Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 61: what if if gets to be easy? 🌻

Transcript

61: what if if gets to be easy? 🌻 · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  What if it gets to be easy? What if it gets to be easy? Isn't it so fascinating about ease that in order to experience
• 0:07
  ease, softness, we have to feel worthy of it. In order to get support, we have to feel worthy of receiving it.
• 0:15
  In order for something to feel easy and effortless and effortful at the same time, we have to feel worthy of that experience.
• 0:23
  And so often, my darling, my love, we don't. You don't. And so you construct all these challenges and complicated versions of things.
• 0:33
  Because you feel that if you succeed or achieve that goal, achieve that dream, the impossibility and the challenge of it will then create the sense of feeling so proud of yourself. I did it.
• 0:44
  Now I can have more trust in myself. Now I can feel like I have what it takes. And yet my darling, my love, you are love.
• 0:53
  You are a manifestation of love on this planet and therefore as such and as with, you actually have nothing to prove, not even to yourself.
• 1:02
  And so ease, my darling, is your birthright. When you were a child, there must have been something you enjoyed creating. Maybe it was singing. Maybe it was baking. Maybe it was dancing.
• 1:13
  Maybe you were very active and you loved movement or sports. And I want to ask if you found it challenging, like really difficult and hard.
• 1:23
  Or did it extend from your being easily, naturally, joyfully blissfully. And so much of what we are trying to do as creators, as visionaries, as artists, as makers, feelers, healers, dreamers is return to that sense of safe,
• 1:42
  blissful creation or experience it for the first time if that was not our experience in childhood. If we didn't have a zone of creativity that allowed us to feel alive and awake and possible.
• 1:55
  I'm receiving that when you were a child, you loved to perform. I'm not sure on what capacity, but you loved performance.
• 2:02
  Whether it was in a room, you loved to be the one making people laugh or smile or dance or giggle. You loved to draw attention to yourself and you were taught to be ashamed of that over time.
• 2:13
  But actually, just as we attend to the sunset, just as we attend to the bird's chirp, attention is a beautiful aspect of our human experience and without it.
• 2:22
  Without beautiful, and I mean that in this deep, rich, soulful way, the way that the sunset is beautiful, the way that a poem is beautiful.
• 2:31
  In that sense, the universe's wisdom is to attract attention to those aspects of reality that will nourish us, that will expand us, that will offer us more life, more love.
• 2:45
  And that's also why the paradigm that we're living currently is so toxic because it draws attention towards that which is soul crushing rather than soul expanding.
• 2:56
  And that is why you can feel there is a shift because the attention of the collective is shifting towards more of that which is loving, that which is healing, that which is deep and wise and nourishing.
• 3:08
  We are coming home to something and it's beautiful to witness and it gives us hope even in the midst of so much despair and suffering, I can feel that we are stretching towards more healing collectively and that there is hope in that stretching.
• 3:22
  And that you are part of what we are stretching towards, your gifts, your way of listening to people in a way that makes them truly feel heard, like the way you truly hold space for people.
• 3:35
  You reflect, they love, they gift, their power back into them, you ask them questions, your curiosity is expansive, is life giving, is love giving.
• 3:46
  You are nourishing people's souls and you're doing it with ease.
• 3:52
  If I asked you, do you find it challenging to allow people to feel heard while they're in your energy, you'll probably say, no, I don't find it challenging, it's my natural gift.
• 4:01
  That is an example that some of your most natural gifts, the work that actually we are here to do, but this paradigm does not always make possible, but we are finding pathways, we are finding pathways.
• 4:12
  And you felt called to find your pathway or to expand your pathway, yes, yes, it's true.
• 4:18
  But our gifts come easy to us.
• 4:21
  When we separate our gifts from perfectionism and move them into a space of generosity, of curiosity, of openness, of exploration, instead of pressure, control.
• 4:34
  And fear, when we move from the space of the ego into the space of the soul, there is a space of ease within that that is trying to find you my love.
• 4:44
  And I sense that you have been finding ways to find the most difficult version, the most challenging version.
• 4:50
  What if I did the 75 hard challenge or what if I, okay, I'm going to start a newsletter, but I'm going to post every single day and it has to be perfect and edited.
