“At 19-20, I graduated as a Commercial Airline Pilot, and was about to become a Fighter Pilot in the Canadian Marines, when my soul told me — despite being raised Catholic, I needed to go over there and become a Vedic Monk”
“At 19-20, I was in Med School, and I decided that I needed to withdraw and simply tune into the frequency of one note. I became a musician, learnt the didjeridoo, and only played one note for three years, before I was ready to take the next step”.
These are the two stories I heard from two outwardly interesting, yet deeply equanimous men, the other weekend at two separate events I attended.
At a pivotal moment in their life, where they drew a line in the sand and started again at the zero frequency.
I had intended to write about this straight after it happened… but it was Winter week in my cycle. Turns out, I have a pattern where I can’t write when I’m bleeding.
Nonetheless, their stories had a resonance that stirred up another layer of remembering.
This year, for me, has been unequivocally returning to the zero frequency.
Although, like these fellows, my journey probably also started around 19.
Actually, I was probably a bit younger. I was always a “bit younger”. I was nearly 3 years younger than many of my peers by the time I graduated High School due to being accelerated.
It feels appropriate to add at this point, relevant to today’s topic, that I was accelerated by my own desire. Which was not an academic desire.
I’m going to take a different tone in today’s writing, instead of channeling, I’ll fall into storyteller mode for this one.
Once upon a time… I enjoyed the carelessness of being fairly prodigal, where I could spend all night on MSN Messenger chatting to my friends, then set my alarm for 7am before an assignment was due, write it, hand it at 9am, and still be top of the my class. But when my high-school boyfriend transferred to the Senior College, just for Year 11’s and 12’s, in the “City”, I decided it was time to step it up a notch. I asked my school to allow me to explore my potential and trial a few Year 10 classes and so forth. Within a term, I was the first and only 14 year old at the Senior College. And I was reunited with my boyfriend.
I could. So I did.
Alas, he ended up cheating on me, and we broke up about 2 months later.
I stayed at the school and went on to become the School President.
After graduation, despite a Gap Year, I was still a lot younger than my peers at University. Like my friends from the weekend, I was about a year or so into my Law / Medical Science degree that I shared that same Ummmmm-where-am-I-actually-going-with-my-life-right-now moment.
Instead of returning to zero at that point, I searched elsewhere.
Externalising was my blueprint.
I talked my way into chopping and changing into subjects that interested me more. Realising that the idea of becoming a Lawyer or playing in the field of Law was not for me. Nor spending my days in lab coats staring at the mirco.
Instead, I dove into classes about the macro, Climate Science, Human Ecology, Environmental Economics, Marine Biology (dolphins!), Anthropology. I travelled the globe and lived and studied in rural villages in Vietnam, studied Infectious Diseases and Globalisation topics at Oxford, visited United Nations Climate Change conferences as a delegate, had a brief career in politics (at the Australian Parliament House), co-founded a pseudo-sorority, and a few other pages of social impact “resume fillers”. Then eventually, at some point, all around the ripe age of 19-20, I had to go and beg the Dean from Australia’s most prestigious University to let me graduate. It felt comical.
But he did. On the premise I would be graduating to complete a noteworthy Honours Thesis. And they made up an arbitrary Degree for me, which I think I might still be the only person in the World to have.
After a year of travelling to (and partying in) Sydney every weekend (because, yay, no externalised structures to keep me grounded!) my thesis was miraculously awarded First Class, and an Honours Prize for the Most Outstanding Result. Even though I only submitted a penultimate draft, had my supervisors in tears about my “wasted talent”, and wrote the whole thing from scratch 2 days before it was due.
Are you seeing a theme here?
I could. So I did.
My wildly full and over-achieving life didn’t start there, and it didn’t stop there. This is merely but a snippet of it throughout the years of 17-20 years old.
Until I was in my mid-twenties, when I started to “return home” (both locationally and to my “Self”) things really came crashing down. Up until that point, I understood my analytical mind to be my greatest gift.
