Mental Health On The Spiritual Path

Hello,

Hello everybody.

Hi from North Germany.

Hello,

Welcome,

Welcome.

How is everyone doing today?

We're going to have a beautiful conversation.

Aloha from the Pacific Northwest Seattle area.

Hello,

Welcome.

Thank you for saying hi.

Today is an interesting day.

It is the most early signups that we have ever had for the Wild Becoming Live podcasts.

I am your host,

Amanda Machado.

I'm an epidemiologist and teacher of conscious living,

But this is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart,

As I can tell it's near and dear to yours.

We have an aligning of values happening here today.

Hello from California.

This is my first time,

Welcome.

So nice to see you.

So nice to be connected with you.

Today's topic is all about mental health on the spiritual path.

And if you're here,

You,

I mean,

If we're here,

If we're living,

If we're breathing,

We're on the spiritual path,

Whether we identify with being on the spiritual path or we don't.

And if we're here living and breathing and saying hello in the chat,

Hello from Victoria,

BC,

Canada,

Welcome.

That means that we have a brain,

We have a mind and life can be challenging.

Life has its challenges and it has its beautiful moments and it has exciting moments and moments of gratitude and love and all of the things.

We're energetic beings.

We hold energy in our body through our experiences.

And oftentimes we struggle,

Right?

Sometimes we suffer.

The Buddha says suffering is optional,

Pain is inevitable,

But we all do it,

Whether we like it or not,

Whether we want to suffer or we don't want to suffer,

We suffer sometimes.

And I think a lot of it has to do with prolonged suffering connected to our mental health.

And oftentimes we can get what we need from a spiritual community,

But sometimes we don't get certain aspects of that.

So we don't get,

How does that actually connect to my mental health or how does that actually connect to the health of my mind and having a healthy relationship with my mind?

I think when I first identified with being on the spiritual path,

I started noticing that I had this,

A bit of a disassociation or disconnection from the relationship with my mind.

I started to notice that I started to dislike my mind.

I didn't trust my mind.

I didn't have a loving relationship with it because I didn't like what it was telling me.

I didn't like the negative thoughts.

I was tired of being in survival mode,

Always trying to seek safety.

I wanted to thrive.

And I don't know about you,

Feel free to share your stories and your expression in the chat.

I love to,

I love to see that.

I love to hear from you.

It was challenging,

Right?

Because I was on the spiritual path because I wanted to enhance my mind,

To heal myself,

To not be in flight or fight,

Basically,

Anymore.

I wanted to be liberated from my mind.

A lot of spiritual communities talk about being liberated from the mind.

And so I didn't have a loving relationship with my mind or my nervous system.

I didn't understand it.

I didn't know why.

Why me,

Right?

We go through life sometimes and we think,

Why me?

Why does this keep happening to me?

Why does this pattern keep showing up in my life?

What did I do to deserve it?

Make it stop.

Make this pattern stop so I can live my life in peace,

Right?

And it was only more recently,

Being on the spiritual path,

You know,

All our lives were on the spiritual path.

But I think I started identifying that I was on the spiritual path in 2017.

And for the first time,

More recently,

Did I notice that we can have a loving relationship with our mind.

We can have a loving relationship with our nervous system.

Because the fact that we're all here today is because of our nervous system and because of our mind.

And if we didn't have our nervous system protecting us,

Guiding us,

Telling us what was safe and what is not safe,

We wouldn't even have a spiritual path in the human experience.

Because we wouldn't be here.

And this is where we get to kind of accept all parts.

Or look at,

Do we accept all parts?

And some of you may or may not be familiar with the chakra system.

And it's interesting because,

I don't know about you,

But the base chakra,

The root chakra,

Sometimes we have an avoidance with this.

We have an avoidance with our primal selves.

The root chakra.

It's kind of,

You know,

More boring to us than the rest sometimes.

Because it's stability,

Safety,

The energy,

And how that's cultivated within us.

We want to fly.

We want to evolve,

Right?

And that's kind of,

As we go up the body,

We start to see how our consciousness evolves,

Right?

Through the heart.

We feel God.

We feel the universe.

We feel nature through our heart.

Through our third eye,

Or seeing eye,

Or chakra of truth,

Our throat,

Our speech,

How we speak in the world.

We want all these things,

Right?

We don't care about,

Like,

Stability.

I'm done with that,

Right?

But it's this energy of stability,

This base to our spine,

This base to our backbone that creates the stability so that energy can flow and we feel safe.

Because in order to thrive,

In order to go beyond our comfort zone,

We need to feel safe.

We have a basic need as human beings to feel safe.

Just as we have a basic need for connection with one another,

And just as we have a basic need for finances,

For a home,

Sometimes on the spiritual path,

We get so in love with the spiritual connections we have and the spiritual connection that we discover within ourselves that we kind of forget that we're in a human body and we're in the wild,

Right?

We're in nature.

We're part of nature.

This is the wild wilds.

This is the wild west or the wild.

We're part of nature.

We're not separate.

And just as nature can be beautiful,

Nature can also be cruel when there's imbalances and the universe and the natural ecosystem of life is trying to put us back into harmonious living.

And so our nervous system is actually designed to protect us so that we can continue on this path because without it,

We wouldn't be living and breathing.

And so it's maybe just honoring that a little bit more and asking yourself,

Do I have a healthy relationship with my nervous system?

Do I have a healthy relationship with this feeling of stability and safety?

And sometimes it goes in the opposite direction.

We fear,

We freeze at the idea of freedom or we freeze at the idea of love and truth because sometimes it can be a little hard to feel in the body.

We want love.

We desire love.

But when we actually feel it,

It can actually feel quite overwhelming.

And so sometimes it's the opposite direction.

We have too much stability.

We honor safety beyond,

Beyond,

Beyond,

Beyond,

And we never leave our comfort zone.

And so maybe it's just recognizing which one of those is it for me,

And it could be many,

Many of things and in many different circumstances.

And then how has my nervous system helped me on this journey?

And in some cases,

Where is it hindering me because I've always been in this particular mode and my body is asking me to come back into equilibrium and harmony.

And so there's this beautiful flow state that we have and Buddhists cause,

Buddhists and other spiritual,

Like organizations and communities of spirituality call this the wise mind.

This is known in mindfulness as well.

And this is really where we have that clarity,

That peace,

That alignment,

That centeredness with God,

The universe,

Nature.

It's also known as the middle path.

It's where we feel safe and held in creation and by our creator.

And this is where we actually can think with a wiser mind,

Our logic,

And where we can feel the energy of our energetic body and what's happening inside of us in a more harmonious way where we're not running from what we feel and we're not trying to attach to certain feelings that make us feel kind of high on life.

We actually,

This is where we get to experience our creator because we get to experience our creator or God or the universe through feeling and expression in our body and in our heart,

As an example.

That helps to amplify that electric,

That energetic currency.

And then we also get to understand through our minds,

Conceptualize,

And we may not be able to conceptualize our whole universe with our mind,

Just as we don't necessarily understand why we feel the way that we feel.

And so when we bring these two together,

This is the beautiful flow state.

It's a beautiful rhythmic state,

Right?

Rhythmic.

Everything in the universe,

Everything in nature,

Everything in us happens in a rhythm.

And when we're in this rhythm,

When we're in this flow state,

This is when we're in rhythm with life,

Rhythm with creation,

Rhythm with one another,

Rhythm with our creator.

We're connected to the source and we create as part of creation.

And we have willpower to kind of have our say of what song we want to sing,

How we want to show up in the world,

How we want to express ourselves.

So it's very connected to our authenticity and being part of the song of nature,

Being part of the song of the universe and not feeling that separateness,

Not feeling disconnected to ourselves in the sense that we don't have a sense of self.

So we don't know who we are and not being disconnected from one another in the sense that we can't connect on our values or we can't learn from other people's values that create this beautiful song when sang together,

When sang in harmony.

If the music was off in a song,

We would notice.

And I think we are noticing.

We're noticing through the earth and what she's showing us about her illness because the universe,

Nature,

It has mind to it as well.

The mind and the nervous system of nature may look a little bit different species to species,

But there's an intelligence there that's connected to us.

And when her intelligence has been hindered,

We see it,

Right?

Wildfires,

Intense hurricanes,

Intense storms.

Some of it is necessary,

But what is caused by rhythm is different than what is caused by drama and the drama from disharmonious living.

And our nervous system is no different.

And so what can happen is when we're out of this flow state,

We can either become depressed,

Very depressed,

Like where our thoughts start creating this negative spiral downwards,

Down,

Down,

Down.

And then we're hanging way too low.

It's like we've gone to the bottom of the ocean and we're looking up and we're like,

I don't know how to get back up.

How do I get back up there?

I need to breathe.

I'm down here.

Hello?

Can anyone hear me?

Can somebody come down and please rescue me from the bottom of the ocean?

And when we feel this way,

Life can start to feel like it's not worth living because all we see is the surface.

All we're seeing is the surface and the depth,

And we don't know how we're going to get out.

And we feel disconnected.

Nobody can hear us.

We're not breathing air.

We're not breathing oxygen.

We have no gravity.

We're not connected with boots on the ground.

And if you've ever felt this state,

Know that you are not alone.

And especially on the spiritual path,

Because I think when we see,

When we can see the nature of our world and what's happening and the disconnect and all of these things,

We start to become very,

The despair becomes quite potent within us.

And then what do we do?

Sometimes what we can do is we don't want to feel this at all,

So we do everything to try and hack our nervous system to put us into kind of like a manic state,

Which can lead us to anxiety,

Right?

Where we're so concerned with the despair that we start turning to flight,

Fight and freeze mode.

We're so high in the air,

We're flying so high off the planet with anxiety that we're taking on all of the world's problems.

We feel it in our body because we're all connected,

But we've gone so high because we've been hanging so low.

We've tried to take a shortcut and we do this in many,

Many ways,

Like drugs,

Alcohol,

Any sort of addiction.

Sometimes we do this through social media,

Binge watching TV,

Anything to get us high.

And there are some healthy self soothing techniques that we can learn and relearn.

Some of them we do them naturally,

But it's very,

It's not uncommon to see people jumping from instead of being in flow state in the nervous system,

From jumping to depression to anxiety,

Depression,

Anxiety,

And those are very extreme,

Where you might actually have a mental health condition,

Which again,

There's large stigma,

But it's so important to get the help that you need,

Especially on the spiritual path.

Sometimes it doesn't,

It's not as that as it's not as severe as that we're like somewhere in the middle.

We're not in flow state,

But we're also,

We're still jumping back and forth from,

From negativity to a little bit of positivity,

Negativity to a little bit of positivity.

And we're not really efficient in our daily life.

We're not living consciously.

We're living very automatic.

We're living in survival mode.

We're only living from our primal selves with a little bit of thriving,

A little bit of evolution,

A little bit of thriving.

Because at the end of the day,

We need to seek safety in the wilderness,

But we also need to make sure that the threat exists.

And the challenge with the nervous system is many of us have grown up in environments where there were real threats,

Where there was emotional disconnection,

You know,

In some cases,

Physical disconnection,

In some cases,

Abuse,

Right?

And all of this,

What this does to a healthy nervous system that's developing is it tells us this was very unsafe.

This was very unsafe for you.

This was very traumatic.

Welcome,

Sasha.

Thanks for joining.

Welcome from Germany.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

You know,

In speaking,

In thinking about my own relationship with my nervous system,

I was like,

Why do you keep telling me there's a bear there when there's not?

I want a relationship with this person.

I want to feel connection.

I want to feel love.

Because what happens is we then begin to fear intimacy.

We then begin to have very unhealthy relationships with intimacy because of attachment wounding.

Because we were frightened when we were a child or in our adolescence in a way that was so impactful that our nervous system was like,

Nope,

Nope.

That's not going to happen to you again.

I'm going to protect you.

And how can we honor that?

That no matter what,

Something within ourselves is always protecting us.

And how can we also look at where we can make the shifts so that we can live a more harmonious life so that we can come back more into flow state,

Especially on the spiritual path?

Because there's a lot on the spiritual path,

Especially around attachments.

If any of you have ever felt deep soul connection,

Or even just attachment to an outcome,

Attachment to an idea you had that just didn't work out in the way you thought it was going to,

Or attachment in a creative endeavor,

Or attachment in a relationship that didn't work out,

A friendship,

A partnership,

A marriage,

Right?

On the spiritual path,

As you know,

We learn a lot about non-attachment on the spiritual path,

Non-judgment.

But is it hard not to be judgmental towards others?

Yes.

It's very hard sometimes because we are judgmental towards ourselves.

We want to do better and we want better for the world,

Right?

We're not going to be without judgments.

It's just how we action them,

How we think about them.

Non-judgment is necessary,

Or else if we didn't have judgment at all,

Then we would just go around hurting one another and it would be okay,

And it's not okay.

Similar thing with attachment.

You can have healthy attachment and you can have unhealthy attachment.

Yeah.

I think there's nothing like non-judgmental.

It is acceptance from my point of view,

Exactly.

There's an acceptance,

Right,

With judgment.

It's not judging somebody to the point of not looking at yourself or thinking,

Like,

This person is bad,

Right?

It's having discernment with judgment and not letting it take over your connections and connecting with people in the world.

And same thing with attachment.

It's non-attachment is not no attachment,

It's healthy attachment.

How can we cultivate acceptance around unhealthy attachment and how can we connect in a healthy way,

Healthy connection,

Not bondage,

Right?

Not attaching because of,

You know,

Traumatic experiences and then we hurt the other person.

Not fusion,

Margaret says,

Yes,

Exactly.

We don't want to fuse.

We want to be free.

We want our spirit to be free and we want to live from this place.

We don't want to fuse with someone so tightly that it's like you can't live your life and I can't live mine,

Right?

We want healthy attachment and attachment is very magnetic,

Very magnetic.

It's like,

Think of even just cultivating a baby,

Right?

There's a reason why the egg attaches in the womb space.

There's magnetism there and that's a healthy form,

A natural form of attachment.

And there's lots of reasons why we are magnetized towards other people.

And it takes a very strong person on the spiritual path to look at their patterns and to look at their attachments and to recognize what is healthy and why do I attach in this way?

And in looking at that,

It can bring up a lot because you may really love somebody but you may have attached to them in an unhealthy way.

There may have been a beautiful friendship that was on the horizon that was cultivating beautifully and then something happened.

Something happened to ruin it,

To cause it to fall,

To cause it to break the heaviness of the wounds.

Because what happens sometimes with attachment is we attach based on many,

Many factors.

Attraction,

Wounds to heal,

Love,

We attach based on our values.

We attach based on our illusions.

We attach based on our loneliness.

Because God,

The universe,

Nature doesn't want us to be lonely,

We're connected.

We always were.

But then what happens when I forget my value,

Right?

What happens?

I might meet someone who reminds me of the value that I've been forgetting.

But then there might be a value there that we both have and somehow there's a wound too.

And my value and me having that value and you not having it creates this friction,

This push and pull.

I don't like that you have it and I don't.

I'm going to do something to you to hurt you because I don't like that you have it.

And it doesn't mean that there's not love there.

It just means where did the actions take me?

And it's not that simple either because sometimes our mental health on the spiritual path is not well.

And so we're looking at our attachments,

We're trying to figure this all out,

We're feeling love,

But we're feeling wounding.

And we're like,

That's when we surrender.

God,

The universe,

Show me the way.

Because something doesn't feel right here and then everything feels right here.

Why do I love this person?

What is happening?

Why would you connect me with someone who has all of my values,

Who could be my best friend or the best partner for me?

And then also give me the best experience of my life and then rip it away.

What just happened?

Why?

And then now why am I chasing this?

What is going on?

Heather says sometimes not a smooth path for sure.

It's not smooth.

There are mountains,

There are boulders in the way.

There's beautiful rivers,

There's the gardens,

There's the trees,

There's smoother parts and then there's Rockies,

Steep parts.

Sometimes we fall off a cliff.

And at the same time,

Our nervous system is trying to lovingly take care of us,

Trying to take care of us in the wilderness.

I read this quote and it said,

One experience is worth a wilderness of warning.

And that's what our nervous system does for us.

When it has that one experience,

It warns us of that wilderness.

It warns us of our primal selves.

It warns us of,

You know,

The tigers,

Lions and bears that are still in the wilderness with us because we want to be in harmony.

We don't want to be eaten alive or be chased down by wolves,

Right?

And so there's balance here.

And so in thinking of our spiritual journey,

It's remembering that we are all going through this and how can we cultivate a fresh and positive mental health and how we think about our minds so that things don't become pathological,

So that ease can flow instead of turning into disease.

Because what can happen on the spiritual path when we're practicing non-attachment?

We can encounter somebody that the universe sends our way to both heal our wounds and love us and show us our values and remind us of the illusions that we're holding and say you don't have to be alone,

I'm with you and walk with us for a little bit.

But then as soon as we get wounded,

As soon as one of us falls or as soon as the other falls or both of us falls,

As soon as those wounds get triggered,

Our natural reaction is to run in the other direction.

And sometimes it really is unsafe.

Like if you're in an unhealthy relationship,

I'm not saying that we should stay with someone who is abusing us.

However,

It's worth recognizing that everybody is going through it.

And what does this do for us?

This level of acceptance,

This level of compassion,

It allows us to hold space for I'm going to continue walking the path and I may encounter this person again.

And I can evaluate,

My nervous system can evaluate,

Whether they are safe for me to connect with,

For me to have forgiveness or for me to have reconciliation or for me to have a relationship with them.

But when we're practicing non-attachment,

What do we do sometimes?

We say cut it,

Cut it,

Cut it,

And I'm just going to walk away.

We don't study it,

We don't spend time really understanding.

And it's important to understand the attachment because we only transcend,

We can self-actualize all we want,

But our sense of self,

If we're not transcending in community like we are here today,

Our sense of self can become so inflated that again,

We go into like a bit of like a spiritual mania where we become kind of narcissistic in a way.

We start to,

That spiritual ego gets so high on life that it starts to say,

I'm enlightened,

I don't need anybody.

I'm enlightened,

I feel good in my body.

But then we start to realize that we're flying so far above the earth.

There's no one up here but me.

This feels very lonely.

And so we want to transcend the wounds through connection.

We want to also rewire our own patterns so that we're not hurting other people,

So that we're not hurting ourselves.

We want to honor the parts that don't serve us anymore.

We don't have to get rid of us,

They're still part of us.

They guided us this far.

Honor them,

Accept them,

And then strengthen the patterns that are serving us.

Excellent understanding of attachment,

Post woundedness,

Acceptance and compassion.

Evaluate future connection through my nervous system.

Another wonderful person in the chat says,

How can there be enlightenment without humanity and love?

Yes.

And so let's just talk about enlightenment for a minute.

Enlightenment being.

What does that mean?

Because sometimes when we're in a spiritual high or we go to a really good retreat,

We feel the euphoria for the first time when we've been feeling so down.

We can start to think like,

We need to stay in this state.

I need to do everything to get back to this state.

But enlightened being is holding many frequencies at the same time in a way of least effort because it's already there for you.

Why least effort?

Why not effortless?

Not effortless because we're still using our willpower.

We're still using our dynamic willpower to shift into different states,

To hold different frequencies,

To be in connection with all that is and people we want to cultivate relationships,

People we're learning from,

All of these things.

Least effort though,

Not force because when we force then we're attaching to something that maybe we're creating bondage there.

And so enlightened being is that flow state,

That connection with God,

The connection with nature in our center,

In the center of our heart,

In the center of our being.

And we're in the music of life.

We have this humility,

Yes,

In the chat.

We transcend the wounds and rewire our nervous system,

Thank you for that,

For ourselves and for others.

And we honor our nervous system and how far it got us.

And then we play in the music of the earth and the music of nature and in the universe.

And this is the song of life in harmony with one another.

And we actually have less mental illness on the spiritual path when we're doing this.

So it kind of works like in our favor,

Right?

We honor our nervous system,

We recognize all the beautiful things it's done for us.

And then we recognize what is not serving me about this way of thinking?

What is not serving me about this way of being?

What is this attachment teaching me?

And how can I take a step back from it to see it,

To love and honor it,

And then choose the right next step,

Right action,

Right path,

Right stone unturned,

Right direction.

And where can we have self compassion on the journey?

Because we tend to beat ourselves up.

And when we beat ourselves up on the spiritual path,

It's like we're standing in the wilderness.

And there's there could be there could be a whole bunch of bears,

Mountain lions around us.

And we're just beating our chest,

You know,

Hating our mind.

And our mind gets to be beautiful,

Too.

Yes,

We may have some dark thoughts,

We may have some thoughts were like,

Where did that come from?

But it's understanding some of it's just consciousness.

It's in our conscious awareness.

We don't have to identify it and make it our identity.

And our mind gets to be a beautiful place of creativity,

Of imagination of beauty.

Where can we stop beating ourselves up and hold more self compassion?

For you know,

Maybe we didn't have the tools at that point in the journey.

And maybe we're beating ourselves up because we're like,

I loved that person and I ruined that friendship.

I ruined that relationship because I self sabotaged it.

Or I was too attached.

I was,

You know,

Running from my fear of abandonment.

And so I attached to this person in a way so that they would not leave me because I was definitely afraid because something happened to me in the past that,

You know,

My nervous system went wacko and told me to do that.

Or maybe we ran away from intimacy,

We ran away from that person.

But it's recognizing that there's so many factors that cause this in us.

And we don't need to beat ourselves up because we didn't get the desired outcome.

What can we do with it now?

Whether it's learning the lesson and coming to acceptance,

Whether it's reconciliation with the person we were attached to or the outcome or the thing.

And just looking at it from a different perspective,

Honoring it,

Being with it in a different way.

Where can we generate kindness and love for ourselves and for the journey of others?

Because we're all doing our best in the wilderness.

We are all part of this vast wilderness and we're all doing our best.

The best that we have and the best that we could do in that moment.

That was what we could do.

That was,

You know,

We always,

You know,

Especially on the spiritual path,

We can be like,

I need to get to enlightenment before I die.

But it's not that.

You can feel enlightenment in moments and not just for,

You know,

Again,

Monks and priests and all of these people that we idolize.

You don't need to create idols in this way because every single one of you,

Every single hundred of you together connecting in this way can connect to that enlightened part of your being through your nervous system,

Through who you are,

Through your spirituality,

Through your energetic body.

And this journey is heroic.

It's not shameful.

And shame at times,

It can be productive when we are the ones who are doing wrong action.

But I actually like to think of that as more guilt.

Because when we do something wrong,

We have a guilt around it,

Right?

And it's either that we don't see it clearly,

We don't see the bigger picture,

We don't see what God or the universe is showing us.

And so sometimes we don't actually have anything to be guilty of.

We just don't see it clearly.

And then other times we went the wrong way and we feel guilty about it.

And that's our nervous system and our energy and our emotions bringing us back and saying,

Take a look at this because you kind of went the wrong way there and that's not where you want to go.

But when we compound guilt,

We start to feel shame and shame can be debilitating.

It can stop us from forgiving that person.

It can stop us from creating a community of reconciliation.

It can stop us from reaching out to that person that we hurt.

And shame is a very interesting emotion because we have to overcome it,

Yes.

We have to take responsibility for when we feel it and what we're going to do with it.

But some of it is purely pathological.

It keeps us in a state of depression.

And a lot of the shame that we have in our consciousness,

In our energy field,

Is also like from the patterns of communities.

It's from the patriarchy.

It's from ancestral,

What our ancestors did that they felt shame around.

And yes,

We have to take responsibility and accountability for what is in our energetic body.

And how do we do this,

Right?

What do we do with all that shame when we are actually on a heroic journey on the spiritual path?

This is heroic.

It's not shameful.

But what do we do with the energy?

Because it's there.

I know it's,

You're saying to me,

You know,

I know it's not shameful,

But it's there.

What do I do?

And what I've learned is just to see it.

See it for what it is.

What is mine?

And what is not mine?

What is,

What was mine to carry?

And what did I pick up,

But was not mine to carry fully?

Because you're not going to carry the shame of the weight of the world on your back.

Because that's going to bring you down,

That causes depression.

And then when we feel the shame,

We'll jump back into that manic spirituality state or use our spirituality to get back into those highs,

Because we feel so shameful,

And we don't want to be depressed anymore.

And so seeing it for what it is,

Is important,

That level of self awareness,

And then also opposite action.

So an example would be like,

A lot of us have had our voice taken from us,

Whether it's the patriarchal societies that silenced women for a very long time,

Or certain people of certain cultures,

Or certain circumstances that silenced us,

Or trauma silenced us from being our full,

Authentic self.

And so opposite action might look like,

An example might look like,

I felt shame because I hurt somebody,

Right?

So there might be a little bit of like,

Part of the shame belongs to me.

But the shame that I'm feeling doesn't technically line up.

Because the shame that I feel,

It feels like I like physically abused this person.

Because men may have physically abused women before,

Or women may have physically abused men before.

And so the shame that I carry is attracting more shame from out there,

From the larger consciousness.

So then I'm not necessarily carrying just my shame.

I'm carrying the shame of what the action that was negative attracted.

And so what's the opposite action?

If I hurt that person,

The opposite action is to come to them and speak my truth.

What does speaking my truth look like?

It means showing up with the shame,

And you can tell them that I feel shame,

Or you don't have to tell them.

Because just by doing this,

You're showing up for yourself,

And you're showing up for them.

And you're acknowledging,

Like,

I feel shame,

But I'm going to do this anyways.

I'm going to do this anyways,

Because this is how I get myself back.

This is how I create justice for this person.

To speak when you feel silenced on the spiritual path by the shame.

Because again,

This is the journey.

This is the hero's journey.

This is not a shameful journey.

Because we all want the connection.

At the end of the day,

We all want the connection.

We all want the intimacy.

We all want the heart expansiveness.

And in a way,

This has been taken from all of us.

And the more we can act in the right direction,

The more we can counteract when the emotion is trying to hold us back from doing it,

And the negativity is trying to pull us down the wrong direction again,

The more expansiveness we will expand within ourselves and out into the world.

And so when we do this,

We begin to create a healthy give and take within ourselves,

Within our own nervous system.

Our own nervous system starts to recalibrate,

Because we've gone against what we used to do.

And our own nervous system starts to trust us.

And we start to trust our nervous system again.

Because our nervous system starts to say,

Okay,

You're she's speaking your truth and nobody's come here to crucify her or,

You know,

Hurt her.

Because women used to get hurt from speaking their truth,

Men have been hurt from speaking their truth.

Look at Jesus.

He spoke his truth.

And he was also crucified.

There have been other people,

Other greats of our time,

Enlightened beings,

Like living out in the world and sharing this with the world,

Who've been hurt.

Even John Lennon,

John Lennon was killed for his truth,

Right?

But we don't need to be in fear,

Right?

And if safety is threatened,

Let your nervous system tell you that safety is threatened.

Don't get it.

This is not about getting it twisted with like speaking your truth when somebody has like a gun to you or is chasing you in a back alley.

That's different.

But it's about this healthy give and take again with your own nervous system trusting yourself again,

And your nervous system trusting you again and your mind trusting you again and you trusting your mind again.

And then there begins to have this healthy give and take with reality again and nature and the universe.

Because you start to feel like I'm not alone,

Because underneath all the shame,

Underneath all the guilt,

Underneath all of the heavy emotion,

The connectedness is there.

The enlightened being that you were born to be is there and has never left.

It's just underneath.

And then you start to see the beauty of the world again.

The world that was looking dull and dark and despairful starts to look beautiful again in knowing like I can hold this and I can overcome it and I can deal with it.

I can go and I can act against the pattern that I keep repeating to see the beauty of the world again and to see how powerful I am when I walk this spiritual path.

And then somewhere in between,

You begin to kind of laugh at the cosmic jokes too.

Like it starts to kind of be funny,

Like in a very strange way.

Because you start to see like all the synchronicities that were brought into your life and you're like whoa,

This is actually quite hilarious.

This play that the universe orchestrated for me is kind of funny.

Like why?

But then also,

Thank you.

And then we get to hold space for the lesson,

Gratitude for the lesson.

Maybe there's some reconciliation with the person.

There's acceptance.

Maybe there's some boundaries around what I'm willing to accept in my life and what I'm willing to not accept.

You don't need to accept behavior that hurts you.

This is not about going around and being best friends with everybody.

This is about honoring that we're all on the path.

But some animals in the wilderness are dangerous.

You know,

They're still figuring themselves out.

You're not going to go and be their best friend.

But you can still honor,

You know,

Put your hand to your heart when you think of them and say,

You know,

I see you.

I see why you're acting the way that you're acting.

And until you're ready to take that step to overcome that shame or the guilt or the anger or the hate inside of you and come towards me,

Then I'm just going to stay here and I'm going to cheer for you maybe even on the sidelines.

But healthy boundaries,

Right?

All of nature has healthy boundaries in a very healthy,

Connected kind of way.

Because we don't want to abandon ourselves because we're so lonely that we do things.

We don't want to abandon ourselves because then we become lonely for ourself again.

We become lonely for our values and the things that we love.

And so nature can just,

It can be cruel at times.

It can feel cruel on the spiritual path.

And it can also feel really beautiful.

And we need to take care of ourselves on this path.

Because when it feels cruel and when we feel that suffering,

Oh,

I'm just going to put my hand on my heart for you and for myself.

Because it can feel so cruel.

It can feel so dark and so,

You know,

And then we see the light again.

And then the sun rises each day and sets each night.

And we see the rhythm and we understand why.

And we understand why the pattern keeps showing up,

Right?

The pattern keeps showing up so that we can intervene.

Because the laws of science show us that until a force is acted upon in some sort of way,

It's going to just keep going on that momentum.

We know that with fact,

With science.

It's shown us a pattern of our universe and the natural way of life,

Right?

And so asking yourself,

How can we rebuild this relationship with our nervous system,

Our mind,

Our body,

Our spirit?

How can we come into this more holistic way of living and being,

Embracing the spiritual path,

Loving the mind again,

Loving our creative ability that happens within our body,

Within our energy systems,

That then comes into our mind through a greater understanding.

And then we can speak it into the world and share it into the world.

Trusting our nervous system again,

Being in our body again,

Some of us,

You know,

Our spiritual path is growing our sense of self,

But not growing it so that we have an inflated sense of self,

But growing that relationship with ourselves so that we're not abandoning our body and the human experience.

Because sometimes we bypass on the spiritual path,

We bypass,

But when we bypass,

We actually,

We bypass beautiful things on the way,

On the path.

There's something beautiful about being in a human body,

A soul,

Being in a human body.

But when we're very afraid of being alone because we've been abandoned in the past or somebody has really hurt us,

Or we didn't have the right emotional connection that we wanted with a parent or friends or communities or people within our school environments,

Growing up,

We can start to feel very alone that we don't even want to,

We don't even trust ourselves to be there for ourselves.

And so where can we not abandon ourselves and not abandon others and create that healthy dynamic within our nervous system without feeling like we need to escape our spiritual path,

Without feeling like we need to escape our,

Our human body or human experience.

And be in the rhythm of life.

Be in the rhythm of all of it because it's all beautiful in ways.

And knowing,

Cultivating that mastery with our mind so that we know when it's safe and when it's not safe.

We don't want to get rid of our safety.

We grow in the safest communities because we actually feel the ability to transcend and to be with what we're feeling because other people around us are doing the same.

But the communities have to be safe.

And we have to feel safe in our own bodies to be able to transcend those patterns that are not serving us anymore.

And Heather says,

Yeah,

Anger at the systems,

You know,

By transcending within ourselves,

By self-actualizing within ourselves,

We go out into the world and we speak our truth in a way that feels both safe and enlightening,

Right?

We're thoughtful,

We're mindful.

We're balanced in how we speak our truth and how we act in the world.

And we're able to actually shape the culture.

We're not victim to it anymore.

That's empowerment.

We become empowered.

We become empowered to be authentic in the way that God and the universe and however you identify needs us to be because we all play a role.

We all play a role in the creation of our worlds.

And we're all needed.

We are all needed.

And I encourage you to,

If you haven't already,

Take a look at the podcast episode,

Who Am I?

This will remind you of how important you being born into the world is and remembering who you are so that when you connect with someone,

You're connecting from that place because that's what we want.

We want that connection,

But we want the connection.

We want our authentic being to connect with other people's authentic being.

We want our authentic being to connect with nature and the universe's authentic way of being because that's when we feel connected.

And thank you for putting that in the chat.

The podcast is called Self Discovery,

Who Am I?

An authentic being is beautiful,

Right?

It's beautiful,

But it's also painful.

Evolution is painful.

Evolution is painful.

I don't know what the butterfly feels when it becomes transformed from when it was a caterpillar,

But the butterfly knows.

We know how we feel.

It's very painful,

But it's so beautiful.

The baby,

The baby that's being birthed,

That is a very painful experience for both the mother and the child.

And I even think the father too,

In a different way,

In a very emotional,

Connected way.

They might even feel the pain in some way or they could.

But when you have that baby in your arms,

You don't feel the pain anymore because you feel the beauty of life.

And the same is true for our experiences and as we walk the spiritual path.

And so when you feel that pain on the spiritual path,

Please reach out to your communities.

Please seek help.

Please know in your heart of hearts that you are not alone.

You know,

Therapy is healthy.

Therapy is healthy.

Transcending in groups,

Even group therapy is very,

Very healthy,

Very healthy.

It makes us feel safe again to discover who we are so that we can live from an enlightened place so we can live from our most authentic place so we can sing in the magic of the universe just as we were intended and born to be.

And that's what I want for myself.

That's what I want for you.

That's what I want for all of humanity.

And that's what we want as a humanity.

Collectively,

This is what we want.

It may not look like that all the time because we're going around,

You know,

Sometimes we have beautiful relationships and then all of a sudden it's like,

This person is jealous of me all of a sudden.

This person is lusting me.

This person is envious.

This person has become vengeful.

But we all do it,

Right?

Not because we want to hurt one another deep down inside,

It's because we love one another and we want to have that shared experience too.

And our values start to align more and more.

The more we become authentic,

Our authentic selves,

We start to see our values in others and be able to actually connect with that in a healthier way.

And so sit with it.

I'm not going to end with any kind of action that I feel like you should do because you know inside your heart,

You know inside your heart what your next action is.

And you're going to do it with an empowered sense of confidence and beauty and love for who you are,

Who you're becoming,

Who you want to be,

How you want to connect in the world.

And I'm going to be rooting you on,

You know,

I'm going to be watching that race,

That path that you're on,

Whether you're walking slowly or you're walking briskly because this part of the path is a lot,

You know.

I'm going to be there on the path with you.

And I'm going to be cheering you on from the inside out.

And that concludes our session,

But you know,

Community is always with one another in spirit.

Always,

Always,

Always.

And sending you so much love.

Feel free to click on my picture,

Connect with me.

You're welcome to support this session if you'd like.

Support the podcast.

Continue to refresh your mind on what we've shared here today.

Great session.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for showing up for yourself.

Thank you for showing up for me and each other because we are all in community.

I may be the one speaking,

But your hearts,

Your souls,

Your minds,

Your consciousness is speaking to me.

And I'm just sharing it back with you.

And so with that,

Love you all so much.

I will see you soon.

I'm going to have another session next week,

So make sure you're connected with me so that you can get the information.

And let's just see where this goes,

Guys.

I'm ready.

You're ready.

Let's go.

Love you.

Have a great day.

Have a great weekend.

Bye,

Everybody.