Finding Your Own Path.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The world of healing can be treacherous. But suddenly Spiritual aims to provide real, honest, practical spiritual knowledge and wisdom for the true seekers among us. The goal is to ignite the divine human within each listener, raising the collective consciousness for our planet. We will challenge your preconceptions, push your buttons, and encourage deep reflect. We're not here to adhere to the status quo of what the new age spiritual market wants you to buy into and believe. Consider this your antidote to the woo woo and a place of woo. You. [00:00:54] Speaker B: So we talked a lot about uncertainty and ignoring and how ignoring uncertainty, saying, I just don't know. I just don't know. Just being stuck in that loop of uncertainty really has a crack in it. And that little crack is that you actually do know. But you may have issues or fears about the knowing of what your truth is at your core. So that truth that's in the core of your being, of who you are, When. When did that uncertainty start? What? What created a block to that truth? What circumstances build that shell? What? What built that shell around your core truth? And what was that smokescreen? It's almost like this murky smokescreen that may be fear. Maybe life circumstances, maybe what your parents told you or teachers or your friends. Their own thinking created that fear shell around the core of your truth. So understanding where that uncertainty started is really important. To help you to unwind it, unwind it, start to unwrap. You could use the analogy of the onion or cabbage. I like cabbage better because cabbage has far more layers and it's really dense. [00:02:29] Speaker A: What about the Russian dolls? I've been hearing that a lot. [00:02:32] Speaker B: The Russian nesting dolls. I love the Russian. That's also a good one because it's a surprise. Every time that you open one of the dolls up, it's a surprise. And I think that's a way better analogy, Sean. So let's use the Russian nesting dolls. When you start to take the dolls apart, they get smaller and smaller and it's a surprise. So what are those layers for you? When did it start and who was involved? I think those are some really good questions to start with. [00:03:06] Speaker A: It's funny, as I was thinking about this, a bunch of things came to mind, and definitely because I'd gone through, and we talked about this extensively in previous episodes, about expectations of you, your family, what should I be doing versus what I want to do? And I constantly found myself coming back to a couple of things where, okay, I won the lottery in my mind. That basically just wipes away everything you were just referring to. And it's like, okay, my life is starting today. I won the lottery. What do I do? Or a secondary question that's similar to that is when all my work's done, when I have nothing to do, when I have downtime, what do I find myself doing that I enjoy? And once I examine those two things, and they kind of always both revolved around the same thing. Music, radio, the stuff I'm doing. And it really pointed me in that direction to go, yeah, this isn't a chore. It doesn't feel like work. And everyone says that. But to actually sit down and go, no, this is something I enjoy doing. Quote, I'm good at it. But I always find myself coming back to when I have downtime or my work is done, then what do I do? Kind of the same thing where, hey, I won the lottery. Okay, that erases everything. And you have a start point and it's like, okay, now what do I want to do? And I always find that's a great exercise to see, have I changed or am I doing it? Fortunately, more often than not, currently, I am doing the first thing that pops into my mind. [00:05:07] Speaker B: I want to go back to something that you said. What are you doing in your downtime? And what I am finding in my own life is that in my quote, unquote downtime, because I am trying to move myself from the fear of my own purpose, I find myself filling my life with being on the phone, being on the phone and doom scrolling on YouTube. Specifically not on Instagram, but on YouTube. Doom scrolling and almost numbing out. So this, I think, is actually related to uncertainty. Uncertainty. Our brains, as human beings, we are hardwired for survival. And if something is too fearful or if something creates too much fear in our bodies or in our central nervous system specifically, we will find any way to avoid it. We wanna avoid pain and we wanna avoid that fear. So what do we do? So hiding and uncertainty can actually look like procrastination, and it can look like doom scrolling on YouTube reorganizing the furniture in your room over and over again, or being meticulous about cleaning things that are very clean, but you're just trying to do some more cleaning because you feel like you need to do some mindless activity or creating errands for yourself. So I think that the uncertainty, it's very sneaky. And so it'll find ways like doom scrolling other things rather than productive things like that. You were talking about music, radio, those things that are actually your passions, but you're a person, Shawn. That is very clear about your purpose and there isn't, I don't, I've never sensed any fear with you. But for many people who are listening there's a fear around the finding of purpose. And so the uncertainty comes in and creates all of these programs