Concentration: A Community Tarot Reading
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2020: The Birth of the Passionate Warrior
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On the Dream Alchemist's Passion Path, You Go from HIDDEN BY the Dreary Mask of Your Trauma
To the Triumph of Revealing Yourself and Illuminating the Path of Transformation for Others
On the Goldsmith's Passion Path, You Go from Frustrated & Trapped in Creative Malfunction
To the Exhilaration of BEING a Full-Fledged Creative Coup D'Etat
On the Vanguard's Passion Path, You Go from the Tortured Hunger of Knowing WHAT But Not Knowing HOW
To the Thrill of Leading the Way with Confidence and Enthusiasm
After You Have Received THE KEY. Take the Next Step! You Will Be So Glad You Did.
Learn More About Your Chosen Path Here:
The Dream Alchemist's Sorrow Transformed:
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
If you went into the witness protection program, you wouldn't even have to leave town. You are already invisible, hidden beneath the mask of your past. Not even the brightest spotlight could reveal your true identity.
Your mask was long ago stitched of your sorrow. Its threads were made of the things you do, and have always done, to survive. Its grip seems ironclad.
Truthfully, you didn't have an auspicious beginning, or maybe you did and something disrupted your grand entrance. Either way, you never learned, or have long forgotten, what it takes to thrive.
All your energy goes to fighting back demons and fighting off devastation.
Well, and let us not forget the loneliness! It takes a lot of energy to manage the effects of your isolation (and don't bother to tell me that you are not isolated even if you are surrounded by people).
No matter how good your life looks on paper! No matter how much money you have in the bank, how luxurious your diversions, how beautiful your public face.
Even a pretty mask is a mask.
Likewise, it doesn't matter how ugly your presentation is by this world's standards or how rotten your overtures seem to this society.
It's ALL the mask.
God how you long to take it off! It feels cramped in there, doesn't it?
Plus, now you want something. Or more to the point, you sense that something wants you. And this something isn't interested in the masked version of you. In fact, the mask is keeping you from having it.
You want love, relevance, impact.
You want to matter and to shine in intimate relationships, in your life purpose, and in the realm of influence.
But there's a catch.
You are suddenly aware that you want, and truly can only have these things, for your REAL self, not the one you cobbled together in order to muddle through.
You are dreaming of the wind upon your face, of the light shining from your eyes. You are longing to feel the joy of contented belonging rising up in your own heart. You are longing for peace too.
You definitely have a grand purpose you are aching to realize. You know you are supposed to light the way for others to follow or even to change the course of history. And you will!
But nothing about happening to history means anything to you if you can't do it with the truth of your own skin exposed.
With the burgeoning wildness of your own heart set free!
With the power of your voice liberated!
If the mask has done anything, it has stolen your spontaneity and sullied your innocence. It has mired your expression in the mores of survival.
The bloody thing does all the talking even when it doesn't say a word.
Yet, you cannot remove it.
Therapy didn't set you free! Brute force couldn't rip it off. Energy clearings and carefully induced trances only strengthened its grip. And don't get me started on the Tantra or even the Tarot.
You can't outrun it. You can't be "good enough" to overcome it. You can't fight it into submission...
What will it take to FINALLY mollify the mask?
ACCEPTANCE!
In the mask you have found shelter. In its presence, you have found protection.
Stop trying to remove it (by feeling better about the events of your painful past or even trying to feel better about yourself).
Instead, destroy the very reason for the mask's existence. Make it obsolete.
The mask corresponds to everything that has, and still is, attacking your self esteem.
It does the bidding not just of the emotional pain that broke your heart (over and over again), but of something deeper.
The ways of trauma have stitched themselves into your mind, woven themselves into your emotions, knitted themselves as the illusions and the habits that govern every action and reaction.
Any "healing" modality that fails to address this is a lie.
The recalcitrant presence of the mask represents the all-consuming influence of trauma in your life.
These were not just events from which you need to heal or painful moments you need to get over. They shaped you systemically, and often, systematically. They made their mark on every part of you. They became your identity, your worldview, your biology, your mental and emotional states.
Can you feel the relief and the release in that truth?
Trauma is like an entire universe that is in you, around you, expressing through you.
But there is another universe.
This other universe is made of, and for, your thriving. To enter it, ironically, you must go deep INto the world made of your trauma. You must not stop at the surface questions of how the traumas (violations, betrayals, dysfunctional foundations) of your life made you feel.
You must finally, once and for all, grapple with who you have been in the world of trauma and then you must learn who you can be in this new world.
You must then uncover the ways of this new world and mark yourself with them. You must do the work necessary to imprint the essence of thriving upon your body, mind, and spirit until you have been born again in the nature and reality of flourishing.
Ultimately, you must then take the final step into this new world: become the solution for someone else.
Trauma doesn't just destroy community and belonging. It destroys legacy. If you are to finally uproot your traumatic past in all its manifestations, your journey must stop being ALL about you. In the world of thriving, your journey is about offering yourself as a lamplight of hope to a world that is punch-drunk on a give-up cocktail. The very same cocktail you drank for years!
Sound like a huge undertaking?
Trust me, I know how big it is! I created ONE of the pathways through these many points of transformation (7 Doorways, to be exact).
And now I am offering that pathway to you in the form of Dream Alchemy, The Revelation Story™.
The journey begins right here with Dream Alchemy Preview.
Register today!
When you choose this Passion Path, you will:
- Take on the role of the Dream Alchemist, transforming your pain into the pathways of liberation for yourself and for a world that may literally commit suicide without your legacy (and the legacy of so many like you);
- Use your unrelenting passion for your dream to confront the systemic and personal limitations that obscure your true value and hide your true potential;
- Turn on the power of your inner light so you can finally see and reveal yourself; and
- Become the lamp of hope, illuminating the path to liberation for generations to come.
Ultimately, as the Dream Alchemist, you will wield the powers of rock solid identity and self definition to shine as a beacon of truth in a world struggling to overcome the lies of oppression.
You will then meticulously distill the essence of your experience, becoming the embodied solution via the mediums of art, music, and the WORD. Like the alchemists of old, you will leave a legacy of transformation for other seekers to follow.
The Goldsmith's Creative Catastrophe Corrected:
FIRE RETARDANT GOGGLES NEEDED
That's the ad you ought to run on Craigslist. Because singed eyelashes are not a good look. And it is virtually impossible to even count the number of times your vision has blown up in your face. So, you either have to walk around with your charcoal eyebrows or get some protection.
Your problem?
You know you are powerful. You are even ready to use that power.
BUT
Your inner world is still too unstable for your aspirations to turn into adaptations.
End Result: Your natural creative fire is also a natural disaster.
Of course, that really isn't news.
But this time is different, isn't it?
Something truly precious is on the line.
Something you want more than you have ever wanted anything is about to fail and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it, at least not if you keep trying to work magic on it from the same unstable foundations.
Feel that churning in your belly? That's exactly what I am talking about.
You know in your gut that this moment is going to be decisive.
You are about to either win or lose something IRREPLACEABLE.
And the outcome of this final battle doesn't depend on your crass ("guided by or indicative of base or materialistic values") ideas about boundaries or your prideful sense of righteousness. IN THIS WORK those things will, in fact, do you in. They are tied to a world you are trying to leave whether you know it or not.
This battle isn't with anyone else either. It's an internal battle over influence.
Will you succumb to the atmosphere around you ceding your mind and your magic to the influences of this world and the influences of your past, or will you step up to the wheel of destiny and finally give it a spin that puts the end game back in your hands?
To answer that question, you have to confront a core truth that scares the living daylights out of you:
You do make your own reality (just maybe not all of it and not in the new-age-guru-bullshit way).
That truth makes you tremble because, well, singed eyelashes!
You are terrified you will never get it right. That much power in your hands feels overwhelming.
It can also feel unjust. Do we blame the hungry masses, the desperate, the displaced...for their own plights?
Do we blame Native Americans for genocide and Black people for slavery?
Do we blame you for...Well, we don't need to name that blood curdling event. But you know what I mean.
The answer is an emphatic NO!
HELL NO!
Instead, together we MUST leave the blame game altogether.
The culpability stands where it stands.
We know who did the scalping, the chaining, the raping...
We know that White supremacy and patriarchy are real and that they are destroying this world and that they will destroy you and me if they can. We know rapists and pedophiles and other predators are out there right now on a search and destroy mission. That is a given!
Now what?
Together we stop trying to solve this at the level of logic and presumably fixed reality (where blame and boundaries are necessary for survival)! I mean, how many years are you going to waste on a game you can't win?
How much longer will you let EVIL control your mind, warp your emotions, determine your next creative impulse? How long will you live with the singed eyelashes of a broken world?
Not one minute longer!
This problem can't be solved by seeking to act upon your material reality with blunt force, though that may sometimes be required along the way. It has to be solved at the level of your being, and choosing and that is a matter of influence. It is a matter of managing your own mind and using your own emotions, instead of being used by them.
You either want this or you don't. You are either ready to seize your creative fire and finally direct it with the kind of precision that overthrows these old nefarious influences or you are not.
Which is it?
If you are finally ready to hold this kind of power in your hands and to use it for the sake of realizing your vision at long last, there is only one thing left to do.
Because let's be honest here.
As long as you are tied up in creative malfunction, happening to history is pretty much out of the question.
The pain of your own life will swamp all efforts to impact the broader world, to leave a legacy, to throw some of that brilliant influence into creating something that is next generation.
Maybe you have already sensed that this is the truly precious thing of all precious things you could possibly lose. Legacy is the BIG KAHUNA of IRREPLACEABLE things.
But let me back up.
Trauma, especially complex trauma (something pervasive that disturbs the context of our lives consistently and persistently such that we never achieve the proper foundation for thriving) will lock you out of the things you want with unparalleled, super-efficiency.
Why?
One of trauma's chief markers is a "persistent negative emotional state such as anger, guilt, shame." I am going to add to that list a few others: pessimism, anguish, hopelessness.
Of course, the traumatized soul has many other attributes we could discuss, and someday, maybe we will. But this one! This one is pernicious. It is the source of your inner instability, those singed eyebrows, and the rotten manifestations that stalk you.
Your body, mind, and emotions are allied against everything you want because they are aligned with, as a matter of survival instinct, a negative internal state.
And the biggest asset for manifesting what you want?
The EXACT opposite. Your ability to imbue your creations with positive emotions like joy, hope, expectation, ecstasy is absolutely critical to becoming a
Creative Coup D'Etat!
And becoming a Creative Coup D'Etat is mission critical in terms of saving your IRREPLACEABLE THING. It is also the foundation of going beyond whatever you are terrified to lose in this moment (for me it was the love of my life) to the BIG KANUNA of legacy.
About legacy:
Trauma destroys legacy. So you can't take your ultimate victory lap in the trauma games until you get past yourself, your pain, even your personal desires and get on to becoming the
Creative Coup D'Etat For Someone Else.
That means taking your creative fire into the realm of next generation impact, influence, inheritance.
You are either going to leave these things or stay locked up in your private concerns forever, thereby cementing trauma's legacy, not your own.
And on that last option...
Not on my watch Passionate Warrior, History Maker.
NOT. ON. MY. WATCH.
On my watch, the formerly traumatized, world changers get free of this stuff and begin to radically alter the atmosphere and the outcomes on this planet. They become Goldsmiths shaping the riches of this world according to their own inherent value (and the inherent value of every human being).
In fact, WE are the only ones who can do this because everyone on this planet lives in systems of trauma. To liberate this world from those systems, we are going to have to cheat those systems out of their well-laid plans. We are going to have to destroy their well-played, timeless strategies. But most importantly, we are going to have to invent a tomorrow that looks radically different from today.
To do that WE must master the creative fire first within ourselves.
Which means that YOU have have to initially master your own creative fire.
You in?
Then there is just one thing left for you to do!
Fork over your email address so we can get this show on the road. Well, and actually pay attention to the materials you gain with this momentous exchange.
I am pretty sure you can tell by now that I am not playing around. So, expect me to support you right out of the gate, even with the free challenges and mini-courses I offer.
I have built this Passion Path for you. It takes you from charred by your own creative fire to mistress of the flames. As you walk this Goldsmith's Passion Path you will learn to:
- Harness the heat and raw energy of creative combustion in order to forge your inner and outer realities;
- Deploy your creativity so you can skillfully turn the wheel of destiny towards victory (I mean, would you look at that falcon?!);
- Employ the power of principle-centered choice (though not in the way you imagine -- not against other people) to make potent choices and create the WE;
- Mould yourself and your life in accordance with the Gold Standard of your true value and your true values (priceless); and
- Become the solution for someone else.
In so doing you will become (not by osmosis, but by concentrated effort and directed focus) such a powerful presence of pleasure and impact that your very existence will challenge everyone around you to rise to new heights and to reach for MORE. As the Goldsmith you will lead by your example and your essence will change the atmosphere wherever you go (not the other way around!).
You are gold and as the Goldsmith, you will carry this truth in your bones.
You will act accordingly. By your presence, you will invite others to do the same. Your presence will insist!
The Vanguard's Deadlocked Dilemma Destroyed:
FAMISHED, FLUMMOXED, AND STALLED OUT AT A BREAK-NECK PACE
Famished: You are hungry for it. There's something down in your belly that is trying to scratch and claw its way into this world.
Call it a dream.