• 4:58
  I'm going to start a YouTube channel and what if I post every single day for six months, imagine the growth I could experience leading to creative burnout, leading to our inner child feeling exploited instead of expressed.
• 5:11
  Feeling tired instead of energised, which is your birthright to be in your gifts in a space of ease of possibility of softness instead of these rigid boundaries and lines that ultimately just suffocate each of us.
• 5:26
  And that is by design because of this social programming system that we are trying to deprogram and reprogram in accordance with love, community, creativity, expression, expansion, liberation in accordance with the true freedom for all in accordance with the highest possible vibration that we could experience as a collective in accordance with the kind of friendships and relationships and work and moments that we could hope for a dream of like our collective dreams can unfold.
• 5:56
  And I really believe that you are part of that unfolding.
• 6:01
  If you think of a place or a possibility called heaven or Nirvana or paradise or bliss or all these spiritual traditions having this understanding of this eternal paradise.
• 6:15
  I would invite you to think, not of that as a place, but as a possibility that we align to.
• 6:23
  And by everyone aligning to that possibility, we therefore create heaven on earth for each other.
• 6:29
  And you are necessarily a piece of that heaven on earth, a piece of that paradise and poetry of our experience collectively together.
• 6:39
  While there is so much suffering and despair, there was also at this moment in time there are people experiencing bliss, experiencing love, peacefulness, experiencing community, experiencing beauty.
• 6:54
  And are they not in heaven?
• 6:59
  Are they not in heaven? If that's what they're experiencing. Have you not been in heaven? Have you not been in a conversation where you felt so seen and heard and understood that it truly felt like you had actually designed the person because they responded in the way that you never even thought was possible, but that you'd always dreamed of at the same time.
• 7:16
  Well, you're not in heaven when you listen to that song and it's so perfectly expressed everything you were experiencing and the melodies rushed over you and then there was the feeling that you're not alone.
• 7:29
  Well, you're not in heaven when you were laughing with your friends or with your family or with your community till your belly hurt till it felt like you couldn't laugh anymore and then you kept laughing.
• 7:39
  Well, you're not in heaven when someone chose to help you instead of judge you, well, you're not in heaven when someone allowed you to see them and witness them with love, with compassion, well, you're not in heaven when someone did that for you.
• 7:53
  So we create heaven for each other, my darling. You have created heaven for people. Did you hear what I just said? You have created bliss, heaven, peace, a sense of perfection in the sense that nothing can be added to this moment, that pause, that sigh, that feeling of reunion or connection or beauty or art or poetry.
• 8:15
  So someone has seen the poetry of your being and been so moved. The other day, one of my best friends sent me a poem he'd written and I was in heaven. I was astounded by the beauty of that poem and I think many of us have read poems that take us to that astonished place.
• 8:34
  Sometimes when I'm talking to some of my friends and the way that they hold space for me and love me, I'm astounded by the love that's possible.
• 8:42
  So it gets to be easy to have friendships that feel aligned to you. It gets to be easeful to share yourself with people. It gets to be easy to do even your soul aligned work.
• 8:55
  And I'm not saying that this is going to suddenly turn things from difficult to easy overnight. If you are experiencing the struggle, the hardship, that is so much a part of our reality that so much does not feel easy, so much feels the complete opposite of easy, so much feels like an eternal struggle.
• 9:11
  And so much has been, in fact, so much adversity, so much oppression, so much. And at the same time, if there are moments and spaces and I know there are where you can invite yourself to say, I'm worthy of the ease that is actually trying to dance with me in this lifetime.
• 9:32
  Because think of the bird chirping. I can hear birds chirping or the bird flying or the wind that softly just shuts the door on your behalf.
• 9:41
  Do any of those find it difficult? Does a bird find it difficult to fly? Does a bird find it challenging to chirp?
• 9:51
  On most days, no, unless the bird is injured, it is its nature. And so when you really find your soul aligned work, I'm not saying it won't ask effort of you, but what I'm saying is it's going to be that paradoxical kind of effort babes and I get the sense that you love paradoxes, that easeful effort, that effortless effortfulness.
• 10:12
  It's like it comes so naturally, it's like you're doing your work, you're doing your work. When I speak, it's not to say I don't face challenges, my inner critics not speaking to me, it's not the case, but I find flow because it's my work.
