Identity and Community with Ayesha Ophelia

Is your identity of your own creation?

Too often, we accept the labels others give us without a second thought. But when you sit with these labels–about your beliefs, your background, your identity–you may find that they don’t align with you. You have the power to claim or reject these labels and craft an identity for yourself.

In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Ayesha Ophelia about her journey to defining her own identity and sense of community.

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Though she’s always been creative, Ayesha found her true passion as a creator and curator in the digital space. But this space comes with a narrow view of identity, something Ayesha refused to accept.

Instead of assuming the labels she’d be given, Ayesha rejected the ones that didn’t align with her and crafted her own identity through creative expression.

And by sharing her love and creative work online, she’s been able to form a community of people committed to doing the same.

Join us in today’s episode as we discuss taking control of your own identity and being open to new levels of understanding. Ayesha shares how she flows through her creative journey, practices radical faith, and nurtures her small but sacred community.

Listen to episode 372 now!

In episode 372 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

[6:16] The origins of creative energy and Ayesha’s creative process
[8:36] Being a creator and a curator in the digital space
[12:39] Reading and drawing inspiration from books on your creative journey
[14:53] The power of storytelling in getting to know ourselves and the Universe
[20:40] Deciding which labels you want to carry and which don’t align with you
[25:31] Redefining “community” and accepting community care
[30:42] The foundations of heart math and how it connects us to those around us
[37:29] Spreading love in the environment you’re in
[39:22] Becoming flexible with our identities in order to be open to a new understanding
[43:40] Bringing your faith and trust to everything you do
[47:34] How to invite synchronicity into your life through the practice of kairomancy
[52:17] Practicing love in its most pure sense
[56:15] Reclaiming your triggers and taking control of the impact others have on you
[01:03:51] Understanding the New Earth and why we need to connect with the old ways

Resources mentioned by Ayesha and Elizabeth in the episode:

Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

“We’re all innately creative because we’re all the essence of something that’s bigger than ourselves.” – Ayesha
“Just stay more open than close. Let new information come in. Let yourself be changed.” – Ayesha
“Grief is actually praise for life. It’s praise for what we’ve loved. And I think the reason that I can be such a big lover is because grief has overtaken me, you know, and I’ve really allowed it.” – Ayesha

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.

Transcripts for Episode 372:

– Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number 372 of the podcast. Today we have my friend Ayesha Ophelia with us. And actually, this is really fun because I had a little pause there because in the beginning of the interview, I said her name wrong and she fixed me. And so it was just having a moment being like, “Oh my God, did I say it wrong again?” But I’m pretty sure I got it right. But when we get into the interview recording, then we’ll all figure out if I said it right or not. So anyway, just a real human moment there for you. Ayesha is somebody who I’ve been connected to on Instagram for so many years. Like she did my original I Shine, You Shine challenge in 2014. But this year in 2021, 7 years later, we finally got to connect more deeply. We started talking on the phone, she came to Miami, I got to meet her in real life. It was always the best to meet people in real life. I love the way Ayesha expresses and embodies her artistry, her mysticism, her viewpoints on things, and how she shares. This is a person… She’s a Scorpio. And one of the things I love about a lot of Scorpios is how they will go into the depths. They will go to the highest highs and the lowest lows and talk about the shadow and talk about the light, everything in between, and that’s exactly what we did in this episode today. So I hope you love this. I hope you follow her on Instagram. Her Instagram is one of my favorites to follow. I love watching her stories. Anything we mentioned in the show could be found at untameyourself.com/372. And as always, share this up, listen more than once, use it as a conversation piece with your friends and family or whoever it is that you like to geek out on embodiment or spiritual things or mystical things with, healing and growth-oriented things. And that’s it. Let’s get into the show. Ayesha, you are here.

– Wait, hold on, you said my name wrong. I was just gonna… The next thing I was gonna say was, did I say it right? So please correct me. And we’re not even… This will be in it ’cause this is part of life, needing to learn how to say people’s names right. Okay, so it’s not Aisha, it’s not Isha, fix me.

– It’s Ayesha.

– Ayesha.

– Yeah.

– I got it now. Thank you. I only said it… I think when we met, when you were here in Miami recently, I was like, I’m pretty sure it in my brain I’ve been saying your name wrong for seven years, and then you corrected it. But I still say the A wrong. Ayesha.

– Ayesha, yeah.

– I got it now. I love it. And Ophelia, is that your last name or is that your middle name?

– That is my last name. It’s actually my mother’s given middle name. And when she passed away, about seven years ago, I felt very unanchored. It was a strange feeling. I just knew I wasn’t a Meriweather, but I knew I wasn’t gonna give myself a spiritual name, so I just kind of waited. And I hadn’t even changed my name when I was married, okay? And so I had this dream and in it, my mom said, “Ayesha Ophelia.” And I woke up the next day and I went down to the courthouse and I stood in front of the judge and I received my new name, but given name and the rest of my life has been… It changed. It really does. There’s a lot of power in a name.

– I love that story. And I skipped over the first question that I always ask everyone this season of the podcast. And when I say season, we’re not recording a season. I just mean like, however long this season will last of our lives.

– Yes.

– Yes. How’s your heart today?

– Ooh, let me… It’s like quiet. It’s like quiet and expanded and open, yeah.

– I love that. And you know what else I love? That we rescheduled this, we would have been recording during Libra season, but now it’s Scorpio season. It’s yours season.

– That’s right. I wish this was a scorpion now that I’m like, ooh, I got into making my own bolos last year and I might find a scorpion. That’s a great idea.

– So for people who are listening, not watching, it looks like a leopard or a Jaguar or a panther.

– Yeah, I think it’s a Jaguar. It was just something fun I found at the craft store when I was in like, I could make bolos, I wanna wear bolos, so I made a couple and now I think it would be really fun to have a scorpion.

– Okay, so this is one of my favorite things about you. We’ve been connected online for so long. You are so creative. Where does all the creativity come from?

– I don’t know, but I thought that’s what we’re gonna talk about, and this morning I had actually picked a card yesterday that says creativity comes from uncertainty. And I was thinking about that and I was like, actually, that’s kind of one of my least favorite things, even though Scorpios are like mysterious, we’re in the mystery, but it’s really the only thing I’ve ever been good at. It’s effortless, like breathing, and I want people to remember their creativity. It doesn’t have to express like mine does, but I think we’re all innately creative, to me, because we’re all the essence of something that’s bigger than ourselves and our cells create and we don’t have anything to do with it, and that’s the ultimate creative act to me. And so I know that we are an extension of it and I think it can look at all different types of ways, but yeah, that’s a big part of my mission.

– How would you describe your creativity or your creative process or your creative flow? I love asking people this question and I’m with you, I believe everyone is creative. I love asking people this, because there really are people who have themselves convinced that they’re not creative for whatever reason, but hearing about other people’s creativity, they might be like, oh, I actually do that. Or I love that, or that’s great. Or I would enjoy that. And maybe something might spark or a seed might get planted for someone.

