Kicking off series one, Kelly Pietrangeli recounts a 'chance encounter' in a tapas bar in Barcelona that led her to read her very first 'woo woo' book, international best seller 'The Celestine Prophecy'.

After 'randomly' discovering the book again 23 years later, she reads it with entirely fresh eyes. Kelly shares her 'nine insights' and asks the question: "Is anything in life ever 'just a coincidence'?"

Get the free PDF with the nine insights and journaling prompts to reflect on your own life.

Enter the podcast launch competition on Instagram! @kellyprojectme

Read the Transcript for this Episode below:

Episode one of the Project Me podcast. Hi, I'm Kelly Pietrangeli, and this podcast is designed to be an entertaining and inspiring look at the different modalities I've dabbled in over the years, plus the life-changing books I've read. Each episode takes you on a fun journey into the wonderful world of woowoo and ends with an opportunity to reflect on your own life path.

You are capable of amazing things when you break free from your past and whatever's holding you back from who you came here to be in this lifetime. This podcast will show you what's possible when you open your mind, open your heart and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.

Welcome back to you. If you've already listened to the mini episode zero. It is felt so fun to finally get this podcast launched into the world. I'm running a fun launch competition over on my Instagram page at Kelly project me. You'll find all the details there. The fabulous prize is a place in the next round of my high vibe journey program, which kicks off on June 29th.

The competition ends on Saturday, June 27th, so if you're the kind of person who says, I never win anything, well enter so you at least stand a chance. You've got to be in it to win it, right? Okay, so without further ado, let's get started. Let's slide into episode one. Have you ever scanned back through your life and noticed how many times you've been in exactly the right place at the right time?

Or someone's come along like an angel to help just when you needed it? What do you make of life's coincidences? When I look back at what first set me down the path to a more enlightened living, it all boils down to one chance encounter. It was 1994. I was in my late twenties and in a very unhealthy relationship.

We were meant to be spending a few days together in sunny Spain, but he never turned up at the airport. I ended up in Barcelona on my own, feeling completely betrayed. I was sitting alone in a random tapas bar, sitting at the counter, I remember I had a beer and a plate of patatas bravas, trying to figure out if I should stay or catch the next flight home.

I looked over and sitting over by the window, there was this older gentleman and I did a double take because he looked so much like my Uncle Jim. He smiled at me and motioned for me to come over and join him. And I don't know, if he hadn't looked like my Uncle Jim, I might not have gone over there, but there was just something friendly about him.

And I picked up my beer and my plate and I went over and joined him and he introduced himself as Jim. And I laughed and said, Oh my gosh, you look like my uncle Jim in Minnesota. He smiled and he replied that he was also from Minnesota. The coincidence was like too great. I was like, there's no way. And he opened up his wallet and took out his Minnesota driver's license.

And it was indeed true. His name was James and his address was right around the corner from my grandma Millie's house. So, I stayed a while and over a beer and some tapas, he started telling me about a book he'd just finished called The Celestian Prophecy. He said this book was about how we shouldn't write coincidences off as they often contain important messages if we're paying attention.

He believed there was a deeper reason why we'd met. And we decided to hit some of the Barcelona tourist attractions together to see what that might be. Now, I kept telling him, my boyfriend's missed his flight. He's going to be on the next flight, even though he wasn't coming. I just didn't want him to get the wrong idea, but I didn't actually have to worry about that.

We had this like incredible two day adventure, including me getting mugged at gunpoint. Being followed by gang members on two trains, we were jumping over barriers and hiding out in cafes. And once we were hiding out in a church, it was like something out of a John Gresham novel. And it would take me another whole episode to kind of try to dissect what happened.

But the main part I wanted to get across is that as we parted ways, Jim wrote the Celestium Prophecy on a folded napkin. And I put it into my bum bag and this little kind of hidden zipper inside of my bum bag. Okay, fast forward, it s a whole year later and I m reeling from yet another hideous incident with my bad boyfriend and I pass this tiny bookshop in Petaluma, California.

Outside there was this cardboard display advertising a book called The Celestian Prophecy. I stopped in my tracks looking at this cardboard display. This sounded familiar. I happened to be wearing the same bum bag from Barcelona. I reached inside, unzipped that little inner pocket, and I pulled out that folded napkin.

I walked inside and bought a hardback copy of The Celestian Prophecy. And I read the entire book in a couple of days. It completely blew my mind. Maybe you read it way back then, too. It was a big bestseller back then. It's a fictional adventure set in Peru, which weaves together nine insights as the main character seeks to discover each one and learn their meaning.

I felt a real sense of enlightenment, as it was the first book I'd ever read. That made me think about my thoughts creating an energy and how when people interact with each other, they exchange energy, often in a very negative battle for control. It made me think a lot about the control dramas my boyfriend used on me.