• 10:30
  We need to be careful of the fact that we've internalized the message that the harder it is, the more valuable it is, and that that logic comes from capitalism and colonialism and patriarchy.
• 10:43
  Oh, an ableism that logic comes from these systems that want to ensure a hierarchical understanding of our experience and that wants to glorify things that actually cost us ourselves.
• 10:56
  They want to glorify in these systems, self exploitation, consumerist beauty culture is an example of this, where work, but not just any work, work that serves the toxic beauty hierarchy that's rooted in all these systems, patriarchy, racism, white supremacy, anti-fatness, homophobia, transphobia, all of the things, that it's a particular kind of work that is glorified in that system and structure.
• 11:24
  So we need to be careful that there is that work that is ours, that is soulful, that is meaningful, and also our understanding of work has been captured.
• 11:33
  So speaking is effortful for me, and also it's a dance, like I feel the heat growing in my body because it's a dance, and I read this incredible essay.
• 11:44
  It was so good, I'm going to put it in the show notes, and I'm going to be talking about it again, but it's all about metaphors.
• 11:50
  And what it says is that metaphors don't merely describe our reality.
• 11:54
  So, you know, I'm at a crossroads, I just don't know what to do, or those two, they don't get along, you know, they're like oil and water, they don't mix.
• 12:03
  So, but these metaphors, they don't simply, and every culture has their own metaphors, right?
• 12:08
  They don't simply describe reality as it is.
• 12:14
  They actually shape our understanding of reality, meaning when you change the frame, when you change the metaphor, the way that people behave in that social context changes.
• 12:26
  Let me give you a beautiful example.
• 12:28
  You will notice that a lot of, and I learned this from the essay, I blew my mind, but a lot of the language that is used to describe relationships, friendships, relationality, is rooted in wall-based metaphors, conflict, sides, winning, and losing the argument.
• 12:49
  Even argument, it's a battle, it's a battle, defending yourself, attacking your partner, okay?
• 12:58
  Okay, so these metaphors come from an underlying structure and understanding of war.
• 13:05
  And what the author says in that essay is if you change the frame to a dance, imagine you just thought of every relationship as a dance.
• 13:13
  Then people become more collaborative because the purpose of a dance is to dance together, it is to collaborate, it is to create something beautiful together.
• 13:24
  It's not to win or lose, it's to create something beautiful, something moving, something soulful, sensual, and it is about responding to your partner rather than attacking or defending yourself against them, even that word against rooted in wall.
• 13:42
  Wow, blew my mind, blew my absolute mind. So what are the framings that we are using to create more suffering, more struggle instead of more love, more peace, and more ease?
• 13:58
  So creatively my darling, the idea of a creative block, that's a metaphor, it is this idea of something blocking the way, we can invite ourselves to say, I have a creative invitation to go somewhere that I was not intending to go, but that is what is arise.
• 14:15
  Do you see suchly how if we lived in a different kind of world and we had a different kind of metaphor and framing, we would have a different relationship with everything in our lives, it's very profound, it's very profound.
• 14:26
  So just as the bird finds ease in its flight, just as the breeze finds ease in its motion, just as the dancer at a certain level of connection to their body finds ease and also of devotion to their craft, they do find ease.
• 14:42
  How can you find more ease? What is a way that ease is trying to befriend you metaphorically to hold your hand, to be with you in this life?
• 14:53
  Because it's so fascinating that we can only experience in our bodies the feeling of ease if we feel worthy of it.
• 15:02
  Each of us knows or is the person who always feels like no one is helping them and then also struggles to ask for help.
• 15:10
  And it's because in your nervous system, it's more familiar to feel tension than to feel ease.
• 15:17
  So even when the opportunity for ease presents itself, it's like, I'm no sorry, I'll just do it this way because I'm used to doing it this way.
• 15:25
  And so it's essentially like breaking up with the energy of tension where we can. There are many aspects of our experience we can't choose, relationships, work, elements of our experience that feel unavoidable.
• 15:36
  And then surrounding what we can't choose, taking ownership of, first of all, truly what can we actually choose and then secondly, how can we choose to dance with ease in this lifetime?
• 15:48
  You might find yourself making things way more complicated than they ever needed to be because you think that's how it has to be.
