In today’s fast-paced world, more and more people are learning to go to their quiet selves, look inward, and showcase their inner energies to change the course of their lives. By taking it to the next level and concentrating more on mindfulness and meditation, a strong intuitive awareness can finally dawn. Tesa Baum sits down with psychic, healer, and medium Cody Edner to discuss how tapping into intuition can pave the way to self-fulfillment, clarity with your goals, overcome trauma, gain meaningful relationships, and handle emotions better. He also explains how he discovered his attunement to psychic abilities through a simple palm reading session and goes deep on how his technique differs from mediumship, letting you talk with people who already passed.
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Listen to the podcast here
Cody Edner On Attaining Intuitive Awareness
I’m going to be speaking with Cody Edner. Cody is an intuitive reader, healer and medium with many years of experience. He has done tens of thousands of energy readings and healings, and taught thousands more to meditate and tap into their intuitive abilities. Cody first awakened his intuitive gifts when he was fourteen years old while watching his aunt receive a psychic reading. He suddenly realized that he was reading along with the psychic, having the same awareness and insights as the reader. After that experience, Cody began studying meditation and metaphysics deeply. He continues to explore, learn and teach about what it means to be psychic. He is the Founder of IntuitiveVision.net and co-host of the Energy Matters podcast. I’m excited for you to learn his exact story.
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Cody, how are you?
I’m good. How are you, Tesa?
I’m doing great. I’m so happy you’re on. I know we talked about the zig-zag of life and your thoughts about it, your work, and how maybe this idea does align with how the course of your life has gone. I am curious to learn if you have an impactful zig-zag story or your philosophy on life.
I’m very much into meditation, intuitive energy work, spirituality, if you want to call it that, mysticism, metaphysics. I don’t know that it was a big zig-zag for me in the beginning because I grew up in a household that had metaphysics as an open question that we would talk about or explore. I grew up in the ‘70s, my mother was taking Astrology classes and we were reading books written by mediums. That was a given idea that something exists beyond what we see in front of us in the physical world. I did have a stark experience that caused me to go in that direction in terms of it being an internal thing that I could do because we read the books and you would go to the astrologer or you would go to the psychic or whatever.
[bctt tweet=”Compared to the loudness of doubts and fears, the intuitive voice is the softer, quieter voice.” username=””]
A very good point is I also think shifting now more so as well, we’re always going out to find the answers in the past, and now it is going more internal. That whole idea of a guru is yesterday’s time.
The school that I found where I learned to do energy work, which I started in about 1984, I was probably seventeen when I started formally working with meditative tools and learning to work with energy, do healings, and ultimately to read energy and auras. Our philosophy was that you have your own answers. These are tools to tap into that inner aspect of you that has the answer for you that knows the next step. The teaching was always through a consideration that I’m not teaching you something you don’t know, I’m reminding you of what you know, or who you are when I’m awakening you to spirit or to energy.
Often, we already get these messages but it’s not believing that it’s real, it’s quieting down to hear it because it’s more subtle.
Very often, that critical or questioning mind will be the louder thing, or that may be doubting or skeptical mind even, which I don’t have a problem with healthy skepticism. We do have to question, but very often we’re hearing or having an experience that is very real, but then a part of our mind is saying, “This can’t be real or this doesn’t make sense,” and that’s the louder voice usually. The intuitive voice is the softer, quieter voice. When we teach someone to connect with energy, sometimes it’s called the subtle body or the subtle energies. You have to be more sensitive and quiet to hear those, and not let the world round out those sensitive inputs that you get or the perceptions. Usually, the world can drown everything out. Meditation is core.
I was thinking of the word ‘proof.’ In society nowadays, we want proof, we want the stories. We want to throw it in your face that it’s real. It’s believing more and more, and as you’re saying, it’s subtlety.
It’s like getting in touch or aligning with the sensitive or subtle body, and the perception that comes from becoming aware of energy. In a sense, getting into a place to be present and open to the experience, and not getting into that ‘prove it’ mindset so much. Just live the experience, feel it, go through it enough that then you start to build a sense of validation and reality to that experience that’s happening at the intuitive level. It’s very difficult to prove it because in one way, what are you trying to prove? It’s an experience that’s like saying, “Prove that you feel happy to me, or prove that you are in pain or feel sad.” You can’t prove it. It is just your experience and you have to be true to it. Being intuitive is no different than that. It is being very connected with that inner experience and trusting in it, valuing it, validating it, trusting yourself.
