Katharine C Giovanni : Reviews

The idea of having a conversation with God is absurd to most people, tantalizing to many and perfectly natural to a few. But according to the celestial starscape of 2004, this is the year that many more people will turn inward to the still, small voice of soul for guidance in every aspect of daily life.

Katharine Giovanni, an author and international business owner, began to do this years ago and is now teaching spirituality to hundreds of business clients. I met Katharine at New York City's Book ExpoAmerica in 2001 and immediately liked her bold, spunky personality. Brandishing her attractive and very powerful self-published book, God, is that You? How to have a conversation with God-and really hear him, she said to me, "You and I are teaching exactly the same thing: how to listen to God. People don't know they can do it!"

Well, we all know what happened to Joan of Arc and maybe that makes some folks a bit hesitant. Happily, as Katharine's book and mine recount through our own and other people's stories, now is the time to listen to, be healed by, and live in peaceful accord with the higher guidance that is love, in its essence, and waits and wants to help us blossom into joy, prosperity and freedom.

Many people, typically "psychic audients" like musicians and writers, are able to tune in to this inner voice of wise, kindly guidance with relative ease-once we realize that it's been advising us all along, without our knowing it! The biggest obstacle for audients (psychic hearing) is to distinguish our own voices from the still, small voice of higher guidance; this is why it's so important for us to learn this difference during meditation, and to trust in and practice this skill in order to develop it.

Katharine ( godsnewroad.com) and I can both assure you that it's a life-changer for people willing to "dance with the divine," as our friend and fellow teacher Keith Varnum ( thedream.com) puts it. Rebecca Skeele ( makeitheaven.com), another teacher and friend, calls this voice the Master Consciousness. Whatever you call it, say something and wait quietly for an answer!

In this interview, Katharine tells her own story to help stir your interest in inner listening, refining your skill, or attending a workshop to learn how. Eagle Life is developing a tele-class on Inner Listening, and all four of us-Katharine, Keith, Rebecca and I-offer free newsletters with articles on this subject.

I trust that you will enjoy Katharine's warm, vivacious personality-and her success story-as much as I do. She's a peach!

Judy: Katharine, as I understand it, you published your book and took your concierge business into international prominence while listening to the guidance of your inner voice?

Katharine: Early on, we made God our business partner. When I asked him business questions, I would listen. He said, "Write a book." I wrote a book. He said teach workshops. I taught workshops. It's a natural progression, because I've been doing what he told me. That's how we got to where we are today. Because I made him my business partner. But I took it a step farther. I actually listened to what he said. I didn't always do it...

K: When I don't listen to him, I get myself in a big mess of trouble and it doesn't work out the way it's supposed to, and everything seems like an uphill battle, a struggle. When I do listen to him, he'll say something, and I'll say, "No, that's not what I'm thinking." He'll say, "Turn left at the next corner," and I'll think, "No, I should turn right." So I'll turn right. That's when life becomes a struggle. When I do listen to him, even if he tells me something out of left field, it always works out right in the end.

For example, one fine morning he told me to write a book. I laughed, and he said, "No, I really think you should write a book." I've now written three (including two concierge manuals), so he was right.

J: You seem to have a real joy in life. It's not just that you're a good-natured person, but that there's an excitement in you, an innate, inborn joy that sort of bubbles out in the written word, in conversation and in everything you do. I know your background and that this has not always been the case, but yet, I feel that this is your essential nature. I wonder if your joy is related to your drive to listen to God and secondly, if it has anything to do with your ability to listen to God. What part does joy play?

K: It was hard to feel joyful in my childhood. I grew up in a very dark childhood with two alcoholic parents. I was raised by a nanny who was very spiritual and provided that light that I was seeking. She taught me early on that God would talk to me. She talked about God like he was a really good friend of hers, and she was very spiritual and quite psychic. She used to see things.

So I learned very, very early on that there was a light in the end of the tunnel and a goodness and love because Torie was there. She really taught me about joy. Here was a lady working in a very dark house, but she brought this joy and light to it that was astounding. Everybody who talked to this woman, their voice would turn soft-no matter how many drinks they had-and their demeanor would change. You could feel the energy move. So I learned from a very early age to be capable of joy. The joy that I get now comes from the very depths of my soul-to teach people how to start their own business, how to listen and hear God, how to get their questions answered, how to change their lives around, how to use the Law of Attraction, which opens up an ocean of knowledge. That's where my joy comes from. I see the light bulb go on over their heads; that's where my joy is.

