Welcome to this teaching.
Before we begin,
This teaching contains discussion of fear,
Trauma,
And systemic oppression.
Please listen only if you feel safe doing so.
During slavery in the United States,
Enslaved Africans created an underground railroad to help each other find their way to freedom.
Those maps were crafted out of personal experience,
Some failures,
And some successes.
We find ourselves in a similar time,
Where many are realizing that they've been enslaved to a system of thought,
Extracting their joy and creativity,
Their sovereignty and power.
And so,
We create an underground railroad to help each other find our way to true freedom.
This is my contribution,
Drawn from my own experience and mapped in my scars.
When you begin to leave the system,
You will experience three phases.
First,
You'll experience fear.
Fear because for your whole life,
The system has told you that you need it.
That if you don't play its game,
You'll end up homeless,
Starving,
Living in a cardboard box,
Assaulted,
Or having your children taken away.
It may not feel like it,
But this is actually a good sign.
It means that you're becoming aware.
You're preparing to detach from the system,
And you can't unhook until you heal where you're hooked.
You will have to heal.
There's no bypassing this.
The good news is that healed,
Whole people are impossible to fool for very long.
You are becoming a force of nature,
Wild and untamed.
On a side note,
Just from my own experience,
Anytime someone or something tells you that you can't leave because you need me,
They're speaking from fear.
You have my permission.
Go ahead and translate it in your head.
Learn to hear what they're really saying.
They're saying,
You can't leave me.
I need you.
I can't function the same without you.
If you leave me,
Others will leave me,
And I'll be left alone with nothing.
It's ego.
It's fear.
It's the system.
Know that the system never wastes energy trying to keep something unless it needs it.
I'm especially sensitive to power dynamics,
And one thing that I've learned is that we never give our power away.
We may lend it to worthy causes,
But we never give it away.
So when you hear that voice telling you that you need the system,
That you need to play the game or else,
Know that you're the one with all the power.
Second,
You'll need to learn how to self-soothe through fear.
Now you can use meditations,
Breath work,
Supportive relationships,
Pausing,
Exercise,
Anything that helps you last longer than the fear.
It's a game of chicken during this time.
Whoever blinks first has to start over,
And that's all it is.
You start over.
You don't lose.
You don't fail.
You just have to start over at your last win point.
It's like playing a computer game and having to start over again at your last save point.
Not at the beginning,
Just your last save point.
Now here's a side note.
Everyone,
And I mean everyone,
Stumbles during this time.
It's part of learning how to walk,
And that's what you're doing.
You're learning how to walk in your own power.
You may even go back to the system for a time,
But you won't be who you were before.
Even that return will show you how much you've changed,
And that will be fuel for when you leave for good.
Now this step can feel like it takes forever,
But I promise it doesn't.
Everything that has a beginning has an end,
Even this.
Finally,
You'll come to a point where you stand in your own power confidently enough to relax in the face of the noise.
Your calm will be the ultimate act of defiance.
You'll be able to stand in your power in exactly direct relation to how well you've learned to self-soothe.
When you can relax in the eye of the storm,
You'll begin to create.
Ideas will come to you a bit at a time.
Act on them,
Even if they seem silly or crazy.
Redirect your thoughts from,
I can't do this,
To,
How could I do this?
You will need to learn new skills because you can't create a new world with old tools.
As you create,
Self-soothe,
And continue to stand in your power,
You will unmask the lie of scarcity.
You'll see yourself creating something from nothing,
And the lie that there's not enough somehow will lose its hold.
Creativity will breed creativity,
And you will stop resting in the eye of the storm.
You'll become the storm.
This comes as you learn to embody yourself.
On a side note,
This isn't a linear process.
It's cyclical.
You'll go through cycles and cycles of this,
Healing deeper and deeper each time.
Each time you heal deeper,
You'll stand with more confidence.
You'll fly higher and root stronger,
And one day you'll draw the map for someone else,
And your scars will be their path home.