My pivotal experience happened very young, I was about fourteen. I was in a family where it was okay to question the mainstream idea of religion or spirituality, and explore ideas of past lives, metaphysics and even astrology. When I was about fourteen, maybe it was even on my birthday, I have a crazy aunt. Most everybody has a crazy aunt that will take you out to do things. She was taking me shopping and this was actually up in Idaho, which always strikes me as funny because I came from California, but my first psychic reading happened in Idaho of all places in 1979 or something.
We were out shopping and we were at a bookstore. I love reading and I love books, all my life. That was what we were doing, we were out in the bookstore, and in the loft of the bookstore, there was a psychic, a palm reader. My aunt said, “Do you want to get a reading? I’ll buy you a reading for your birthday.” I thought, “That’s great, I’ll get a reading.” When we get up there to check in with the reader and to get settled, my aunt says, “I think I want to get a reading too. I’m going to go first.” To this day, I don’t know if she just wanted to get a reading for herself or if she was giving me a reading, but it was great. It was an experience we were about to have. She got the reading first and I got to sit in on the reading, which as a long-time teacher of intuitive nowadays, we don’t let people sit in on their readings. It makes it much harder for the reader when there’s that other attention. Anyway, this reader, she didn’t care. She let me sit in and she started reading my aunt. As the readings started to progress, my aunt would ask a question and I would have an answer immediately come into my head, and the reader would say that very thing. After this happened a few times, it’s funny because the thought I had wasn’t like, “Wow,” and it wasn’t like, “Oh my God.” It was like, “This is easy. I could do this.”
At fourteen, I matched her energy and started to read along with her, which ironically is how we teach people to read is we have them sit alongside of a more advanced reader, teach them how to match that frequency, which opens them up and they read along with someone. I naturally had that experience. By the end of that reading, and then even by the end of my reading, which I don’t even remember what she said, I remember the experience of opening up and seeing the answers to the questions, seeing the energy. By the end of my reading, my only question was, “How do I develop my own psychic or intuitive abilities?” I didn’t even remember that. I happened to find the cassette tape about a decade later and I listened to it. I was shocked to hear that was my only question. By that time, a decade later, I was a director of an intuitive training school at 24 years old. It was an interesting thing to journey back, listening to that reading. She was a good reader. When I listened to it again, I was like, “She is a good reader,” but then to hear my question, that set my path in a certain direction. That was my interest I had turned on and got a sense of what it was to be in a place of perceiving energy directly and having those messages come in very prominent and active. That was a moment where I think without that, I may not have pursued developing my intuitive abilities quite as strongly. It would have taken longer because that opened me up and made me feel that’s something I could do.
[bctt tweet=”Many people struggle to find where they fit in the world and miss this piece of themselves of being recognized and validated.” username=””]
What I’m getting is this is the best form of teaching. Often, we are delivered with information and sometimes it doesn’t come in. It depends upon who’s teaching. If the teacher is connecting with you in a different way, which I could tell you do, automatically you’re learning because you’re allowing that stream of consciousness to come in. You’re pretty much connecting to the student, so the student is in your wavelength, in your vibe. You’re flying, and the person that’s coming on board has to go along with the wings, “That’s how you do it,” “This is how we do it? Okay.” Intuitively, like a bird, the bird will fly on its own. I find that to be interesting how you offer this.
It is a very different type of teaching in some ways, which is in part why the idea of the expert, the guru or the person that knows a lot is not really where things are now. It’s about teaching you how to tap into your own information. It’s not so much about what I know in terms of knowledge. It’s about different energy levels or frequencies, and knowing how to open a door for you to get into a particular energy frequency. If you want to get more esoteric, it’s getting into different chakras. You start to be able to get into the third eye and open up to that perception that happens there. It’s more about getting to a particular place of perception in yourself, than knowing a particular thing.
We do teach a few tools to get there because we have to have a foundation, but the whole goal is to get a person into that place where they can open up to that intuitive perception and then be able to have enough support to be able to validate those experiences that come in. Maybe a teacher with a little bit more than knowing the right answer for someone, knows how to validate the experience so that they don’t invalidate it and say, “That was crazy. That was just coincidence, or that was some form of minimizing it,” which we do every day to our awareness.
