Colette Baron-Reid on Turning Uncertainty Into Opportunity

Renowned medium and oracle card expert Colette Baron-Reid is a “spiritual cartographer,” helping others orient themselves within themselves and in the world. This year Hay House rereleased two of her previously published works: 2011’s The Map and 2016’s Uncharted. In her new book, The Art of Manifesting: A Meditative Drawing Practice to Rewire Your Brain and Create Your Reality, Baron-Reid and transformational art coach Anna Denning unveil The Art of Manifesting Method. Its calming practices, which include meditating, journaling, and drawing circles and flowy lines, are designed to create new neural pathways, enabling the participant to cocreate with the Universe through the power of synchronicity. Here, Baron-Reid talks with contributing editor Karen Brailsford about the process of intentional synchronicity, manifestation, and stepping into the world of infinite possibilities. 

Karen Brailsford: Tell me about Uncharted, rereleased recently as You’re in the Right Place, and why it’s relevant today.

Colette Baron-Reid: Uncharted was before its time. We reissued it because I saw the uncertainty that was coming. The book is about where home begins—in the realm of Spirit. We mistakenly think that our certainty will come from the outer world, but it doesn’t. We spend our entire lives relearning what we knew as babies: that we are all worthy, that we are part of this unity consciousness, and that we are all intrinsically connected. And yet we play this bizarre game in which we manufacture things to separate ourselves from one another. 

We frantically look for answers—for our entire lives on Earth. We get here, we put in place the things we need, and then we forget! We wonder, How did I get here? Where did I come from? But the answers are always right there.  

For example, I used to roll my eyes sometimes when people said they channel. Like, “Oh, please.” Then in 2014, after conducting more than 300 readings one month for a TV show, I began to hear a hum. I thought maybe a whole bunch of dead people had followed me home. In meditation, I asked, “Who are you? Do you have a name?”  

I heard this buzzy voice say: “We are Fred. We are the waves. We are the ocean. We are when you listen.” 

I then asked, “Where are you?” and I saw the character Garth from Wayne’s World. When I looked up the names, I discovered Garth meant “keeper of the garden” and Fred means “ruler of peace.” I realized that this was consciousness with a capital C. It manifested itself very playfully because it knew that would get my attention.  

KB: One of your processes is to ask, “Where am I?” Can you say more about that? 

CBR: That question is part of a three-part self-inquiry exercise I call the “Total Mindshift Process.” You first ask yourself, When I feel this way, where am I? If your emotions were in a place that you temporarily inhabited, you then ask yourself, When am I? And finally, you ask yourself, Who am I listening to? Immediately, you go from identifier-experiencer to observer. It’s a powerful process that engages neuroplasticity. 

Here’s a great example of what it can do: When I was living in Sedona, a woman who had been in an abusive marriage and had left her husband attended one of my workshops. She appeared older than she actually was. She was hunched over and had grayish, mousy brown hair. After doing a process in the workshop, she was able to access a memory of attacking her husband with a knife in self-defense. It was a memory she had blocked. Through the exercise, she realized there was a part of her that was continually trying to protect herself, and then she was able to release that part of her that felt she always needed protection.  

After two days, her hair started turning brown. It was weird! Everybody saw it. I was on the phone with [fellow Hay House author and stem cell biologist and epigenetics expert] Bruce Lipton [Ph.D.], asking him, “What’s going on? This woman’s hair is changing color!” She was standing taller too. Bruce suggested it was a biological epigenetic response. Everything changed because she no longer felt unsafe. She was no longer in fight-or-flight mode.

KB: I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, and Spirit said, “Let’s cut to the chase,” and then gave me five questions to ask you: Who are you? What are you? Why are you? Where are you? When are you?  

CBR: That’s too funny! Let’s play with this. Who am I? This depends on what emotions I’m experiencing or my perception of my reality on that day because I am a product of everything that I have learned up until now. But I am also this immensely tuned-in, connected, and conscious being. There’s a higher consciousness that I am that doesn’t believe any of the crap I’ve decided to believe about myself. The reticular activating system of my brain, the sorting system that activates what we see, has used my noggin to consistently look for evidence in the outer world of what I believe is true.  

Imagine there’s lots of data out there, but only the stuff that we believe and have reinforced lights up. In other words, we see what we believe to be true. So, who I am depends on whether or not I’m operating out of my conditioned self. The only time I have ever let go of my conditioned self is when I’m in the process of creativity. We’ve been conditioned to expect certain things to be true when we engage uncertainty, like right now. The world is extremely chaotic and will continue to be so for at least another year and a half before things settle down. That isn’t pleasant for most people who rely upon certain truths, facts, and experiences to be consistent.

KB: So what are you? 

CBR: I am a woman in the process of peeling back the layers of who I thought I was while welcoming who I want to become. I would say I’m an artist first because it is through my cocreative ability to be partnered with a power greater than myself that I can intuit and do mediumship.  

I’m a thriver who has experienced the full catastrophe of being alive, including violence and rape, but I refuse the tag of victim. I’m also a recovered alcoholic and drug addict.  

I’ll be 67 by the time this interview is published. I’m in my mentor years and want to give away what I know. I’ve never enjoyed the word psychic because I always felt it had a pejorative meaning. But I’m going to own it right now. I am a psychic and a medium.  

I’m also a business strategist, a science nerd, and a fiction writer, as I’m working on my first novel. I’m also a dog mother. I love my dogs! I have two Pomeranians—Tinky (short for Tinker Bell) and Bisou (the French word for kiss). I’ve had two dogs named Tinker Bell. 

KB: Isn’t Tinker Bell the fairy in Peter Pan?  

CBR: Yes. Fairies are very powerful and walk between worlds. It’s like, Yes, I am a human being that experiences the world with the five senses. But I can also tune into something different and then things happen as if by magic. 