• 15:54
  So inviting ease and invite ease to speak to you about what would it say next?
• 16:01
  What if you did the 10 minute version?
• 16:04
  What if you didn't edit this video that much?
• 16:09
  What if the essay is good to go? I know you feel you could do way more to it, but what if it's good to go?
• 16:15
  What if this book is just asking you to write 200 words per day?
• 16:20
  What if you get to play this delicious music and drink your favorite tea while you do this task that you've been avoiding?
• 16:30
  What if the task that you've been avoiding is actually going to be more easeful than you think it will be?
• 16:36
  What if you get to embody ease first and then do the task and see what happens?
• 16:42
  What if meditation doesn't have to feel like a to-do-less task that feels heavy and strict and rigid and an upright spine and closing your eyes and crossing your legs? What if it gets to feel like a pleasure practice?
• 16:56
  What if it gets to feel like a pleasure practice? What would that invite you to do next?
• 17:00
  What if you actually express your truth with ease? What if the idea that it's hard for you to have hard conversations is actually just making them even more difficult?
• 17:13
  Now, I'm not saying lies yourself, but as you can see, there are all these what-if questions, these invitations, these explorations, experiments that we can play and experience in this life to invite more ease into our lives.
• 17:56
  One thing that changed everything is having a playlist that was speaking words of just love and soulfulness into my heart as I journaled.
• 18:06
  Now, I know some of us like to journal with no lyrics. I totally love that and feel that.
• 18:10
  I find that listening to this playlist has really supported my journaling practice over the past two or so years.
• 18:17
  Now, journal daily, I do morning pages from the artist's way and that has really supported my creative practice and life and also just my emotional life, my relationships.
• 18:26
  I feel like I do it with ease. I do three pages a day and I love to do them because it's a ritual that I've created.
• 18:34
  So, I want to share with you that I have a free e-book called Soulful Visibility that you can access right now at iUnderstood.com and in it, I have a music playlist that can support you as you journal or as you get into the frequency that you would like to create from and through.
• 18:52
  It's so soulful, it's so delicious and I really hope that you enjoy it and that it speaks to you and through you.
• 18:58
  So, again, you can receive this, it has affirmations, mindset shifts, this music playlist, it has a few words of loving wisdom from me, it has journaling prompts, it's really packed with loving wisdom for you to step into more visibility and visibility can look like sharing yourself more honestly with friends or family or relationship partners.
• 19:20
  Visibility can look like standing in the truth of your dreams and the bigness of your dreams, even saying the words, I want to be a screenwriter.
• 19:28
  Whatever you want, I want to write a book, like sometimes even just daring in a room full of two or three or one person to state our dreams, that can be the fear of being seen.
• 19:38
  Maybe it is the fear of being seen online that you know that this can be a place to attract your dream experiences, opportunities, communities, peers, mentors, collaborators, friends.
• 19:49
  Maybe it is visibility in studios, like you see your favorite podcastes and you're like, I can do that, I want to do that and I will.
• 19:57
  Or on stages or hosting events, hosting a book club, you've been meaning to start, but you're scared to be seen inviting people into a space.
• 20:06
  Maybe you've been seeking to share your gifts with the world in one way or the other, perform more, sing more, play your instrument, produce music, teach, coach, start your business.
• 20:17
  Now how are you going to sell, starting it is one thing, but you need to be willing to be seen, selling and sharing and offering your gifts to the world.
• 20:26
  So fear of visibility comes up in so many areas and the thing my love is, it's not something that is a point that we reach.
• 20:33
  It's a continual invitation to expand into greater and greater levels of visibility, because just as you feel comfortable being seen in one dimension, one paradigm, one space.
• 20:43
  The universe says, oh, have you thought about, have you thought about this other one? For example, you've been seen maybe without your face on the camera, suddenly you get this voice inside, it's time for me to show myself on camera.
• 20:54
  Or you've been seen in short form, you get this voice in your head, I want to start a podcast. Or you've been seen virtually speaking into a camera, you get a voice in your head, I want to speak at events.
• 21:03
  So there's always invitation to expand and expand and play and play with this aspect of our reality that is so spiritual, which is visibility, which is sight.
