Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic. Our weekly show is here to expand your mind to what's possible, uplift your spirits, help you move forward with confidence and joy, and create a space for your collaboration with the invisible.

Welcome, my friends, to Mind Power Meets Mystic. You are listening to me, Michelle Walters, the hypnotherapist and mind power part of the equation. My podcast co-host, Cinthia Varkevisser, has the week off; she's our show mystic.

I’m doing something a little different this week. I'm going to read a couple of my blog posts. For those of you who don’t know, I have a blog. I don’t write in it that often, but I have a couple of recent stories that I think you're going to want to hear.

The first story we're going to listen to is called "Will AI Replace Your Spiritual Advisor: Who Wins, Astrologers or ChatGPT?" A few weeks ago, a friend of mine shared something she remembered discovering in my Western astrology chart. Over 10 years ago, my friend was reading a book by an astrologer and looking at my chart. She saw that, according to the astrologer’s descriptions of star charts, a very unfortunate pattern was going to repeat in my life. She didn’t bring it up at the time because she thought it would be upsetting to me and unhelpful in our conversation. My friend couldn’t remember the specifics of what she saw in the star chart that she looked at over 10 years ago.

For me, I was desperately curious to uncover if her observation might be true. As soon as I got home, I turned to my computer and thought, I wonder, could ChatGPT have an answer here? Sure enough, it did. I entered my birth details, and in just seconds, ChatGPT was able to whip up my star chart and tell me all kinds of things about how the positions of my sun, moon, and planets might be affecting my life. From what I could tell, the ChatGPT version pretty much matched what I had seen in other astrology calculators.

When I asked about the particular pattern my friend had observed, ChatGPT was not as specific as saying the pattern was there twice, but it did have several data points to share with me that corroborated my friend's interpretation of my astrological destiny. A little creepy and certainly curious. This got me thinking: ChatGPT may be gunning to replace our accountants and our travel agents, but will it replace our hypnotherapists like me or our astrologers? What about psychics, hand readers, meditation teachers, or meditation composers? There are thousands of people who work in these professions. Where is this all going?

I asked ChatGPT a few months ago if it could hypnotize me; it told me no, it couldn’t do that. At least my profession is safe for now. However, when I asked it to write a meditation about a tree, it did so without hesitation. It wasn’t a particularly good meditation about a tree, but it was instantaneous. Score: ChatGPT zero for hypnotizing people, but one for writing meditations.

Can ChatGPT do hand readings? It turns out it can. When you upload a picture of your palm, it will tell you all about your lines and mounds and a fair bit about your lifelines and so forth. It doesn’t go as far as talking about the length of your fingers, and it doesn’t talk about seeing any stars in your palm, which are said to be a sign of highly intuitive people. ChatGPT is not advanced with hand reading, but it has made a start.

My summary as of this point in time, in 2024, is that ChatGPT has already learned how to calculate and observe many of the data points metaphysical practitioners like astrologers and hand readers use, and it can do so quickly and effectively. However, I think that the real pros in these professions will be safe in both the short term and the long term. I can't see people turning to ChatGPT anytime real soon to be hypnotized. I believe good astrologers combine their intuition with the data they see in the star charts to express their findings for their clients, while I believe ChatGPT will improve, and maybe next year we'll be able to talk about finger length or star patterns in palms. The human element of the delivery of a quality hand reading has a lot more value to me than one that prints words to a screen at breakneck speed.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your stories about ChatGPT and what you think will become of these questions and answers in the short and long term.

Well, that’s my story about AI replacing your spiritual advisor. And now for a short break. I want to remind everyone that we have a contest going on. Cinthia and I are giving away one of our sessions for Mind Power Meets Mystic. What’s that, you say? It’s a very special one-hour session where Cinthia does a 30-minute reading, and I do a 30-minute hypnosis. At the end of it, you get your reading with recommendations from Cinthia that she has drawn from her intuitive sense about what you're trying to amplify or let go of. Plus, you get your hypnosis from me. At the end of the call, you’ll get a copy of your Zoom call with both of us, the video of the whole thing, plus I will split off your 30-minute hypnosis recording so you can listen to it over and over again.

