tired when everybody says, “Oh, everything…

time’s an illusion, reality’s illusion,” blah, blah, blah. You know, I get what you’re saying when you say that, but realistically, isn’t it truer to say that it’s incomplete because it’s not that the thing you’re experiencing isn’t real. It’s just not the whole story. So the first thing is the idea of the veil that covers and obscures the world of energy and consciousness beyond the physical. That’s one way of looking at it. Let’s look at it another way. There are other realities that overlap with ours where other sorts of energies and beings live. Okay.

Here’s the one I’m going to bring up. Imagine our physical body. And most people have encountered some idea of there being layers of energy that surround the physical body, layers of the aura. There’s lots of words that people use for these divisions. And it goes from the full density here to less and less dense, higher frequency. There’s lots of ways that people talk about it. Truth is, I think that when you incarnate, you incarnate on all the planes at once. And the veils that are separations in your aura are literally the veils between planes of reality.

Because you have a physical body, you have an astral body, you have an emotional body, you have a mental body. You already exist in all those places. Now it’s anchoring, and anchored, and following your physical body as you walk in this incarnation. But you are already in all the planes at once. And if you can find a way to change your focus of perception so that you are moving through the veils of your own aura, you can change which place you are actually viewing or experiencing or where your focal point of consciousness is. So the planes of reality are divided by a membrane, a veil. Even though I will say that when it gets down to this level, down close to Earth, it’s pretty durable. But when you get to the higher up. Or if you don’t like up/down as a metaphor, more expansive.

When you get to the more expansive ones, it’s there and it’s not there. It’s like if you pour oil into water and you have an inch of oil and an inch of water, you can see a boundary between the two very clearly. You can wiggle it a little bit. You can see the boundary of jiggle, even though there’s not really anything there, but the way that light passes through it changes, it refracts there so that it becomes a less durable veil as you rise upwards. But it’s, but it still marks the difference between one kind of time and a different kind of time, the one kind of consciousness and a different kind of consciousness. So that the veil can mean a lot of different things. There are also people say, “I don’t believe in this veil thing.” Or people say, “Oh, at this time of year, the veils between the worlds get thin.”

Well, I’m going to say, ‘Yes, and…” It is true,” but I’m also going to say the veils get thin at sunrise and sunset. The veils get thin at noon and midnight. It’s not a binary. It’s a matter of degree. Is it easier if you’re first beginning to choose those liminal spaces or liminal times? Yeah, absolutely. And when you’re learning something, don’t make it any harder for yourself than it has to be. So take advantage of it.

But indeed, have you ever seen people in old movies where they’re passing their hands over a crystal ball or a bowl view in and whatnot? And a lot of times nowadays people go, “Well, that’s just, you know, theatrics.” Well, yes, and not. Nowadays, people mostly think it’s theatrics and that’s all they’re doing. But realistically, in the best of all possible worlds, over that crystal ball, over that scrying mirror, whatever, what you’re actually doing is moving in your energy and trying to literally push aside the veils. You’re actually trying to navigate the veils. And so originally it was meant to do something, and then it eventually, for lack of teachers of scrying techniques, turned into that’s just a thing people do.

Linda Lang:
You know, I almost understand it like if we’re not seeing all the information, it’s like we have our blinders on and we’re just seeing a very narrow focus that if we can open that up a little bit, so much more information.

Ivo Dominguez:
And you don’t have to do it all at once. What I like to compare it to is a lot of times people, when they go outside, especially out in nature, you actually have to be out in the dark for a while before your night vision kicks in and you can see the stars and you can navigate outside by moonlight. If you just came in from the bright house, you’re not seeing because you haven’t acclimated yet. And it really is an acclimation process and it requires somebody to remind you, you know, be patient.

Linda Lang:
Do you think everyone gets messages from that spirit world, whether they know it or not?

Ivo Dominguez:
All the time. I’ll give you a little example. You’ve probably been in landscapes that are identified as powerful or special landscapes. Maybe there’s a special pond or a rock outcropping or a large old tree or something hill that has a history attached to it. And when people go there, they sense something. And how do you think people found those in the first place? I think that they were guided to them. And the thing is, when we have something pop up in our consciousness, most of us only become aware of what’s going on over there when it pops to the level of waking consciousness, when we have it as words or a little urge to start moving in that direction.

But something sent the message, you should go over there. Which part of you decided that you should go over there? Well, the parts of you that are deepest and non-verbal are the ones that are most able to receive information from beings that don’t rely on representational language like English or whatever. So I think we’re being nudged all the time. Most of the messages that people respond to, people just assume that it’s their own thought.

Linda Lang:
I think the same goes for writers and music composers.

Ivo Dominguez:
Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, it’s coming from somewhere that’s outside of, you know, we, a lot of people just hang on white knuckle to the steering wheel of consciousness. And you drive better when your hands are relaxed. Your creativity comes forth when you’re not forcing it out.

Linda Lang:
So do you have any tips on how we can know the difference? What’s coming from our own mind, or our own ego, and what’s maybe something we’re receiving?