I have a client I taught back in 1998, who's earning $5 million a year now. My joy is seeing my students and clients successful. I just get so jazzed by that. I love watching people get successful, knowing I played a small part. It's like teaching people to read. We're all born with this ability inside of us, but we need a teacher to come and teach us how to read. The teacher has to show us the letters. We're born with the ability to learn how to read, but everybody needs a teacher. I am one of those teachers, and watching somebody learn how to read, so to speak, brings me more joy than you can imagine.

K: Yes, and that journey began with Torie, back when I used to have conversations with myself in my mind. I was a very lonely little girl and very angry, but I thought it was just me talking to me, and it wasn't until 30 years later that I realized who was talking to me.

The journey started, on a conscious level, back in 1995 when I was pregnant with my second child, Jeremy. I had a dream that I was given a tour of heaven and hell. My body was pure energy, like a little bowl of light, and I could sense that there were two angels or beings or something. I felt that I had two guides on either side of me. My first visit was to hell, and I don't remember many specifics about it, except that the feeling was very dark. There was no light energy at all, and it was the complete opposite of love. God was not in this place, anywhere. It was the total absence of God. Then I went to heaven, and again don't remember many specifics, but the feeling was of love, beauty and light and it was everything you ever wanted. Unlike other people who were given the chance to stay or come back, one minute I was there, the next minute I was jerked out of my bed.

I wasn't a very spiritual person back then. I was raised Episcopalian, but went to church at Easter and on Christmas, and I felt that if I was a good girl I would go to heaven; if I wasn't I'd go to hell. After this dream, I talked to my minister, my husband, everybody I could think of, because I focused not on heaven, but on hell. Somebody told me it was God's way of telling me I needed to get a multivitamin complex. Somebody else said it was just a weird dream and to forget about it. So I put it out of my head.

Then, after we moved to North Carolina, we were in our apartment while our house was being built. We were sitting in the living room, watching TV, and I turned my head and there was an angel. She was beautiful. She looked like she was about 5'7, 5'8. I didn't see any wings, but I could see right through her. She was wearing one of those Elizabethan dresses, and she smiled at me with this smile that stays with me to this day, and in the blink of an eye, she was gone. It couldn't have been ten seconds.

I didn't tell anybody for two weeks, because I thought I was crazy, but I couldn't get the image out of my head. I thought, either I'm crazy or something's going on. But then, one day, I went to the house to check on the builders, and it was a very cloudy, rainy, disgusting day. I walked over to where our mailbox was, and all of a sudden, the clouds opened up and a beam of light hit me. All of a sudden, I felt loved and warm, like I was on a beach in Bermuda. I knew that something was going on, but thought, maybe I'm a born-again. I didn't know what a born-again was.

So I went back to the apartment and thought, okay, which religion should I choose? There are 100,000 religions in the world. Which one should I choose? Which one will teach me what I need to hear? I heard very clearly the words, "Follow me," and I've been following him ever since.

K: I have been listening ever since, and I've learned from him through conversations. I've got disk after disk of things that I've heard and learned from him, one day at a time.

K: Yes, with a sense of genuinely wanting to help people. You have to run a business with love, as opposed to fear, and ethically. You have to treat your employees and everyone who works with you fairly. You have to act responsibly and to be transparent in your business. All of these things combined have made us a very successful business.

We're teaching companies a new road to take, like you see with Southwest Airlines and Oprah and Mark Victor Hansen, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul. We're here to teach people how to create a company to be proud of. Triangle Concierge teaches both individuals and corporations how to create their own concierge service-how to start their own company or their own in-house benefit to clients and employees.

Triangle Times is our online e-zine, that we put out to all of our clients, business and spiritual. For years, I was holding my book, God, is that You?, in one hand, and our business manual for Triangle Concierge in the other hand. I was holding them as far apart as possible, until God told me to put them together. I told him that was crazy, but he said that putting business and spirituality together is the wave of the future. The companies that embrace the work-life programs understand the fact that their employees must be treated fairly and an employee happy in body, mind and soul will give more to the company and increase their bottom line. This will also help their insurance because their premiums will go down and employees won't get as sick.

That's how Triangle Concierge was born. We live in the Triangle here in North Carolina-the triangle made by Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It's also the triangle of body, mind and soul.

J: So you've begun to teach people inner listening during your conferences...is that right?

K: Yes. A lot of our conferences are held here in the Triangle, but we're starting to spread across the United States. We travel and do a lot of training at companies on-site.

J: So you're integrating these workshops on how to listen to your inner voice and how to be ethical, and these two themes are making their way into your newsletter as well.

K: That's right. I'm slowly weaning people over. Really, what I'm doing is teaching Spirituality 101, the basics, and the basics include honesty, integrity, responsibility, love, respect, commitment. These are the principles and foundations of spirituality. You can call these the principles and foundations of ethics, if you like. They're the same thing. Either way, this is what we're trying to bring to Corporate America.

