Ep 458: What Is Your Truth

Telling the truth is the ultimate act of love, even when it hurts or is unpleasant. Fear and discomfort often hold us back from fully embracing truths. Truth telling requires courage. Today, we dive into the nuances of accessing and embracing your truth. I also share some truth of my own that I recently came to terms with, which while uncomfortable, is a relief to acknowledge and share with this community.

Throughout the episode, we explore the tools and practices to help you access your truth. We also unpack the risks of speaking your truth, such as personal and societal repercussions, and how to navigate this while staying honest with yourself. We discuss how to embrace the evolution of truth and give compassion and grace to those who share their truth with you.

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In episode 458 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

(1:58) How to tune into the body’s sensations and emotions to access your truth
(5:52) The truth that I’m currently living and navigating
(17:00) Embracing the seasons and cycles of truth
(26:13) Engaging with your complex truth true real honesty
(28:55) Finding a balance between believing in your truth, social pressures, and personal choices
(33:59) Why you have to welcome in an evolving and shifting truth
(38:45) Understanding truthfulness as an act of love, even if it is painful
(43:19) The Truth Prayer

Resources mentioned in the episode:

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

How to begin to access the truth? I find it’s helpful to first look at what blocks us from doing that. There are two main things it could always boil down to – fear and discomfort.

The truth might not always be pleasant. Telling the truth always requires honesty, acceptance, and compassion and therefore also means it requires courage.

Until you can engage with your truth with real honesty and acceptance, you’ll always find ways to distort it.

Telling the truth is the ultimate act of love, even when the truth hurts, sucks, or is simply unpleasant.

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 discussions on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 458 “What Is Your Truth“:

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:00

Until you can engage with your truth with real honesty and acceptance, you’ll always find ways to distort it. And two things about truth that we’re always juggling is, what is it, and how to engage with it. And engaging involves a couple of things, right telling it, sharing it, receiving it, dealing with it, honoring it.

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:25

Hello, everybody, welcome to episode number 458 of The Embodied Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth DiAlto. And as these episodes have been going, and 2024, I use the sermon from our wild Soul Sunday services for a big chunk of the episode. And the opening here is always an elaboration on whatever I talked about in the sermon. And so this week’s topic, what’s your truth? In the sermon I spoke about engaging with the truth. And what I want to elaborate on here is how to access your truth. And I’m also going to share a truth that I’ve had to face recently, that has been both uncomfortable, and a wild relief, to admit to myself and will be even more of a relief to share with this community. And as always, when I share personal things, they’re offered as a way of demonstrating how I use the tools and practices in the School of sacred embodiment in my own life, and to invite you to see how to integrate these wild soul ways into your context. So to begin with, how to access the truth, it’s helpful, I find the first look at what blocks us from doing that. There are two main things it could always boil down to. And those two things are a fear, and discomfort, period. Anything else you can think of as blockages from the truth will always relate back to fear and discomfort of some kind. So anything that you can ever do to face your fears about telling the truth, and why it makes you uncomfortable, will be enormously beneficial.

Elizabeth DiAlto 01:58

I was listening to the 63rd gene key audio from Richard Read the other day. And the 63rd gene key is the shadow of doubt the pathway of inquiry, and the city of truth. And something he said which was really validating actually, because this is what we’ve always taught in the school of sacred embodiment is that most people think Yin serves Yang, where the right brain serves the left brain or the heart serves the minds. But really, Yang serves in. And I always call this reversing the order of operations, to get the wisdom from the body from the heart, and then use the brilliance of the mind to carry it out, rather than what a lot of people are programmed conditioned to do, which is trying to manipulate the body to conform to the will of the logical, rational mind. And the truth is very, very rarely an absolute static thing. Truth is always calling us into refinements, asking us to see what is the next version of things. The truth is always in refinement. And many things can be true at once. And I say this a lot. Some of you are probably like, again, with the many things could be true more than one thing could be true to time. And the truth can also be paradoxical which the human reasoning mind does not like that. In an ever changing world, we’re always asked to be open to how truth evolves within us and around us and adapts to that. There’s yes no truth practice that I’ve been sharing and refining for the last eight or nine years that shows you what’s present in your body, how to connect with what feels like a yes, what feels like a no. And when you’re in the presence of truth. The deeper truth is always found in the heart that creative, compassionate, generous place, because the real truth is always honest. And honesty requires acceptance. And acceptance requires compassion. And these are all sacred threads.

Elizabeth DiAlto 03:53

And I bring this up because I have found in the eight or nine years that I’ve been sharing the yes, no cheat practice. And using something like that for myself for longer than that. Just how crucial it is to be tuned in to the way our systems communicate our yeses or nose and truth to us. Because again, we can really distort what’s true. When what actually is true, is at odds with what we wish would be true. That happens a lot. The truth might not always be pleasant. But telling the truth, again, always requires the three things I just mentioned honesty, acceptance and compassion, which therefore also means it requires courage. But cultivating courage is a topic for another day. Expanding your courage is how you face the fear and discomfort of telling the truth. It’s one of the ways one of the biggest ways. The truth also can always be found what I’m going to call below sea level meaning not at the level of the mind. We have to go into our body ideas, we have to go into our emotional body or physical body or energetic bodies, and listen to the sensations and emotions ride those waves into the depths. So we could get into the heart. I love the metaphor of diving under a wave. If you’ve ever done that, whether you surf or just swim in the ocean, sometimes the wave is crashing on the surface. But you could dive underneath where things are calm as it passes, so you don’t get pummeled by it. And because of that contrast, I always find it extra peaceful, to dive under a wave and hear and feel that crashing, happening above me, and not getting all caught up in it. And the truth is not always gentle, that may require fierceness, but that comes from love when we’re really connecting and tapped into our truth. Because the most loving thing we can do is to tell the truth, not just others, but to ourselves.

Elizabeth DiAlto 05:52

The truth often takes experimentation to, we often have to try things out and observe them over time, see how things go and correct course, in order to arrive at what is actually true for us. And this is another reason why so many people don’t access the truth, because a lot of people want to know, and they want to know now, they don’t want to develop observational skills or the patience to wait and see. And we see the consequences of this in our lives every single day, whether it’s our own consequences when we rush through things or the consequences when other people do it, the systems do it. So the biggest truth that I’m living in and navigating right now, after years of testing things out, trying them seeing results, in some cases that were amazing and other cases, that just were not what I was hoping for. I’ve reached a point in my journey as a business woman and a medicine woman, where it’s time to ask for support in a way that I never have before. And while I don’t feel uncomfortable about asking for help, I do feel uncomfortable about the timing, considering the horrors going on in the world, and how there are so many people who need so much more support than ideal and are living through the unfathomable. I also want to acknowledge that I’m pretty sure plenty of people listening aren’t in a position to help. And I obviously would never judge nor am I going to feel let down. If the response to the Ask that I’m going to make for help isn’t what I might hope for the outcome of this ask is really just going to determine some choices I need to make over the next few months. And I really need to give a shout out to some people for catalyzing my deeper honesty with myself about this with their generosity. I won’t name names, but a new member in our review membership posted this when she introduced herself. She said I first found Elizabeth’s work years ago when one of my colleagues was a guest on our podcast. And I’ve been listening to her show on and off since then, I just recently decided to dive a little deeper into her work attending some wild Soul Sunday services and incorporating the am and pm rituals into my day. And these have quickly been so healing impactful and transformative for me. I joined relief because I wanted to explore a paid offering and give monetarily to where I’ve been spiritually fed a teaching from the four spiritual laws of prosperity, which I think I also heard about through Elizabeth. We also had a wild so sacred body member tell us a couple months ago that they mainly just signed up because they were looking for a way to pay me. I hadn’t ever thought about that before, that some people might not be into any of our offerings at the school, but would like to contribute in some way. And being reciprocity for all that we offer for free. As well as all the things that we’ve made and continue to make accessible through our Cuba pricing model, pay what you can offer is and sliding scale offers over the years. And as a person who’s kind of always recovering from feeling like I have to do so much by myself, and pulling myself up by my bootstraps, who really also held a belief for a long time that people don’t support strong women like me, the way they jumped to support more fragile or docile people, which led me to taking on too much burden as an individual, not just in my own world, but for addressing systemic issues. There’s just a balance and harmonizing my life is calling for right now. And I don’t feel ashamed or like a failure for needing help, like I may have in the past, actually feel very tender and grateful to be this honest, not just with myself, because I’ve been very good at convincing myself. I only needed minimal help in the past. But again, also with this community because I don’t need to victimize myself by continuing to try to make things work and shouldering the entire burden myself, when I know that so many people would be willing and able and happy to help. And I realized this a few weeks ago when I published my novella, dark healing people on our email list who have been here for years, volunteered to be early readers. And I realized that there are a lot of people like that. Each week 1000s of people open and read my emails and listen to this podcast. And I don’t have 1000s of people in the school or working with me, one on one taking me up on all my offerings. So it’s clear that some folks appreciate the things I share, but just aren’t into To offerings. And I don’t feel any kind of way about that, because as I’ve said many times over the years, I’m much more medicine woman than businesswoman. And it’s not in my mystical nature to create to market and make things just because people want them and they would sell. My soul doesn’t let me do that. Unfortunately, sometimes I really wish it did. I create things that my soul guides me to create, and whoever buys them buy some. The enthusiasm though, from my early reader, volunteers got me thinking that people love helping, and they obviously want to, but they can’t help until I ask, they don’t know what I need, unless I tell them. And I know some people, again, will be more than happy to help me out during this time. So they can continue to create the things that I share that they do appreciate and are interested in like these podcasts, my emails, my prayers, writing on substack. So those things could actually be sustainable for me.

Elizabeth DiAlto 10:51

What’s also true is that I’m a person who’s been impacted by speaking up for things I believe in loss of clients, business and customers, which also that impacts sustainability of running a business. And I think you all know, I am not built to stay quiet about things related to justice and liberation. And there’s a saying out there go woke go broke, that I hate so much for two reasons. First of all, the CO opting of the word woke, which has even made its way into the dictionary. A lot of people never heard the word woke until just within the last several years, as it’s made it into the mainstream. But woke is an adjective derived from African American Vernacular English, meaning alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. And more in the recent years, it’s come to encompass bigger awareness about social inequalities, and stuff like that. It has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of like, leftist, what will be classified as like, liberal or leftist ideas. But the phrase and I’m getting this from the Wikipedia page, but this is also something my friend and teacher Dr. Chi, taught me years ago, that the phrase stay WOKE was presents in African American Vernacular English since the 1930s. And in a lot of ways, it was used to be a phrase, especially by black folks to signal each other about potential danger, threats or discrimination, kind of like when you flash your headlights to other drivers to let them know there’s a cop in the vicinity. Now, it’s, again, mostly used to describe liberal ideas and beliefs. And it’s often used in a derogatory way. So when I looked at the dictionary definition, it says, often using context that suggest someone’s expressed beliefs about such matters are not backed with genuine concern or action, you know, like reflecting the attitudes of woke people, politically liberal or progressive, especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme. And then in its most, what’s the word I’m looking for here, innocuous expression in the modern sense, it means aware of an actively attentive to important societal facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice. And so it bothers me so much that people will infer that if you care about or stand up for those things, that you won’t be able to thrive financially. We do see it though, because like I just mentioned, I’ve certainly lost income and things like this. Because of that. I have many friends who have as well. And then the second thing that I dislike about it, is that what it’s meant to do when people say go woke go broke, is to keep people from orienting toward justice and liberation from inclusivity. And addressing the broken systems we live with him. It’s designed to keep people entrenched in hetero patriarchal capitalism and colonialism. But I have to believe that we could do both. I have to believe that we could speak up for justice and liberation, be sacred weavers are the world we want to live in, especially those of us who hold non dominant identities and still have a shot, a thriving two. So I’m currently offering everything in my capacity to offer within the School of sacred embodiment and one on one. And I’ve also been reorganizing at the school with an aim that by the end of this year, our four main courses, body love and reverence, wild womanhood, wild celebration, and embodied self love will be available to anyone anytime. And we released a new reweave membership last month with my teaching archives for folks who are interested in the workshops I’ve taught over the years, and ongoing access to our wild Soul Sunday service recordings. And people can join these things anytime, not just during big launch periods or marketing promotional times, which I have to tell you I’m really out of energy for that kind of stuff, which is why we just want to make it available whenever when people want it. But the revenue that we’re generating isn’t enough to keep the ship going

Elizabeth DiAlto 15:01

That’s funny, my no I want my editor to keep this moment in with me just like laughing and that word slip, because my notes say, isn’t enough to keep the ship going. But I said, isn’t enough to keep this shit going, Ah, not at the capacity that it currently runs. And it’s been this way for a few years, and I’ve been able to keep it afloat by leveraging credit, working capital loans and stuff like that. But I’m about to reach max capacity on those things in a few months. And the truth is, you know, we generate a decent amount of revenue here, I mostly find myself in this position, because the cost of living and doing business has exponentially increased since the pandemic. And in 2021, when I moved to Miami from California, there were a lot of reasons I moved here. One of them that I was particularly excited to for was a lower cost of living. And it’s just been such a rude awakening for me in the last two and a half years, as Miami has become the number two city in the country for increased costs of living since the pandemic. So as some of you can also relate to pandemic isolation was really hard on me. I’ve mentioned this on the podcast, I’ve also been navigating some health issues and chronic pain for the last few years. And all of that is just partly due to doing too damn much for too damn long. And you know, despite all of this, I haven’t wavered in my commitment to keep our services excessively priced and sustainable for our students and clients. And unfortunately, that just hasn’t been super sustainable for me. So I spent the last few months figuring out how to cut or reduce as many expenses as possible. And it’s still not enough. So I’m turning to our community to ask for support. I’ve added donation buttons to the website, one time donation, recurring donation, I’m also writing weekly, or more on substack. Now, so people can offer support over there, I will be launching a private podcast also in April on substack, which is going to be really fun.

Elizabeth DiAlto 17:00

And another truth is that when I was younger, before I understood seasons, and cycles, and upswings and downturns, I would have felt ashamed in a moment like this, for finding myself in this place, especially after 10 years plus of running my business. But instead, what I’m feeling is really proud of myself for not succumbing to the pressures of capitalism, compromising my integrity, or resorting to methods of marketing that I don’t believe in just to benefit my own self. And I’ve seen a lot of people over the years turn to community support. And it’s always so inspiring to me, I’ve just never needed to do it before. And I’m also always giving to people like that, you know, and causes a need. So, you know, I just feel very at peace. And it makes sense to me and the natural order of things in life that eventually my time to ask for help would roll around. And that time is right now. It’s also another layer for me in divesting from hyper vigilance and radical individualism. I can’t just continue to offer more things and extract myself to make a living wage, to be able to pay my team and do my work. And I see how many people like 1000s of people read my emails, listen to the podcast each week, and join in getting value out of the things that I’ve been offering for free for so many years, which are free for me to offer, but now more expensive than ever to provide. I’m also not interested in shirking responsibility, or passing the buck on to others for choices that I’ve made, that haven’t panned out. And the reality is that for some time, I was in denial, that there are just some inherent challenges. For person like me, that makes thriving as an entrepreneur, something again, that I can’t sustain on my own in the ways that I had been taught to. And the way that I’ve tried to over the years, one of my recurring lessons, which I’m pretty sure this season is calling me to complete is that just because I can’t doesn’t mean I should. I’ve made a lot of offerings from that place over the years that have impacted me detrimentally, and most recently, was offering the real uplevel interview series last year. On a more personal note, one of the biggest things that came into view, I will say, maybe in the last year and a half year and some change is being neurodivergent. So many of the behind the scenes things of running a business that I’ve struggled with for years, make so much more sense to me now. And I’ve been able to navigate them better now that I understand the route as well. The online landscape has really changed so much. Over the years, I was recently chatting with a friend who wanted me to record a podcast called this shit isn’t working anymore. Which is probably why I made that slip a little bit earlier. And we laughed and laughed about that. It’s just harder now unless you’re someone who’s comfortable doing business as usual, staying in bed with certain systems in certain ways. And following like all the marketing and social media trends, it’s a bit more challenging. And listen, I’m not knocking people who do that stuff. That’s just not how I’m built. I just can’t contort myself to be and do things that aren’t me that aren’t aligned with my soul. And I don’t believe that people who don’t have those values or capacities, who just aren’t built to like, keep up with every trend. And you know how the platform’s shift and change and all these things. I just don’t believe that who aren’t built that way should suffer financially because they’re not built that way. But we do. I have several friends who are facing similar challenges that I am right now. And these are really seasoned people. You know, that’s been one of the things that some of us have processed together. Here we are in like, these stages and phases of our career where we’ve really like earned mastery in certain things, because we’ve been serving and growing and building our bodies of work and training for so many years. But we’re facing this inflection point, and having to recalibrate and refine, because the aspect of it of doing business has really shifted. And that is not the aspect of things that we’re experts at. And I’m not worried about us. Again, it’s just a very challenging season. I was laughing at myself recently. Because for years, this has been hiding in plain sight. I’ve created so many things in the School of sacred embodiment over the last decade, that support people in so many ways. And I’ve never asked or given people a chance to support me outside of the transactions of signing up for my offerings. And now I’m seeing the lesson that I had to get to a place where I didn’t have a choice but to ask, in order to realize that I could even air quote, people like me, the strong friends, the independent person, the one so many turned to for support and upliftment, sometimes were the ones in need. And it’s very humbling.