Ivo Dominguez:
I’ll give you one of the ones that I consider a big warning sign. If it is telling you to do something that you know to be factually wrong, don’t do it. And people go, well, “What about faith?” And “What about this …?” Like, I’m sorry, you should treat the spirits the same way that you should treat human beings. Trust is developed by observation and, and experience about how someone is and whether their ideas were reliable. If something comes through, ask yourself, is it factual? Is it testable? Is it something that I’ve heard of before? Is it something that immediately puts up any red flags? No.

The other bit is beings vary in size, right? Some are not that much bigger or older than us, and some are vast and infinite. So some of them may be chatty with you and talk to you like a friend. And those are the ones that are closer in, if you will, in age and size to you.

But I am always cautious. If something is speaking too much like my deepest fears or my best hopes, I’m going to test those to see if they’re accurate. The other bit is I will ask my friends that are sensitive and this requires acquiring a pool of people around you is like, when I’m talking to this being, did my energy change? Did you notice that there was anything else in the room with us? Because that also is a testing point. And by the way, if it is good information, bravo. Maybe what’s decided to happen is you’re allowing information from your higher self to come through, but you’re not ready to believe that’s true. So you’ve got to believe that it’s some kind of angel or spirit or something. And, and you know, as long as it’s good information. But my point is it’s the information and the emotional content that is the thing to be watchful of.

The other bit is don’t do something for a being unless they’ve proven themselves. It’s kind of like if somebody asks me to do something, if it’s low risk, I’m going to try that or I’ll do that for you. And sometimes it’s ridiculous. I was told by a being once, “Can you please move that rock from that side to about 200ft forward on the right side? Could you please do that? Please, please, please, please, please.” It was like very insistent and I said, “Well, it’s not that big a rock. It’s not that far to go. Yeah, I can do this.” So I did.

And then as soon as I put the rock down, oh, the energy felt so much nicer in that part of the park. So apparently for some reason that rock needed to be moved because it was messing with the flow of energy in that spot. And I got immediate confirmation. If I hadn’t gotten any confirmation, I could have still walked away from it and said, well, know, didn’t cost me anything really. But if it’s something like, you know, you need to change careers. If my best friend told me that, I would still think it through.

Linda Lang:
Don’t jump off the cliff.

Ivo Dominguez:
Contacting spirits is not that different than contacting new friends on the Internet.

Linda Lang:
Do you think people really need protection?

Ivo Dominguez:
Yes, depending on what they’re doing. For example, one of the few things that I actually believe in, almost like an article of faith, is the bell shaped curve, the normal probability curve. And what I mean by that in this case is that most human beings are mostly decent, though on either extreme. There are some human beings that are really remarkably good, and then there are some human beings that are like really remarkably terrible to other human beings and enjoy cruelty. And you know, they exist. Most of them are not at the extremes. I think most spirits that we’re likely to encounter, and there’s a wide range of possibilities, are somewhere in that middle range. And some of them are really awesome and some of them are really terrible.

There are spirits that are awful, though. I’m going to say I prefer to think of it as pathology rather than evil, but it still results in the potential for harm. So there are things that are cruel and avaricious and all those other fun things. Now when people get themselves in trouble. Like as a, for example, I had a friend… actually it’s happened more than once where they were dosed with a drug while they were out at a nightclub and terrible things happened to them. And in that state where they were intoxicated and also violated, something decided to attach to them. And there’s lots of good reasons why that would have been the most terrible and vulnerable moment.

Linda Lang:
Something energetic.

Ivo Dominguez:
Something energetic attached to them. Yeah, and, and that took a while to remove. And now, here’s the thing, for a while, that person also had to wear some, some protective stuff to keep them protected. Why? Here’s the thing, even if something is removed, disconnected from the person’s energy, if for a time there is an afterimage or an imprint…. and unfortunately, if they keep poking at it and thinking about it, is it still there? Is it still there? “It’s still there?” is just as good as saying, come on back.

Linda Lang:
It calls it back.

Ivo Dominguez:
Sometimes the protection is like a band aid to temporarily keep something clean so it doesn’t get reinfected. But then there’s also the need for protection that convinces you that you are safe and are not susceptible anymore, because otherwise that memory of it, that imprint of it in your memory and in your energy until it smooths over is going to potentially invite it or something else.

But I will say that the Universe has many more things that are the equivalent of astral ticks and mosquitoes than there are demogorgons and demons. Most of the time, whatever is plaguing a person is small and mean. But we can convince ourselves. And the problem is that once we get into that mindset, it’s easy to draw additional problems. So protection matters. But nine times out of 10, you don’t need big protection. And honestly, I would say doing too much protection invites other problems. But you do need protection in some settings.

Linda Lang:
So how can we strengthen our energetic boundaries and still be open to higher guidance?