If you’d like to enter the contest to win, it will be going on for a few more weeks. There are details in the show notes; you need to fill out a form and show us that you have completed a rating and a review. And if you’d like to get even more entries, check out the details in the show notes about getting your friends to rate and review us so that you can get more entries. That’s it for our little break.

Next, I want to read you my second article. And in case you’re wondering, my second article goes into detail about that mysterious finding my friend had seen in my chart. This second story I’m sharing with you today is called "The Amazing Healing Power of Stories: My Path from Grief to Growth."

Stories are powerful. I see the evidence for their power frequently in my hypnosis practice. Often when I can help a client uncover a story about why they have a particular, generally unhelpful thought pattern, my client is able to let go of a way of thinking and behaving and move on to more hopeful, healthy, and happy life chapters.

The story I'm sharing with you today is extremely personal because it is about me and my romantic partners. I'm a very sensitive and loving person, and having a loving partner at my side is something I truly value. I want to tell you about the discovery of an explanation of a new story that is extremely healing to demonstrate just how powerful stories can be for healing.

I had been blessed with two wonderful romantic life partners in my life. I married my husband, Bruce, in 2000, and in 2001, he received a life-saving lung transplant. We had a happy marriage, including being blessed with a son in 2003. Unfortunately, Bruce suffered a major lung infection and a serious stroke. In 2007, he recovered a fraction of his previous abilities and lived in care facilities for several years after the stroke. Bruce died in April 2011.

Then in 2015, I met a wonderful man named Scott. We had an instant and passionate romance and fell deeply in love. Scott was a healthy, vibrant man, active and smart. Choosing someone healthy was very important to me since Bruce had died young. Bizarrely, about three years after we met, Scott was diagnosed with an extremely rare terminal illness. About one in a million people are diagnosed with this disease every year in the United States. Even though Scott was doing a good job fighting the disease, in 2020, he suffered a stroke and went into kidney failure. Scott died on Halloween 2021 after a fall, possibly caused by a seizure.

In the year, I lost two life partners before the age of 55, and it took a toll on me. While my friends celebrate their 20th-plus wedding anniversaries, I'm single again. What did I do to deserve this? While Bruce had been a sick man all his life, Scott was completely healthy with no lurking diseases when I met him. That led to my next question: Is there something unique about me? My experience of losing two partners so young is extremely rare. I have been seeking an answer to this question for several years.

In the story I read before the break, "Will AI Replace Your Spiritual Advisor? Who Wins, Astrologers or ChatGPT," I talked about an astrological observation made by my friend around 2012 after Bruce had died. This friend of mine took a look at my astrology chart and noticed that in my chart, it indicated that I would lose not one, but two life partners. My friend chose not to tell me this at the time because it was upsetting and it might not come true.

But about 12 years later, in July 2024, two and a half years after Scott died, my friend told me that she had observed this disturbing pattern in my astrology chart. Here is the story that helped me to heal: The story is that it was inevitable that I would have two wonderful life partners, and both would die young. The takeaway is these two deaths are behind me, and there is no forecast of additional unexpected deaths to come. I can safely move forward and open my heart again without fear that my next relationship will end far too soon.

Is this true? Honestly, I don't know. I'm a practical person, and while I don't always believe in star charts and their interpretations, I do understand the value of a story and its healing power. It gives my heart and brain a reason, an explanation of why certain things happen to me. It creates the space to believe that what happened before is not necessarily going to happen again. And for me, this is a very healing thought. I see this all the time in my hypnosis practice, when we are able to identify a story about why someone is experiencing what they are experiencing, it is much, much easier to let it go. I love being able to help people discover their stories and healing. I'm so thankful to my friend for giving me this story. I understand completely why she waited until now to share it with me. I deeply appreciate the story, and now I feel ready and free to be open to love. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear it. Please don't hesitate to reach out to either me, michelle@michellewalters.net or Cinthia at cintuition@gmail.com We'd love to hear from our listeners, and know what you're liking, what we can do more of and move the podcast forward. Thanks for listening today to Mind Power Meets Mystic. You've been listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic.