Here to Help: A Conversation with Kerri Lake

Kerri Lake introduced herself to me with an intriguing story of contacts with Ariel, her possible daughter-to-be. She volunteered that there was much more to tell and invited me to view her YouTube video for “a scratching the surface introduction.” Seeing her in action, as she guided clients to a better rapport with their horses, I was struck by her qualities of gentleness and inner listening. I was interested in learning more about this unusual person, and our conversation began. Kerri wrote:

I am a teacher by nature, and would be honored for opportunities to teach about awareness, communication, and equality. I have spent most of my life working with people and animals, although it's almost invariably assisting the people—they're just more open if they think it's about the animals!

Spiritual and telepathic communication are so totally natural to me that it took me years to realize and accept that other people really don’t see the world the same way I do, and they aren't just trying to hide from me!  I have been communicating on these levels consciously throughout my life—I've shared my gifts primarily in working with animals, and life has put me in a position to come out of hiding, expand and begin to share in many other ways.

A short time ago I came to the clarity that I now have the courage to let my path find me, to stop running and searching for where to be, what to do. As I declared my readiness, I felt a tremendous lightness come over me and a bliss many associate with meditation or transcendence, and the concept that came to me was "Spiritual and Telepathic Communication with the Autistic and Gestational Infants." It's not like it was a new idea for me—the inspiration has been there for years. But this was like a distillation and an open door. It makes seamless sense with who I am, what's fun for me, and my experience in life, so I said, okay...I'll walk down that path and see where it takes me.

I'm interested in learning how I can contribute to teaching communication with gestational infants, unborn people, as well as facilitating communication on various levels for families as these new people are born and start living! I feel an opportunity to help people become more aware of their option to remain aware, to help parents encourage their children's connection to their higher self. We don't have to lose our connection as we get older; we can choose to remain connected and integrate into this world without sacrificing our connection or uniqueness!

You relate that you have had conscious communication on such levels throughout your life.  How did it begin and did you receive any family support for it?

I was born with awareness of communication outside of language, and I had no guidance for how to integrate the common social world with what I experienced as true. I did what I could to be a "good human," to mimic what I saw in adults. I'm sure most children go through this; the difference with me was/is the awareness of my own condition and that of others.

My family, bless them, had no idea what to do with me, and consequently they stifled as much as they could. I was told repeatedly that I would hurt people, that I am very powerful and I need to be careful (not a bad message, but surrounded by fear and a total absence of clarity, it was very difficult). "Kerri is good with animals,” and that's about as far as I was allowed to go.

Once I learned the vocabulary for it, I was able to say that I've been in communication with out-of-body entities throughout life.

How do you  envision the work that you hope to do?

I would like to start talking with parents and midwives to offer them this possibility of helping parents/families know who's on the way, help coach them in remaining aware in a world where awareness is still a bit taboo, and help create environments within people's consciousness that support rearing and teaching children in a way that honors their uniquenesses while teaching them how to function in this world.

To be a bit more concrete with this answer, I envision doing one-on-ones with parents/children/families (how wonderful it would be to talk to other children in the family, too, to see if they are communicating with their new siblings), teaching groups of parents, teaching groups of practitioners, and teaching teachers to teach teachers, eventually. The order and timing of it all are part of simply walking the path, one step at a time.

Can you explain more about the kind of communication you experience?

The type of communication that is natural to me isn't limited to one discipline or focus—you can use the techniques you teach parents to connect with their babies to connect with animals, trees or rocks. You see, our ability to communicate is truly limited only by our choice to believe that we can or we can not. There is always a way. It might not fit into a cultural belief system, it may not fit into what's been or being taught about spiritual communication.

I don't limit myself to how communication should be happening. So, it shows up in whatever way best serves the interaction. And that's where I guess I have a gift of verbal articulation, the ability to find and share words that convey not only a mental concept but an energetic signature that evidences the truth of a communication. People feel it, you know, that sense in your whole body that tells you you are in the presence of truth. This is why animals are such great facilitators. They are always in truth. As are infants who have yet to start learning all of the rules we've developed to limit ourselves!

The way I work is to show up and listen on all dimensions that are communicating, and I speak to them where they are asking for acknowledgement or assistance. I have no agenda for anyone, where they should go with their thinking, what they should see/feel/experience. It's like facilitating what the higher self has in mind for the individual who's asking, but doing it in a way that integrates the mind with the "intangibles."

How do you look at the issue of validating messages? It seems like such a huge responsibility, to convey impressions and information from unborn souls to their future parents. 

I understand that many people want to hear predictions or be given an idea of what to expect. I go through that myself from time to time, and the person who helps me does so with the greatest love and patience (I can be stubborn cuss!). 

It can take deep breaths sometimes to not just give people what they want—but I have learned that there is much greater service in coaching people to their own answers rather than giving them exactly what I see. I don't want to limit anyone's experience. I don't want to limit anyone's perception of what might be. So, even as I am answering their questions, I also ask clarifying questions that guide people to their own answers, which I can then validate, clarify, coach, and so on. (i.e. "Does that feel true to you?" or "How does that fit with what you already feel?")

I'll teach people how to hear/feel what's true for them, and then they can validate for themselves whether what I say is something they want to welcome and watch for, or something to dismiss. I bring a different paradigm that is not based in right or wrong, it's based in knowing your own authenticity and alignment, being effective with your own tools and learning to include new individuals in your field. 

There is a delicate balance in there. There are many times in working with people and their animals that I will tell them something that makes no sense to their mind, because they haven't experienced it yet. The key in those situations is to then bring the mind's attention to the body and listen to the body's feedback—the body will tell us when what we're hearing feels true or out of alignment. There are also times when the information can trigger emotional responses, and good coaching can again bring people back to listening for their own sense of truth, a skill that will help immensely over their lifetime with new people!

I can offer, "I'm hearing this from your little one..." "Here's what I feel (from the child) when you ask that question," "And when you bring that up, the connections I see are..." And there is an energy there that rings true with clients or it doesn't. I'm not trying to be right; I'm here to assist in the clarity. The only part of the exchange I can be responsible for is to offer the greatest, most authentic guidance and healing I can in any situation—no matter what I offer or what I teach, I have no control over what someone else learns or hears or experiences. To claim responsibility for their experience, to tell them that I am right or wrong above their own guidance, would be to say that I am more powerful than they are, which just isn't true.

The free will of the parents and the offspring, as well as other influences, all have an effect on whether or not any one potential event or concept is ever fulfilled. So rather than looking for evidence in the outside world for the validity of intuitive knowledge, I teach people how to find validation within their body at the time they receive the guidance, and then coach them to watch the unfoldment with an open heart to see more than could ever have been predicted! 

I am curious about the work with autistic children that you envision. 

I haven't had the opportunity to work with many parents and their kids—a few, and they all felt a sense of deeper understanding about who the child is, what's important to them, how to honor their unique perspectives, etc. People still largely maintain the perspective that autism is a disease to be cured, and that limits their availability to clear communication.

The first experience I ever remember with an autistic person happened at my dad's company picnic in 1981 or 1982. 

There was a huge, roaring campfire, and people were milling around doing their thing. I have no idea what I was doing before I saw the boy who was talking to the fire. He was standing close and making very unusual hand gestures with the fire—I say with the fire because that's how it felt, not at the fire, toward the fire, because of the fire...he was with the fire. And at the same time I felt he was torn somehow, like he didn't know exactly how to get to where the fire was, or if getting to where the fire was is what he actually wanted. He stood there, rocking back and forth on his feet, close to the fire, less close to the fire, close to the fire, his hands reaching out to be with the fire, pulling back, reaching out... 

I had never seen anyone who moved that way before. I didn't have the words then, but now I can say that this was the first time I experienced another human who lived in touch with another dimension. I felt it, it felt like other things I had felt, but my mind did not make the association at that time. I watched him move, and his movements felt so satisfying. If he hadn't been moving that way, letting his fingers, hands and wrists flip around without pattern, jerking his head to the left without rhythm, shifting his weight, it would have been like trying to hold steam in a tea kettle by putting your thumb over the whistle hole! 

I felt all of this in my own body, knowing it wasn't me I was feeling, knowing it was him. I wanted to get up and move like he did because it was so satisfying, satisfying in a way that I had not yet found for myself—which actually is one of the things that began my "spiritual quest." "What in my life, in my world, is as satisfying for me as that movement is for him?”

His mother was a knotted mix of love, worry, frustration, exhaustion, embarrassment, and understanding. I wanted to go tell her, "He loves the fire. He's playing with it!" But you don't do that...you don't just to talk to people about their enigmatic offspring when you are just a kid who’s not supposed to know what you haven't been taught. 

She, of course, was worried that he'd fall into the fire. I saw it in her mind. She was worried that he'd get singed, that he wouldn't feel the heat, that his hair would burn off, that she'd have that to deal with, and it would not be easy to treat any burns...and she loved him so, so so much. 

The words I have for that situation now are: this boy was in touch with a dimension that felt as non-linear and undefined as the transformative dimension of fire. There are no boundaries to fire. It just is. It is this sense that this boy was dancing with. And the conflict he felt, the sense of feeling torn was the duality between knowing innately the dimension without boundaries and at the same time being bound within a body that does not transform. Many autistic people are at a very high level of consciousness, one that does not work in "recognizable" structures and boxes and struggles to even conceptualize the linear existence of the physical world. The hard part is translating it for the parents and caretakers! For me it's very similar to listening to animals, but different because it's a totally different consciousness you're listening to. 

Since then, I have experienced a wide variety of autistic people, from anonymous encounters like that one to teaching Asperger's kids. I got myself set up to volunteer with a school for the autistic in 2004 or so—they were considered very progressive at the time, they had read Temple Grandin's books and were doing their best to recreate her suggestions. I couldn't stay there, though. There wasn't space yet, or I wasn’t ready.

I had the total pleasure of teaching riding to a girl diagnosed with Asperger's and mild Tourette’s, and I learned more from her than she did from me, I think! The key is finding a way to travel to where the autistic mind is operating, let yourself be seen there, and then offer to lead them to a place where what makes sense to us can actually be seen and experienced, then do the translation to ask if they'd like to participate here. Because the general mindset is that autism is a disease, the general consensus is that they should be "like us," that they need to change. As "normal" people open their minds to the existence of different versions of consciousness, we'll be able to feel who these autistic people are and what they have to offer. The translations will happen more and more naturally with time and as people start to think differently. I can help with that, I just don't know yet how to open or invite the conversations with people.  

I understand what you’re saying about tuning into the body’s response to what I’m hearing inwardly. But you were born with this special awareness; you didn’t have to be taught. How would  you teach a person to even begin "hearing” communication on those spiritual/intuitive levels? Can it be taught?

This is where we come down to what we believe about ourselves. The kind of communication I'm talking about is very natural to all of us. Some are more gifted with it than others, to be sure. But we are all capable. It is a natural ability of humans, one they don't teach about in public school!

This "gift" is a gift to us all. It is a gift of communication available at all times. There are ways to develop it, and there are no rules that say you must. When people feel drawn to, there are ways to become more clear, to develop greater understanding, technique, balance, guidance. But the ability is already within each and every one of us. 

I'm guessing most people have experienced this kind of communication in their lives already. We usually call it intuition, or just knowing. There are times when you know your child is hungry—how do you know? Is it simply because it's that time of day? Or are there more subtle cues that we don't consciously articulate? As we relax the self-doubt and look with the eyes of a child at the senses we're often taught to ignore, we can start to see where the communication is already happening. Ultimately, the question is, what would you like to know? Whom would you like to communicate with? There is always a way—and it just might turn into an opportunity to expand your understanding of yourself! 

Let’s close with a story to give readers a feeling for what a session with you might be like.

One woman asked me for a session for herself, after she'd had a session with me that focused on her animals. That's not uncommon. She told me that she knew there were blocks inside of her, things she wanted to move past, including trying to become pregnant. In those moments, those two or three sessions, I really didn't pay much attention to where the messages were coming from. I was just honoring where she was, what she wanted to talk about, without bias for where it should go or what it should mean. I didn't ask or pay attention to the sources of wisdom and guidance that came through for her. 

She had stories about her family, her responses to her father in particular, her need for order and routine and predictability in her life. It wasn't about what was "wrong" with her, it was more about "What needs to change so I can move forward?" So we talked and we cleared some of the old, heavy thoughts. And I didn't see her again for another few months.

One day she stopped in to say hello! We were chatting, and I noticed that her body was...different. I said nothing, but I felt a little boy in there, sort of studying where he was, a little serious. I don't remember how it came up, the roundness of her belly, but it did, and she, very shyly, told me that she's pregnant and had just come through her time with "morning sickness." We talked for a few minutes about her experience, how her body feels, the energetic shifts. And eventually I asked her if she knows the baby's gender, or if she wants to know, not because I heard and I wanted to tell her, but because I heard and I wondered if she had heard, too. It was clear that she had a sense of it, but didn't want to say it out loud. It's pretty intense to know things before you're "supposed" to know them! 

Another few months went by, and Kingston was born! Looking back at the whole situation, I can see where "Key" was there with us supporting the conversations as she cleared space to let his love and light into her life. There is no doubt that he was there the whole time, that he assisted her to have the courage to ask the questions, to seek the assistance to let him come in.

They're always assisting the parents to be in the right place at the right time, to feel the ways they need to feel to let the serendipities happen. As humans we tend to think in linear terms, sequences of events, clocks and calendars. The communications that happen before birth, before pregnancy, do not conform to linearity. The souls who are on their way are already communicating, assisting the parents-to-be through the sequences of events that give everyone's life the greatest chance for the greatest potentials. And once they're here, conceived and on their way, our free will helps to shape and guide the growth, choices and expressions of these beautiful new people! As we are open to them in newer, broader ways, we not only give them a greater chance at reaching their fullest potential, we give ourselves a greater chance for our fullest love.

Kerri's contact information: