Earning Ourselves Our Own Wisdom
Humanity is having a turn of the wheel. We have choices to make about coming along or staying behind. To step into this future arriving on our doorsteps (and with quantum speed), it is hard to not feel the tug and step into the next layers of our personal evolution. Becoming who we are, who we are meant to be, rooted more deeply in our higher minds and selves continually, intentionally, actively — and sometimes painfully — is the underlying point of our humanity.
Mindfully engaging the becoming process calls us to interrogate and face early programming and patterning — deeply rooted beliefs and thinking we aren’t generally aware of as we go about our days. It means we have to look at and feel into these, regardless of how unpleasant, uncomfortable, and scary they are — or how disrespectful they feel to question.
When we interact with our early storylines, modeling, expectations, and wounds consciously and with care — and do the work of infusing them with healing, we are then able to open up the pathways for the early patterning and programming to release themselves from our DNA.
The interactivity creates the potential(s) for the becoming. The interactivity earns us our own wisdom.
Observing and Allowing
When we interrogate our thinking and beliefs — to objectively notice yet be in a conscious relationship with them — we shift our own energy. When we engage with shifting our energy, we become the designers rather than the designed. We are out in front, in our power, sitting in the driver's seat of our lives, relationships, choices, rawness, and [soul] purpose. In this interactivity, we choose more up-to-date, relevant, and mindful thoughts and beliefs which we then behave into to ground new programming and patterning. Programming and patterning that is relevant to the now.
All the while we do this work, we simultaneously sit with, observe and notice our emotions. We don’t try to change, manipulate, or judge them. Doing that simply recreates thought and belief loops that keep the shackles on. We acknowledge inherent loss co-exists in this model of becoming because we cannot update and improve our thinking and patterning without letting go of and releasing what is outdated, not ours, and no longer holds relevance. We honor this dialectic of awareness and freedom, pain and loss.
When we mind the tap on the shoulder of change, transformation and evolution, we learn to
engage with our own wisdom rather than live in a risk state around our relevance, our own non-becoming. As relevance is an evolutionary imperative, it will happen one way or another. Being in front rather than behind can make it slightly more palatable.
stop reenacting scenarios from early programming and patterning that we weren’t actually meant to take on in the first place. They happened by absorption, storytelling, and interpretation — and then they tend to feel unsatisfying, unfulfilling, and unpleasant — as they remind us that their expiration date has come and gone. They are the shackles rather than the calling cards.
live more fully in the here and now, in the present moment, in the light, and in the interplay of learning with others.
become more joyful, fulfilled, and satisfied.
step into love for ourselves and others in the ways love ought to look, feel, and be for many reasons — an important one being we are now carrying less luggage.
Humility and Grace
Consciousness is trendy. Spiritual warriorhood being a bumper sticker and all. The irony is that to do the work of becoming, awakening, stepping into that bigger, higher self is in truth the most intense, humble, and private journey we ever take. (And to be clear, it is several journeys rather than just one.) So then why bother setting off into the wild of becoming intimate with your deepest, highest, most honest self? Because it's the only way.
We are students hanging out down here in Human School. Becoming is the curriculum. Besides, she’ll (your higher self) come to get you regardless, so committing without a fight is generally the best game plan.
It is in this understanding that we are a work in progress — an experiment in evolutionary intention — a captivating ball of clay. It is here as well that we encounter freedom, grace and the wisdom of self-love and self-acceptance. We must become our own ball of clay who we shape and reshape to continually grow into the more updated version of ourselves we know at the deepest layers of our being we are here to become.
Nothing short of it will feel aligned, peaceful, or settled otherwise. The journey to it will feel equal parts exhilarating and unnerving. Co-creating your own masterpiece of and with yourself is fraught, yet fully intended. It is how you consistently know you are on track.
Fear and Strength
While fear, anticipation, and hesitation pretty much always ride in the sidecar, we don’t let them hold us back. Instead, we consider them as motivation, shout-outs from our Muse and higher self.
Fear is a brilliant catalyst for action. She reflects back to us our own sense of possibility and deep knowing that we are meant for something far greater than the shackles designed for or by our earlier selves.
We are reminded by her that we need to keep iterating, improving, and scaling our elegance and beauty — the infinite resources we each embody.
We know that sometimes during the process of mucking about through life we have to (be willing and courageous enough to) throw away early hypotheses and best guesses about our becoming. We gain insight along the journey that we have to dig deeper, start fresh, try again in order to nail it. It is warriorhood. Yet it is far more rigorous than the bumper sticker seductively promises.
Ways to Root In
Recognize with deep humility the power you hold to design, shape and change your own circumstances.
Embrace the architect you are to (re-)write your programming and transform your life.
Tame your inner reptile by looking (deep within) versus looking away.
Summon the courage to appreciate and recognize pain as the master teacher, yet without indulging it. Worthy pain ought never be wasted yet may also never be your personal bumper sticker.
Interrupt the storylines with consideration and with sheer might and conviction.
Hold yourself lightly and in a deep embrace.
Acknowledge the depth of your heart and all that it yearns to share, emit, and stand for.
Surround yourself with people who are capable and willing to truly see, know, and love you — and your potential in becoming.
Be in the headspace of allowing and feeling grateful that you have the awareness to participate in your own becoming.
Appreciate all that led to this moment of being and knowing — understanding and integrating that it was entirely by design and intention to enable what is next.
Do It Anyway
Consciousness is so powerful that it shapes our reality and changes matter. You could begin to look different. You will certainly feel different. Others will experience you differently. Signs and synchronicities will inform you it is happening. Feeling good inside — in silence alone or in the company of others — without needing to cognate, explain, perform, rationalize, or be validated is evidence you are becoming exactly who you are meant to become.
Your authentic knowing and wisest, highest self is always reaching for growth and evolution. It is deep in the design brief of Human School.
Our own becoming frees and rewards us while also pouring goodness into the collective. The more we orient ourselves to face the programming and patterning, the more give back our spirit summons, the more the material world meets us, and the more it elevates where, who, and what we are doing in service of a better way of living, being, and loving.
Settle in.
Ensure it matters.
Make it real.
Face your fears.
Do it anyway.
Earn yourself your own wisdom.
Editing Credits
Thank you to my friend and colleague Tim Casasola for his soft hand and thoughtful suggestions on my writing.