Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 78: 👁️ the power of y(our) vision

Transcript

78: 👁️ the power of y(our) vision · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  Your vision is so deeply powerful, is so spiritual.
• 0:05
  It has magnetized this very wisdom,
• 0:07
  this very experience to you.
• 0:10
  Because your vision will always attract the support,
• 0:14
  the wisdom, the people that it asks for you to meet
• 0:19
  and experience in order for it to be brought to life.
• 0:22
  First, I want to talk about what is a vision.
• 0:25
  A vision is what makes the impossible possible.
• 0:30
  A vision is what makes the unseen seen.
• 0:34
  A vision is what bridges the spiritual realm
• 0:38
  and the material realm.
• 0:40
  And you, equally as you have visions,
• 0:44
  what I really want to communicate through this work,
• 0:47
  is that you are a vision.
• 0:51
  And I invite you to reflect on the different ways
• 0:54
  that is true for you.
• 0:55
  Who are you a vision for in this life?
• 0:58
  Maybe you are a vision of your ancestors.
• 1:01
  Maybe you are a vision of your parents.
• 1:04
  Maybe you are a vision of your best friend
• 1:06
  who dreamed of having a friend just like you.
• 1:09
  Maybe you are a vision of your students
• 1:11
  and now you've become their dream teacher.
• 1:14
  And I invite you to use possibilities
• 1:16
  that have already unfolded as well as possibilities
• 1:19
  that have yet to unfold.
• 1:20
  Who may be calling you in at this very moment,
• 1:24
  calling in a coach like you,
• 1:25
  calling in a teacher like you,
• 1:27
  calling in an artist, a mentor,
• 1:29
  a creative doler like you,
• 1:31
  calling in a friend, a lover,
• 1:33
  a partner like you,
• 1:35
  calling in a parent like you.
• 1:39
  What souls are asking for you to believe in them
• 1:44
  before they fully show themselves
• 1:46
  and reveal themselves to you?
• 1:49
  There are so many beautiful paradoxes,
• 1:52
  dances, mysteries of this idea of sight
• 1:56
  because it doesn't require physical sight to have sight.
• 2:00
  Inside a third eye,
• 2:02
  it's all related to perception, discernment, to vision.
• 2:06
  And what we need to understand
• 2:08
  as people who are heart-led, soul-led
• 2:11
  is that we are living in a vision.
• 2:13
  We are living in the vision of colonizers,
• 2:17
  of capitalists, of patriots, of homophobes,
• 2:20
  and also we are living in the vision
• 2:22
  of loving artists and activists and revolutionaries,
• 2:26
  and people who resisted and insisted
• 2:29
  on the very possibility of us being here.
• 2:33
  In terms of the freedom that I have in my life,
• 2:36
  that was a vision that my ancestors
• 2:39
  as a Black South African held.
• 2:41
  Direct ancestors fought in that struggle
• 2:45
  because they had a vision for my freedom,
• 2:49
  because they had a vision for the freedom
• 2:52
  of Black people in the world.
• 2:54
  So who are you a vision of,
• 2:57
  my darling, my love, my angel?
• 2:59
  Because sometimes when we have a vision we see for ourselves,
• 3:03
  it is so easy to look at that vision with doubt
• 3:07
  and with disbelief, oh no, that could never happen.
• 3:10
  I hear people that I work with
• 3:12
  as a creativity doula saying this all the time,
• 3:15
  like I would love to be able to live full time of my art,
• 3:18
  but that just seems like a pipe dream.
• 3:20
  I know that most artists struggle,
• 3:21
  so I'll never be able to do that.
• 3:23
  But once you reconcile the impossibility
• 3:26
  of your being here at all,
• 3:28
  you're able to see that how dare we not hold visions,
• 3:32
  that seem out of this world.
• 3:35
  How dare we not believe we are worthy
• 3:38
  of believing in magnificent possibilities for ourselves
• 3:41
  when we ourselves, when you yourself,
• 3:43
  are a magnificent possibility.
• 3:46
  The chances of you being here, you, your soul,
• 3:50
  are so staggering.
• 3:52
  The chances of you being in this moment in time,
• 3:56
  being alive, having been born,
• 3:58
  your ancestors surviving what they survived,
• 4:02
  you are a staggering possibility.
• 4:04
  You are, in a sense, an impossibility.
• 4:07
  Many people could have looked at your being
• 4:09
  and said, that's just not possible.