Elizabeth DiAlto 21:33

And if you’re ever in a position like this, I want to say something directly to you. Some people will make it about your own failing, whether they say that to you or not, you could have should have worked harder, figured out what your customers wanted or found a better job for the people who aren’t entrepreneurs, should have should have should have all these things, right? They’ll put it on you. But these moments are rarely that black and white. So with all of that said, if you’ve been kicking around, we’re thinking about joining any of our offerings in the School of sacred embodiment, and you’re in a position to do so now. It is a really helpful time for me and the school for you to do so. Everything we have got going on from you know, group things the cherish retreat, the different courses that are available membership, and my one on one offerings are on the homepage at untamed yourself.com. Later this month, I’ll be doing a spring equinox discount on retreat spots for the cherished retreat in Spain in November. And as well if you don’t resonate with any of our offerings, as I mentioned earlier, I added a donation button will donation buttons, one time or recurring to the homepage at untamed yourself.com. And whatever you can offer is deeply appreciated, whether it’s $1, or $1,000. And beyond finances, your offerings will also help me evaluate what it’s possible to keep going with and 2024. Or if I need to make some bigger decisions about our operations in the coming months. Thank you so so much for listening, I hope the parts about truth were super useful for you. I hope listening to my experience was illuminating for you. Let’s now get into the sermon part of the episode.

Elizabeth DiAlto 23:10

Today kicks off our exploration of the wild soul liberation topics in our Sunday services. And some of you are already familiar with those topics. If you’re not there’s eight of them. Surrender release trust receptivity, wild dreaming, desire, love and truth. And we are beginning today with truth. And we’re going to explore the vast complex and illuminating nature of truth, and how to connect with yours while leaving room for ET NGO to evolve over time. And before I dive in, I need to share with you a you can’t make this stuff up moment. I love the gene keys. Some of you might be familiar with the gene keys by Richard Rudd. And I’ve been keeping up with the weekly gene keys since January to explore the keys that aren’t in my own profile. Because there’s 64 I think your profile has like 12 or something like that. And I have several that repeat so I have even fewer in my own profile. Last night. After I’d already chosen this topic and began jotting down ideas for it for days, I look up to see what Gene key is being explored this week. And it’s number 63. The gene keys are laid out as the shadow the gift and the city. So the shadow of number 63 is doubt the gift is inquiry and the city the highest expression is truth. So not only are we right on target per usual, there’s some extra GG because the way they pick the gene key of the week is because similar to human design that gene keys are lined up with like what’s moving through what what are the transits or whatever going on astrologically at the time, and so I thought that was really amazing that that aligns with what we were talking about today.

Elizabeth DiAlto 24:56

And I also need to tell you before I dive all the way in for Are any of you who have loved the last several weeks, where we explored the wild soul archetypes, our wild womanhood course, which is the wild soul archetypes course, goes live tomorrow. Technically, it’s actually live now, if you go to untamed yourself.com, forward slash womanhood, but at the time of this recording, it’s Sunday, March 3, you can go to untamed yourself.com forward slash womanhood. If you are a wild soul sacred body member, you do not need that course because you already have access to everything in it in the membership. And if you’re not a wild soul sacred body member and you want to go deeper into the archetypes with more embodiment practices, a wild soul wisdom and a wild soul flow class prayers, mantras, journaling, prompts, video lessons, as well as a video lesson that walks through which chakra each archetype aligns with. It’s a really fun course, I’m really excited to now have that just up and available on the website. So check that out if you’re interested in that. And then what else? Let me see, oh, our prayer book.Our prayer book went live today prayers for wild souls volume one.

Elizabeth DiAlto 26:13

I’ll mention that a little bit later. Let’s start getting into the truth. Today I’m going to focus on specifically how we engage with the truth. Because until you can engage with your truth with real honesty and acceptance, you’ll always find ways to distort it. And two things about truth that we’re always juggling is what is it and how to engage with it. And engaging involves a couple of things, right, telling it, sharing it, receiving it, dealing with it, honoring it. And that’s that’s in both directions, right? You’re expressing your own truth, receiving other people’s truths, and not just choose among between people. But like the truth of the world, there are certain universal truths. When I elaborate in the podcast episode, which will go live March 10. For this one, I will talk more about connecting to what truth even is, today, I’m really going to focus on the engaging part. So there’s a saying, you’ve all probably heard this saying, the truth will set you free. And it’s popular because it’s true. In one way or another, the truth sets you free. My most recent example is the essay I posted on substack, a couple of days ago about my TEDx experience, which was the single most disappointing experience of my career. And I won’t get into that here, you can read it at Elizabeth D alto.substack.com. If you’re interested. It’s called right talk wrong stage, the immense and avoidable disappointment of giving a TEDx talk, the energy that I had to hold for the last three months since the event around how it went. And what’s happened since related to the event was pretty heavy. And after I made that post on Thursday, and finally spoke about the experience, I felt a lightness around it that I haven’t felt since the event, even though the outcome is still unresolved. And it’s also a great example of something else. With that post. Whenever I share something like I did in that essay about how an experience went, whenever I say or speak about things that most people don’t or won’t. I always get messages from people calling it brave or telling me how terrifying but powerful it is. I was getting notes from friends, calling this article things like exquisite and beautiful and so well done, which is all lovely to hear. And of course I appreciated that. But what it reminded me of the most was that the main reason why people’s relationships to facing the truth and telling the truth are so complex, is because it’s so scary. And it’s scary because it’s risky risks of telling the truth.

Elizabeth DiAlto 28:55

Primarily it’s loss of all kinds. And we’ve seen this with people speaking up about genocide in Gaza across industries, people have lost jobs, clients deals, family, friends, and more. I’ve seen this over the years as I became more active and vocal and speaking about collective healing and liberation. First in 2018 when I changed the name of the podcast, from untamed the wild soul to truth telling with Elizabeth C Alto and started inviting more guests to educate our community about social justice systems of harm and oppression and things of that nature. We lost like more than half of our listenership once I started having those conversations, and then in 2021 when I was honest with our community about not getting vaccinated, despite all the social pressures, false equivalencies and dichotomies around doing so I lost a lot of followers and I hate the word followers, but I mean it in the literal sense, I made that post on Instagram, and 1200 people immediately unfollowed me, some of whom, by the way, had been in this community for years. Listen to the podcast, students and clients even I think Just unfollowed some people canceled memberships, simply because I wasn’t vaccinated. Even though my reasoning wasn’t putting anyone in harm’s way, I was living by myself, I was working from home, I was masking up everywhere I went, and I’m an embodiment person. Anytime I checked in with my body about getting vaccinated, I always got to know. And so I trusted that, in fact, many people I shared that with were like, well, I trust you. Which was interesting, because that imply that they didn’t trust others to make choices for themselves. And I found that extra fascinating because people love talking about trusting yourself or your body or your intuition. And so the answers you get aren’t in alignment with their beliefs or their preferences, and then forget it, you’re scored on humanity, and you hate your fellow citizens. I was even clear about not being anti Vax, just pro bodily autonomy. Simply wanting people that choose whatever they felt was best for them, their families and loved ones, given their life circumstances, right. I also wasn’t pushing my choices on anybody else. The only reason I even shared is because I wanted to illuminate the truth at that time, that nothing is so black and white. I want it to speak to the nuances that many people were in the same gray area I was around that particular issue, and that many people were operating, unvaccinated but also happy to respect people’s boundaries and other health precautions like masking and social distancing. Even though of course, there were plenty of people who weren’t. Right. That’s where the false equivalencies and dichotomies came from. Because people mainly saw this unvaccinated population that wasn’t wearing masks that was just out doing whatever they want, not respecting guidelines, or whatever. And I’m like, but there’s plenty of people who are right. And so many people were in the black and white thinking that if you were vaccinated, you cared about people. And if you weren’t, you didn’t. And I was so grateful to have friends abroad. And I know some of you don’t live in the United States, I was so grateful to have friends abroad, reflecting to me how it wasn’t like this and their country is, America really has a way of polarizing people and seating the us versus them mentality, which I can tell you anytime you see that it’s rooted in manipulating the truth, not the actual truth, because one of the highest truth there is, is that we’re all connected, there’s only us there is no them. And many of us make choices that others disagree with, that doesn’t make us separate, that just makes us multifaceted, dynamic and diverse human beings.

