🎙 86. The Practice is to Return, Again & Again: Personal Life Update and New Beginnings
the spiritual 9-5 podcast transcript
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Episode Published on March 12, 2025
Transcript
Welcome and welcome back. I haven't dropped an episode in a while, like half of a year, a while. And so I'm here today with the intention to remind you that I'm still here. 👋🏼 That the Spiritual 9-5 podcast has far from died, and to share a bit of a life update and to introduce a new type of episode content concept that will begin dropping between regular episodes.
So first things first, you may have noticed that there is no intro music to this episode and there will not be any intro or outro music to this particular episode. My fiance is currently working on new intro and outro music for the podcast.
Yes, I did say fiance with a dramatic pause to follow. More on that in a moment or maybe even in a later episode.
The point is you'll hear the new intro-outro when we drop the next full episode. For all intents and purposes, we are going to consider this episode a Spiritual 9-5 mini.
So before I go into my life update, let's talk about Spiritual 9-5 minis. Minis are mini episodes. My goal is to keep them 15 minutes or under and typically to use that time answering a question either from the present or from a past coaching or group session.
Some of you may know, or all of you may know, that I've been mentoring and coaching people for 10 years now. Four of those years, coaching and mentoring has been a major source of my income. Through that time, I've answered countless questions privately or in group spaces, and now I want to revisit and share some of that really juicy Q &A here on the podcast in quick one take recordings.
Mostly it will be me repeating a question and then answering it on the spot in the context of the current present. So I'm not gonna just repeat a question and then the answer that I had in the past, not that I would necessarily even know or remember that answer, but in some cases, I'm sure I have some documentation around it, but really just answering it based on what's alive in the present moment.
My hope is that this form of Q &A invokes or inspires or provokes you into your own inner realm of wisdom. My hope is that these episode minis, these Q &A's land into your ears at the precise moment that you're open to hearing whatever it is that we talk about.
And whether the Q &A's, the A's are what you need or agree or believe or want to hear or not, that they bring back to you yourself. They bring you back to yourself because you are always your best guide. And I am always here to remind you of that.
So the general ground rules of these Spiritual 9-5 minis, the concept that I have in mind or my vision is this:
to answer a question from coaching wisdom, from life experience, from surf experience, from business experience, from the tarot, from spirit. So this isn't and will not be just about coaching
and another general ground rule would be to be quick, to be real, to offer one perspective. This will always only be one take taken in one take as well. Not all of the takes. That's a lot of takes. This will always be only one perspective, not all of the perspectives. So I invite you to please take whatever serves, but leave whatever doesn't.
And the third ground rule is to get out of my own head and into the production of this podcast no matter what.
That is my vision — to answer a question, to bring a question forward, to be quick, to be real, to offer a perspective on that question that hopefully provokes or invokes you back to yourself. And for me personally, to get out of my head and into the production of this podcast.
So for these episodes, there will likely be no intro or outro, just one deep breath to kick us off and close us down so that we can just get right into it.
This particular episode, however, is going to fall slightly out of this framework simply because it's been a while.
Listeners, I feel like I owe you a life update, business update, all of the updates, both because I think it's important to share the BTS of human existence and running business, because that is often what connects us as humans and it allows us to feel seen and witnessed and validated and normal in our own experiences. It is what allows us to feel like it's okay to be human.
And because I'm hoping selfishly that you'll cultivate some understanding and compassion for the absence of this podcast in the last six months. So before I rewind to six, seven, eight months ago,
🧘🏻♀️ Let's take a deep breath. So go ahead and expel all oxygen from your body. And when you feel completely empty, let's take a really big deep inhale.
And let's hold that inhale at the top. Four, three, two, one. And then fully exhale.
allowing for a moment to feel the emptiness of breath.
and then come back into normal breathing, allowing your body to do what it does and your lungs to do what they do. 🧘🏻♀️
And now I will rewind all the way back to the summer of 2024. And I'm going to first barrage you with a list of experiences that are not necessarily sequential to give you the update, but also to keep my time limits in mind.
And I'll start with this.
I met someone. I met someone incredible and we fell in love. We had actually, and are still having what I could only describe as a fairy tale romance. I will share more another time in another episode. Maybe he will even join me at such time in such episode. But we met, we fell in love.It was magical.
He and I did a bunch of traveling. We got engaged in Guatemala.
I got pregnant and rearranged my entire life and then we lost the baby.
I sold my oceanfront beach cabin and bought a place just off the island with much more space, with actual heat and AC, with a garage, and with all of the bells and whistles I've been living without for such a long time or maybe my whole life. I'm not sure. And obviously, you all know how much I love my Beach House if you've listened to this podcast before and heard me talk about my Beach House. If you know me personally, my Beach House was such a huge part of myself and my way of living and being and moving through the world. My statement (bullet) before this played a huge factor in that decision.
I spoke up for myself against someone who was harassing me and I'm still working through that.
The underlying point is that I held massive duality in the second half of last year with really big experiences happening on both sides of the happiness and goodness spectrum. Last year I learned really big lessons about myself and about the way I show up when things feel bleak and hopeless. I also learned that no matter how much mindset and somatic training and positive tools and mindfulness and yoga you have at your hand, you have in your tool belt, no matter how trained you are in these fields, life can feel really hard. And sometimes suffering isn't a choice, but an experience that we must go through, that we have to walk through.
I kicked off the new year in grief. We kicked off the new year in grief.
