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Guy Spiro: Sonia, we last had an interview in December of ’99. What’s new?

Sonia Choquette: Everything and in some ways nothing. I’m still on my mission to teach people that we are by nature six sensory. We need to start taking the sixth sense out of parentheses and stop designating it to certain special and sometimes “freaky” others. It’s very important that we begin to recognize that it is an essential quality, for all of us to identify and own and utilize for our personal success and ultimately world peace.

GS: So you don’t want to keep it special, just for you guys anymore?

[Laughter]

SC: No. I’ve never believed it was special. I’ve always said that it’s perfectly natural and normal and the fact that it’s been disenfranchised from the rest of our abilities has been really damaging.

GS: I’ve always thought the same thing. We all have it.

SC: It lies dormant in people due to their conditioning. But it doesn’t take any special trickery or indoctrination to activate your sixth sense. I believe it really just takes a change of values. Educating yourself and understanding what you’re made of in terms of being essentially spirit.

GS: Would you say it’s a matter of just paying attention to what’s already there?

SC: Absolutely. The definition of intuition, if you look it up in the dictionary, is to pay attention.

GS: I did not know that.

SC: But it’s not enough to pay attention. What really distinguishes five-sensorys, or dormant intuitives, from six-sensorys is that we not only notice but we say so. I really believe it’s the ability to articulate without apology or hesitation what is obvious and feels essentially true. I’ve been working with people for 35 years and I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t, in a safe place behind closed doors, admitted that they have many intuitive feelings.

GS: But only a small percentage of people feel comfortable with it. You have to be willing to be wrong, or at least willing to face people denying it.

SC: Well that’s the other thing. In the five-sensory world, everything is dictated by right and wrong. And right and wrong pretty much boils down to other people’s opinions and approval. But in the six-sensory world, we don’t live in the world of right and wrong. We live in a third space in the world of what feels true for me, for now. Ask me tomorrow and I may feel something different because I may have learned something more. But for this moment ...

GS: Wouldn’t that make you a flip flopper?

[Laughter]

SC: Well no, it makes you an evolver.

GS: I agree.

SC: It definitely is that empirical static knowledge that really prevents people from being creative, intuitive and spontaneous in faith. It’s not natural. Everything in life breathes, grows and changes. So does our awareness. Intuitive people embrace and allow that kind of awareness to be comfortably expressed. Five-sensory people reject that kind of awareness. They look to others, to a large degree, for approval and direction. This is to their detriment. So my mission, especially in this new body of work, Trust Your Vibes, is to normalize intuition, to take it out of its parentheses, and to mainstream it. I have a very high ambition that I am really on a mission from God to mainstream intuition as an essential part of our sensory awareness.

GS: It’s part of our birthright.

SC: The five-sensory world works out of an ego-based paradigm that, simply put, is me against you. That’s the insanity that causes us to do such crazy, damaging things to one another. The six-sensory paradigm looks past appearances and superficial realities and really recognizes that we are all the same. Its fundamental focus is me and you, and where are we alike, what do we have in common? What do we share and what can we create to help one another? So I really believe that, without this sixth sense in place and operating, we will not be able to find a collaborative peace with our neighbors. It’s really taken on enormous momentum for me.

GS: One can clearly see that you take it very seriously.

SC: Very. I always have. I am very committed and passionate about empowering people with their own higher wisdom and telling them that’s the voice, that’s the choice that they have to make in order to find the kind of peaceful existence they seek. Ultimately it boils down to a choice. I don’t know anyone so far distanced from their intuition that they’re not even remotely aware of it. We are aware, but we don’t have the confidence to choose to follow it.

GS: Then there are those unwilling to admit it.

SC: There are two things that go along with being intuitive. They are commitment and responsibility. There are a lot of people who are not prepared to make any sort of commitment and are not interested in taking any responsibility for their happiness or for their impact on others. So when I talk to people, I actually say about thirty percent of you will embrace this message, thirty percent of you will be interested but non-committal, and the rest of you will throw it away for now. But at least the seed is planted. Eventually we all will return at some pertinent time and it will make sense. I have a good story about that.

I was teaching about eight years ago at the New York Open Center, and was really empowering people, but along with that, bringing the message of responsibility and commitment. One woman just flat out got up and was offended, annoyed and angry with me. She said I was crazy and being irresponsible and it was only for a special few, and she left in the middle of the class with a big scene. So all I could do was what I normally do, I just let it happen and said let’s continue. After 9/11, I had a client on a phone reading from New York and she admitted to me she was the woman who made the scene and left. She said, “I made the scene and left because I wasn’t prepared to be that honest. I was having an affair at the time and you were making me uncomfortable with that choice.” But she said, “I did go home and it didn’t go away. I did confront my husband with my affair and what was wrong with the picture and we actually worked it out.” Then she said, “Sonia, he died in 9/11. And had I not heard what you said, I don’t think I could live with myself today.”