Thankfully, we split up soon after I'd finished the book. As my first spiritual, personal growth type book, it kick started what became my insatiable appetite for all things woo woo. Several years later, however, I'd written off The Celestian Prophecy as kid stuff. I saw it as very dumbed down fiction, attempting to hold beginners by the hand by weaving spiritual messages around a very thin plot.

Now, Let s fast forward again, all the way to the summer of 2018. I m on holiday in Tuscany and on an overcrowded bookshelf, one title jumped out at me. I m looking at the spine of it. I m like, Is that? Yep, it was The Celestian Prophecy. I picked it up. I was curious to discover what it had been about this book that had made such a big impact on me 23 years earlier.

I read it again by the pool in one sitting. This time, I was coming at it with 23 years more of life behind me. And I've lived and breathed so many of these concepts. It doesn't matter whether you've read the book or not, here are my interpretations of the nine insights. The first insight is all about coincidences and synchronicity.

Life's big and little coincidences are there to guide you. They're like breadcrumbs. And when you follow the trail, you come to see that you're experiencing events and meeting certain people for a reason. Pay attention. Stay curious. Follow that breadcrumb trail. That's my take on the first insight. The second insight is around the history of spirituality, religion, and science.

For centuries, our natural essence of spirituality has been put into a really small box called religion. What started off as a beautiful connection to a higher source and a knowing that there's more to the universe than what meets the eye, morphed into a way to get society to conform and behave.

Spirituality is a journey. Religion became an institution. Religion oftentimes promoted shame and guilt and obedience to get society to behave. Spirituality is self honesty and awareness and curiosity and growth. But later in history, as people became more interested in science and needing scientific evidence to back up their increasingly logical analytical minds, they lost their intuition, their heart energy, the part of them that seeks to know, What's life beyond the physical?

Why are we really here? People began to think there were really only two choices, religion or science. The second insight also begs us to consider that as we've focused for centuries on conquering the earth, we have wasted her natural resources. The third insight is about energy. In this book from 1993, the author is gently opening people up to new experiments which reveal that every single thing on this planet is made up of energy, including ourselves.

Well, here we are nearly three decades later, and the concept is finally becoming more mainstream. It is the whole basis of my online program, the high vibe journey. But when I read the book the first time, this was all completely alien to me and I really didn't get it. I now know that our thoughts and intentions really do create our reality and quantum science is proving it.

Our perception of this energy increases with our heightened appreciation to beauty and nature. So in the book, we're invited to really look at flowers and trees and see the energy they're emitting. I remember putting the book down on my lap back in 1994, desperate to see that glow of energy. If you read the book back then too, I'm sure you did this too.

We were looking at trees and plants and wanting to see that glow. When people are in beautiful places in nature, They see more sharply and precisely and are able to see auras. So quietly enjoying nature daily can aid us in experiencing these energy fields and connecting with them can enhance our appreciation of beauty, which increases our energy and our awareness.

I am really only getting this one now because of lockdown 2020. I am spending more time appreciating everyday nature, not just when I'm on holiday somewhere beautiful. Insight 4 is about competition for energy. When you are conversing with someone you like and you're both happy, then you're voluntarily giving away energy and you're receiving it back.

I'm picturing it like a fun ping pong game, just kind of going back and forth. But people actually compete for psychic energy, or they try to feel good at other people's expense. This struggle for power happens when one person tries to dominate or manipulate another person. The dominator feels more powerful, but takes power away from the weaker person.

Bullies do this, or parents who try to dominate their children by not letting them verbally express themselves. When I first read the book, this chapter was my biggest takeaway. I suddenly saw, with blinders off, that I was being completely controlled by my boyfriend. He was literally sucking my energy and leaving me so depleted that I had none to stand up for myself or to believe I could make it without him.

This competition for energy is a big cause of conflict between people and countries. We certainly can observe it in our political leaders, right? There is plenty of energy in the universe. We do not have to steal it from others. This is huge. The more we can understand ourselves as energy, the better. The fifth insight predicts that we are entering into a historical period where more and more people will begin to attain higher states of consciousness.

Not just a few practitioners of esoteric practices, but by anyone who is willing to surrender to the adventure of life without trying to conform or control outcomes. And as we do this, we begin to exist at a higher level of vibrational energy. It is at this point in the book that our main character describes a euphoric connection with everything and this kind of total security and confidence of feeling light and connected.

Wow. This is how I feel so much of the time now. While those around me are fearful and worried and angry and really focused on the future, I feel such a sense of peace and connectedness, presence and love. And all of this is a culmination of my journey into this wonderful world of WuWu. It's opened me up and enabled me to move past the cynical, analytical mind and into these higher levels of consciousness.

It's taken me nearly three decades since I first read the book, but hey, I'm still here. The sixth insight dives deeper into four different control dramas people use to get energy. The first one is aloofness. That's when you kind of withdraw from others, you want to appear mysterious and secretive and actually you kind of pull people's attention to you because people want to find out more about you.