• 4:12
  And so that same idea that it always seems impossible
• 4:16
  until it's done, as Nelson Mandela said,
• 4:19
  which is so true if you really sit with those words,
• 4:21
  it's so short and so simple and so powerful,
• 4:24
  it always seems impossible until it's done.
• 4:27
  So what you are calling in to create,
• 4:30
  the visibility you are calling in,
• 4:32
  the creativity you are calling in,
• 4:34
  the book you are calling in,
• 4:35
  the kind of life you are calling in,
• 4:37
  the kind of roles you are calling in,
• 4:39
  that you see yourself filling in this life for others.
• 4:42
  It always seems impossible until it is done.
• 4:48
  And the fact that you can see it,
• 4:51
  means that desire exists.
• 4:54
  There is a version of you in the quantum field
• 4:56
  who's already living that desire.
• 4:59
  And then on a collective level,
• 5:01
  collective dreams like love, liberation,
• 5:04
  mutual thriving, freedom from all these forms of violence
• 5:08
  and war, freedom for Palestine,
• 5:10
  freedom for all the people on earth
• 5:13
  who are suffering, freedom for the people of Congo,
• 5:15
  like a free world,
• 5:17
  that can seem like such an impossibility
• 5:19
  when we keep seeing this violence continue
• 5:21
  to be perpetuated.
• 5:23
  And yet I do believe that because we are in a sense
• 5:26
  an impossibility that was once envisioned,
• 5:29
  that we owe it to our future
• 5:31
  to continue to dream and imagine
• 5:34
  beyond the structures and systems we've been given
• 5:37
  towards something that can be more nourishing.
• 5:40
  And we have to accept that in the in between,
• 5:42
  it's going to look messy.
• 5:44
  It's going to ask us sometimes to be hypocrites.
• 5:46
  It's going to ask us to show up imperfectly
• 5:48
  because we are literally brick by brick
• 5:51
  trying to continue to pave the way to the future.
• 5:54
  So it's not going to be a perfect process.
• 5:56
  It's literally never been done fully before.
• 5:59
  We are the ones who are here as bridges
• 6:01
  to a world of collective healing,
• 6:03
  where healing and love and these frequencies
• 6:06
  get to be the dominant reality for all.
• 6:09
  Like I think of the idea of a government
• 6:11
  and what if the whole society was structured around love
• 6:14
  not around all these different forms of hierarchy
• 6:18
  and power and dominance?
• 6:20
  What if it was structured in love?
• 6:22
  What if it was structured in peace and softness
• 6:25
  and nourishment and how to truly relate
• 6:28
  to each other?
• 6:29
  You know, there are so many things to imagine
• 6:31
  that are so much more fruitful, nourishing, delicious.
• 6:34
  And so we're always trying to sort of weave
• 6:36
  the individual and the collective.
• 6:37
  And I wanted to offer examples that are not only
• 6:40
  what you are calling in, but also what we as a collective
• 6:43
  level are being asked to envision is a world
• 6:45
  that stretches beyond the world we've been given.
• 6:49
  And so all we are here to do is hold that desire,
• 6:52
  hold that vision, hold that possibility
• 6:55
  with conviction, with faith,
• 6:58
  with love most of all,
• 7:01
  and bring it into being.
• 7:03
  The next thing I think is so important to note
• 7:05
  about a vision, which I say very often
• 7:07
  in the Soul Salon podcast,
• 7:09
  is that your vision is not merely your own.
• 7:12
  Many of our ideas around dreams
• 7:15
  have been shaped by a colonial and individualistic
• 7:18
  consciousness and understanding
• 7:20
  and a capitalist consciousness and understanding.
• 7:23
  So your task in this life is said to be
• 7:26
  to fulfill your dreams.
• 7:28
  And if you get to the end of your life
• 7:30
  and you don't do that,
• 7:32
  there's a sense that you will regret the actions
• 7:34
  that you didn't take in service of your dreams.
• 7:37
  But I don't believe in individualistic dreams.
• 7:39
  I believe we make each other's dreams come true.
• 7:42
  I believe in a collectivist understanding
• 7:44
  of dreams and visions.
• 7:46
  I believe that if you feel cold to speak,
• 7:50
  it is because there are people who feel cold to listen.
• 7:55
  If you feel cold to paint,
• 7:58
  to paint the world with your consciousness,
• 8:01
  to paint canvases, walls, murals,
• 8:04
  whatever it may be,
• 8:06
  it is because there are people who feel cold,
• 8:09
  who long, who desire to bear witness to your art,
• 8:14
  with love, with appreciation,
• 8:16
  with all, with wonder, with gratitude.