It’s interesting because the minute you told the story, I understood it on a different level. I didn’t even need the words necessarily because many other teachers, you’re studying or you’re trying to retain the information, then you may feel, “I didn’t get that right, I’m not relaying what the teacher told me to a tee, so I don’t know the information.” If we learn in a different way and if you think about children, it is the curiosity. The teacher’s goal should be opening up the world of curiosity and then allowing the student to receive. The information is coming through and then as you said, opening up that other space and our third eye, you may want to call it. I’m feeling it more opening up that sixth sense.
Certainly, it is one of the primary senses we come into the world with and first encountered the world relative to all of these subtler perceptions of energy and dynamics. It is opening up to a place to be in that level of perception. We might call it coming into a place to have energy awareness rather than, mental thought or analytical awareness. There’s this intuitive mind, which is both of them are valuable. We’re not trying to get rid of the analytical mind. We’re trying to open up to, listen to, and maybe enhance a little bit the perceptions that come from the intuitive mind, which we could call a state of becoming aware of energy or having the energy awareness. That is the foundational quality in the world, especially the world of spirit, mysticism or where a medium might work is everything is energy at that level. Everything vibrates. You have an energy field around you if you have a guide that’s an energy vibration that comes around you. Sometimes it has a form. Sometimes it has a color and a frequency. There are these ways that we might perceive from an energy perception level. It’s different than our normal way of perceiving the world. It’s helpful to have feedback to be in a group where others are sharing their experiences as well, so it validates it.
When I brought up the proof like when you’re learning and you’re growing, you want to share the stories. Often when I have groups, I’m noticing it’s a shared experience. I do a lot of a contemporary shamanic journey for people with trauma, and we all go in with the same intention. It’s that collective work. Afterwards, we all seem to have similar visualizations, feelings, knowledge. That’s the beauty of this. I’m loving the way you’re explaining it. We don’t necessarily need to be in an altered state of consciousness to receive the information. We can be very awake and present, and still opening our tower to this higher consciousness without necessarily being asleep, being in a trance-like state.
We do practice meditation, which as we move into that place to focus on energy more than sensation in the body, that is a slightly altered state of awareness. It’s just not that far away as what we might think of. It’s not going into a different trance deep level. It’s something where you shift your focus a little bit and it’s there. Over time, you do that enough, then you start to bring it more into your waking state, not that you couldn’t do that to begin with. For many of us, we have to quiet ourselves somehow enough to hear that and see.
The sacredness, creating a sacred space, and that is important.
We call it a safe space. It’s creating an energy space where it’s safe to open up. Often, we were very perceptive as a child. We opened up at times where it wasn’t safe and we got ourselves in a little bit of trouble somehow. We got shut down. In many ways, we’re opening ourselves back up to this innate ability. Having a safe space to explore that, to not be judged, to not be criticized, is important. I like what you’re saying. The power of the group is amazing to watch. It’s hard to overstate that power because when we come together and set an intention or what I would call the energy is set a particular way, and we start to all open up, then we do have these shared experiences. When you’re opened up at a certain level, what you’re perceiving is what’s there. The person next to you is going to see it too. That’s always miraculous to get that validation. It’s like, “I could easily write those experiences off as I’m weird, crazy, different, I don’t fit in the world.” Many people that struggle to find where they fit in the world are missing this piece of themselves being recognized and validated this intuitive self, shamanic self, because we all have it, but it is so marginalized in the world or denied. That’s where I was at fourteen. Luckily, I found the place that I fit in. Before that, I wouldn’t have known what I was going to do.
It’s finding that course in our life. You’re passionate, you’re excited and there’s no question because you’re loving it. I wanted to make a couple of points. In one of my shared experiences in my meditative state, I was working with somebody who was doing a DNA activation, which were beautiful, incredible sounds. I was in that relaxed place and I was noticing something on the skin. It was like a change of the skin like a hardening of the skin in my mind. I didn’t think it was that important. After the session in the group, another student was mentioning that she was thinking of her brother who had AIDS. I was picking it up. Whatever comes into your mind, there is a good chance that you’re picking up somebody else’s energy or helping things move along.