So you never know. It was very moving for me, because she said, “in the moment, I reacted negatively, but in the long run I really stepped up and now I can live with myself.”

GS: That’s a great story.

SC: It was an important message, not to judge in the moment. We’ll spread the message. We’ll give people a choice and give them the room to come to their own decisions in their own way and in their own time. My job is not to convert anybody but just to lay out what’s possible and then let people intuitively resonate in their own fashion.

GS: The conversion process is internal.

SC: I do believe that too much talking is a deterrent to learning to be intuitive. In spite of the fact that I keep writing many books, I even think that too much reading doesn’t help. But I did create a deck of cards, the Trust Your Vibes Oracle Deck, and it’s really psychic sit-ups … you know, little cards you can pull that just present a choice.

GS: Psychic sit-ups, I like that.

SC: It just conditions one to think about their choices instead of being automatic. How many of us are members of the woulda, coulda, shoulda club … where we did have an intuitive hit, but we didn’t give ourselves enough time? Or enough opportunity to go with what our deeper wisdom was saying, because we’re just so rushed in this world. So I say this is another little way to kind of take a moment and check in with yourself before you answer or decide, to give yourself that pause that takes you off of autopilot and allows you to connect with your deeper wisdom. Because it is present and it is available …

GS: Always.

SC: … if you give it the space it needs, and it doesn’t need a lot, just a moment, just a breath.

GS: It’s always striking to me how patient it is.

SC: Right. That’s a good point. People ask me how do you know it’s not wishful thinking or you’re making it up, but your intuition is consistent, it doesn’t change, it will say the same thing Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Whether you try to talk yourself into or out of something, it will remain pretty steady. And it is subtle, there’s nothing aggressive about your intuition.

GS: It’s gentle and loving.

SC: I often say that the fairy tale of the intuitive voice is “The Princess and the Pea.” She’s the one who could feel the pea under the hundred mattresses and say so, she’s the one who really is the embodiment of the intuitive side. It’s not going to scream at you. You have to listen, it’s very subtle.

GS: I’ve had people ask, how can you tell the difference between the voice and the other things that go on in the mind? One way is that the voice that we’re talking about never says, “Dummy, I told you not to do that.”

SC: It doesn’t flatter you either.

GS: Oh, that’s a good point.

SC: It doesn’t say, “Well, you’re so special, you’re the exception.” Because the voice of your spirit is the voice of universal spirit that connects us all. So it would never attack you nor would it elevate you because, you see, that’s isolating, too. It’s just very loving in a non-isolating way. What prevents people from being intuitive is courage, not having enough courage sometimes to really say this is my feeling, and standing in the fire of disapproval, of being odd man out. Living an active, open intuitive life is very often not popular.

GS: Right.

SC: So you definitely have to assess the challenges that go with it. Fortunately the world is getting better about accepting and respecting our intuitive voice. There is a collective consciousness that’s growing, that’s starting to integrate intuition and give it its due respect. But conversations like these will help. I like to tell my students, follow your intuition with no apologies and watch your life turn around. This is my feeling and I’m willing to stand by it. I have to go with what I feel for now because that’s my highest truth.

GS: You’re going to be doing a workshop at the Unity Church in Evanston.

SC: Yes, and I’m very excited about that because one of the things that a person really needs to develop their intuition is what I call “believing eyes,” people who believe in you, and are willing to take the risk of listening to you and respecting you. When I was first coming into my public life with my first book, from being a very hermetic stay-at-home psychic, Festus, the minister there, took a risk with me and allowed me to speak to his congregation just outside of Minneapolis. I’ve always valued that, so I’m coming back to his church to appreciate and support his forward vision in our community. I’m going to come up and do a Trust Your Vibes Workshop for the church on the second Sunday in December. It will be three hours long and it will be a lot of fun, because developing your intuitive voice is fun. It will be very hands-on. People should come with their minds open because I’m going to give them a lot of tools so that they can enter 2005 with all of their senses up and running and serving them for a more peaceful year.

GS: I had the good fortune of sitting in on one of your short talks recently and you’re really very good.

SC: I speak from the heart, and I bring in the guides and I trust what comes. It’s all very organic and very spontaneous. I love sharing this message and I really love people; I really love empowering people, and that’s my mission.

GS: It shows through.

SC: I am grateful to have the opportunity to go to Unity Church and share these tools with everyone. I am very excited because things shift in a big way in a short period of time when you use all of your senses.

Sonia Choquette will give a workshop and sermon on December 12 at Unity Church of the North Shore in Evanston, Illinois, from 10:30am-2:30pm. For tickets and information, call 847-864-8977 or see www.unityns.org. Her newest book, Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living, is available at local bookstores and at www.Amazon.com.

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