Elizabeth DiAlto 32:38

So there’s a saying, I remember the very first time I ever saw the saying it was 2010, or 11. And I was in a gym in Washington, DC, and it came up on the screen in the women’s locker room and it said, Would you rather be right? Or would you rather be happy? And there’s a lot of people who would rather be right? There are a lot of righteous, miserable people out there. One of the bridges between right and happy is the very topic we’re discussing today, truth. And it’s important to hold all truth lightly, rather than clinging to it so that when things shift and change, and the truth shifts, which it often does, we can adapt instead of being stubborn. And even to go back to that vaccine example, since the initial vaccine came out. And the CDC was making all these recommendations or whatever. A lot of information has come out after the fact that in some cases, the CDC was wrong, right. And so people lost relationships over that. A lot of things happened around that, because they were so holding so tightly to their troops around what they felt and what they believed around that. So that’s also a good example of that. I reshard, an old post on Instagram the other week. And here’s what it said aggressive reminder, you know, people do gentle reminders, probably won’t surprise anyone that I like to occasionally give aggressive reminders. You’re allowed to change your mind about things. When you acquire new information, shift your perspective, grow and evolve. It’s natural. Some will call that hypocrisy, but emotionally intelligent, immature people know it’s a healthy part of being an adult. And when we treat ourselves and our own truth, this way, we can extend that grace to others as well. We can give people grace as their truth evolves to. So I was talking to a friend the other day who’s in recovery, and she was sharing how a friend of hers even though my friend has been sober for many years now, this friend of hers still treats her as the woman she was when she was in her active addiction to alcohol. And so things change, people change, we all change. Sometimes this happens, because what got us close with people was connecting in our struggles and in our suffering. So part of engaging with truth is acknowledging when it’s not static, and shifting and evolving right along with it. Another thing about the truth is that it can be very uncomfortable because truth and humanity are deeply linked. And humanity includes our shadow parts and our most evolved parts and everything in between. And people are afraid of all those things, looking being or feeling vulnerable, not knowing everything, making mistakes failing, looking stupid being judged, rejection abandonment, the list goes on. So accepting in regarding the shadow parts with equal reverence and respect as the more evolve parts is big work. And then on the other side of that coin, people are also afraid of their magnificence, and the power and the genius. Owning your brilliance, your talents, your skills, your generosity, your compassion, your successes, is also quite vulnerable. It also risks rejection and abandonment. Because some people don’t evolve along with you, or aren’t happy for you are proud of you. Some people are undercover competing with you. And you don’t know that until you’re clearly winning in their eyes. And now they resent you, or the other way around. So people are succeeding and judging you, because you’re not succeeding in their eyes, right. And when I talk about people, like sometimes it’s us, I’m sure some of you have experienced these things as well. Sometimes you’re the jealous person, sometimes you’re the person who can’t celebrate someone for whatever reason. I had this dynamic in a relationship once unbeknownst to me until it was ending. I had been operating as if we were a team. He was secretly always competing with me, and building resentment because apparently, by whatever his measuring stick was, I was usually winning, which made him feel like crap, but I wasn’t making him feel like crap, his insecurities were making him feel like crap. So here’s the universal truth. Some people are capable of celebrating others. And some people take other people’s wins as an affront, because it shines a light on where they are failing, or simply not succeeding in the ways that they want to be. Some people aren’t jealous or envious, other people see with those things. What’s also true is the healing works. We can all heal just about any trauma, conditioning and emotional wounding, if we want to. Truth can also be shame inducing for folks. Not to be confused with shaming, though people’s capacity for alkalizing and metabolizing shame will determine whether they project it out on others and distort the experience into being shamed, rather than feeling ashamed, because something true has been activated or illuminated within them. Another universal truth is that we live in a world of seasons and cycles, and nothing is permanent. There’s a quote I’ve loved since 2014. I heard it at an events by the unmistakable creative. And I don’t remember who said it, but the quote was, your current situation is not your permanent reality as a universal truth, because things are changing all the time. And I’ll speak more about that in the podcast, where I elaborate on this sermon. But I have another example of this. I’m in a pretty challenging season of being a business owner at the moment. And I’m facing some tough choices. And I’m gonna have to ask for support in a way I never had before. And what’s beautiful about this, despite the challenges is that I’m totally open to asking for that support and willing to receive it, which wasn’t true for me for many years. And I’m sure some of you can relate to that around asking for support, admitting to yourself that you even need it, being willing to receive it. It’s all very humbling. I’m also in a wildly creative season of my life. I self published three books since December, my first workbook, the wild soul liberation workbook, my first work of fiction, the dark healing order secret precesses book. And then as I mentioned earlier, the prayer book came out today, prayers for wild souls volume one.