But we found ourselves again in San Francisco and in Chicago.
And then I spent a month and a half in Florida learning pottery. I'm kind of obsessed now actually. I just bought a wheel and set my garage up as a mini studio. It's very cool. Maybe I'll share some updates on this in future episodes.
And that brings me to now, to today, to the time that I'm recording this, which is Wednesday, March 12th. I'm home for the moment, long enough to get a couple of surfs in. 🏄🏻♀️ That's been great. And in three days, I will be leaving for the Caribbean to meet my future in-laws and to spend time with people who, at the moment are near strangers, but people who I hope will someday become true, real family through time and energy spent together.
I'm saying all of this, I'm sharing all of this because it's been a lot. What I shared were some really high level points. And it's been a lot.
And it's one thing to say all of that. I think it's another thing to live all of that. And it's another thing to live all of this in a condensed period of time.
And life is still life. It's still happening. Janne Robinson wrote in one of her poems that (this is not exactly how she wrote it, but she says,) even when you are standing still, the earth is always moving.
Despite my stillness and the earth's movement and despite my movement, I've been thinking about this podcast through the entirety and almost nonstop.
There's not a day that goes by where the Spiritual 9-5 doesn't run through my head at least once. Honestly, not really being sure what to say, not really having the capacity to produce encouraging or inspiring content, but rather living in the practices that we talk about here all the time.
You know, I've been really living in the duality of goodness and hardship in the polarity of goodness and hardship or bliss and hardship, happiness, and I don't want to say sadness, but also sadness. And living in being a human and how messy and complicated it can sometimes feel to just be alive, experiencing things.
I always say that life and running business or that anything we do is like the practice of meditation. The practice isn't about thinking nothing at all, or even being or staying in a meditative state, or in bliss or in peace. The practice is noticing when we've drifted and coming back again and again and again. You know, if you're meditating on the breath, it's noticing when you're no longer focused on the inhales and the exhales, noticing when you've gotten caught up in a thought thread or stream and then bringing yourself back to the breath. No matter how many seconds you've been away or minutes you've been away, no matter how long it's been that you've been gone, coming back into consciousness.
And life is the same way. It's noticing when we've drifted and we come back again and again and again, no matter how long it's been, no matter the circumstance, the practice is in the return, which feels like a poetic way to conclude this Spiritual 9-5 mini, especially considering I'm about to hit the 15 minute mark.
But
I didn't include a business update, so I'll keep it really short. 😅
The Corporate Psychic (business number one) has been the preferred vehicle for the corporate world, which has completely taken me by surprise because TCP offers some things to the corporate world and for it, we have no sales page. We do zero marketing and yet we've received inquiries.
And we've delivered on them for workshops like Astrology at Work and Team by Design, which is human design for your team and even Tarot for Your Team. And it only seems to be ramping up, which is very exciting and shocking since I just mentioned, I have not been marketing. I have not been marketing a damn thing in quite a while.
I don't even know the last time I posted on LinkedIn period. So.
Thank you, universe. Thank you listeners for sharing this work. Thank you, internet for connecting, for connecting us, for connecting all of us.
Essential teams (business number two) is still alive as well and is going through a visual rebirth with our dear Kening through the months of March and April. As a business, we are coming out of the spiritual closet more and more. And I'm really happy about that.
I'm really excited about where both of these businesses, these vehicles are going to take me and my team and life and experience in the coming months and years.
and.
What I will state is what you've witnessed.
Coming back, coming back again. When you are going through, well, I'll speak from the eye. When I'm going through big life experiences, paralysis or ghosting is an easy place to go to. For me, it's like just straight up freeze mode in terms of sharing, terms of creating, at least publicly.
Because when the story doesn't make sense, which it usually doesn't when you're in it, by the way, but when the story doesn't make sense, when the story is not finished or feels painful or embarrassing or uncomfortable..
It's harder to share and to talk about, at least in real time. And when big things are happening in rapid succession, it's also hard to process and integrate and share, as well, through the processing and integration.
For me, the creation, the sharing, the talking, the processing, the integrating, it has all still been happening. I think that's why I'm able to even be here today, but very close from the public space, which if you know me at all, you know that's not my norm. If you followed the corporate psychic, @thecorppsychic on Instagram a couple of years ago before we left Instagram, which maybe we're gonna go back to Instagram this year. I don't know, we'll see. If you follow that account or if you follow my personal page, @marietoburrito, which I've never stated publicly, you will have seen me cry.
You will have seen me move through all of the human experience because I think that there is a lesson or a connection point when we share what is real and true. But sometimes what is real and true in life can become overwhelming and we have to go within or we have to go away for a while and that's okay as long as we come back.
As long as we come back out, as long as we return, anything that we commit ourselves to is like practicing meditation. I repeat: the practice, the skill comes not in being in that state or holding onto that state of peace or meditation or bliss, but the practice is in the awareness — to notice when you've drifted off. And it's in the effort to come back again and again. The practice is found in the return. No matter how long it's been, six months, one month, two years, three years, five minutes, 30 seconds.
Whatever is happening in your life, if you are in a hermit moment, a quiet moment, a reserved moment, that's okay. Give yourself grace and allow yourself when you are ready or maybe slightly before you are ready to come back again.
🧘🏻♀️ Let's take a deep breath together: Inhale fully.
and hold it at the top for three, two, one, and now exhale completely.
Allow your breath to come back. 🧘🏻♀️
and wherever you are, have the best day. ☀️