• 8:19
  If you feel cold to teach
• 8:21
  and you cannot stop visioning and desiring yourself
• 8:24
  as a teacher in this role and in this life,
• 8:27
  it is because there are people who feel cold
• 8:30
  to learn from you.
• 8:33
  All of our visions are tapped into the same collective conscious
• 8:36
  and collective unconscious.
• 8:39
  So I think it's so beautiful to recognize
• 8:41
  that we're not alone in this vision
• 8:44
  and we can't fulfill our own visions on our own.
• 8:46
  I can't dream of having a podcast if no one wants to listen to it.
• 8:50
  So I must be fulfilling some sort of desire
• 8:53
  in the heart's souls of others
• 8:55
  in order for my dream of having a podcast
• 8:57
  to rarely come to fruition and blossom and bloom.
• 9:01
  So in what ways might the collective be dreaming through you?
• 9:05
  I invite you to journal on that question.
• 9:10
  How is the principle of collective dreaming, as I call it?
• 9:13
  How is that resonating or true for you?
• 9:16
  And you can also reflect on the other side.
• 9:18
  Who is a teacher or a musician or an artist, a writer,
• 9:23
  who you can imagine a version of them doubting themselves?
• 9:28
  And you're just trying to be that piece of faith.
• 9:30
  Think of me.
• 9:32
  Think of me.
• 9:34
  You may not know that I exist yet, but I exist.
• 9:37
  None of these writers could have fully known
• 9:39
  just how deeply we would connect with their work.
• 9:41
  They must have faced doubt.
• 9:43
  They must have faced fear.
• 9:44
  They must have faced resistance and overwhelm.
• 9:47
  And yet it's what they then chose to do with that.
• 9:49
  So I'm inviting you to reflect on both sides.
• 9:52
  In what way is the collective dreaming through you?
• 9:55
  And who is someone who you could say you dreamed of?
• 10:00
  Like you dreamed of listening to a music like theirs.
• 10:02
  You dreamed of listening to an artist like theirs.
• 10:04
  You dreamed of being in the presence of a consciousness like theirs.
• 10:08
  Okay?
• 10:09
  So our visions are deeply important.
• 10:12
  And we live in the vision, as I said, of many of these systems
• 10:16
  that have therefore captured our imaginations.
• 10:20
  In the book Imagination Ammanifesto by Dr. Ruha Benjamin,
• 10:24
  who is incredible, a sociologist and African American studies scholar.
• 10:28
  She's so powerful and such an incredible thinker and philosopher and sociologist.
• 10:33
  And in Imagination, she writes about how imagination is not frivolous.
• 10:38
  She says that those who monopolize resources also monopolize imagination.
• 10:46
  So so many people can imagine a world filled with robots.
• 10:51
  People are talking about imagining a world where you go to Mars for the afternoon.
• 10:55
  People talk about imagining a world where we have chips in our heads
• 10:58
  because the technology has gone from phone to like mind.
• 11:01
  So we can imagine those technological possibilities that have been shaped
• 11:05
  by big tech, by Silicon Valley venture capitalist and technologists.
• 11:11
  But we can't imagine a world where no child is hungry.
• 11:14
  Where no human being on earth is hungry.
• 11:17
  Where abundance is true for all.
• 11:19
  Where violence is not a thing.
• 11:22
  So they've captured our imagination.
• 11:24
  Oh no, that's just human nature.
• 11:26
  Human nature is to be violent. Human nature is to be competitive.
• 11:29
  Human nature is this and that.
• 11:32
  You know what I'm saying?
• 11:35
  But when it comes to AI, they don't care about human nature then.
• 11:39
  Now suddenly all the bits are off.
• 11:40
  We can do anything we want.
• 11:42
  So those who monopolize resources monopolize attention.
• 11:47
  They want to have ownership.
• 11:52
  Unique ownership over what we allow ourselves to envision as possible.
• 11:56
  And remember this exists at every scale.
• 11:59
  Because if we can hardly imagine creating something like a song,
• 12:03
  how are we as a collective supposed to hold the vision and imagination and possibility of freedom for all?
• 12:09
  You know what I mean?
• 12:10
  So we have to practice the skill of imagination and then of doing the work in alignment with the imagination,
• 12:16
  which is also what she speaks about in the book, Dr. Benjamin, is that it's not just about having a vision.
• 12:21
  But the action, the strategy, the planning that goes with bringing the vision to life.
• 12:28
  She gives the example of Serena Williams and how Serena Williams is dead from a very young age
• 12:34
  would ask her to visualize being at the US open or the French open.