The world reiterated that to me.
And I fed off it. I constructed an entire life, thinking I wasn’t serving my purpose, or wasn’t complete if I didn’t honour this about myself.
But our greatest gifts are also our kryptonite, our shadows.
I often wonder what would have happened if instead of pursuing the entire World at 19, I decided to return to the zero frequency then, like the fellows I met?
Oomph. My ego shouts no! Why would you say that?
Can you hear the pride and worthiness in which it shares all of its “great achievements”?
The tone is different when I share about this, isn’t it?
Honestly, I’ve been having a little fun indulging it for a moment, although I know it will inevitably come with a dreaded “shame hangover”. That’s the thing about playing with the ego.
***
My first born is coming of school age now, and she is starting to show a deep thirst for learning her letters, reading and writing. Inevitably, both my children have “sharp minds” too.
According to the Steiner philosophies, of which I feel most deeply aligned with, she “should” really be waiting another 2-3 years to let her life forces come into their fullness before settling into the rigidity of the fixed Mind. And I mostly agree. Knowing my daughter better than anyone, and how she preferences the upper chakras, bypassing the lower ones.
It’s brought up a lot for me.
Our lifetime’s wounding is crystalised in the first seven years. I’m navigating how to support my children’s unique blueprint whilst going back to the Source of my own.
I’m sure you can imagine what sort of child I was.
I was limitless.
That was my blueprint. And my wounding.
Apparently I have many lifetimes of mastering the limits of the human potential.
It’s my default.
But it’s not my Soul’s end point.
And I truly believe, aside from a few obvious exceptions,
All children can.
All people can.
The human experience is essentially a limitless one. We have the infinite expansiveness of the Universe in our DNA.
But just because a child (or person) can, doesn’t mean they should.
Alright, I have to pause there for a moment and reframe that, as the should of’s, could of’s and would of’s are also something I no longer subscribe to as well.
Let’s try this:
It’s not about whether you can, but what happens if you do?
This is the question I’m asking today.
What happens if we get off the wagon of our potential and we simply just be?
We all have infinite abilities to create. To create wealth, to create success, to create power, to create influence, to create projects, to create knowledge, to create impact, to create “a life for yourself”, to create a home, to create a family, to create stability, to create freedom.
And depending on your own unique soul’s blueprint you’ll have have defaulted into creating, or being blocked in creating, infinitely in different ways too.
For me, it has not really mattered what sector of my life and career I’ve existed in, the external environment around me has always been set against the backdrop that our worth, value, purpose and potential is linked to what we create.
But I really can’t help feel, in the depth of my truth, this is an industrially-derived lie.
The personal growth, wellness and spiritual empowerment industry, has capitalised on this like Big Tech did on the pandemic.
I “dabbled” (except with my whole being, because I obviously don’t do things in halves) in these industries over the years. Moreso in recent years.
It was necessary for me to do this.
But I was already limitless and already abundance and already in deep service. In both the conditioned way, and yet also the pure and true way.
Jumping into these industries, particularly in the digital space, created an entirely false reality for me and drove me into scarcity, lack of self-worth, confusion, inflated self-importance and essentially a belief that the most important thing in life, is that I can.
Of course, there was much to be gained, but I found there was much more to be lost.
This was partly algorithms (hint: read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari if you haven’t yet).
But mostly industry. The profitability of distraction from the Inner.
I’ve come to believe, I’m not sure anyone can be truly free, whilst still engaging with these systems in a significant way. Systems, which I feel also require a radical upheaval back to their zero point.
I was grateful for this experience, though, as it brought all this to my consciousness.
Where I can talk about it, because now I know it.
The essential nature of a Human Design Projector: to try on the conditioning of the Collective, so we can See from a place of lived Truth.
***
It’s taken me about 7 years to integrate the first experience I ever had of a Vipassana (a 10 day silent meditation - meditating from 4am to 9pm every day, no reading, no writing, no talking, no consumption, no distraction).