• 21:13
  We even ask each other like, what do you see? What do you see for yourself? What did you see in your vision? That sight is metaphorical as much as it is physical, right?
• 21:22
  That it is actually metaphysical, the idea of prophetic vision and sight, that this is a very important dimension of our experience.
• 21:30
  And that being seen is a path to deepen our spiritual practice and connection and to grow our wisdom, to grow our evolution, to grow our self-love, to heal the inner child, who feels like she had to hide.
• 21:45
  Because it was not safe to be seen, because of the trauma, the bullying, the lack of acceptance, the fear, the feeling of perfectionism and needing to be perfect in order to be worthy of being celebrated or seen or even trying.
• 21:59
  So it's part of our healing to allow self to say, I get to be seen imperfectly, I get to take up space, the way that I can today and not after I've read that book, not after I've done that research, not after I've accumulated that degree or that qualification, because then I'll be worthy enough to be seen, then I'll be worthy enough to be listened to.
• 22:16
  Babes, a new earth is trying to awaken through you right now, through our collective understandings right now.
• 22:21
  And so it's the very people who have the consciousness that can invite us to a new path, to a new earth, who are actually feeling the most repressed.
• 22:29
  Okay, that is also why systems of oppression and supremacy exist, to create a sense of self-silencing, especially of the voices that are the most disruptive to the status quo.
• 22:40
  So your heart, your spirituality, your magic, your activism, your gifts, your love for the earth, your multi-passionatism, your spiritual understanding, your culture, your languages, your voice, your accent, all of it is part of the multi-dimensional healing that you are here to bring.
• 22:58
  So you are multi-passionate, multi-dimensional. It's because you're also here to offer us multi-dimensional understandings, teachings, and forms of healing.
• 23:05
  So you are this piece of the matrix that we cannot do without my love, leaving the matrix actually.
• 23:10
  You are the piece of the portal towards that heaven we spoke about, that we cannot do without. I truly, truly believe we cannot do it without you.
• 23:20
  Because if we get that dream world and we look back, we would have said we did everything to nurture the loving artist within, the loving activist within, the loving teacher within, the loving healer within, the loving creator within, so that we could become who we are today.
• 23:35
  So if that part of us is feeling silenced, repressed is not feeling like they have space to express, how will we get to that world?
• 23:42
  It's going to take us stepping into the spaces that feel uncomfortable, but also completely necessary.
• 23:49
  And while we do that, may we invite more ease, may you invite more ease in that stepping.
• 23:55
  I step into my power with ease, repeat after me, I step into my power with ease.
• 24:02
  I step into my purpose with ease.
• 24:06
  I step into service with ease.
• 24:10
  I step into abundance with ease.
• 24:15
  I love you so much, my darling. Thank you for being in the soul salon with me today. I am sweating.
• 24:20
  I hope that this has served your deepest consciousness today. Thank you for being with me in today's soul session.
• 24:25
  Remember to please sign up while you can for the free, soulful visibility guide to help you overcome your fear of being seen and step into power, purpose and visibility in 2025 and beyond.
• 24:38
  I love you so much and I will see you on the next soul session. I love you. Bye.
• 24:44
  My darling, my love, my soul sibling. Thank you for stepping into the soul salon.
• 24:50
  If you are still hearing or watching this, we are soul siblings. We are resonating on the same frequency.
• 24:56
  And so something you may struggle with that I struggle with is the fear of being seen.
• 25:01
  You know that visibility is involved in you living your creative purpose and being in your power, serving the collective through your gifts, through your magic, through your medicine.
• 25:11
  In order to do that, you know you need to be more seen than you are allowing yourself to be right now.
• 25:18
  I have a gift just for you, heart made for us on this frequency. And it is a free ebook called the soulful visibility guide that is soulful visibility.
• 25:29
  Like we don't just want to be seen. We want to be felt. We want to be heard. We want to move and be moved. So I do have a free gift for you. And all you need to do is go to my website.
• 25:39
  I understood dot com. And there you will be able to input your email address and receive this directly to your inbox.
• 25:47
  This is such a juicy and delicious guide. And I change the free offering every few months. So you know, get it while you can.
• 25:54
  All the links are in the show notes. So thank you so much. I love you. And I will see you on the next sole session. Okay. I love you. Bye.