One of the things that’s always an amazing aspect of intuitive development or awareness exploration is you start to discover how sensitive you are. We don’t realize how much we’re often picking up and even becoming the effect of some other energy that’s around us that’s not us. For some people that are sensitive, they can easily then dramatize that or feel that thing. It’s not even them. That’s something that we start to learn as we develop our intuitive awareness is how to separate from those things that are basically what we’re reading from the world. We do a reading on something, what we’re perceiving that’s not ours, but it’s coming in and we’re experiencing and our own energy. Our own energy feels much calmer, centered and grounded in our own bodies. Very often to a sensitive person, when you start to experience someone else’s energy, that’s when you feel anxious, ungrounded, worried and stressed. A lot of the practices are about tuning ourselves into knowing what is our own space and energy so that we can be in the world as a sensitive, but not become the effect of the world so much because it’s overwhelming.
I noticed with my children when they are around friends that make them feel a certain way, I know that my children are not in their own energy. When they’re by themselves and we’re enjoying each other, there’s calmness. Often when they do feel rattled or any emotion that comes through, I know that they’re taking on a friend’s energy.
They can even act out differently. The same thing with our daughter, she’s grown now and off to college. She would be around different friends and then she will be acting a certain way or projecting a certain energy. You go, “That’s not her. She’s not being herself.”
It’s important to be grounded and find your own center, energy and your higher self. I often do a certain meditation. In certain cultures, they call it a refined light energy in some cultures, bringing that in and bringing it to the Earth. Bringing that heavier energy into the Earth. We need to clean the debris of others.
That’s central to the meditation style that we practice and teach. We call it running energy because you’re moving energy through your body that connects you to both the Earth and to the cosmos. That brings us together in those two energy levels and consciousness levels, awakening to both or integrating both.
It’s interesting because in many different methods that I’ve learned, that is the cycle, that is the flow. It’s bringing it in, moving it out in that flow. It is destressing. It’s such a natural thing.
[bctt tweet=”We don’t realize how much we’re often picking up and even becoming the effect of other energies around us.” username=””]
There’s bringing energy in from the cosmos, then there’s bringing of energy up from the Earth so that you’re grounded, you’re set and you’re embodied. The practice of meditation that I teach and have practice, we would call it an in-body meditation, which would be one way to describe it, where there are meditations where we go out. We expand ourselves out into the cosmos or we project out into a different space. Every meditation has its value, and everyone has something that will help you process or work on. It will get you somewhere. The one for opening up the third eye and being intuitive, that brings you into the body because that’s in the body. The one for exploring mediumship and connection with a disembodied spirit takes you out because that’s out at a higher frequency. We have both.
It is important to be grounded and embodied in order to do that work. Maybe when I first started doing any of this work, it was exciting to explore and to want to go out. It is important to feel grounded and revitalized from the Earth because there is an energy that we get from nature. We need to eat that, suck that in and we’re able to. It’s available to us, but people don’t think of it that way. Also to drink it.
We very much need to be in connection, and in a way in communication alignment with that energy to be revitalized, to be stabilized in the body, to feel validated and real in the body. I agree with you, in the beginning, when you start to open up to this mystical stuff, it is fun to be out there. It’s such a big world and it’s exciting. It’s dynamic energetically very energizing but over time, in order to fully integrate all of that experience, we have to be grounded and in the body at some point. That’s where we integrate it.
It’s merging the two. It’s integrating and being happy to be here.
I was lucky enough to find a place where that was the core philosophy, and the goal was about integrating into the body, realizing your true self through the body, and creating whatever it is you’re here to create. Your path is to offer something to the world, to be here in some way that hopefully gives to and helps heal the world. There are plenty of that needs to happen. To be more of yourself in the body has always been the goal.
It’s such an exciting idea how you teach because through osmosis, just by learning the energy and how you’re sharing it, I understood what you were saying. It’s pretty cool. You gave me a new idea on how to connect, how to reach those levels of consciousness. It’s a gift by being you. You’re offering these techniques, the frequency, the vibration.
It’s a vibration. The thing about an intuitive, if you hang around them for a while, and you’re very intuitive, so you do this too, is we tend to talk a little bit more in pictures, and the minute you get the picture, you get all the information. It’s not always that the whole story has to be spelled out. It’s enough that you get the picture and then you see it. At that moment, you get the rest of it.
I’ve always read it like an analogy. Speaking to people and explaining it, “This is what I’m seeing. Can you relate to that?” The person then often does. It’s interesting because we are connecting to spirit.
One way that I’ve described it over the years is spirit speaks in pictures, which is the language of spirit, and body speaks in emotion. You have to be able to hear the emotion of what the body’s telling you. You also have to be able to be in the place to connect with and see what spirit is communicating. To be aware of both of those levels or frequencies of communication integrated to, that’s tricky. It’s tricky to be a conscious spirit in a body because the stuff that comes up in the body is challenging, the emotional stuff and all of that.
It’s not easy to be human. It’s easier to be a spirit. I have never explored mediumship. It’s something that I don’t think I connect to. I mentioned to you that both my parents have passed, my father passed and my mom passed several years ago. It’s interesting, she was the spiritual one, but I haven’t communicated with her as much since she passed. I’m feeling like either she’s a lighter energy maybe higher. My father had more of a magnetic personality here on Earth. I don’t know if he had a stronger presence, but there was something. Since he’s passed, he has given me images and communicating with him. I don’t know what the process is. I don’t know if as he passed on, it was the remnants of this life that he still communicated, and maybe his journey will begin. I don’t know how it works except for the first year, I’m sure he’s processing this.
The mediumship, that world is such a big world. Most spirit that we’re connected within that way, family and the like, we have these deep spiritual connections as well. It’s not random that we’re in a particular family, at least in most cases, you look in and there are deep agreements, there’s karma, there’s a history where we’ve incarnated with different souls over time. Most spirit when it leaves is processing, getting out of the incarnation, recollecting its energy, resolving some things. It’s funny because that may or may not take a lot of time. It depends on that spirit and where they are. They can move on and still come back and have communication or connection with us.
Even if they’ve moved on, we don’t totally sever the connection with them. They might be in a very different place and yet we can still connect with them or contact them. That’s a thing that is great to explore the communication that happens with someone who’s passed on, that’s close to you. If it’s a parent, maybe there are some questions to ask as you communicate with your father, as you sense him around you, what is he wanting to communicate? By asking him, you might get an impression. He could be there in a supportive healing fashion. My crazy aunt passed away, and that was her thing. She loved being the crazy aunt. She was wonderful, loved all the metaphysical stuff, and pursued that. She passed away, and I was lucky enough to be there as she passed, which is quite a powerful energy and experience. It’s been a couple of years, and I still see her show up on occasion, feel her presence, I communicate with her. I don’t think she lives here anymore, I think she’s moved on, but I still have that connection at times with her.
With all that I’ve read, you go through these levels. The more it evolves or you reach this lighter way and there’s less of a need to be in this energy.
You get to a higher frequency. The mediumship, I know you have an interest in it.
I don’t need to be in that role, but it is interesting to think that we can reach those that have passed on and are in another realm. The idea that they can give us messages and, “As above, so below.” It’s always an interesting idea that we are more than our physical. If that’s the case, where are they in spirit? It’s a question, “What are they doing up there?”
Mediumship, there are a couple of different ideas, and nowadays out in the world and in the media, there are a couple of different ways that people are using that word that mean very different things in terms of what they’re doing. There are many readers out there that might call themselves a medium. What they’re being a medium for is communicating with a spirit that’s on the other side. In an intuitive or clairvoyant reading, if I’m looking at you, I might see a spirit guide and talk to it and say, “There’s a spirit guide over your left shoulder and it’s telling me to say this.” I don’t call that mediumship, but there are many people that are saying, “I’m a medium because I talk to spirit,” I call that clairvoyance. I’m a clairvoyant because I see a spirit, and then I can pass on that message. That’s one form or one usage of the word.
[bctt tweet=”While the body speaks the emotions, the spirit speaks through visuals.” username=””]
The mediumship that I teach and explore is what we would call trance mediumship. You do go into a trance to do it. It’s more akin to Edgar Cayce style mediumship, where something comes through the medium into the world that otherwise exists on the other side. The reason you would connect with that isn’t to connect with someone who’s passed on, it’s to connect with some higher consciousness or frequency that can come through and bring healing, insight or new information into the world. That’s a whole area of mediumship. There are plenty of channeled books that come from that genre, from Edgar Cayce as being probably the most famous to Jane Roberts’ Seth Material to even A Course in Miracles. The person who wrote that claims it was a channeled-tone of work. The true mediumship that I explore is what you can bring through.
Are you familiar with Living Medium?
Which one? Who’s that?
Paul Selig, he is wonderful.
We had him on our show. He’s one practicing that form of mediumship where you bring through another entity. Esther Hicks brings through a bunch of entities. That’s a form of mediumship that I would call trance mediumship in most cases because you’re in an altered state to let that happen. Sometimes, some mediums get into such an altered state like Edgar Cayce, he came back and didn’t even know what happened. He didn’t remember it. The practice that I work with people on is being conscious to remember what happened, but letting go enough to let something happen. We don’t want to totally disappear because that’s how we learn and grow is by being in the experience, being aware of it and conscious.
That’s why it’s important to be embodied. It is important to be in that for quite a long time.
It is a much better path to get grounded, centered and know yourself in your own space first, and then maybe explore mediumship, but you don’t want to do it the other way around.
I have been intrigued of Paul Selig. He calls himself The Living Medium.
I didn’t know that you spoke with him. He was on our show. It was great to meet him and great to talk with him. He told a little bit about his story.
The Harmonic Convergence. I don’t remember that time, do you?
I do. I was aware of it but I didn’t do anything during it, but I do remember it. Are you speaking of the one that was in the ‘80s?
The 1987.
I was aware of that because I was already practicing intuitive by then. I started in ‘84. I remember a lot of talk around the Harmonic Convergence.
I love all of these conversations and I’m excited to hear about more of your classes. Anything you want to share with our readers about what you’re offering and anything you want to finish up with?
There are two best things to check out. One is our podcast, Energy Matters Podcast. I do that with a partner, David Gandelman. He has a meditation school and he does intuitive work as well. We partnered up. Through that, we have created the Energy Matters Academy, and that’s where we teach intuitive development. We have schools, classes, and a program of deep, intensive, intuitive development that takes about a year. It’s not something you get on a weekend because you have to build up and reinforce the validation of the experience. You can have great experiences in a weekend setting and open up, or in a retreat setting, but to go deeper, it also has to have this longevity. It becomes a practice. We do both. We have done retreats. We went to Costa Rica a few years ago. That was a blast and took a group and stuff like that. We have this Intuitive Development Training course, which is about a year long. It’s done like this, over Zoom and/or the phone. We have it all set up with classes, and then practicums, places where you learn how to read the energy, you read people. A lot of it is the practice. The workshopping is where you get the answers where you open up in the experience.
We were talking about the escape, it’s wonderful going on a retreat and feeling that self-care, have moments of epiphany, and understanding. We go back to our daily life and we may forget what happened in the workshops, so it’s important.
It’s hard to change the practice of how we operate in the world, how we think on the energy level we’re at, but that has to be something we work on a little bit every day over time.
Thank you so much, Cody. It’s such a pleasure talking to you. I’m looking forward to speaking with you again.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s great.
Take care, Cody.
Important Links
- IntuitiveVision.net
- Energy Matters Podcast
- A Course in Miracles
- Seth Material
- Paul Selig – episode of Energy Matters
- Energy Matters Academy
About Cody Edner
Spiritual Teacher, Reader and Healer.
Cody Edner has been teaching meditation and intuitive awareness for over 30 years. He is the founder of IntuitiveVision.net, co-host of the Energy Matters podcast, and currently travels and teaches advanced intuitive training programs, workshops and seminars. He is also the former director of the Berkeley Psychic Institute of Santa Rosa and Aesclepion Wellness Center.
Cody first awakened to his intuitive gifts when he was 14 years old while watching his aunt receive a psychic reading. He suddenly realized that he was “reading along” with the psychic, having the same awareness and insights as the reader. After that experience, Cody began to study meditation and metaphysics deeply. Even today, he continues to explore, learn and teach about what it means to be psychic.
Cody is an intuitive reader, healer and medium with 35+ years’ experience. He has done tens of thousands of energy readings & healings and taught thousands more to meditate and tap into their intuitive abilities. He currently spends his time between Colorado Springs and Leadville, Colorado.
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