Suzanne Gieseman returns to The Breakdown to explain how consciousness, spirit guides, and the deceased communicate with the living—and why the information that comes through is relational, compressed, and optimized for meaning rather than practical data.
Suzanne is a former Navy commander, spiritual teacher, and author of Always Connected. Her stepdaughter Susan’s death 20 years ago opened her to mediumship and a lifelong practice of connecting with what she calls “Joy”—a term for the deepest layer of consciousness she contacts in meditation.
This episode covers the mechanics of spiritual connection, why it’s blocked, what guidance actually looks like, how mediumship works in missing persons cases, what happens to people who have done great harm after death, and a simple daily practice anyone can use.
The One Thing Blocking Spiritual Connection
The nervous system is the bottleneck. Consciousness is always connected to a larger field (which Suzanne calls Joy, the ocean, or spirit), but the body’s nervous system filters and restricts access to it.
When you’re in pain, stressed, or emotionally activated, your focus narrows to survival and the body’s immediate needs. This makes it nearly impossible to sense the stillness beneath the “waves.”
Suzanne experienced this firsthand during a herniated disc that left her in excruciating pain for months—her connection to spirit didn’t disappear, but her ability to feel it was severely diminished until she could calm her nervous system.
The fix is not hours of meditation. Suzanne recommends 1–3 minutes per day of slow breathing with the explicit intention to sink beneath the waves of thought into stillness. That’s enough to begin training the nervous system.
How to Actually Meditate When Your Mind Won’t Shut Up
Stop trying to quiet your mind. That’s the most common mistake. The practice is noticing the stillness between thoughts, not eliminating thoughts.
Thoughts, sensations, and feelings are like clouds in the sky—they’re always there. You just notice them (“noted”) and return to the space between them.
Guidance doesn’t usually arrive as a booming voice. It bubbles up as a thought that stands out from the normal mental chatter—something you didn’t expect, something that feels different. You can then ask, “Why did I just think that?” and often find it’s the answer to a question you’ve been holding.
Suzanne’s analogy: you’re a wave in an ocean. The wave can’t separate from the ocean. You are the stillness already; you just have to stop thrashing long enough to feel it.
The Architecture of Spirit: Guides, Angels, Deceased Loved Ones, and Intuition
All of these are real and distinguishable, just like you can tell the difference between your mother and your father even with your eyes closed.
Deceased loved ones show up with distinct personalities, memories, likes, and dislikes. A medium who has never met them can describe them in ways only their family would recognize.
Spirit guides feel different—they lack personality but carry a depth of wisdom. Suzanne notices she gets physically “pulled up” to a higher angle when a guide comes through, and they tell her things about her client that are often exactly what the person needed to hear.
Angels are best understood not as beings with wings but as aspects of consciousness at a deeper, more coherent layer of the ocean—able to resonate with more people and influence them positively.
Your own intuition is also spirit. Suzanne’s “Joy” makes this point: if you’re a wave in the ocean and the ocean is thinking through you, the distinction between “your thought” and “spirit’s thought” is meaningless. They’re the same substance.
Top 5 Misconceptions About Connecting with Spirit
“It only counts if I hear a voice or see an apparition.” Wrong. Spirit inspires thoughts, and you often only recognize them retroactively—why did you turn down that road at that moment? Why did that song with those exact lyrics come on right then?
“Only gifted mediums can connect.” Wrong. Spontaneous connections happen to everyone (seeing a loved one at the foot of the bed, “no other explanation” moments). Training helps clarify the signal, but the connection is universal.
“Spiritual communication fades over time.” It only fades if you stop holding the intention. Your loved ones haven’t gone anywhere—they’re still part of the same ocean. You just stopped tuning in.
“I have to be fully healed first.” There’s no such thing as fully healed. The nervous system needs some regulation, but the process of connecting with spirit is itself part of the healing. Suzanne’s herniated disc led to a profound emotional release that deepened her connection.
“Signs stop once you notice them.” The opposite—signs increase once you start paying attention. Not every butterfly is a sign, but the one that lands on your hand and stays for an hour while you’re thinking of your loved one? That’s different, and you feel it.
How Mediumship Actually Works: Resonance and Compression
Information is relational, not data-driven. A medium doesn’t tap into a cosmic database. They come into resonance with another pattern (a person’s field of being) and information transfers through that relationship.
This is why a medium can pick up a dog’s name (Daisy) and the client realizes it’s also their password—the medium accessed the relational pattern of love around the dog, not the password itself.
Data is compressed through the nervous system. Exact coordinates, lottery numbers, and street addresses don’t transfer. What comes through are sensations, images, feelings, and symbols—an oak leaf instead of “Oak Street,” a number five instead of a full address.