around it. [00:07:15] Speaker A: Well, I must be a really good actor because I've, I've been fearful but I guess when I interact with people I've learned and obviously doing this and other things I've learned leading with vulnerability kind of helps me. So I've been doing that way more. So that's probably why there's no fear being sent. But for the longest time that wasn't the case. But what, what I sensed here and I've been hearing this and seeing it and I can't remember the exact wording of it, but just in general, our body, our mind likes comfort because we want to survive and we want certainty. So the lion was chasing us. But then when we run into the cave, we're surrounded on all sides. We know there's only one entrance and exit and the, the lion and the elephants are gone. We saw them run by and we're, we survived. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Right? [00:08:13] Speaker A: And I keep thinking of that now where in modern day where most of that isn't the case but our body mind still have those drives to survive, to be comfort, to be comfortable so we can survive. So change is bad because change means uncertainty. And we walk outside the cave and we turn left. We've been turning left for 20 years because the water's over there. You're never going to turn right. Why would you turn right? Then your mind is like, well what if, what if, what if, what if I turn right? But then if you turn right it's eaten. But you're not going to know because our body wants to. And, and in modern times I've caught myself doom scrolling too. And I've, I. The way I've abated it is I decided two things. First one is who's in charge of the information I get? So I pruned. You talk about pruning things in, in life and objects. I'm like whose news feed am I seeing here? So I went and I pruned the followers. I'm like who, who do I want to get info from? And then you know, as I'm going through I'm like this is. And I changed it completely. And then the other thing was my relationship with time and for me now I actually value it more even though it doesn't exist. We can do a whole episode on that. [00:10:00] Speaker B: We can literally do like 10 episodes on time. Not existing, but. [00:10:04] Speaker A: But I've. I've. I've made it a thing where I'm like, okay, I've accepted my mortality. I've had a lot of people around me, and even now, because they were born, you know, in the 40s and 50s, they're all kind of dying or they're not healthy. And a lot of it's kind of a generation shift. I can feel it. Where 40s and 50s People born in 40s and 50s are kind of dying now. Yeah, they are, and I'm seeing that. But I prioritized time in the sense that it's a thing, it's finite. I only have a certain amount of it. I have a cup, and there's only a certain amount in it. And I have to manage it drop by drop because it's so precious. And now when I'm sitting doing something or not doing something, I'm like, am I wasting time? What do I gotta do? I gotta be not about being busy, but being efficient with this finite thing. And then now that I've had that little exercise, okay, I won the lottery, or here's my downtime, okay, I got time. I gotta make sure it's. I'm efficient, so I'm just doing as much as I can. And don't get me wrong, I'm not doing a workaholic thing because I'm putting into the calendar time to do nothing. And I don't feel that's a waste either, because that's Sean time, which is at the top of the list now. It never used to be. It wasn't even on the list. [00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:46] Speaker A: And for me, the uncertainty, I think, stemmed from identity. Like, once, once I figured out, okay, this is who I am now. I'm not uncertain. I got finite amount of time. Let me make use of it. And then again, if I. If I wipe the slate clean and I start my life today, what do I want to do? So I kind of discovered where the uncertainty came from in my sense. It was identity, you know, that's floating around, like you said, doom scrolling, wanting to be comfortable, nothing new. And I'm embracing that nervousness now, that new, that little bit of fear in the back where it's like, I've never done this before. [00:12:35] Speaker B: When I look at Instagram and YouTube now that you said, like, whose newsfeed am I looking at? Immediately in my mind, I thought, whose agenda am I following? Whose agenda on my life am I applying? Like, what am I applying to my life from this person's agenda who doesn't even know me. [00:12:57] Speaker A: I was just being nice, but you're. That's exactly what I was thinking. Word for word. [00:13:02] Speaker B: It's an agenda. It is 100% an agenda. Whose Kool Aid are you drinking? And then that Kool Aid that you keep drinking, it causes confusion. It causes the uncertainty, because that is so noisy and expands to take up so much space psychically and emotionally in your brain that there is no what's Sean's agenda? Because you have thousands of other people's agendas who want to sell you something. Typically, if I'm being. Keeping it real, which that's what we do here. So I think the agenda part of it is like, who. What are you buying? What are you buying? Whose version of reality are you buying? Whose needs are you trying to fulfill? And when you said to know yourself and know just the roles that you play. It is very hard to come from a collectivistic culture or a family that's very enmeshed and believe that purpose is something that you