– Well, for me, because it’s like my second language, it’s innate, but I think a lot of people have to reacquaint themselves with what their creativity looks like. And so for me, my process is just getting open and receptive and seeing what’s around me that’s inspiring me. And I mean, you can see, I have a of colors, I have a lot of textures, I have a lot of things that really ignite that spark within me. I actually used to have a blog called “The Spark Seeker” that ignite that spark within me. But I think that it’s a thing that we can all remember it. If we scan our lives, we can find something, some thread of creativity, something that we do that makes life our own, if that makes sense. So I don’t… It depends on what I’m working out, what my creative process looks like, but I really just get into an open creative state. And when I’m not feeling like that, there’s certain things that I do just to like jar myself back into what I feel is a natural state for myself.

– I love that. Okay, so one form of creativity of yours that I see all the time is like your Instagram stories. So I’m curious, is that part of like, even like all the techie little things, I always mean to message you and be like, what apps do you even use to lay this picture over that and put a video in here and all these filters? We don’t need to get into that here, but I’m curious in terms of the process, is even like finding the little techie things to use part of the creative process? Is that agitating? ‘Cause for me, that stuff is agitating.

– No. I was thinking about what my new titles are ’cause every season I get, like, I’m a coach, I’m a writer. Those things are just staying the same, but I’m like, you’re a curator. So I’ve always been a curator of a lot of things which has been… I’m kind of glad that there are a lot digitally now, even though my phone’s… I’m always full on my phone, I have to get rid of stuff. But when I was a kid, I collected magazines religiously. I made collages religiously. I just think I had this very like devoted, almost like obsessive personality with certain things. And that has translated over into my creative process online. I just always thought I’d have a network or like a radio station or a broadcast system. And something about Instagram, and especially when they got stories, it was like the perfect creative challenge for me, because I have so much imagery and have a real knack for music. Like it just never leaves my mind. If I’ve heard a song-

– You are so good at. You’re so good at putting the songs on the things. I’m always like, yes!

– Yeah.

– I always put my sound on for your stories.

– Thank you. That’s what I really freaking love to hear. So to me, it’s like, the tension is good. It’s not like… If it’s overwhelming, I honestly take a break. And just to like give a disclaimer, which I hardly ever do, I’m unmarried, I’m single, I don’t have kids, I have a lot of time and I have a lot of sexual energy. And to me, sexual energy is creative energy. So in order to not be a whore, I create a lot of thing.

– That’s the quote that’s going on the podcast page this week.

– Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, so-

– In order to not be a whore, I create a lot of things. Honestly, probably me too.

– Yeah, exactly. It’s the creative energy. And I really love to channel it into certain things. And Instagram is becoming increasingly weird with censorship and things like that, but I still love using it as a means to like, just like a stream of consciousness and a means share what’s going on with me and see how it resonates with other people. And that’s how I’ve built my whole audience. I’ve never done a contest or asked for people to come to the page. Honestly, just poured, like completely poured myself into that in my work over the course of the last seven years.

– And that’s what’s cool. That’s shareable, that’s magnetic. You’re just being yourself. I mean, I do enjoy a bit of marketing and things and kinda figuring out on like… What’s the word I’m looking for? Like non-coercive, non-deutsche ways to get people to take some actions. ‘Cause I have that innate teacher in me like, come on, y’all. Have a realization, have a revelation, do something. You got this, but in your way, not my way. So I love that about you. Been thinking about this morning, probably because you were gonna be my interview today, someone recently called me a liquor curator. She’s like, “I love how you curate stuff in your stories.” And I’m like, “I don’t curate things.” I’m like, “I just share what I like.” And she’s like, “That’s curation.”

– Yeah.

– I was like, “Oh.”

– I mean, it is, in the simplest form, it is. And I mean, I’ve seen bits and pieces of your house from your stories and even the way you’ve curated your books and sort of like, they’re color coded, that’s a form of curation. Mine definitely aren’t, but it’s still a curation. It’s a collection, it’s things that I love and it’s… Yeah.

– And somehow, there really is like this poetic and appropriate way that things end up going together and flowing into each other. And when you introduce something new, it’s like, oh yeah, of course, she does that. ‘Cause this is also what I love about you because your creativity is so vast. And I love this ’cause… I’m one of those people, you probably have this in your stories all the time of people being like, “What book is this?”

– Yeah.

– By the way, for every once I send that to you, there’s 10 times I’m not ’cause I’m like, I do not need to be bugging this person every day to be like, “What are you reading, bitch?” But I always want to know what you’re reading. You read so much, I read so much. I love that and I love snippets because for me, and so I’m gonna be curious, this is gonna be the question for you. I rarely finish books anymore. It’s like I’m constantly dancing, picking this one up, putting that one down. And it is, it’s like a passage here and there is like all I need to get sent off on some mystical, intellectual, spiritual adventure of the day realization, whatever.

– We’re the same. The last book I read was “The Shamanic Way of the Bee”. And I’m actually reading this “Anastasia”, have you heard about this series? It’s like nine books written by this… I’m probably gonna butcher some of the details, but you’ll get the essence of it. It’s a series of nine books written originally in Russia and translated to English about… It’s supposed to be real life about this woman who lived within the cedar ring. And so it’s extremely magical. There’s a lot of power within trees and nature. And she just lives in a totally different way and had all these powers and abilities and whether or not you believe it’s real or it’s fantasy, it’s an escape, it’s like, it’s spiritual, it’s mystical. And I know I’m gonna read it all because they’re really easy reads. I’m like almost done with the first book and I can’t wait to read more. I feel like it’s like the feminine version of “Dune”. I’ve never seen “Dune” or read “Dune”, but I know dudes love “Dune”. It’s supposed to be this like other world, and these warrior principles, like “Star Wars” probably. I don’t know. I didn’t really watch that either, but it feels like the feminine version of that so far in “Anastasia”.

– Yeah, so someone was asking me this recently, I think it came up in a healing session or in an Akashic records reading, or maybe it was a Q&A, whatever. I’m on 30,000 calls every week of my life. But yeah, fiction, I can read… It was a coaching call, I remember now. Fiction I can pour through. When I say I don’t finish books anymore, I mean like spiritual or self-help or anything like instructional.

– Yeah.

– Except Carolyn Mays, I’ve been bingeing her stuff lately, but I’ve been listening more than anything. But the fiction, I really got into… I really got back into fiction during the pandemic ’cause I was like, I need stories.

– Yeah.

– I don’t wanna be like watching Netflix all the time. I’m not knocking TV, I love TV, but I was like, I need this. I need my brain engaged. I felt like my attention span waning in a way that I wasn’t okay with. So I’m like, but I need something like beautiful, like gripping, compelling, not just some like something that’s designed to make you wanna turn the pages ’cause drama. So I love that, I will check out that series, thank you. So what happens for you when you read?