Elizabeth DiAlto 38:44

And this points to another thing about truth, perhaps one of the most important things which is that many things can be true at once. One truth doesn’t necessarily negate another doesn’t have to overwhelm another. I’m elated about these books and writing and plan to publish three more this year. And my main business, the school sacred embodiment, which I spent the last 10 years building, the struggling a little bit. And partly because I’m learning now, in this new season of my life, to hold two callings at once being the founder of that school and being author. And there’s so many more reasons I’ll share more about that soon another time. But, again, all of you who come to these Sunday services or listen to these sermons via the podcast, know, just always like to give examples, so that perhaps it might contextualize something that helps you to see your own example or where something I’m talking about is active in your own life and your own context in your own way. And I’ll say one more thing about truth. Unfortunately, there’s no right or perfect way to speak truth that is not going to offend upset or turns some people off for all the reasons we mentioned above. And especially because most people aren’t as honest with themselves or others, as we’d like to hope they are. Which again, sometimes this includes us right We’re not saying, Oh, those other people over there, everything I’m talking about, we deal with it too, right? Especially, it’s hard for people to be truthful when confronted with someone who’s being completely honest from their own perception. It’s not always well received. Telling the truth, though, is the ultimate act of love. Even if the truth hurts, sucks, or is simply unpleasant. Some people aren’t truthful, because they deem which to to be negative. So they spin things to be more positive, and ultimately bypass the truth, contort the truth, or just straight up lie, whether it’s to themselves or others. And another universal truth related to this, that no one can deny is that sometimes things are just painful and ugly. No one gets to live a whole life without experiencing painful and ugly stuff. And talking about them as they are will never be inherently negative. It’s just real. Now how you harp on things or complain about things or blame things on people that can get negative, or victimize yourself, or drag out when you know, sometimes we really are victims of things. But sometimes we drag that out, or overly identify with it or cling to it.

Elizabeth DiAlto 41:06

But the reality of what’s happening will never be negative, it will always be real. One thing that we can always do in our own way is bring compassion and kindness to how we tell and share the truth with people. Sometimes what that looks like is not sharing things until you can come from a kind or compassionate place. And whether they can feel a receipt or compassion and kindness is not something we can control. But if we always bring it, we can trust the chips to fall where they may, and know that we did our best. And a great example of this. Going back to the TEDx thing I mentioned earlier, in that essay, I mentioned having a conversation with the organizer of the event, about everything that had gone on like everything that was disappointing, because it wasn’t just me, this wasn’t, you know, these were things, some of the other speakers were deeply impacted by including a dear friend of mine, two of my friends, actually, were gonna have this conversation with her with me, but they just weren’t in a place to do it. By the time the conversation was happening. And one of them specifically said to me, Listen, I can’t, I can’t be there and be kind. So I’d rather just not calm and I was like, that’s totally fine. I got it because I can. Alright, and I really appreciated this week, when I posted the essay in the school, sacred embodiment and mighty networks, one of our longtime community members, she wrote a whole note about everything in it, how it touched her. But this part was super important. She said, when you added this part about the situation, to give them some compassion. That was like a record scratch moment for me. Through your experiences, you keep teaching us how to look at circumstances and events through a multi dimensional and objective lens. And one of those lenses always includes compassion when possible. And I genuinely find that really helpful for so many reasons. Because yeah, even though things really did not go any kind of way that anyone would have expected based on how the organizers of the event presented it, I can absolutely see the reasons why they weren’t able to live up to and execute it, or facilitate it in the way that would have been congruent. So that’s our sermon for today, everybody.

Elizabeth DiAlto 43:19

With that, let us pray. And I’m going to read you the truth prayer from my own Kindle, because I downloaded the prayer book this morning. So take a moment to receive the Prayer. Take a breath, soften in your body. Feel yourself ground if your feet are on the floor, exhale through the bottoms of your feet. If your feet are not on the floor, wherever you can connect to your roots. Just imagine exhaling and rooting into the earth all the way deep down into the core into the center of the Earth has lift your chest let your heart be as open as possible. Do my mother goddess helped me relate to my truth in the most empowering way? For my own benefit and the benefit of everyone connected to me. Allow me to feel my truth. Know it, trust it and express it with love and honesty. Allow me to choose to feel my heart and inform my life helped me to grow, evolve and mature and alignment with my truth so that I can always return to it with ease if we’re when I stray. May I always have supportive, loving people in my life, to hold me in my truth and reflect it back to me. May I regard my truth with deep respect and extend that same respect to others helped me to stay safe, open and curious, aware and courageous as my truth continues to reveal itself to me throughout my life. Thank you and a man. All right, everybody. We are signing out on episode number 458 of the embody podcasts. As always, thank you so much for listening Seeing. And again, as I mentioned earlier, if there’s anything that you’ve been thinking about joining in the School of sacred embodiment, or any support that you can offer in our little season of need right now is deeply appreciated. Thank you so much. We’ll be back. We’re taking a little break on the podcast and our wild Soul Sunday services for the rest of the month of March, but we will be back in the beginning of April. Thanks