“We spend our entire lives relearning what we knew as babies: that we are all worthy, that we are part of this unity consciousness.”

KB: You talk about “intentional synchronicity.” Can one make synchronicity happen? 

CBR: You don’t make synchronicity happen. It’s a partnership with Spirit. My vision board exercise is a good example. With typical vision boards, you cut out images of things you want and attach them to the board. With my vision boards, you draw a rectangular border a few inches from the edge of the page. Inside the border, you draw large circles of intention, and within them, you draw smaller gratitude bubbles. You write words and draw images inside the circles of what you want and what you are grateful for because it’s key to express gratitude for the things you want in advance.

And then everything outside the rectangular border is what I call the Zone of Synchronicity. In that space, you draw circles and gratitude bubbles, but you don’t write or draw images of what you want in them. You’re acknowledging that God may have a better idea—one you haven’t thought of—and you are making space for what better idea God might have and then allowing God to fill the circles. You’re telling the universe you’re ready to receive; you’re saying, “Your will be done. Surprise me. Show me the form.” 

KB: Your vision boards actually start with the dot exercise. Can you explain that? 

CBR: I use it in all of my work. It’s part of The Art of Manifesting Method that I developed with artist and teacher Anna Denning. We are both Reiki masters. She told me that whenever she draws or paints, she Reikis the page first to put life force energy onto it and to activate the paper. So we have people start the vision board exercise by rubbing their hands together.

By doing that, you are asking Spirit to come through your hands, which is what Reiki is. Then you create a ball of energy by positioning your hands with fingertips apart as though you are holding a sphere. You keep them there until you feel a temperature change. Then you place your hands above the paper so that you are putting the energy onto the paper, activating it.  

Next, you draw a dot and focus on the dot until you see the light around it. When you actually see the light, you know Spirit’s in the room. Then you draw a representation of God around the dot. This can be a heart, for example, or an eye. Then you draw the border to create the Zone of Synchronicity and the circles.  

KB: So why are you?  

CBR: Everyone’s “why” is to channel Spirit. We’re here to be the emissary of something greater than us. We’re here to let Spirit experience anything It wants through us. Now I’ll tell you why I do what I do. I believe it’s because I had a genuine spiritual awakening. My “why” is to grow and to share what I know.

Before I got sober, I was wild. I was in a band, and I looked like Elvira with spiky blue and purple hair and thigh-high boots. Later, after I got sober, this guy told me, “You saved my life. I went to a meeting, and you were sharing about your recovery experience. I was going to kill myself. But I thought, If she can do it, I can do it too.” That has never left me.  

KB: What led to your spiritual awakening?  

CBR: I hit bottom. I had been going to a drug dealer’s basement for about a week to smoke cocaine. I hadn’t slept or bathed. I went to the bathroom, and for the first time, I saw myself. I was so skinny. I had jaundice, and the whites of my eyes were yellow. My teeth were loose, and my gums were bleeding. I said, “Help me.” A light came around me, and I heard a voice say, “We’re done. It’s okay.” I got in a cab and went home. I tried to get high a couple more times, then two weeks later, on January 2, 1986, I finally stopped.  

KB: Where are you?  

CBR: Physically, I’m living in Portugal for a few months. It’s been on my bucket list. My dad was Serbian and Mongolian. He claimed he was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. My mother was Polish with a French father. They immigrated to Canada after World War II and took me to Europe every summer. I love Portugal. The people are friendly, and it’s so multicultural. We have these incredibly respectful conversations about the state of the world.  

Emotionally, where I am right now is in a really open place of receptivity, love, and self-care. I’m like the Energizer bunny. I’m constantly working, and that’s not good for me. Here, I live a different lifestyle. Where am I? I’m coming to myself again. I also happen to be in a bakery because the bread is so good here! 

As for When am I? I am pondering the past. I am thinking of my parents during World War II and what it was like when the world became so unstable. I’m writing a fantasy romance novel that takes place in ancient Europe, so I’m researching the history and trying to understand what happened then. For the past 50 years we haven’t experienced anything like the kind of spillage that’s happening now in the West. 

KB: You end You’re in the Right Place with words that make me tingle: “It’s time to step joyfully into the magical world of the uncharted. Infinite possibilities are waiting for you.” 

CBR: Stepping into the uncharted means that we’re going to discover something new. That’s the uncharted space in the Zone of Synchronicity. We can say that we think we know what we want and align with that. But it’s the experience of what we say we want that is more important than the thing we say we want.  

As an artist, you don’t always know what’s going to appear on the canvas. We discover something that is alive, and it feels magical. I like to pray, “God, let me be a channel for your divine light. Relieve me of the bondage of self so that I may better do thy will. Use me as thou wilt. Thy will be done through me.” That’s intentional synchronicity.  

Right now, the world is waking up to the fact that something needs to change. We need to step into uncharted territory where somebody has taken an existential jackhammer to break up the hard ground that couldn’t grow anything new anymore and kept recycling what was. We’re being invited to plant new seeds that will grow a flower we don’t have a freaking clue what to call just yet.  

We are not going to find those seeds by being opposed to one another. We are going to find them when we recognize that we share our humanity regardless of what we think it should look like. I think that’s why terrible things happen in the world, so that we will wake up. We can’t wait for the world to behave and for the hard things to be over for us before we step into our power to cocreate, to hold space for our humanity, to have hope, and to respect each other.      

Colette Baron-Reid is a spiritual intuitive, seminar leader, motivational speaker, visual artist, and musical recording artist, as well as the author of 19 oracle card decks and seven books. She is also a member of the Transformational Leadership Council. Visit colettebaronreid.com. 

This article appeared in the September/October 2025 of Spirituality & Health: A Unity Publication^®. Subscribe now.