– Well, speaking of storytelling, I think that’s an important little tangent we can go on for a minute because when I was thinking about the things that really would create the new earth, it’s like community and it’s really simple and we can… That’s really locking in more for me what that means. Secondly, it’s storytelling because I think we’ve all been, had the finger pointed at us and told this is what you’re supposed to do and this is how you do it. But from the beginning of time, the way that we learned was actually through storytelling. Obviously, experience too, but storytelling myths and creativity and community, that, I think is revolutionary and it’s way more simple than we think. And there’s a term that is an African term, it’s called griot. And my dad was like, “You’re the griot the family.” And I didn’t… I love words, I love finding out what new words mean. And that word is the storyteller. The one who carries the stories, the one who has all the family photos. My mom’s passed away, but I say her name the most, I bring her into conversation. And so, that feels like my role. My stories feel like storytelling. Sometimes it can be pointed like… But usually, I like for people to have something within them raised, whatever that is. And then they get to answer that question for themselves. Something unlocks in them, something opens up, it’s an invitation. It’s not like, this is the way. It’s like, what is the way for you? And I think that storytelling really can get us out of our literal minds back into our bodies. Oh, the last title that I’ve given myself is soul revivalist because-

– I Love that.

– I’ve been working with people a lot, clients a lot, and sometimes it gets to be very practical when we’re talking about things sort of on a surface level and Scorpios love to go deep. And when we go deep, we find that the way that the soul wants to meander is a lot different than what we think we’re supposed to be up to, but that something really beautiful is happening if we’re willing to look at it from the soul level. And so, I think we’re a nation of soul sick people. And so it feels like an honor to help people remember that there’s this eternal part of themselves that’s unchanged that is wise, that they can interact and speak to and connect with.

– Hallelujah. Okay, storytelling for a second. I had an experience, it was last year actually. I started working with this 81 year old shaman and the best. And honestly, most of our sessions, she would just talk and tell me stories. And I remember being irritated for the first one being like, I need help and this bitch talks like the whole time, right?

– What the hell’s going on?

– What’s going on? But then, I went to sleep that night and I had dreams. And then I was like thinking, like there were things in her stories that stuck with me that were bothersome, but bothersome in a good way, in ways that I needed to be bothered so I can have realizations or so I could just be like, why is this bothering me so much? And then be like, oh, and I really, through the experience of listening to her stories, a couple of things happened. I’ve always been a storyteller as well, but there’s so many distortions and perversions in the overarching self-help industry. And I think one of the things that gets so weird for people is the murky weird, funky ways that people create narratives around being self-centered, right? Or sharing your own experience as if your own lived experience is only valuable for certain people or whatever. And what felt so about working with Midea Elena and listening to her stories and realizing I was like, I can’t help myself. I always share personal experiences, not from a place of being like, if I could do it, you could do it, ’cause we’re all so different, but exactly what you said to be like, I’m gonna tell you a story and I want you to listen, not even for the details of my story, but for whatever jumps out at you and goes, hi, I’m the detail you needed, or I’m the spark, or I’m the whatever. And I love that you shared that as well and I hope people here are listening… I even remember years ago, someone saying, “If someone is writing and you just keep seeing the word, I, I, I, I, you shouldn’t be listening to them.” And I’m like, okay, like what are we… Why are we out here trying to create and live these rich, impactful, meaningful lives if we’re not gonna freaking tell people what’s happening?

– It’s true. As a person who writes a lot, I use we a lot and not because there isn’t an I, but I really… It’s like, I know when I need to say I, and I know when it’s the collective we, because we have all been so pitted against each other. And I feel like I chose exactly who I was gonna be in this lifetime, so I could not have to hear a lot of the bullshit. You know what I mean? It’s like, are you gonna listen to black women? Are you gonna try to censor me right now? And so I think talking about privilege, I kinda don’t believe in it. And I know that’s not appealing to a lot of people. It’s not that it’s not a real thing. It’s that I’ve decided, and my ancestors are all on board for this, we fought for you to be able to have a different kind of life. Do you wanna live that? Or do you wanna live by the old rules? And so when I started telling myself a new story, saying some of those mantras felt extremely disempowering, and I was like, I can’t have anything to do with that. And if we’re supposed to be a species who evolves out of some of our lower qualities, if you will, then can I model that? And especially, can I use my privilege? ‘Cause we all have different… When I think about nature, I think like, if we’re saying that certain things have privileged, right? And an elephant has a different privilege than a mouse, we can’t really compare those two. And so coming in as the person you are, we have different privileges based on societal things. I’m tall, that could be a different privilege. And so I really just want to use all of the beautiful things that I am to bring about something new, a new conversation about what it means to be a woman, about what it means to be a woman of color, about if I need your power in order to move around in this world, or if I don’t, or if I choose not to. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of societal things that as we know now, we do not wanna ascribe to any longer and we want to move into something different. So if I can model that.

– Yeah, I appreciate that. Something I’ve been thinking about since you here, I remember we were in the ocean and for whatever reason, I used the word marginalized and you were like, “Yeah, I don’t subscribe to that.” And I loved hearing your perspective on that ’cause recently, I saw a woman, black woman, she’s a business coach and her whole branding and marketing since last year now revolves around marginalized entrepreneurs. And I was just hearing you share how you’re like, “Yeah, I’m not taking that label on for myself anymore.” Would you mind sharing your perspective on that? And again, I like what you said, listen, it might not resonate for some people and we’re not out here being like, “You have to think this way.” Like if there’s two people that I’m certain are not out here like, “You need to think like us,” it’s me and you.

– Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I mean, you can keep on the chains of any of those things for as long as you want and there’s gonna be a lot of business around it. There’s gonna be… There was a quote that I said last year and it was that there’s a lot of institutions and people that wanna sell you on your collective neediness and I’m not one of them. So I’m not one that’s gonna continue to ascribe to something that makes me lower and need something outside of myself. Just spiritually, that doesn’t make sense for me. And I know that there’s a lot of other people that are moving in that way and have seen like, okay, yes, we live in a society that pushes these people to the front. But the society is sick. I don’t wanna ascribe to it. So I’m not going to… And for a while, these were ideas I’ve considered because everyone’s considering them in the ethos. And I’m like, okay, what does that look like? What does it look like for certain people to realize that, oh my gosh, this person’s had a different story moving through the system than I have. I think all these things are great, but if we hold on to them too much, especially something that’s disempowering, it leaves us handicapped, and it doesn’t make sense to me. And I just, for a while, when all of it was really popular, it was like, every email I opened was like from a white woman telling me that she is going to help me and give me some of her privilege. And I just was like, ugh, this feels like I don’t… This is not the jam. And so I just had to fundamentally reject it. And it sounds like a lot of things in my childhood that I had to decide early on, all right, this is how people are acting, but this doesn’t make sense for me inside. And I don’t have to… Just to be a part of the group, I don’t have to take on this thing. And it doesn’t mean I don’t experience people who still have this malware installed, they do, but I’ve uninstalled mine pretty much and I fucking feel free, and I think we all should feel that way. And we should all move as such and see the ways in which our life changes.

– Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I wanna come back to community. So I know you’ve been doing some traveling and trying out some different places and spending time in different communities. So what are you thinking about community these days? What does it mean to you? What do you wanna see it mean? How do you wanna have it in your life?