deserve to have, because there are many families where your purpose. I could speak to mine, where your purpose is to have these roles. Do not deviate from these roles. You are to be a daughter, and this is how you're supposed to be a daughter. This is what a good daughter is. This is what a good sister is. This is what a good niece is. This is what it means to be a productive member of this family and your culture. So in Greek culture, purpose, it's. It's a luxury to have a purpose outside of the preexisting roles that you were given. So a lot of the people who are listening, I get the sense intuitively that they are in family systems and in cultures where it's very hard for them to break out, to even know what their purpose is, because they're being told what their purpose is, and that is hardwired and ingrained in them. So, again, it's back to the Russian nesting dolls. Finding out what those stories are, where they started, who they're from, who did they come from, and then moving into clearing those out and starting to bring certainty into your life. And knowing what certainty means for you, it's not gonna look like what it means for Shawn. It's not gonna look like what it means for me. So really figure out what certainty looks like. And watching those thoughts when they come up about, oh, no, no, you don't need to. You don't need to do this course, or you don't need to work with these people, because it's not falling into the category of the roles that we want you to be that we have pre selected for you. So it is very, very tricky with families because we're so ingrained and so enmeshed in them and there's a lot of codependence. And as someone who's recovering from codependency with their family boundaries, there, there's so much involved. So I really, I really hope that people get a sense of where they can start through this, this podcast or this episode and continuing on because we're going to talk more about it. [00:16:27] Speaker A: Well, it's coming back to the, I guess the sub name of the podcast, the self awareness because I was thinking, you know, where does, or for me, where did the uncertainty start? Because uncertainty, I think has to happen before certainty. And for me it was as you were saying, pre made roles of society, family, expectations. I meant as I became more self aware and then figured out who I was, then I had this thing to compare to the roles I was told by society or family. And then once I had this thing to compare, I went, oh, these don't go together at all. Having the roles told to you, becoming more self aware, having that and then being able to compare it. I was like, okay, that's where the uncertainty started. But then here's the other thing. You got to have the courage now because the F word is going to creep in there to stand up for this identity of your. And obviously it's not a one time thing. Our identity changes over time as we grow and we learn new things, obviously. But it takes trying to overcome fear to push against that and go, yeah, this doesn't jive with this. That's been laid out for me. And then the beautiful thing is once you kind of cut that tether, then you're uncertain again. But at least you have the identity of who you are now. You're certain in that. But then it's like an adventure again. And I think part of the thing I was talking about earlier with the time and valuing all that is now I don't, I don't even know, can we morph uncertainty into expectation? At some point it would change into that word. Because the reason I'm saying that is because now the way I operate is I'm just open. Like I have no expectation of this is going to happen. This or I want this to happen or I just wake up and I'm like, I'm doing my thing and I'm literally giving the power back. I was taking away from the Universe. Well, it never lost it. It was just there. But now I'm aware of. Oh, yeah, I can't see into 10 different timelines right now, but the universe is just kind of doing everything. When that cat ran past me on the sidewalk, the fact that I stopped kept that truck from coming around the corner and smashing me. I'm not thinking of that stuff anymore. [00:19:27] Speaker B: Right? [00:19:27] Speaker A: It's like, oh, the cat ran by. Oh, my God. Bad luck. Is it an omen? Is it a demon? No, a cat just ran by. And then that truck went. Oh, okay. So I'm just starting to play with the idea now of expectations and embracing uncertainty. [00:19:46] Speaker B: I think the middle step between converting uncertainty into understanding of expectations is to have expectations, but to hold them very loosely. I think as human beings, we naturally are inclined. We take the information in the physical world and. And some of us who are tapped into intuition, or some of us who don't even identify intuition, but know we have it but don't talk about it, because that's a whole other story of fear. We use all of that data, those data points, and create expectations. And some of our data points are, again, not from us, they're from others, Expectations that have nothing to do with us. So I think it's going to the core of what your expectations are for yourself, what you would like to see in your life, but not have such a death grip on them where you push them away and just very much hold them lightly, hold expectations that you have lightly, and be certain that whatever is in your greatest and highest good, as long as you keep making decisions that are aligned with your core of what you want in your life, that those expectations may be fulfilled, but in a way that you never expected. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well said. I'd have to agree with you there, because I was thinking, as you were saying, that I'm like, if that were the case, I'd just sit here and not do anything. [00:21:25] Speaker B: And not do anything. [00:21:27] Speaker A: So. You're absolutely right. There they are there. Like, I. And it's funny, I'll think, okay, I want to do this, and then I do it. But I don't have the death grip on it. I'm giving it room to pivot naturally or to shift. So it's like, here's the boat. I put it in the water, but there's no anchor anymore. But I only put one sail up and let the wind. Because before, I would take the sails down and only use the motor and just go wherever the hell. That's a good analogy. I like that. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good analogy. [00:22:02] Speaker A: But the. You're right, obviously, I need that, but it's not super tight, it's loose. And I'm open to the idea of having it morph in real time and change and grow and knowing that I don't know the ants because then I set up an expectation and, you know, we can get back to the Buddhist and suffering and all that. If you set up an expectation, you're gonna suffer right away because it'll never. It'll never be in the minutia the way you want it. [00:22:42] Speaker B: You can try. You can try. People put so much, so much energy to like, they have PowerPoint presentations and exact all these plans. And back to your boat analogy. You're full of great analogies today, Sean. Kudos to you. A rudder on a boat gives directionality, like the rudder takes you. So you can have a rudder and you can have one sail, but you don't need to blast a motor and want to land at one specific point on this island. As long as you get to the island, you're good. You don't need to port in this one specific place. And I think what happens is when we push something far away from us because we quote, unquote, don't want to be that way, or we don't want that, we just bring it closer. And then when we want something really badly and we really, again, the death grip on it, we push it away too, because it's a level of desperation. And desperation is a really low frequency. And many kind of backwards things happen when you're in desperation. So when you're searching for purpose and you're just wandering the shadowland trying to figure out your purpose and you're desperate to find it out, you just keep pushing it away because your purpose probably doesn't align with the fee, with the level of desperation and fear that you're in. It's usually a higher state. So it has to do with how you feel. And again, holding things loosely. [00:24:33] Speaker A: So I asked the listener to think about this, and I love that exercise. But it can be said differently. You know, the way I do it again is lottery or downtime. And now I'm starting right now. But if there was no downside to, to following your purpose loosely defined, what would you do? Money's no object. Nothing's an object. Now what would you do? And, you know, it's funny, I found when I do this exercise that a lot of the stuff that pops into my mind doesn't need money. So when I. I go, okay, I just won $80 million. There's day one. What do I want to do? And then things pop into my mind. Are. Are things I can do now without $80 million. And then I go, let me start doing that right now, because I don't need the $80 million to do these things. And then it leads me into other things. But I wanted to go back to the F word. Fear. [00:25:43] Speaker B: That's the F word, everyone. [00:25:44] Speaker A: For those who don't know what is keeping people, first of all, the fear will creep in. But how. How is that fear keeping people, do you think, from finding this purpose? Where is it coming from? [00:26:08] Speaker B: I think one of the main things that the fear points to is judgment from others. It's really the fear of being judged and criticized, because many of us, I think everybody on the planet at some point was judged or criticized. So that fear of judgment and criticism, I believe, is also hardwired in us as human beings. Because when we lived in nomadic tribes, if you were not accepted and did not follow the cultural mores and norms of your tribe, you were expelled and you died because you relied on the tribe in order for your food, your shelter and community. So community and those tribes were very important, important. So being accepted was the number one primary concern of human beings in the. In those societies. So, again, just like the tiger chasing you, we feel now that we have to be accepted. We have to be normal, like whatever the. Whatever normal means, because I don't know what it means. We have to be accepted by our family of origin, our community, our culture, because we get the sense that if we're not, that we will get expelled from the tribe and then we will die. So I think that's where the fear is really. One of the core wounds is that the fear is fear of criticism and judgment, being expelled and then dying. So it comes back to dying, being fearful that you're going to die because you've been expelled. [00:27:50] Speaker A: And for those of you listening, you know, we're only doing audio, but Maria and I are seeing each other. And I was, as she was saying that, like, sparks were coming out of my head because I was realizing. [00:28:07] Speaker B: They were. I can attest to that. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah. For the longest time, I was thinking back, just probably 12, 13, 14. Everything you said resonated, obviously, with our need for community, but I was remembering back to me specifically that I never cared about that fitting in or being part of the community, even though it resonated with me as a sense of survival, of strength in numbers and that need to be accepted, which is, frankly, being exploited. Currently ad nauseam. And as you were saying that, I was like, oh, my God. But I'm realizing ever since I was younger, I didn't care about being in the community. I always did my own thing. And I actually didn't want to be in the community because I never agreed with the watered down accepting of middle road, which is ultimately what happens. I think consensus. I think consensus is a bad word. [00:29:25] Speaker B: Mediocrity is a bad word too, in certain contexts. [00:29:28] Speaker A: Mediocrity, absolutely. And then as I'm examining things now too, looking back, people would call me, what? Loner, isolated, whatever, and other other words because they didn't understand. And then I slowly realizing because of that, and then you're talking about the need for community. Everyone's kind of looking at me or someone like me and going, well, he doesn't look fearful. He doesn't look. Or she doesn't look isolated. And why are they so quiet? What do they know that I don't know? And then what ends up happening, Maria? Then the community forms around me and it's happened. I'm looking back, I'm like, yeah, I was alone. And then everyone, everyone just came and all these communities formed around me. And then it was a matter of, ooh, I don't like that. Let me, Let me sidestep that. And then it's like another community would form around. And those were all periods of growth because the first community, I have nothing to do with them anymore. But then the next community. So the reason I'm mentioning this, folks, is if you're fearful of being the loner and being isolated, I think I can safely say, Maria, it's a rule that your community and tribe will form around you. The right people will be attracted. [00:31:01] Speaker B: I think they'll magnetize to you. Yeah, I agree. And I think that Adyashanti talks about this, and I was just talking to my friend about this this morning. You can't follow the path of the Buddha. You cannot follow the exact path of Ram Dass, like, step by step, because you're not Ram Dass. And Ram Dass can be your teacher, Alan Watts. Ram Dass and Alan Watts are dear teachers to me, but I can't be a Harvard professor at the time that Ram Dass was a Harvard professor. I can't follow his footsteps exactly. Because I have to do my own thing. And I feel like many people are trying to pattern their lives, especially in the spiritual community. Exactly. Precisely because they want the outcome that Ram Dass, Alan Watts, the Buddha, Jesus, they want that outcome but you have to do your own path. You have to work your own path. You can be informed by Ram Dass and Alan Watson, Jesus and the Buddha, you can. But it's not going to look like what they did. It's going to look like what you did. So being comfortable with forging your own path, being your own person. And there will be times where you will be judged and criticized and the pack will not be about it. They'll be like, you're weird, Shawn. We don't understand you. That it is. It's literally the story of my life is I've never fit in. I've always been different. And when I was younger, when I was in my teens and in my 20s, I really hated it. I truly had a lot of self hatred because I was like, why can't I just be like everybody else? Why can't I just be normal? Because at that time of human development, teens and twenties, many people want to be a part of the in crowd. People want to feel that that community around them. They want that acceptance because it's a part of development. But then you start seeing the cracks in these communities. Then you start seeing like, oh, wait, I don't want to do that. I'm going to veer off to the right. And then you're walking what feels like a very lonely path of your own purpose, your own journey. And then you start not caring. Then you start not caring about what other people are doing. And that is the important. For me, it was the very important tipping point where I was like, look, I'm different. I am what I am, like Popeye said, but I'm just gonna do it. And if people want to magnetize to me, which they have, which they have to you too, and they want to learn from me, or if they want to be my friend, then cool. But the people who don't want to do that, that's fine too. I started not caring so much about how many people I had friends or how much community I had around me. It's more so having the right people who really that you can resonate with that love and accept you for who you are and don't try to change you and don't judge and criticize you. But that could be a lonely and scary process because again, we're so hardwired to want that acceptance externally. [00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just coming back to me that saying, you know, other people's opinion of me is absolutely none of my business. And for those of you listening, embrace the fear. Because in my example, every time I have, it's meant that I'm learning something new.