K: Very well. You have to speak their language and be fluent in it to get your point across. We're teaching the same thing to many different groups, we're just teaching it in different languages.

J: You're just starting out, also, to teach people how to hear the voice of God as a means of discerning the right and wrong directions?

K: That's right. Everybody speaks to God in different ways. One of the things I've been teaching is that there are four ways we perceive God. We hear him, see him, feel him and know him. Everybody perceives God in a different way.

I've run into more than a couple of people who can feel answers literally. One gentleman works for the zoo, and he can feel what's wrong with the animal. Others just know it. My friend Vivian is a surgeon. One moment she won't know the answer; the next minute, she just knows it. Because her first choice is knowing, doesn't mean she can't know God in other ways. I'm here to teach people how to hear, how to listen. Then we're going to talk about what else is out there to help you. There are angels, there are spirit guides.

K: Yes, they're hungry for it. They've read 30,000 books and been to 25 different churches and they're still searching. They don't know what they're searching for.

K: The answer is within them. They're searching for answers on the outside, but the answer is already within them. They already know the answer. They already have all the answers they need. It's inside of them.

J: A lot of people have doubt and fear that gets in their way. How do you help them dissipate this?

K: They've been socialized to doubt and fear. Surely it's that unworthiness thing. My friend Connie Domino says that so many people, like her, were taught in church that they are lower than a worm's belly and not worthy enough to talk to God. Mother Theresa was worthy enough and so was your pastor, priest and rabbi.

I think that God wants to talk to all of us. If he had a single message for the world, I think it would be that we've got it all wrong.

K: That they are worthy enough. To lose the doubt and the fear. They're doubting that God will talk to them, and they're fearing that he actually will. Because they're scared of what he's going to say and that he might smite them with a lightning bolt. They're scared of about 300,000 things. But God doesn't judge anybody. He wants to be your friend.

You know, every day is a brand-new day. The beauty of a sunrise is that it's a brand-new day. It's a chance to start fresh. He really wants to be your friend. That's all he wants.

J: This puts me in mind of the last quote in your book, one from Mother Theresa. It says that, "God doesn't require us to succeed. He only requires that you try."

K: Just make the choice. Just take the tiny little mustard seed of faith, of choice, and make the decision that you are going to listen, that you would like to hear. Once you make the decision to allow God to come into your life to change your life, your business, your relationships, your money, he will put the right books, workshops and people in front of you. All you have to do is ask for help and the help will be almost instantaneous.

There's no such thing as a coincidence. People will say, "Oh it's such a coincidence I ran across this." No it's not. It's all there waiting. You know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

J: Another thing in your book that struck me was Eric's story and the last line in it, where he says that, "You know, if everyone could hear God, the whole world would be a different place."

K: It would change overnight. The whole world would literally change overnight if everybody could hear and everybody would listen to what he has to say. The world would change instantaneously. Not everybody is ready to hear him. Not everybody wants to hear him. But there are people out there who are absolutely and completely and totally ready to hear him. And once they start hearing him, they find out what their real life's purpose is. Everybody has a purpose for being. Some of us have realized it and some of us haven't. He will help us realize that purpose.

You know, one of the fallacies of being spiritual is that you have to be poor and a vegetarian. I like a good steak once in awhile, and there's no reason why we can't all be prosperous. You can have money and be a terrific human being all at the same time. We're taught that money is bad, yet we want to be just like those rich people.

It's a question of living a life that you are absolutely proud of and living a life of example. You can be prosperous and a loving human being at the same time. There's nothing wrong with it.

J: You're also saying, aren't you, that when you start listening to this voice, the joy that is either active within you all along or can be animated within you, begins to run your life.

K: Correct. It doesn't matter how horrible a human being you think you've been-you could have been into drugs, violence, or all sorts of things-every single person on this planet has this spark of light that is our true essence. If you want to go within and talk to that spark and call it God or anything you like, you can go within and do that. Every single person on the planet has this ability.

It's the power of choice. One of God's greatest gifts to this planet is the power of choice. We can either choose to listen to what he says and tap into that ocean of knowledge, so that we can feed and cure everything on this planet, or not. Some of us are choosing to reach in and grab it. That's all it takes.

About the Author: Judith Pennington is a writer, workshop leader and author of a landmark book on the soul and consciousness, The Voice of the Soul: A Journey into Wisdom and the Physics of God. Visit her site, www.eaglelife.com, to read excerpts from her book, listen to a guided meditation CD, and sign up for the free e-newsletter, "The Still, Small Voice," in which this interview appears. Be sure to take a free look at the debut issue of her beautiful new subscription e-zine, "OneWorld," which seeks to create a global dialogue with its spiritual perspective on people, places, politics and our planet's ecology.