– What it means for me now is… So I was talking to a friend the other day and she told me that she knew she won when she was sick at home, she lived alone, and that just by one simple text, her neighbors came over and the next three meals were taken care of for her. That’s the kind of community care that I think creates the new world. I think a lot of the symptoms that women have, so for instance, like postpartum, like a lot of things affect us because we’re so disjointed. We’re in our little house, I’m taking care of me, you’re taking care of you, maybe I know you a little bit. You don’t have to become best friends with all your neighbors, but I do think that it’s this care of one another that removes our need for all of the trickle-down care that’s not really even care that we get from a lot of the governmental structures around us. And so for me, it’s as simple as that, but I’ve been dipping my toe in and out of community a long time, really trying to figure out, okay, how does this look? There’s been so many downfalls of community. We’ve seen a lot of like misuse of power and maybe everyone… My idea of community is where we all come together, we get to keep who we are intact, but there may be a thread of commonality through us, but we’re not little clones of each other. We’re not necessarily wearing all the same color and ascribing to all the same 10 beliefs. But we are diverse, unique people who have found a way and found a common thread with which to exist through. And I think these little pods of protection are gonna be what move us into this new earth that all of the spiritual community is talking about. I think that we have to go through the eye of the storm and look at ourselves in a certain way, but really what’s been like the lifeblood for me is connections with other people and how we move within the human family and not just our family of origin. And that’s been really beautiful to see and witness that there has been this Renaissance of really simple ways that we can look after each other. And it can just be like, I lifted my head up from my phone and I saw that there was a beautiful woman in front of me and I gave her a smile or a man or whatever. I think it’s actually these little simple things that add up that really creates a massive shift.

– This is something I’m loving about being in Miami. Like the neighborhood I moved into feels like a neighborhood. I grew up on Staten Island, which is a borough of New York City, for anyone that’s not familiar with Staten Island. And you knew your neighbors. We talked to other people, we brought food over, whatever, you invited people. My bus stop was at the end of the street and we knew practically everyone along the street. It was one block, but you knew practically every single-

– Exactly. If you were gonna get in trouble, someone’s mom, another mom could see you and go back and tell your mom. So your mom didn’t even have to be hypervigilant. They could be like, “I saw your daughter with whatever.” That’s annoying, but it’s also family, right?

– This isn’t funny. So we had a skylight window on my house when I was little and my brother and I loved throwing shit out this window, but it was on like the fucking roof. So our neighbor across the street, to this day, I don’t even know what his real name was. His nickname was Buddy, we always called him Buddy. And they were much older than… They were old enough to be our grandparents. And my mom comes upstairs, she’s like, “What are you guys doing?” We’re like, “How did you know?” She’s like, “Buddy came and told me ’cause he saw you guys. He didn’t want you to fall out the window.”

– Exactly.

– But like, that’s care. That’s being like… And that people would care enough to do that, right? Because that was something that was so alarming to me about living in California, I have to say. Just even the last place I lived in LA was in Marina del Rey and I specifically moved back into an apartment building ’cause I wanted to have like neighbors and have like a community feel. But no one to like… People would go out of their way not to talk to you. Even if you’re like standing in the elevator with them, I became like a snake charmer person. I’d be like weaving around trying to make eye contact, like I’m gonna make you look at me, dawg, even if you don’t say anything. But here, literally like the minute I moved into this building, people were helping me… Saw me trying to carry too much… Just participating.

– I love that.

– Which, to me, even like out by the pool, like the… It’s just so unbelievable to me. People don’t look at you like you have seven heads here when you just go to like have a conversation or make a comment or whatever. It just feels so different and I needed that. I didn’t realize it’s so unhealthy not to have that.

– I think everyone in LA really needs it too. I mean, it makes sense to me like Hollywood, like everyone’s really cool. But I think underneath that, actually people really do wanna connect. I think it’s like very innate in us to want to do that. I really feel like… So another nature example that I’ve really been digging recently is that all the trees appear to be separate, but underneath there’s this like mycelium and it carries information. And so if there’s a tree over here that needs something in the community of trees, they speak to each other and they send resources over. That’s the same kind of community care that we want to have for each other. There’s another example that I was thinking of, but yeah, we’re connected even though we don’t think we… Oh, HeartMath. Okay, so for HeartMath people who are into it, our heart or our heart energy extends out six, seven feet around us and it gives invisible information to people. It can transmit as much as a smile does. There can be a person that walks in the room and they have such a warmth about them. And I think this is a thing that sometimes you ascribe to holy people or people who have really like sat with themselves, but they just feel different. Like when you look in their eyes, there’s a different feeling. And as sort of like scorpionic as I am, which means I’m just like a little bit hesitant about people at first, I really care and I really think that we need each other. And that’s the thing that we forgotten, is that we’re all connected beyond religious affiliations, whether we’d done the thing or not done the thing, the color of our skin, our pronouns, all of the identities that we have, that are fun to play with. I mean, look at me, I look like a different person all the time. But take away all this stuff and I still have an idea about who I am as a soul, as an essence. And I think that that’s really important.

– Yeah, I’m with you. Quick break in the show. Everybody to let you know the applications are open for my 2022 embodiment specialist training. I am so excited about this training. It is like seven or eight years in the making. It is expanded beyond what was wild soul movement teacher training since 2016. And this is really for anybody who feels the pull to graduate from doing basic level self-help personal development and spiritual work and truly embody self-love, healing and wholeness, so they can live soulful and soul-centered lives that contribute to collective healing and liberation, as well as people who are wanting to really integrate the light and the dark, who place a high value on kindness, generosity, integrity, humility, and reverence, who know that while we receive all kinds of gifts and talents and genius, we are the instruments, not the players. This is for people who wanna prioritize embodying their divine nature in order to serve the human experience as well for those who would like to incorporate embodiment work into their professional lives in some way, shape or form, or just deepen their own practice. So if you wanna learn more about the training, which starts in February, 2022, head to untameyourself.com/specialist. There are some dates by which to apply. If you need an extended payment plans, we have a couple of different extended payment plans, and it’s just gonna be an incredible alchemical transformative experience. It’s gonna be a small intimate group, ’cause I will also be mentoring and working with everyone one-on-one throughout the 13 months of the training. So again, really deep, really beautiful, really incredible experience. If you are interested, go to untameyourself.com/specialist, and I will be so excited to receive your application if you decide to submit one. I love HeartMath. My project manager, Stephanie is also super into all that stuff and she teaches HeartMath workshops inside the invited living center. ‘Cause I’ve just heard, I’ve never taken like a super deep dive into it, but I’m into this. This is why I love so much.

– Yeah-

– To me, that’s like HeartMath in action. We’re like, great, let’s blast people with up. I used to travel so much in pre-COVID times and I would often really utilize this in airports ’cause people are so stressed, some people are so miserable, so rude in airports, and I’d be like, I’m just going to blast these people with some love and see if I could get this line to like-

– I like it.

– Function better.