Ivo Dominguez:
I am a big believer in creating a process or protocols or steps that you repeat when you do any kind of communication work. One of the things I mentioned earlier is that humans have limited bandwidth. There’s only so much we can juggle at once. So whenever we have patterns or protocols, a technique that we’ve done again and again, it’s like offloading a certain amount of the workload so that we can actually have the leftover energy for other things. So, for example, it may involve some kind of process where you reset yourself and reset your boundaries and energy and find your center. And basically the equivalent of an athlete warming up so that you are ready to do things and are not likely to sprain or strain yourself. If you have anything that you think of as beings or part of you that. That has your back that is protective of you or can be your minder, if you have a spirit, a God, a goddess, a being, your higher self, whatever that you have invited to be present and cover your back while you do this, to watch for you while you do this, then that saves you on multiple levels.

People say, well, I don’t need to invite them or tell them. They know. It’s like, no. The beings that I think of as my best helpers, guides, teachers, et cetera, respect my autonomy, respect my free will. And unless I specifically have asked them, they’re going to go. Well, they didn’t ask me. I don’t want to violate their space. So always invite help and then follow whatever protocol you use to call, reach out.

And also, more importantly, have a way that this is my symbolic action for closing and ending and shutting down. You do a cool down period to make sure you’ve actually closed up all your centers and didn’t leave yourself open to keep perceiving. Because then it might not even be the spirit you just talked to. May be that you go, go out to dinner with friends and suddenly like, oh, there’s other things at this restaurant. You didn’t shut down after the ritual, did you?

Linda Lang:
It’s like leaving the door open, right?

Ivo Dominguez:
Or the TV on, and the radio on, and your computer streaming whatever it was streaming.

Linda Lang:
So might you have a little exercise that you could lead us through?

Ivo Dominguez:
Yeah, it’s a simple one. It’s a simple one. So first decide what it is that you want to communicate with. And it could be an ancestor, it could be a goddess, it could be a nature spirit, it could be whoever the spirit of place is for one of your preferred parks or places of beauty in the world. So you’ve picked a thing right now. I want you to make a little altar. Now, that little altar may be a couple of pictures printed out from the Internet and, or maybe a piece of jewelry or a little statue or a little, little prayer card or an icon, whatever it may be, but something or an acorn from that forest, something that is a image or tangible representation of that thing. So you’ve got these in front of you, and I want you to look at them.

I want you to think about why you chose them. I want you to take a couple of deep breaths, bringing in energies with each breath, and then blow energy across them and see them glow, see them light up. You set a little beacon to attract the attention of what it is that you’re trying to communicate with. So far, so good. And then you can just sit quietly and meditate and listen. But if you want to take one more step, and I hope you do, then imagine them, whatever that is standing in front of you, maybe five feet away, six feet away. And even if it’s, even, even if it’s a place, then what would the spirit of place look like? Would it have leaves for hair? Would it have hair? That’s a waterfall. You know, depending on what it is, a God or goddess, a place or whatever.

Literally construct the image of that being in front of you and see it as sharply as possible. And if you’re one of those people that doesn’t visualize well, then you’ve written it down. Keep reading the description that you’ve written for them again and again, because every time you repeat it, some part of you is building up the energy. So then when you’re ready, you get up and you go to where that image is that’s five, six feet in front of you and step into it so that it is surrounding you, draped on you like a mantle, like wings or a blanket or whatever is you want to imagine. And then listen while you’re inside that representation of its energy, because you have given it something that resonates to them, is shaped like them, and given them the way to communicate to you in energy that’s partly your understanding of them and partly your own energy. And then when you’re done, you step back out of it. You make sure that you do something like, “I’m just me, only me. I’ve left behind anything that isn’t me.

May all those things that are me return. May all those things that are not me depart.” Whatever simple affirmation… And then say thank you a bunch of times because you experience something, they experience something. And thank you is a good way to also help turn off the process. We’ve come to the conclusion I’m thanking and giving gratitude. And then jot some notes down if you can and repeat it again because it’s lovely whatever happened the first time, but most things require practice before it really clicks in.

Linda Lang:
And it feels like it would develop relationship.

Ivo Dominguez:
Yes, it would develop relationship. And just like I said, treat them like people. And it’s all about the relationship you form. And that means consistency, that means communication, you know all the things.

Linda Lang:
Wonderful to have you here today, Ivo. Where can we send people who want to know more?

Ivo Dominguez:
Easiest way to get a hold of me is my website and it’s just my whole name, www.IvoDomingezJr.com and I list my books there, which conferences I’m attending, and there’s also a bunch of links to content that might be interesting to you.

Linda Lang:
And your latest book is a reprint of Spirit Speak.

Ivo Dominguez:
Spirit Speak came out about 19 years ago and it’s about 12,000 words longer than the old one. It covers a broad territory. It covers everything from animal spirits, plant spirits, ancestors, gods, goddesses, methods for connecting with gods and goddesses. A whole chapter on, I’m going to call it, first aid techniques for attending to the kind of boo boos that can sometimes happen when we’re doing this lovely but strenuous work sometimes, of communicating with spirits or reaching out to them.

Linda Lang:
Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you so much for being my guest.

Ivo Dominguez:
It was a delight. It really was.

Linda Lang:
And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical side of Life. You will find all of our conversations on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform. Come visit me at www.ThoughtChange.com pick up your copy of Learning to Listen. Expand your muscle of receiving information and messages, and we will see you again next time. Bye for now.