• 12:38
  But it's not that she would just go to bed every night thinking of the vision.
• 12:41
  She would then train every single day towards that vision.
• 12:45
  So that's her way of tiling us.
• 12:46
  We need to weave together the vision and the aligned action.
• 12:49
  And that's where many of us get stuck as big dreamers is taking action.
• 12:53
  Another thing that came through is that it's not only that you hold the vision of everything you want to create and do.
• 13:01
  You are also a vision of everything you've already seen created and done.
• 13:06
  Do you hear what I'm saying?
• 13:08
  So for example, you may think, oh, I have this vision of me living speaking on a stage.
• 13:16
  But equally as you have that vision, the version of you right now is a vision of the past version of you.
• 13:24
  So me speaking to you now, I am being, it's not only that I have visions.
• 13:29
  We always focus, you know, especially in this consumerist capitalist world where it's all about what we have not yet achieved.
• 13:36
  And therefore self improvement and self development and it's just conveyor belt.
• 13:40
  It's always about the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
• 13:43
  I am a vision right now of a vision that I had to create this.
• 13:48
  I'm a vision that I have right now a vision that I had of supporting people with their creative journeys of sharing my voice boldly of walking towards courage instead of fear.
• 13:58
  So in what ways are you a vision right now of a past version of you?
• 14:04
  How often do we reflect on that? Very important.
• 14:07
  There's a version of you that didn't love themselves as much as you do now.
• 14:11
  So you are a vision of that version.
• 14:13
  There's a version of you that didn't have the understandings, the consciousness that you have right now.
• 14:18
  So you are the vision of that version.
• 14:22
  There's a version of you who didn't believe you were worthy of love and partnership that didn't feel toxic or abusive or harmful.
• 14:31
  And so you're a vision of that version.
• 14:33
  There's a version of you who dreamed of having a parent or an elder in their life just like you.
• 14:38
  So you are a vision of that version.
• 14:40
  So you are already a vision by donning my love, my angel.
• 14:43
  Now when I create my podcast, I'm like, wow, I think of the version of me who was so questioning around like, who am I to have a podcast?
• 14:52
  And now I'm at episode 70 something and I know that this is part of my life's work.
• 14:58
  And yet I am the vision of a version of me who insisted on this work being born, even when she felt afraid, even when she felt self doubt, even when she felt in pasta syndrome.
• 15:09
  So I am not only visioning and dreaming of all that may come, but I am already the vision.
• 15:16
  It's just so beautiful and powerful.
• 15:20
  So you are an embodiment of the vision of a past version of you.
• 15:24
  And then also you are an embodiment as you are today of a vision that people in the collective have to learn from someone just like you to hear from someone just like you to receive the stories you've already lived.
• 15:37
  Not that you'll go get once you finish that degree or qualification or that course or watch another video or read another book.
• 15:43
  People dream of the wisdom, the love, the guidance, the art that you have and that you make right now.
• 15:50
  There are things sitting in your drafts that people dream of reading, receiving, experiencing right now.
• 15:57
  It is so in our consciousness to think I have to go do something more outside of myself to earn that feeling of worthiness to earn that feeling of pride in myself.
• 16:10
  You already have so much to be proud of, babes, babes.
• 16:14
  So something I want to share with you is that if you just depersonalize yourself for a second and you imagine yourself as just this ball of consciousness, like a floating ball of consciousness.
• 16:29
  Then if you can imagine this ball of consciousness has seen certain things, it's felt certain things, it's received and perceived certain things.
• 16:37
  So if you think of yourself not as you with the name and with but as a vessel of the reality which you have seen, a reality which you have felt, a reality which you have questioned and perceived and received.
• 16:49
  So then I invite you to ask what have you seen in this life and here we're using the words seen as very metaphoric, what have you experienced, what have you lived, what have you understood, what have you questioned, what have you healed from, what have you not healed from, what have you felt in this life, what have you seen in this life that you sense people long to see.
• 17:11
  My darling, my love, my soul sibling, thank you for stepping into the soul salon. If you are still hearing or watching this, we are soul siblings.
• 17:20
  We are resonating on the same frequency and so something you may struggle with that I struggle with is the fear of being seen.
• 17:27
  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, in order to do that, you know you need to be more seen than you are allowing yourself to be right now.
• 17:44
  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 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.
• 18:01
  So I do have a free gift for you and all you need to do is go to my website, I understood dot com and there you will be able to input your email address and receive this directly to your inbox.
• 18:13
  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.
• 18:21
  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.
• 18:26
  I love you. Bye.