– Like loosen up. That’s like… See, I love experiments like that. And that’s really like… I’m taking this thing out. That’s really how I’ve decided to live my life, is very experimental. When I get really serious, I take a step back and I’m like, oh, how does my life change if I do this thing? Like people have… They send me these questions and they’re so serious. And I’m like, okay, yes, sometimes it really does feel like that. But what if we had this very light approach with how we do that? We’re standing in a line and we’re just… What if I just send out love? Or what if I just smile at someone? Does this loosen up the energy of the line? Can I see this energy snaking through people? You’d be surprised. I mean, everywhere we go, either people think they’re really powerless in a time like this and they don’t know what to say or do. Or we’ve realized that these little simple actions and experiments can really plant a seed and the effect is bigger than we think.

– One of my other favorite ways to do that, when I’m in public, if I’m listening to something and something makes me laugh, I don’t even try to like chuckle to myself. I do like a full-out the laugh that people know me for by myself, with my headphones-

– That’s like your superpower, by the way. It’s so infectious and it’s so freaking real and we need to laugh more too.

– We need to laugh more. So I just do that wherever I… Coffee shops are my favorite. I’ll erupt a whole… And it’s like everyone turns, but then like you said, it’s contagious, they can’t help themselves. And I’m like, you don’t even know what I’m laughing at. But also that so many people would suppress their… They’d probably cover their mouth or look down or try not to bother others. And I just erupt. That’s another one of my favorite ways to just sprinkle a little bit of joy in the world if I can.

– Yeah. My favorite people are children and whores and children always… And dogs. And dogs. And like children, they always laugh and whores don’t give a what and dogs are just honest. I just like honest interactions and people more than anything. All of this like, oh, it’s gotten to a point. We just have to break through that and find ourselves and be real and yeah.

– Yeah Yeah. And I think, to go back, like the thing you said about LA, it’s more diverse now industrial, like many different, many… Whatever that sentence was. I think you all know what I mean. There’s more industries in LA now than just entertainment, but there’s still that overarching veneer about it. And of course, this is… I think of everything in a bell curve. The majority of the energy in LA is this way. Of course, there’s anomalies in outliers, but it’s almost like people feel like they have to be a certain way or carry themselves like so, and they can’t care too much. There’s a woman… Oh man, her name on Instagram is Rainbow Salts. I think I sent you one of her things the other day. I love her stuff ’cause her stuff is basically always like, slam your heart into everything.

– Yeah, I love that.

– Just do it. Just love, just whatever. And I’m like, yes, this is me. I’ve had my heart broken so much because I refuse to not love.

– yes, same, same.

– I could protect the shit out of myself, but then I also miss out on these incredible, tender, unbelievable experiences that change me all the time.

– Yeah. Same. Nothing to add. Nothing to add, it’s perfect. I shared that and I’ve always been a get back on the horse type of person. I’ve just never understood. I mean, obviously take your time, heal your heart. Don’t bam, bam, bam. But I always, I’m always gonna be a lover. I’m always gonna endeavor to open again. I’m always gonna try again. And I think it’s just the human spirit, I think that’s actually pretty innate to us if we don’t amount to much.

– Yeah. Or tell ourselves stories. I will say, in 2021, one of the things that I really put under a magnifying glass was the stories, the narratives that I had been hooked into. ‘Cause I started to watch other people get really hooked into very dangerous things and be like, how? But then also look at former me and be like, when have I gotten hooked into very extreme things? When have I gone probably too far and been quite divisive myself or not as open to being like, well, I might not be into this person’s politics, but what else is going on there? I just refuse to throw people all the way out with their identity that I had maybe thought I was or wasn’t supposed to be on board. Even me now like, I live in Miami, who would have ever thought I’d be glad to be living in a Republican state? Like this governor, do I support all his politics? No. Am I much happier that I live in the state of Florida than the state of California right now? A thousand percent.

– Exactly. That’s why we have to… Here’s a note from spirit. Sometimes we ask for something and then it trickles down to us and we say, no, not like that. It can’t look like that. No. And so I think we… It’s just another way that we miss out on the many blessings that we have by being so overly identified with the way that we think it’s gonna come in or our identity or our pronoun, our race, our religion. We just get really brittle and tight and inflexible. And I don’t think that that is ultimately a part of our innate design. We’re meant to… I just think of bamboo, something that’s like… How did my friend put it? Strong opinions loosely held, that’s the thing. Just stay more open than closed. Let new information come in, let yourself be changed. Science is always changing. There’s so many things that we didn’t think were possible that are now and so I like to think, okay, am I on the leading edge of thought? It’s important to me. I like it. I like to be up there knowing what’s new and what’s coming down and what new sort of spiritual technology we’re gonna accept. And even just thinking about that when people used to run, they were like, oh, you can’t do a mile in this amount of time. It’s impossible. How many things are we sleeping on right now that are like the whatever minute mile? Do you know what I mean?

– Yeah. Yeah.

– And the idea is that we keep ushering in something new. And so the only way to do that is to keep your mind and your heart and your body open.

– Yeah, I was listening to the Carolyn Mays I’m listening to right now is called “The Power of Holy Language to Change your Life”, I think, to change or transform your life. And this morning… I love Carolyn Mays because she doesn’t care. She’s practically yelling at you the whole audio. This is why I like to listen to her ’cause I’m like, “No one talks to me like that. Please, someone yell at me and yell at me about spiritual things.” All Right? I’ll go to church. So, and I don’t like the things that they yell about, so. She’s like, “Pray like you have a backbone, not a wishbone.”

– Yes.

– She’s like, “God is not a vending machine. Stop praying without… Bring your faith when you pray.”

– Thank you.

– She’s like, ” Act like…” She’s basically like, “Act like you know.”

– That’s the tough love I love. I mean, I love the really like fierce goddesses, people that just come in and tear it down because that is an aspect of the feminine, that is an aspect of the mother. And then afterwards, this gentle energy comes in, scoops you back up, make sure that you’re okay. But I really, I need to be talked to like that too and I feel like I like my truth. I like it just staying. I wanna know.

– Yeah, I wanna know. ‘Cause she goes off too about all these people who will… God won’t let that happen. She’s like, “Say so.”

– Yeah. Yeah.

– She’s like, “Say so. She’s like, “You’re talking about a race of people that creates weapons to blow the other half of the people up.”

– Yeah.

– She’s like, “Of course, it would happen. God can’t do anything about the choices all these people are making.”

– Preach.

– My God.

– Preach.

– Well, something you said, I think when you said your message from spirit made me think of that, but there was something else that was relevant to what you had just said. She just is so adamant that people really bring their faith and their trust to everything.

– Yeah.

– And I’m hearing that, it’s not even necessarily something you’ve said, but it’s in everything you’ve said, right? Because even in the beginning, when you said like, “I actually hate uncertainty, even though Scorpios are supposed to love the mystery.” But the fact that you just like play with it, ride with it, go with it, deal with it, there has to be so much faith and trust in that. So I’m curious for you, how do you cultivate your faith and trust? And when it gets challenged, when it gets dinged, like sometimes when things don’t go our way or whatever, we’re like, “Damn, what am I even doing? Is any of this shit real?” Do you even have those moments anymore?