This explains why remote viewing and mediumship can’t be tested like lab experiments. The data type is fundamentally different—more like falling in love than reading a spreadsheet.
Can Psychics Find Missing People? The Sylvia Browne Problem
Sometimes, but with serious limitations—and real risks.
The famous case: Sylvia Browne told a mother on Montel Williams’ show that her missing daughter was dead. The mother died two years later. Eight years after that, the daughter—who had been kidnapped and was still alive—escaped. She had seen the show and lost hope.
Why it fails: The person being sought must be in a coherent state for resonance to occur. Someone who has been kidnapped, murdered, or is in trauma is not calm or coherent. A medium tuning in gets silence—and silence feels like death.
Suzanne’s rule: do no harm. She will not speculate about whether someone is alive or dead based on a feeling.
A Successful Missing Persons Case: Kim and Jack Canton
After the Montecito mudslide, Kim Canton’s son Jack was missing. Multiple mediums, including Suzanne, connected with Jack and her deceased husband.
Suzanne described specific details: a prep school emblem on a sport coat (the husband’s), the son’s sports involvement, and the message “we’re okay, and we’re glad the boys are together here.”
When Kim visited the search area, Suzanne sensed Jack sitting on a downed tree trunk, smiling, gesturing “I’m right down here.” She also saw a dead crow (which Kim then found), an X painted on a tree, and a “K” near rushing water.
Search dogs were brought in, bone fragments were found, and DNA confirmed it was Jack. The family was able to hold a celebration of life and bury him with a Star Wars lightsaber (a gift from George Lucas, since Jack was a huge fan).
The key insight: Jack couldn’t give exact coordinates, but the messages “You will find me, and I’m okay, Mom” were what Kim needed most. Mediumship is optimized for meaning and connection, not GPS data.
What Happens to Evil People After Death?
Hell is a state of consciousness, not a place of eternal punishment. It’s the human programming for revenge and justice projected onto the afterlife.
Suzanne has had two readings involving men who had committed horrific acts (rape, murder of teenage boys). Both came through symbolically “cocooned” and escorted by higher beings.
The first was not allowed to speak. The guides spoke for him: “This is to assure your client she will never have to talk to this man again. He is being ministered to.” He was not free to rejoin the population until he accepted that we are all souls and acknowledged the harm he had done.
The second was allowed to speak and said, “I was a monster, and I’m sorry.” His client’s book began with the line: “My father was a monster.”
The mechanism: When you cross the veil, you feel the full brunt of every harm you caused. Many people who do terrible things have blocked themselves off from feeling—they literally cannot feel the pain they inflict. After death, that block dissolves and they experience it completely.
Healing means bringing the field back into coherence by letting go of dissonant energy—acknowledging harm, asking for forgiveness, choosing love over hatred. This is not punishment; it’s the natural consequence of consciousness becoming aware of itself.
Love is the healing force. Suzanne’s friend Brenda once ran from a presentation because the love coming from the stage cracked open something she had barricaded for years. Sending love to people who are blocked off is counterintuitive but is what actually heals them.
The “Hey Spirit” Practice
Suzanne’s entire book Always Connected came from a drop-in message from her guides. They had her write “Hey Siri” on a notepad, then remove the P and T from “peace and tranquility”—leaving “Hey Spirit.”
The practice: When you need an answer, pause and say (aloud or internally): “Hey spirit, what don’t I know right now?” Then stop and listen for 1–3 minutes.
The answers will stand out from the song lyrics and mind chatter. They may be obvious in retrospect. Over time, you learn to trust the unknown—and that trust itself becomes the connection.
The deeper problem the practice addresses: we’re all feeling disconnected despite being more technologically connected than ever. We say “Hey Siri” for everything. The invitation is to redirect that impulse toward the source that’s actually always there.
Top 5 Ways to Know You’re Being Guided
Synchronicity — Meaningful coincidences that keep happening. If you notice them, something is connecting. They may be happening all the time and you’re just not paying attention.
Physical signs or phenomena — Hummingbirds, electronics behaving strangely, objects moving. These are physical manifestations of communication.
Intuition and inner knowing — A strong gut feeling to do or not do something, sudden clarity, or the sense that something someone told you is incomplete or off. Jonathan’s example: feeling strongly not to drive on the freeway that day.
Dreams — One of the most ancient and reliable channels. The meaning is personal—what the symbol means to you matters more than any universal dream dictionary.
Sense of presence — Feeling someone near, warmth, tingling, thinking of someone right before they text. Suzanne and Jonathan text each other simultaneously all the time—it’s coherence in action.
