Episode 41: Moving Forward [Final Episode]

I’ve spent forty episodes and nearly one solid year exploring and discussing the winding roads and pitfalls of what true alchemical healing of mind, body and spirit requires. And there was a lot to unpack in those forty episodes. But one of the most important parts of this type of deep, transformative healing is recognizing when you have reached a level or a deep understanding of where you were versus where you are now. And with that understanding, being willing and able to step back from what is often a relentless process that often takes you so far inward and get back into LIFE. Life without the constant backdrop of the transformation movement. Life without the need to process or run to a therapist for support or as a safety net. Because that life away from this movement is not only available and waiting for you, it is a necessary requirement if you have any chance whatsoever in fully integrating what you have learned and absorbed and move forward. If the ultimate goal for you is to dig deep within yourself and your psyche and uncover your true self and whatever that self requires for sustained growth and hopefully contentment, I think it’s almost a mandate that eventually you have to move forward into that life without the apron strings of the transformational movement directing your every move and thought. Because if you don’t allow that process to happen, you’re not in a movement. You’re in a cult. 

In this final episode of my podcast, I discuss when it’s time to move forward, as well as what prevents one from doing that and what is required to effectively make that happen. I also touch on where I would love to see the personal transformational movement evolve to in the coming years as more people are drawn toward it and are looking for direction and solid guidance. 

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL MY DEDICATED LISTENERS WHO ARE COMMITTED TO CONSCIOUSLY TRANSFORMING THEIR LIVES, BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT. 

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Transcript

            Welcome to Episode 41, the final episode of my podcast. Today’s topic is fitting for the last show. “Moving Forward.” 

            I’ve spent forty episodes and nearly one solid year exploring and discussing the winding roads and pitfalls of what true alchemical healing of mind, body and spirit requires. And there was a lot to unpack in those forty episodes. But one of the most important parts of this type of deep, transformative healing is recognizing when you have reached a level or a deep understanding of where you were versus where you are now. And with that understanding, being willing and able to step back from what is often a relentless process that often takes you so far inward that you become detached from your world, your circle of whatever friends and family are left in your life, and disengaged with life in general. Just normal life. Life without the predictable backdrop of the transformation movement. Life without the buzzwords that have become part of your daily vocabulary. Life without the need to process or run to a therapist for support or as a safety net. Because that life away from this movement is not only available and waiting for you, it’s a necessary requirement, in my opinion, if you have any chance whatsoever in fully integrating what you have learned and absorbed and hopefully sifted and sorted through to determine what works for you and what doesn’t. I have met and encountered too many people who have followed this path of transformational healing who after ten or twenty years are still intricately woven into that world and my experience has shown me that it becomes an identity after years and years that actually has the opposite effect, ironically, of the intention of the journey that began so long before. Instead of being this bright and varied palate of an individual, there is this often one-dimensional and very tedious character that also ironically, is devoid of self-awareness. Yeah, imagine that? And it’s the lack of self-awareness where one is unable or unwilling to release themselves from the constrictions that are often baked into the cake of “the personal  transformation movement.” 

            If the ultimate goal is to dig deep within yourself and your psyche and uncover your true self and whatever that self requires for sustained growth and hopefully contentment, I think it’s almost a mandate, so to speak, that eventually you have to move forward into that life without the apron strings of the transformational movement directing your life. Because if you don’t allow that process to happen, you’re not in a movement. You’re in a cult. 

            I can speak from my own personal experience, that after about six years of often intense transformational work, I began to get consciously irritated at the lifestyle I had consciously and unconsciously created for myself. And I really began to get irritated with the people within the movement that I’d known for anywhere from three to six years. It actually hit me about the five year mark when I took a class and I realized how bored I suddenly was with the speaker and the information that by that time had become somewhat redundant and repetitious. Everything I was hearing, I’d already heard countless times and I kept thinking, “don’t you have any new material?” But in all fairness, there is just so much you can speak about within this movement, without falling back on repetition. It’s part of what I mentioned in last week’s episode when I announced today would be my final show. The last thing I want to do is churn out the same material and cobble it together in a different way  and call it a new show.  

And as I said, at that six year mark, I began to become impatient with a lot of the people that I’d been around during these conferences who tended to all gravitate together given our collective interest in self-empowerment. But I started noticing that most of them were no more enlightened or calm or embodied, I guess you’d say, in themselves than they were when I first met them. So after four to six YEARS, they were not growing or transforming. We were having the same conversations about the same blocks that they couldn’t overcome after four to six years. And I realized that many of them didn’t want to do the hard work required but they still wanted to be part of the movement as either some kind of clout or because they drifted in that direction. A lot of them were lost souls and I have a lot of compassion for those people. And often the only time those lost souls felt empowered was when they traveled to take these courses or attend conferences and melt into their tribe or clique of people who they looked upon as their brothers and sisters on this never-ending journey of self. And I remember sitting at a table at what was to become the last class I took, and realizing that this empowerment movement had become their life and identity and that their life was so self-focused and myopic that any conversation you had with them devolved into greater and greater self-involvement. And there was something about that that repelled and repulsed me. So, whatever creates that big of a charge inside you, needs to be looked at because it usually means you are mirroring the same behavior. So I took a look at myself and asked, “Are you doing the same thing, Laurel?” And I realized that I was to a point. I was too intensely, at times, engaged with this world. I’d show up at conferences and never leave the hotel and be hyper focused for the four to five days I was in attendance. And that mentality, I began to realize, locks you into a hyper myopic reality during those four to five days that takes you over and you lose some perspective. Like on the fourth or fifth day of these types of conferences, that’s when you start to buy things at the conference that you use either very briefly after the conference or you put in a drawer and never use again. 

So when I recognized I was as guilty as anyone of this type of often manic behavior, I would purposely plan a half day during the conference when I would step away and get in my car and do something that had nothing to do with whatever classes I was taking. Often these classes were in other states and so I planned a three-hour trip to drive around the area and be a tourist and enjoy the scenery. And I’d invite other people from the group to join me but they weren’t interested. And that was fine. I went by myself and I had wonderful times and I realized, my God, there is a world outside of this transformational movement and I’ve been neglecting it. And thank God I got to see all these places outside the conference because I have some great memories of what I did. And it was in those moments when I realized, you know, this movement is leaving me and that’s okay and I’m ready for that to happen. 

            Because I always knew that moving forward past the relentless self-focus and intense physical, mental and emotional effects that are produced by doing the work that’s required was my ultimate goal. I recognized that maintaining this vibe was not sustainable if I wanted to eventually have experiences and meaningful relationships outside the personal transformation movement. I am at my heart an individualist. I’m not a big follower or believer in entangling myself in any group or movement that requires me to adhere to doctrines I don’t agree with, or belief systems that I don’t adhere to, or methods that have a knack of holding one hostage instead of giving one wings to fly away and establish a life away from the movement. I will not be anchored in a movement that also often self-cultivates victimhood instead of self-sufficiency and accountability. I have no interest in being connected to a movement that seems to attract a lot of very virtuous people and enough narcissists to fill a large football stadium. 

            So when will you know when it’s time to move forward? What prevents you from moving forward? What is required to move forward? And where would I personally love to see this transformational movement evolve to moving forward?

            When will you know it’s time? While there is no timeframe, I would hope that around the six- or seven-year mark, and that’s from the day you took that first brave step into the unknown and started to peel back the proverbial onion, to the day you realized it was time to take that equally brave or meaningful step and walkaway from that movement and into life. And it may be five years for you and that’s great. But if you are comfortably still stuck inside this movement at the eight or nine year or ten year mark or longer and the idea of having any other life or reality except the transformational world terrifies you or paralyzes you, you are not achieving what you ever thought you were going to achieve and you need to take a hard look at what you are doing. Because there’s a big risk that you are using the transformation movement to bypass – using a popular word in the movement – to prevent any true actual transformation of body, mind and spirit. Basically, you’re just playing at it and using the movement as a soothing crutch and not a resource that propels you forward. 

            Another sign for it’s time to move on would be when you take a step back and realize that instead of the former warmth and brightness and newness that once filled your spirit, instead there is a kind of comforting strangulation that you’re choking on now. The classes or the conferences are no longer providing you with the same energy and nourishment. And that in many ways you’ve grown past the requirements it demands because you’re different now. And the idea of yet another day drowning in self-focus is more than you are willing to take on. When you begin to chafe at the continual self-focus that is around you and that you are compelled to take part in, that’s an important moment in my opinion. Because self-focus IS required in the beginning of your journey and often it’s the first time you’ve ever allowed yourself to do something just for yourself or spend your time truly going inward and exploring who YOU are and not who you are when you are entangled with others. And I know to give yourself permission to get to THAT point was enormous. But staying in that valley of self-focus and self-exploration eventually turns into the snake eating its own tail. Because while it’s vital to jump into that place in order to do this work, that mentality has a great potential for locking you into an endless stream of rabbit holes and loops of circular thinking that often prevents you from seeing how isolated you are becoming and how that isolation is often feeding you a diet of delusion, confusion and chaos. 

When you can step out of that self-focus loop and get perspective on what you have been giving your life to, I would hope you would recognize that a lot of what you’re engaging in and agreeing to is not necessarily in alignment with either your highest and greatest good or your general wellbeing. And you also may notice that there are still friends out there that you’ve ignored or forgotten who are decent people and would love to hang out with you. They don’t have any understanding of the transformational movement and what you’ve been doing but they still like or love you and want to connect occasionally. And yes, if you’ve done the work required, you will be different in the way you are and act and react. And you can always say to these friends, “I’m different. I’ve changed. You probably won’t know this new me. And that’s okay.” And you know what? They may not recognize the new you, but they can come to love the new you. Or accept the new you and move along with the friendship. And if you feel like nobody ‘gets’ you anymore and you can’t relate to anyone anymore. Or “they don’t speak my language anymore,” accept the fact that you’re right, they don’t. And that’s Okay. Not everyone needs to be on the healing path. Not everyone is ready for it or it’s not their destiny to go that route. And that’s just fine. Don’t infuse your healing journey with a cult-like mindset where everyone has to drink your Kool-Aid and die to their old self. 

So what prevents you from moving forward? A lot of things, actually.

One of the big obstacles is staying in any therapy longer than you need to be there. Extending therapies, no matter what they are, into infinity, is hogtying you to a mentality that keeps you hostage to that therapy or mindset or person in the form of a therapist who is not giving you wings to fly. Because the objective in this work is to fly on your own using your own power and wisdom that you’ve gained along the way. A lot of therapists are wing-clippers. Because they either need the income you are providing for them and they see you as an anchor client for their practice or they simply have a desire to control you. Either one of those is reason to get away. And this is also about therapies that are either done to extreme measures or are redundant or are being used to bypass any real growth. This could be everything from extreme trauma release therapies to extreme psychedelic therapies that often do more harm than good. That is born from my personal experience and the experience of talking to others who push the envelope too far and end up incapable of moving forward and seeing any progress. 

Take a good long look at your therapist or therapies you’re choosing and ask yourself the hard questions. And the biggest question is “am I using this therapist or therapy as a crutch instead of a bridge forward?” And if it’s a crutch, stop the therapist or the therapy. You’re gaining nothing. You’ve talked yourself into believing that the action of going to this therapist or this therapy is the same as the action of doing what you need to do in order to effect a true, lasting change in your lives. I went through this briefly myself and when I saw that I was plateauing with someone, I opted out. If you are not diving into the heart of the heart of whatever you need to dive into after the first four to six weeks of working with a therapist, you are choosing to stay in resistance and if your therapist is not demanding certain benchmarks, no matter how small, from you, and you are refusing to meet those benchmarks, then you’re just wasting your time and the therapist’s time.  And when therapy goes on and on and when you are at the six-month mark or one year mark and still rotating in this endless loop of regurgitating the same shit every time you sit with their therapist, this is not working for you or you are simply unwilling to go the distance. If you’re still the same person you were the day you started therapy and you’ve been in therapy for longer than six months, my advice is to move on and ask yourself how truly committed you are to this process. To get where you need to go so you can one day move forward, you have to start feeling your fears and doing what needs to get done regardless of how much it terrifies you. I did a whole episode on Fear. Episode 6 on March 29th of 2024. You have to be able to mentally, physically, emotionally face your fears and move past that. Because all that fear will never allow you to move forward.  Jump into the deep end of whatever you have been terrified to do. No amount of talking to someone and having them cheer you on and give you tips and pointers will do a damn thing if you don’t jump into the damn pool. People get into this awful pattern of believing that because they are taking the action of driving to the therapist or turning on their computer and doing a Zoom call with their therapist that that action is the same as the action that is required to effect real hardcore changes. And they’ll argue with you and tell you that they are “getting something out of it.” But too often, their behavior and their focus demonstrates they are not achieving anything whatsoever. 

And here’s another thing that prevents you from moving forward that is connected to working with a therapist. And this was reaffirmed for me recently. Stop repeating the stories that haunt you, that you’ve already repeated a million times, that linger in your psyche. I did an entire show dedicated to this. Episode 20, July 6th of 2024, titled, “It’s Just A Story.” You cannot move forward if you continue to live inside of that story and give it energy and power over you. And this is something I was guilty of for a lot of years so I get it. And I understand the need to have your story told and listened to and validated. I get it. But after awhile, telling that story creates an energetic vacuum that doesn’t allow forward movement in your healing journey. What I’ve learned is that when you repeat your story ad nauseum to your therapist, your friends, your family and on and on, you reactivate the energy of that event or story and basically give it life again within you. The brain, it is said, does not the difference between that story being told the day after it happened or thirty years or so later. That’s not to say keep your story quiet or secret. Not at all. But it’s get it out and process what you need through it and then move on. Because the story will become greater than the event. I guarantee you. And it will carry its own heartbeat and resonance that will not allow you to move past it and into a healthier place in your life. 

            The next thing that prevents moving forward is victimhood. That’s a big problem in this movement and unfortunately, it’s often enabled by therapists as well as your circle of influence within the movement. So that’s the people you befriend and become your sounding boards, etc. And if they are welded to a victim mentality, you are going to be mired in a collective nightmare that does absolutely nothing to give you any forward momentum. 

            Next up is feeling like you have to forgive someone who hurt you or were responsible for traumatizing you and maybe being told or believing that if you don’t forgive them, you can’t heal or move forward. And that is not true. You don’t have to love or forgive anyone from your past, living or dead. The truly best you can hope for is to feel totally neutral about them without pretending to feel neutral. If you are truly neutral, you will not get triggered by the thought of them or seeing a photograph of them or hearing stories about them. Whatever is said or shown will wash right through you without any waves of pain, grief or rage. It’s a wonderful thing to experience, I can tell you that. And once I understood that being forced to forgive them or love them wasn’t necessary, I was able to move closer to neutrality until one day, it just basically happened. And curiously, I was able to feel compassion for some of them, especially when I made connections regarding their own traumatic childhoods that planted the seeds of their own psychological undoings. But the point is, if you believe or are told that only through forgiveness can you move forward, that is inaccurate. And I hope that once you hear that it takes a weight off of you and in essence, allows you to take another step forward. 

            Next would be getting mired in too much reflection which is not conducive to moving forward. I made the mistake of sitting in that reflective mode for the first four years of my healing journey. And I can say from my own experience that that much reflection completely takes you out of the present moment and tends to anchor you in the past where you risk getting stuck in that place. And through too much reflection, there’s also the pattern of too much isolating. And I went through that too. It’s okay to make yourself scarce for periods of time when you are dealing with the deep stuff that erupts in the beginning of your healing journey. But there is a queasy comfort in too much isolation that at first is terrifying and unsettling, but in time, it becomes a very unhealthy habit. Isolation does tend to breed a pattern of too much reflection, and I found it builds too many mirrors and your thoughts become myopic and not challenged by someone else who might be able to inject a healthier perspective and could pull you out of that reflective place that does stall your forward movement.

            Another pattern to watch out for that keeps you stalled is this belief that I had for a lot of years and that I’ve seen with others that you are waiting for everything to be perfect, or right, or joyful, or carefree. And I’m here to tell you that if you keep waiting for that to happen, you will not move forward. Unfortunately, there are a lot of false messages out there from empowerment gurus or teachers that give the impression that healing is all about being relieved of the stress that life creates and that you deserve this “amazing” life that is one big love fest and that’s simply not baked into the cake of reality. Healing does not mean you’ll never feel pain again because when you do the work that’s required, you will have to come to agreements with emotional and mental pain and one of those agreements that is essential is that pain is inevitable but that with the right practice and various techniques that help you navigate pain, it doesn’t have to drag you under and make it impossible to move forward and into the life that you want to create for yourself.  Eventually, you come to the understanding that pain will happen but it won’t be the obstacle to your intended success in whatever you are striving for.  I’ve mentioned the quote, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” And if you can take that to heart, it goes a long way in allowing you to feel the pain and still choose to move forward. 

            The other one on my list of what keeps you from moving forward is not striving every single day to become more grounded. Healing requires a firm foundation and that’s not easy when you are in a state of upheaval, and I get that. Believe me I do. But if you allow yourself to stay in that place of ungroundness, you will create a lot of problems for yourself that absolutely complicate your journey and stall it out. You have to teach yourself to be in your body. To be present. Be aware that when you are ungrounded, you will be easily transfixed with the latest teacher or guru, or the latest gadget or teaching modality. And discernment goes out the door. This also puts you at risk for being a bright, shiny magnet for unscrupulous grifters to take advantage of you. They will detect your ungrounded behavior and take advantage of it. You will end up buying so much shit you don’t need that if you ever come to your senses down the road, you’ll look at that heap of crap and wish you could have all the money back that you invested in it. You also risk getting entangled in various healing modalities or therapies that either waste your time or potentially create setbacks. So I implore you to do whatever you can to ground your body, your mind and your emotions so that you can strengthen your muscle of discernment. 

So what is required from you to move forward in your healing journey and eventually back into life? Stop being offended by every little thing until you get to the point where it takes a lot to offend you. 

Stop personalizing your pain which means believing that you’re the only person who has ever felt what you are feeling. I guarantee you that your identical emotional and mental pain has been felt by millions of other people and throughout all of time. 

I’ve mentioned this many times on this podcast and that’s the importance of regulating your nervous system. You can’t move forward into a healthier place if you are still dealing with an over-reactive nervous system. And that takes time and a real conscious intention to make that a priority. But it has to be a priority because everything that is worth striving for is attained by creating an inner flow that allows one’s nervous system to not run your programming. This was something I had to continually address until I reached a point where I consciously made a choice to not jack myself up over minor things because I began to really see how much precious energy it was sucking out of me. And I just began to make daily choices that eventually led to not indulging in drama or hyper reactive responses that weren’t required for whatever I was dealing with. Not everything required angst. Not everything required anxiety. And when I got into this habit, I saw almost instantly how much calmer I was and while I still had bouts of anxiety here and there, I wasn’t living in that state 24/7. Part of what helped me get to that place was practicing meditation and learning how to tune out the chatter in my head and be present and focused in that moment. It took time to teach myself that but I was committed to doing it because I understood the value of dialing down my nervous system response which was the secret sauce to creating the life I wanted for myself.  

            Another good habit that I encourage everyone to do is learn to take a step back and recognize where you are getting in your own way and consciously choose to change whatever energy or behavior is entrapping you in this circular pattern. We are all guilty of stopping our forward progress because of self-sabotaging patterns and being able to see them as they come up and have that “Aha!” moment is invigorating and eye-opening if you allow yourself to go there. 

            Cultivating discernment is also critical to moving forward. Learn critical thinking skills. Don’t take everyone else’s opinions or experiences as your experiences. What works for someone else on their healing journey may not be a good fit for you. And part of that comes with trial and error and being able to look at what’s being offered to you with clarity and saying “no” when something just doesn’t feel right for you. Because once again, wasting a lot of time doesn’t allow for forward movement. 

            The next one is discover what belongs to you and what does not. Don’t fight battles that are not yours to fight. This is SO important. What is your fight and what belongs to someone else? And if it’s not your fight, take that imagined responsibility off your shoulders. This will free up a lot of energy that can be funneled into proactive actions that keep you on track. Once I did this, my life improved overnight and that’s not an exaggeration. I went from engaging in other people’s battles in a misguided attempt to help or support them and then realized, hang on, they were not stepping up to their plate and doing what they needed to do and were relying on me in many ways to do what they indeed needed to do. When I released myself from this belief and burden, I gained energy back I didn’t realize I’d been giving away to others. And that energy was like gold to me. Still is. Energy output as you get older especially after you’ve dealt with a long healing crisis and come out the other end, energy is a commodity that you must nourish and cherish and never waste. Because it was the wasting of it, you learn, that got you in the pickle of your health crisis to begin with. 

            Another tip I can share is the importance of generating a less fragile personality because fragility is not your friend and obviously you can’t move into your intrinsic power if you are like a glass doll and easily breakable. This takes time and lots of practice. And part of that practice is practicing bravery because the braver you are, the stronger your energetic field will become and that imparts resilience which is absolutely imperative to being able to eventually move past all the triggers that kept you hostage in the past. When I was struggling with the prospect of moving forward, I ran across a great quote that I printed out, laminated and pinned on my desk wall. And it was, “She was never ready, but she was brave and the Universe listens to brave.” I cannot begin to tell you how that simple quote helped me. I would read it out loud, sometimes several times a day, and I’d find myself saying, “OK. Let’s be brave and take the next step.” And one step led to another and another until being brave was second nature and I was no longer feeling this unsteadiness that prevented me in the past from making the strides I needed to make. 

            Next up is simplifying your life in every way possible. It’s easier to move forward when you are not burdened by either actual possessions that you no longer need or agreeing to commitments that are no longer in harmony with where you want to eventually be. 

            Another one is recognizing when you need to take a break or put the brakes on a lot of trauma centered therapies. I know a lot of therapists will argue about this one. But my own experience has been that after five or more years of committing to various types of trauma release that you reach a point where you realize that if you keep this intense pattern up, you’re never going to find or feel the peace you are looking for. I leaned hard into doing a lot of trauma release and I was all in. But there came a point where I’d really extinguished a lot of it and agreeing to venture back into that place began to feel like a forced march that I was weary of taking part in. I know that a lot of trauma therapists may hear this and not agree because releasing trauma is important to being able to move forward. But as you get older and especially if you are engaging in transformational work later in life in your sixties or seventies or older, there is a point in my opinion where you have to say okay, I haven’t released it all and I may never release it all but I’m at a better place and I need to embrace life again. Because if you are going to move forward, it can’t be about trauma healing for the rest of your life. I can tell you from my own experience that after seven years of moderate to major trauma therapy, with the last two of those years doing very little of it, that I reached a point where I needed to stop all of it, stop reading about it, stop talking about it and move into another perspective around it. You will never heal “all of it.” And if you attempt to do that, healing trauma will be all you do for your entire life and if you do that, you risk having a dark, claustrophobic  existence that leaves no room for joy or meaningful friendships that live outside that trauma. 

            Now I don’t want to give any of you the impression that I have all my shit together because I’m still a work in progress. I will continue to grow and make mistakes and learn from them. This idea that you become transformed in this movement and you stay static in that place is ridiculous. As long as you have a pulse and breath, you are in the process of learning and growing and hopefully gaining awareness from that learning and growing. 

            So the final question I asked earlier is where would I personally love to see the transformational movement evolve to as that movement gains steam and momentum with more people who are drawn to it? I think first and foremost, I would love to see it be inhabited by more teachers and mentors who are not afraid to be unabashedly honest about where they came from and where they are still in a growth process. Basically bringing more of a human quality to their teachings instead of presenting themselves as having it all figured out and if you just follow them and listen to them daily, you will become as enlightened as they are. The ones who present themselves in that light are not just fooling themselves but they are doing a disservice to others who are often in awe of those people who they believe are oracles but are often just presenting a well-honed façade that is not representational of what is really going on in their life.  In my opinion, this movement needs more imperfect, unpolished teachers who have been through their Dark Night of the Soul and know who they are and have had decades of life to experience and draw from and who aren’t burdened by the need to perform or use heavy filters on social media and who aren’t heavily politically or morally biased and who can articulate both sides of an issue with clarity. People who understand and practice and teach accountability. Who make whatever they are teaching easy to understand and not laden with silly little buzzwords that seem to drag through this movement. We need people who don’t pander and aren’t afraid to say exactly what they think, even if they offend tender souls who can’t handle the truth. 

            I hope to see less strident voices in those who are teachers who seek to control you or keep you in your lane if you don’t follow their advice or lecture you like you’re a child. I’m weary of the often-militant quality that infuses a lot of what you hear in this movement. And a lot of it has to do with people who seek to control you and that’s not how you heal. There’s a tediousness within the transformation movement that essentially demands everyone bow to an almost religious, cult-like mentality or risk being shamed or “corrected” when you toe the line with the agreed upon mantras or bias that you may not agree with. 

            I would also love to see teachers stop referring themselves as “shamans.” That’s a pet peeve of mine because the act of calling yourself a shaman or putting that title on a business card is actually counter to how an actual shaman would present themselves. Did you know that true shamans never refer to themselves as a shaman? In the case of native shamans, the only people who tell you a certain person is a shaman are other people who know that individual and have witnessed or benefitted from his or her gifts. In native settings, the one who is given the title of shaman by others is bestowed that title because they showed early on in their life a dedication to this intensely deep service to others and who have gone through often perilous initiations that would break the psyche of the average person, especially the average Western man or women.  When I learned this, it put a lot in perspective for me. A true native shaman has been through hell and back multiple times and has the instinctive capacity to walk with someone as a guide through the underworld and who can navigate the dark crevices as they walk with you on your often treacherous healing journey. And then have the power to bring you back from that place and who allows YOU to come to the understandings and make the connections that lead you toward your own resurrection. A true shaman is simply a guide to your underworld. They are pretty much devoid of ego. They don’t seek to control you or lead you down a path that serves them. They present you with opportunities that you then have to decipher and learn from. Because they know it’s YOUR journey and not their journey. They don’t entangle themselves with your process. 

            So when I talk about the art of moving forward, I hope you understand that your healing is forever. It only ends when you take your last breath. And when you are finally able to recognize that it is time to depart from the journey that you’ve been on for many years and move into the next stage of your life experience, I hope you also understand that you will move into a world that is still in the throes of undoing and full of thousands of unhealed people who may never heal what is broken inside them. You will have emerged from your chrysalis and re-entered into a world that is still chaotic. And you might see all this as an ugliness you want no part of. But that’s not reality. You still have to be in the world but you don’t have to be of it. You can’t change the world but you can change yourself. And your job is not to go out there and become a pied piper for your healing experience and hardline others into your perspective. Your role is more about being an example of what dedicated and intentional healing looks like. To walk the walk and talk the talk. And hopefully inspire others who are seeking to find meaning in their own lives and are willing to do what is necessary to begin their process. 

Because at the end of all the relentless searching and digging and diving and maneuvering the often perilous roller coaster that this work requires, at the end of all that, I truly hope you can arrive at a place where you are centered enough and rooted firmly into the ground beneath while still having your head open to the infinite potential that still lies within you, and I hope you can put down your walking stick that you’ve carried over the hills and valleys that you’ve traversed on your journey, and say “I’m good.” I’m not perfection. But I’m good. And I found what I call home now and I can rest in that place and know that even though I can never excavate every nook and cranny that is still present in my psyche, that I’m okay. And I hope if you get to that point, and I really hope you do get to this point, that you can finally look up and around you and recognize that there is a life out there that has nothing to do with the personal transformation movement and that world has the potential to provide for you a different perspective that doesn’t involve unrelenting self-focus and self-examination. And that’s a good thing. That’s a very good thing. 

It is so freeing when you get to that point. You’ve done the work you needed to do, and you are releasing yourself from the shackles that you needed to wear in order to often bury yourself into the work that was required. But the day you recognize that you don’t need those shackles anymore and you remove them is on par with the day you entered into this agreement. Because the energy that drew you into this world of personal transformation is akin to the same energy that releases you from that world. And just like you didn’t ask anyone’s permission to dive into the movement because you knew you had no choice, the same applies to the day you walk away from it and give yourself the permission to take whatever you have learned and whatever you have become through that movement and move forward into a life that is still unknown and you’re just fine with that. Because by that time, you’re not trying to control anything or anyone, including yourself. You’ve learned that your life will always be a series of seasons that ebb and flow and give birth and die. And that pain is part of that process and you don’t run from it anymore. And that curiosity has become your greatest friend and ally. And trust has become your bedrock. And the unknown is just part of life and that if you choose to be the observer as well as the participant, life becomes so much more interesting. And that really when the day is done, you don’t need a lot. The things that matter to you can be counted on one hand and still has a couple fingers left. 

I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart who have been regular listeners of this podcast and who have hopefully gained a little insight into what it takes to peel that proverbial onion and uncover the true self that lies beneath all of that. I wish all of you the best of luck on your individual journeys. I wish all of you the bravery that is needed and the perspective and the discernment. And I hope you can experience the freedom from whatever has held you back and realize that you had the strength and the power within you all along. You just needed to wake up and discover it for yourself and then walk the path that leads you to your own resurrection.  Because remember that that awareness you acquire is a demanding mistress. Once she wakes you up, she won’t let you go back to sleep.