– Of course. Of course. One thing that I was thinking of as we were talking about this is I’m doing a lot of work around grief and grief can feel like just a sudden wave that comes and sweeps your feet out and honestly, that’s the way it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to bring us to our knees and someone whose message I love is this man named Martin Prechtel and he’s kind of this like big storyteller. He’s got a gravelly voice and he’s like, “When you grieve, you should look like you’ve grieved. None of these little tears.” Your feet really need to hit the ground because grief is actually praise for life. It’s praise for what we’ve loved. And I think the reason that I can be such a big lover is because grief has overtaken me and I’ve really allowed it, the last seven years have been a lot of massive changes, deaths, rebirths, all kinds of things. And I think for me, when I start to believe that I have to do it on my own, it gets really hard. It feels like I’m pushing a boulder up a hill. And for a while, you just do that. Sometimes you really do take the hard road and then something in me shifts. I hear something I remember like, oh my God, I’m not telling my heart to beat right now. I’m actually breathing. There’s so many things that are going on that are in union with something that’s bigger than me. Oh, step back. I have a little post-it note that says, “Before it manifests, where is it?” And as a person who is kind of obsessed with the metaphysical and mysteries and the dream time and things that aren’t quite solid yet, like actually that’s where I thrive, getting to the point before it’s solid, before it manifests. And so I think it’s just a mindset shift for me. And sometimes you are, you work really hard and you think you’re doing it all on your own and it’s you dig in and then you surrender and you remember that there is a current that’s taking you with her, is a power that’s outside of yourself, it’s also within yourself. And even if it’s just like connecting back to the fact that you’re breathing and there’s so much about how the human body works that’s a giant mystery. And for me, I have faith and trust in the other portion of it. That’s ultimately that process of forgetting and remembering, it’s like rebirthing yourself into an elder, a person that that’s not just aged, but that holds the wisdom of the years that they’ve… And millennia. I know you work in the Akashic. I feel like I’ve worked within the Akashic because sometimes I’ll have a word come in, I’ll be like in this like poetic thing and this perfect word will come in and I look it up and I’m like, “That’s exactly the word that I wanted.” Wasn’t quite sure that it meant that thing. And I just love it when spirit, whatever it is just drops it in.

– Yeah, you’re like, “How did I know that?” It’s like, “We got you.”

– Exactly, exactly. And I’m like, “Oh, thanks.” Yeah. Like just a clear channel.

– I wanna tell you two things. So synchronicity is one of my favorite forms of… I’m not super into Danielle LaPorte anymore, but I remember one of her truth bombs back in the day was like synchronicity is the universe’s way of saying yes.

– Yeah.

– It was like, yeah, like literally, yes. And I’ve been really, again, ’cause the Carolyn Mays, but back in March, I’d ordered the complete works of Saint Teresa of Avila volume one because being raised Catholic, I just resonate a lot with things that stem from Catholics ’cause I get their context. It’s same characters, I get it. Different look, same Jesus, different context. But I never even opened the book. Then when I start listening to Carolyn Mays’ “Entering the Castle”, it’s literally, it’s Saint Teresa of Avila’s work. And then the other day, so I pulled that book back off the shelf that I had ordered back in March and never opened. It was sitting here on my dining room table and I started taking Spanish lessons. I have a tutor once a week and we meet and we talk and the way she teaches, it’s really cool. It’s actually quite embodied. That’s how I originally found her, is she’ll pull pieces of texts, like things that you would be interested in anyway.

– I love that.

– That you could be learning the language through things that have meaning for you anyway, because the idea being, if something has meaning for you, you’re more likely to remember it, you’re more likely to be into it, relate to it, whatever, and it could become more embodied. And so I opened the document, she had pulled like two passages and the first thing was like an excerpt from a friggin’ poem from Saint Teresa Avila. And I had made a post on Instagram about it that morning. And I just started sobbing. I was like, “Did you do this on purpose?” She was like, “No.” I was like, “St. Teresa’s coming for me right now.”

– Yes, she is. Do you know this word, kairomancy?

– No.

– Okay, you’ll be into it. It’s how you woo synchronicity. It’s being-

– How do you spell it? K-A-I-R-O-mancy, which is a form of oracle divination. And my favorite person who talks a lot about this is an older gentleman, storyteller named Robert Moss. He teaches dreamwork, but he talks about kairomancy and this was like a big part of my last year. It’s like, okay, if synchronicity is a force and we understand that it’s at play and it’s working, how can I be a part of it? How can I play with it? And sometimes it’s just like, it’s random, it shows its head or whatever. But when you have an intention to be a chiromancer, then life takes on this very mystical, magical quality and it’s one of my favorite things to play with.

– I love this. The other thing I wanted to tell you was, I think I had told you about this man. Earlier this year, I met this man, he ended up being my realtor, although I had met him on a dating app and he helped me find this apartment. We went on some dates, there was definitely… There was a vibe, I wasn’t sure where it was gonna go, but I had been so isolated in the pandemic… There were just like all these things and all these synchronicities and these things we had in common and the connection was very intense. But he looked like Jesus. He looked like Cuban-Dominican Jesus. And so ultimately, he ended up being unavailable. Unavailable in a way that I previously was not attuned to proceeding. And so since that experience and I had to have a conversation with him shortly after I got here to be like, all right, is this gonna go anywhere? Is it not gonna go anywhere? What do we think? And he didn’t really wanna pick a lane and I was like, “All right, cool, let’s be friends then because I don’t do the wishy-washy thing.” And I was just reflecting this morning on… This is how infinite intelligence works because I really do. I have such a Mary Magdalene thing and I love Jesus so much. I was just imagining like, I call it my divine support squad being like, “Okay, how are we gonna get this final message through to her? How are we gonna help her see this?” And they were like, “Got it. Make ’em look like Jesus.” Wow. Yeah. My guides-

– We’re gonna have to send in a Jesus lookalike, she’ll really pay attention.

– Exactly. Yes. Your spirit team knows exactly what will get you to move, what will help you. And often, it is for me, it is love-related, passion-related. It gets my attention every time and it gets into those places where I can easily throw up a hand with other things. So I get it. I get it.

– ‘Cause it was funny. And here’s why I’m sharing this and I’m sharing it with you and I’m sharing it with people who are into this episode, because I had a moment, actually, it was on our second date where it felt like time stopped. He said something that was so spiritually meaningful for me, has been for many, many years. And it literally felt like the temperature in the room changed, time slowed down, there was more space between the molecules in the air. Like everything, it got thick. It was so crazy. It was almost like in a movie when like time stops and only one or two people are aware that it happened. And he looked at me and he was like, “What?” He’s like, why am I tearing up? And it was a whole moment. And for me, I just didn’t have the ability in that moment to be like, this could be non-romantic. Of course, I was like, this is a soulmate, this is my… Like Venus and Leo. It’s a rough life. But no, in retrospect, I’m like, oh my God, no, but he did actually really come to prepare me for a bigger, greater love by revealing something that I hadn’t dealt with and something that I wasn’t looking at and being exactly how he would like. I’ve got it to my records about this. I’m like, oh, I got it. Like there was a contract, not the contract I wanted.

– Yeah. Yeah. When we’re in right relationship with love, I feel like… And whether we get there in this lifetime or not, it doesn’t matter. But to me, we’ve taken on this contractual thing with love, it gets so weird. We’ll meet friends that we’ve known for two seconds, oh my God, I love her. We’re already using the word about this connection that we feel, but when it comes to anything romantic, we start to act really weird like, okay, this is what this means if I do this. And I’m like, “I’m a fucking lover. It’s what I do. If this scares you, back away, because it is what I do, but it doesn’t…” It’s not a contractually binding thing. In the past, I probably would have believed that it is, but I’ve just really realized that we’ve got a weird relationship with love and contracts. And we use the word a lot, but what does it really mean? What does it mean to say, “I love you”?

– This is what I like about learning another language. There’s so many terms of endearment in Spanish.

– Yes.

– There’s so many different ways to say love and-

– Try some on me. Come on.

– Well, amor, which is love, right? But then there’s words like carino, querer. They’re slipping out of my minds because it was on the spot. But there’s just things that you just know or you say to someone, like tell your daughter, I adore you.

– Yeah.

– And I’ve taken that. I’ve started to try to use different words to describe, oh, I adore him, I adore her. How can we describe… Because that love… And then that word gets sanitized.

– Exactly.

– And it feels like it doesn’t mean anything, but it means a million things.

– I like that.

– There’s a word. My abuelita, since I was tiny, has been calling me negrita de mi corazon. And that term, which now, if you hear anything with those letters, you’re like, “Oh, shit, is that racist? Are you not supposed to say that?” And I’m sure some people would argue one thing or another, actually met neighbors who have a black dog and it’s named Negrita. But again, it’s that term of endearment from certain cultures. And I was like, “Oh, what’s the dog’s name?” And they kind of like winced to tell me ’cause it was like they probably named their dog long before, it’s an old dog. And it’s like, Uber PC time. And again, different people might have different levels of tolerance for times changing or not or whatever. But I remember being a little kid and being like, “Is she calling me a little black girl? Should she say that? Is that okay?”

– Yeah.

– But that’s not… It’s not what it meant.

– Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We have a narrow context of… And also we think we’re the only ones and there’s a lot of other people. That’s why like throw out your dream dictionary, throw out any one size fits all thing. It just isn’t a thing, and obviously you can choose if you’re gonna become offended by something or you can stay open and be curious about what it means in someone else’s culture. And that works a lot better for me, is like intent versus like how we may have been indoctrinated. Like that’s the word that’s coming up for people a lot because we have been so indoctrinated and it’s like finding yourself within that. It’s a really an important time to really find yourself in that.

– Yeah. And you mentioned intent and there’s this popular saying, and we’ve talked about it a lot on the podcast, the relationship between intent and impact. And there was some people who wanted to be like, intent doesn’t matter. It’s all about impact. And it’s like, no, of course intent always matters.

– Yeah.

– It has to matter. And then we need to also understand the impact, but we need to understand that the impact is gonna be different on different people for different reasons.

– Exactly. How in the world could I ever create a sentence that’s gonna impact every person the same way? I literally would not have anything to say. And so I’ve long just been like, you know what? Claim your trigger. It is literally a point of power that you can reclaim. And if I’m standing in front of you, that’s why I put a Scorpio seasons ramped up and just as I’ve like gotten to this… My mom was always naked. This is gonna be about being naked and about being comfortable in your body. So I’ve just gotten to a point where I was like, man, I spent so many years self-loathing and literally not having the ability to see what a great form I was in until many years removed. So I’m like, all right, I’m obviously projecting on myself right now. I’m not seeing my true beauty. I’m gonna actually just act like… I’m just gonna feel like I would looking back and I’m gonna do that. And so I’ve been just sharing a lot of things that are saucy and I love it and I put something up that was like, my sensuality is here as a mirror for you because I know what my intent is. And it’s pure, actually. It’s just a pure exploration of who I am as a sensual woman and whatever you place on that… So you could see it, it could bring up feelings within you. Those are yours. I’m just a mirror, you own it. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s yours. And so I’ve really tried to live my life in that same… I just don’t shoot the messenger. Sometimes I’ll share something from someone and they’ll be like, “Do you know that this person is horrible? I can’t believe you’ve done that.” And I’m like, “Well, then who do we talk to? We’re all flawed. Either we’re all fucking okay.

– I used to do that shit, for sure. I used to really police the source of fucking everything. I think you commented on it. I made a post about this a couple of weeks ago. I’m like, “Listen, y’all, I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you all to figure out if someone was a piece of or not basically. I’m sorry for all the times that I thought I needed to so deeply vet everything.”

– And people that are pieces of shit can teach you something and they can say something that’s fundamentally true, whether they live it or not, whether they fall short of the glory of God, we all have. But there’s been a lot of people who have said really important things that can change your life. And if we shoot the messenger, then our worlds become really, really small, become really, really brittle. It’s just, I don’t think the creator just, no. It’s a no, people.

– Someone was up in my DMs. Like, I dunno. Just because I’m not vaccinated, people or some people wanna call me like anti-vax. I’m like, I’m really not. I don’t care what other people do. I believe in other vaccines… This COVID one is kind of shady. There’s like more and more stuff going out that’s really making me really glad that I’ve made the choice I’ve made and I’m not gonna begrudge anyone there the thing. And I’m not out here trying to convince people not to get it. That’s just not my way, not my jam. And this woman was like, “Then maybe you wanna stop sharing things from other anti-vaxxers.” And I’m like, I didn’t even know, And I can’t… And I realized literally how exhausting that was for all the years that I did that. Like overly vetting and whatever, and like all this stuff ’cause we just don’t know. We don’t know who someone’s gonna be like next week and I can’t like… I’ve deleted a whole bunch of podcasts from people who came out and turned out to be like really shitty. And that feels good to me in retrospect to be like… Because I don’t want people to go, if I know I’m not gonna be like, yeah, listen… And I’m not gonna edit the show to be like, hey, by the way… Like even earlier when I was like, yeah, I’m not super into Danielle LaPorte anymore, but if you love Danielle LaPorte, you love Danielle LaPorte. Do your thing. But I just say those things. I make my little asterix notes. There’s no perfect way, but I’m with you. I stopped shooting messengers this year.

– Good. I think anti carries the seed of the thing that you are against. So even before this, it never really worked for me. It’s like, as I’ve learned certain spiritual principles, it really has… And like for better, for worse, Kanye West has made an impression on this human because of his… Like I saw this clip of him where he’s like, “I no longer use the word try.” It’s either you do, or you don’t. I’m not gonna try to pick up the pencil. I mean, unless there’s mobility issues, whatever, you get it. But there’s a lot of words like that that really don’t work for me anymore and anti is one of them. And it’s also just a clever marketing. It’s just when… I know where a person’s at based on what they’re coming at me with, whether it’s well thought out. I will entertain all creative inquiries, but if you just come up with just… If you’re just spewing the rhetoric that they’re telling you to spew, I just can’t. It’s like we can’t even have a conversation anymore because you’ve reduced me to an idea. I’m not a human, I haven’t had a story. There’s not anything I can say to you. When people come at me with anti, there’s two things I think, and it’s like, I’m too smart to be anti anything. I’m gonna be pro whatever I’m for. And secondly, yeah, where did this clever label that we can just slap on everything come from?