This was about one of the most painful experiences of my life.
The ego-death was real.
Ego-deaths hurt.
To have an ego-death is to realise who you are is getting in the way of truly being who you are. Get that?
I’m a Scorpio. Scorps welcome the Reaper vivaciously with open arms.
But boy, it doesn’t distract from the painfulness.
Releasing parts of yourself.
It’s like cutting off your own arm.
It doesn’t feel natural. It feels anti-evolution. But, in this case, I needed to cut off my own arm because my arm was the puppeteer to my own life, and I was not letting myself be a “real boy” (ref. Pinnochio).
What are we in such a hurry to progress and evolve into, anyway? Perhaps less forward momentum is just what our humanity needs right now.
What I learned in this Vipassana was the concept of equanimity.
And Impermanence. Detachment from the material.
The first time I think I truly embodied these ideas was about a month before my second child was born. I had just come out of a Float (one of those meditation magnesium bath things), I was trying to stay in a state of bliss whilst entering the Birth Portal, like I did effortlessly with my first. I got out of the car to pick up my daughter, who’d just spent her first moment away from me, with my Mum, and I tweaked my back painfully. To the point I could barely walk. Moments later I was on the floor crying because I felt so helpless I couldn’t even carry my 1 year old daughter back to the car.
Then it just clicked - like on a cellular level, not just an understanding level.
And I started laughing, coming to the realisation how much attachment I’d been putting on a falsely constructed experience of existence (a blissful birth portal, being a “good” mother etc), rather than just the peace of what is.
I ask now:
What if we stop wanting to be so delighted by life? Stopped seeking the most “expansive” experience?
If we stopped being hooked on our I-can-have-do-be-more-one-day future? Stopped contracting in our current reality, resisting it?
And we just be. Without story.
This isn’t numbness.
This is the ultimate source of True life force.
Life force which does not depend on anything outside of ourselves.
What if True life force has nothing to do with what we eat, where we live, how we move our bodies, who we’re friends with, what we do for work, how much we live “in our purpose”, our design, or our potential, or the potential of our experience of life…
And it just is.
Like our breath.
Despite being highly unmotivated to practice Qi Gong or do Breathwork, etc, (note: I’m reflecting why this is) I do actually believe that at the end of the day, all we really need is our breath.
And I think, both of the men I met last weekend - the Monk and the Musician - also started again at the zero frequency with this notion.
For me, this year, it has not been possible to “continue” or “carry on” whilst also returning to this frequency. It has required an entire life reset and it has required letting go of many daily things we’ve taken for granted.
Who am I without it all?
I can’t know, unless I actually release it all.
Cut off the rest of my limbs.
How does it feel to truly be, have, own, need nothing outside of myself?
To live each day in a deep sense of peace, where the power is in the not-doing.
Even though we can, what happen’s when we don’t?
Sometimes I start to “build myself up” again, in a worldly material sense, and then I realise that my journey to surrender into the nothingness, isn’t even near completion.
Perhaps it never will be, as long as I desire.
***
I’ve come to learn you can’t solve problems created by the ego, with the ego.
You can only solve them with the heart.
Similar to Einstein’s “you cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
Except, taking it that one level higher and alchemising the thinking part completely.
No thinking. No analysing. No processing. No making meaning of it all.
Just being.
Without agitation.
Where there is Will, there is agitation.
I spent the whole first part of my adult life harnessing the power and force of my Will, and now I’ll probably spend the rest unravelling from it.
Because it’s not about whether I can, it’s what happens when I don’t.
P.S. I didn’t write last week again. I’ve come to realise that writing does not flow for me in my cyclical Winter week. My bleed. It is my inner time of inner truth. Just for me and for my return to the start. Zero. I think I’ll just accept this will probably be a pattern… and I’ll likely add in a second post in my Summer week when I’m in full creativity bloom. It seems to be the natural flow. No promises. You know the drill xx
Love this!
I recently watched “Finding Joe” on YouTube. I think you will be able to connect with it. X