You're kind of creating an interest and you're pulling people in closer and so they end up kind of sending you their energy. That's aloofness. Then there's interrogator. Interrogators probe and ask lots of questions in order to find something wrong with the answers of someone and then they can criticize them and draw the energy from that person.

Then there's poor me. These people take energy by being able to easily make people around them feel guilty for no reason just by being in their presence. They create a feeling like you haven't done enough for them. Maybe you know a poor me person in your life, or maybe you recognize that you do that yourself sometimes.

Then finally we have intimidator. And an intimidator takes energy from others using aggression. There's this whole breakdown in the book of how this happens between parents and kids. Interrogator parents create aloof children. An aloof parent creates an interrogator child. We need to free ourselves from these patterns and the book doesn't really say how, but in further episodes of my podcast, I'm going to share what I've done.

Then we have the seventh insight, which is about conscious evolution. When you tune into your intuition and feelings, you are plugged into a universal current that will show you where you are stuck, confused, overwhelmed, or worried, and from there you take inspired action that is truly coming from universal intelligence.

When we become the observer of our thoughts that can be through meditation or mindfulness, we're no longer ruled by our thoughts and our emotions. We can more easily replace fear based anxieties and worries with positive thoughts that feel better and we can distinguish the ones that are deeply seated so we can address those and find ways to release them.

Dreams are another way of tapping into higher consciousness and this is for another future episode. I've got so much to share. The eighth insight is about assisting each other in our evolution. This chapter blew my mind when I returned to it 23 years later. It all kind of washed over me the first time.

I know I didn't get it then. When we begin to form conscious groups with like minded people, amazing things happen. Because everyone has the intention to uplift each other. Working together raises us up to a mutually higher vibration. And then even more wisdom becomes available. With the goal of lifting each other higher, you don't have the old ways of interacting like trying to impress someone or concentrating on your own thoughts rather than actively listening.

Or feeling intimidated or trying to control the group. Rereading this chapter in 2018 got me to launch my online membership, Project WE, just a few months later. I suddenly felt called to create a special place for women to come together in a shared WE space, to openly share challenges, offer non judgmental support, to celebrate our wins without feeling braggy.

So, that book had another big influence on me the second time I read it. The eighth insight also talks about the importance of supporting and listening to children, taking them seriously, and acknowledging their personal worth. The ninth and last insight in the book is the conscious evolution, and it is an outline of where the human race is heading.

It speaks of a change in our vibrational frequency. As whole groups of people increase their vibrations, they will move into a lighter frequency and an evolutionary leap. The Ninth Insight describes the inspiration that comes when we're truly loving others and evolving our lives forward. Fear lowers our vibration, love raises it.

It's quite a book. And I now see the author James Redfield was being very clever in weaving these important messages into a really simple fiction adventure. He made it accessible for so many people, including myself, when there is no way I'd have read a book about that stuff back then. It opened my mind.

And it led me to new awakenings.

Dear listener, please relax your forehead. Take a nice, long, nourishing, deep breath in and let it out with a sigh. Keep breathing as I ask you some questions to reflect on your own life. I'll create a PDF of these questions for you. For now, simply breathe and listen. How often have you been in the right place at the right time, or someone's come along to help you just when you needed it?

What are some of the significant coincidences in your life?

Are you willing to let go of your logical analytical mind and build a relationship with your heart and intuition?

How connected do you feel to nature? Are your actions in alignment with the preservation of this beautiful and extraordinary planet?

How aware are you of energy and the exchange of energy between the people in your life?

What control dramas do you use the most? Is it different depending on who you're with?

Do you include children in your conversations, not talking about them or at them, but with them, so they feel acknowledged and worthy?

How open are you to being a part of a shared WeSpace? Do you believe there is power in connecting with others to lift each other higher, or do you try to do everything alone?

How do you feel about the idea of a collective consciousness and evolving together from a place of love? Thanks for listening to episode one of the Project Me podcast. I'm creating a PDF of my interpretations of the nine insights, as well as the journaling questions I've just asked you. I'll pop those into the podcast show notes.

If you'd like to share your insights about this episode, email hello at myprojectme. com or leave a comment under the episode post on my Instagram at kellyprojectme. And registration is open for the next round of my High Vibe Journey program, which kicks off the week of June 29th. This four week journey has been called life changing.

And I really encourage you to head to the info page to read all about it and do the little intuition test to see what your higher self says. Go to myprojectme. com and then to the courses and workshops tab. And I'll include a link to the high vibe journey in the podcast show notes too. Stay tuned for the next episode to find out what happened when someone thrust a flyer into my hand for a positive thinking workshop and how yoga changed my vibes and ultimately changed my life.

Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious.

Episode one of the Project Me podcast. Hi, I'm Kelly Pie, and this podcast is designed to be an entertaining and inspiring look at the different modalities I've dabbled in over the years, plus the life-changing books I've read. Each episode takes you on a fun journey into the wonderful world of woowoo and ends with an opportunity to reflect on your own life path.