– Yeah. That this year, more than any other year of my own life personally, I’ve just seen how dangerous that is and how people really devolve, it seems, around that. There’s been a lot of really surprising people in my life who have been shocked to see how they have behaved, how they’ve treated me, how they’ve responded to certain things. Like people who really know me without even having a conversation with me about something. I’m like, for real… You’re not even gonna ask? You’re just gonna decide? So interesting, but I think that’s also God. That’s also divine orchestration being like, “Hey, you thought this person probably needed to be in your life or be closer, and guess what? We’re gonna just move ’em away ’cause it’s not super aligned any more.

– Yeah. I’ve experienced that. That’s hurtful when it’s like, “Oh my God, I’ve sat on your couch. You know my dad’s name. Come on, let’s have a conversation.”

– Yeah. Totally. Fascinating. I think I haven’t asked you yet that you’re like, I wanna talk about that. Or is there any loops you might think open that you feel like you want to close?

– I can’t think of anything.

– I love a great winding conversation. I was writing things down. Let me just make sure I asked you everything that I was writing down as you were saying it. Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, let’s end on this. All right, new earth. This is one of these things that I’m like, I don’t love the way some people use it ’cause I feel like some people are just using this concept to create more spiritual superiority and like condescension, and it just is more separation too. But I get it. We need new… Like this is not working. Or rather, I think you kind of alluded to this earlier, it’s working exactly the way it was designed to, but this is not what a lot of us want. This is not going to get us… A lot of it is not gonna get us to the place where we really wanna go or where we really could go. So when you say new earth, what does that mean to you?

– Maybe it’s like the new ancient. It’s like actually remembering… What does it mean? I think it’s way simpler and I think that it has become… And it’s funny ’cause I did like when all this started, I did an online symposium and it was called The New Earth Symposium. And it was just a bunch of people who were creatively thinking about what can bridge us in between the old way of doing things… And there was a lot of things that I subscribed to. I’m like, “Oh, this is completely normal.” And then when I thought about it, I’m like, “This is not life-giving.” Actually, when I think about what I need to be a sovereign, upright, creative, connected individual, a lot of the things had to be stripped away. And I’ve been in this process for a while ’cause I’ve always just been kind of a different thinker. Like I would hold back, I wasn’t bandwagoning. There were things that I love, but I love to dip my toe in all of them and like… I used to be so into Abraham and it’s not my favorite thing anymore. So it’s a part of the evolution. But anyway, for me it means it’s way more simple than this big term that we see on a lot of, I don’t know, spiritual accounts, the new earth, the new earth… I don’t know. There’s so many beliefs around it. For me, it’s actually really simple. It’s about infusing my life with the things that make me healthy, happy, and whole. And I think a lot of the old systems don’t work and that we need smaller little pods of care. And so for me, it’s been putting my energy into communities that run a broad swath… It’s not just like, okay, I’m only speaking to people who think like me, look like me, and move like me. It’s like, no I’m giving my life force to the continuation of the species in all these little ways. So the new earth for me is these really simple things that we can do to remember each other within this structure that is really considering so few people. And the so few people that are being considered are jaunting off to space and creating more tech and just a bunch of stuff that keeps us distracted, sick, unhealthy, not connected. It seems like it’s good, but then the payoff at the end is not. And so to me, the new earth is simple. It’s really simple.

– Yeah, I love that. Yeah, you had some stories recently. It might’ve even been like yesterday about this whole Facebook Meta, the AI… I’ve always been so resistant to AI ’cause I’m like, why don’t we just wanna be in our lives? Why do we wanna have that thing? And I tried one once, the VR thing. Have you ever put one of those headsets on?

– Yeah, I was just like, “Dude, I’m a lucid dreamer.” Let’s just remember that all the technology that they are selling us back is already innate within us. And I get that it takes a practice and most people wanna pop a pill, put a VR thing on, but it’s not… It’s backwards to me. It’s upside down. So I did, it was weird, very disorienting. And then I realized that I’ve always been a lucid dreamer and it’s way cool to populate my dream in that way than to get sold an expensive headset by some white dude that’s well off. Fuck you. I don’t need it.

– You’re like, “That’s not for me.” Yeah, it’s very disorienting. And to me, it always just struck me as escapist. That was one of the biggest things. When I look at my time in California, I’m like, I had to really experience and even get hooked in some ways by the underbellies of two things, which was new age spirituality and super neoliberalism, especially like white liberalism. And I was like, wow, neither of those things are for me. But thank you for the time that I got hooked into it, felt how I felt under the spell and I was like, ooh, no, that’s… Like in all things, there are certain things it’s like, okay, this, this, this, this, this some seeds that are interesting and probably important, but so many things that are like, you go too far into that, we lose ourselves and we lose each other.

– Yeah, and that’s what AI is. And the fact that they’ve used Meta, I’m like, “How dare them take that term?” Metaphysical like the meta. And I’m like, “What? No, no, no, no.” That’s when I quit Facebook when that happened. I mean, I really wasn’t on it anyway, but I just was like, you’ve made it really simple for me, Mark Zuckerberg.

– And I’m out. We’re just gonna pretend not to know that Facebook owns Instagram. It’s fine.

– Exactly. Exactly. We have to pick our battles. There’s just so many to have.

– Blind eye right now.

– Oh my God. So, okay, where people find you on Instagram, it’s your name Ayesha Ophelia. And we’ll put links to everything in the show notes. Is that your website as well?

– Yeah. All roads lead home. And if you’ve known me by the Girlfriend Manifesto, it’ll still lead you back to the portal Ayesha Ophelia.

– Okay, good. When did you change that?

– I think last year. I just took the title of the Girlfriend Manifesto off and just went by my first name. I had this weird card reading from this woman and it was very strange, but the nugget I got at the very end was like, yeah, I’m gonna do that actually. That makes sense. And I was like, if my name is available, I’ll do it. And it was just a simple change and it felt really good.

– It’s a beautiful name, like its… The energy, even like you said, the energy of the name had such an impact on you. But even seeing it, there’s a real energy to that name.

– I like hearing it too. I’m obsessed with it. I’m like, “Oh, that’s me. Someone just said my name. I like it, yeah.

– Yeah, it’s great. Well thank you so much. I’m so glad we finally got to do this, probably years in the making.

– Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me.

– All right, everyone. Share it up, follow Ayesha. This is a great episode, by the way. I like to remind people sometimes, listen to this more than once. There were so many nuggets and we pulled so many threads. This’ll be a good one to listen to a couple of different times and also use it as like a book club. Like have a fun conversation with some friends about this episode, pick things apart, be like, oh, well we think… Even if you were like, “I vehemently disagree with that thing.” Great, use the episode for that and get clear on your own beliefs. All right, everybody, I guess I’ll stop talking now. Talk to you later.

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