Term it a calling.
Name it destiny.
Whatever it is, you feel certain that if you have to go another day like this, you will die of your ravenous desire to bring it through. You will expire under the weight of the mandate to make your mark.
Your thoughts are troubled, because you are thinking of little beyond the fact that you cannot seem to get this done (because, because, because).
Your mind is so often tense with the heat of your desire and the frustration of your inability to achieve this dream.
And boy are you confused because you have the grit and determination. There is nothing you wouldn't do, nothing you wouldn't try.
Plus, you have the money, honey and you have the talent. You'd even have the time if...Well, we'll get to that.
In any event, you know you are here in order to blaze a trail. It is so clear that you were born to alter fate. There is no doubt. You are meant to have an impact. Otherwise, why would your mind be awash with the novel, the innovative, the truly cutting edge?
Stalled: Yet, you are basically running in place, stalled out at the brink. No matter how much you want this, no matter if you are new at this or frustrated from prolonged EFFORT, you just can't seem to put your considerable Passion in Motion.
Something is always IN.THE.WAY!
The energy and potential of your dream are stuck inside of you just as you are stuck inside your own restraining circumstances.
In short, you can hear the call, you have seen the vision. But you have no idea how to answer it, and the tension, not to mention the exhaustion, is just about to break you.
Flummoxed: How can you have such a strong imperative, such a clear call towards impact, and still be stuck wearing deep grooves into the same patch of ground day after day after day?
Easy!
At all the critical moments of your life, someone or something has ALWAYS devalued you and snuffed out your potential instead of developing it.
All your life, you have struggled for relevance. You have worked overtime to even be considered. Your gifts have been undervalued and looted on the one hand and ignored on the other. Worse yet, no one has ever truly taken the time to help you develop your considerable promise. To the contrary, those charged with ushering in your progress and developing your gifts drew you deeper and deeper into trauma and the drama of surviving at every turn. Those in charge of society created the unjust structures that have held your potential in checkmate.
Now is no different! The trauma and the injustice are real!
Which means...
You are likely accommodating the perfect scapegoat for your dilemma: a disruptive partner, children whose needs engulf you, overbearing or abusive parents whose influence you continue to abide, lonely relationships that sap your strength instead of nurturing your soul, a soul-sucking job you can't leave, a church that won't permit your contributions, a society that doesn't value you. Name your scapegoat, systemic or personal. Whatever it is, you let it drag you to the ground and drag you out of your purpose.
Let me clarify this. I am not asking you to overlook the real, systemic, organized, intentional oppression that is being repeatedly highlighted at this moment in history. I am not asking you to bypass your own dysfunctional relationships either. I am asking you to change your relationship with these scapegoats from an all consuming focus to a blunt recognition and insistence that you get to control your focus for your destiny. I am asking you to stop accommodating the scapegoat by allowing these things to suck up all your time and attention.
The problem is not your recognition of injustice or even your efforts to end personal and systemic oppression. You should end it every chance you get!
Your problem is hiding in plain sight a few paragraphs above:
You let your scapegoat drag you to the ground and drag you out of your purpose.
The reason has to do with trauma itself. It loves to replicate an internal state of pessimism, distress, disappointment, hopelessness, inertia...and thereby, replicate itself. This is one hugely problematic legacy of trauma. It enshrines victimization at the center of everything to the exclusion of building a better future.
Effective leaders do not lead from this place. They lead from coherent, empowered inner states that transcend the negative mandates of trauma.
To become the Vanguard, you must recognize the truth of the terrain (which TRULY IS littered with the very real impacts of White supremacy, patriarchy, and abuses of every kind) while ALSO incorporating the Vanguard's sense of new potential.
Trauma, injustice, dysfunction...feed inner states of incoherence and the kind of distraction that destroys leaders and leadership until you arrest your focus and take ownership of your inner landscape. As long as you let these things direct your focus and determine your inner condition, you are embodying trauma and not the Vanguard's power to lead and certainly not your destiny.
Well, and let's not overlook the far less weighty and no less deadly stagnation potential in the modern maze of marketing gimmicks, seemingly essential technological quagmires, and your own whacked out to-do list. Another facet of your scapegoat: something to do that doesn't advance anything!
With the perfect built-in distraction provided by your scapegoat, you never have to get to the core of this thing.
Let's be honest, your scapegoat is more than an excuse. It's a habit so entrenched you can't even discern the ways in which you use it to hide from the life and the legacy you truly desire to create. You can't even tell that while you yearn for your dream on the one hand, you have been trained to kill it on the other.
Survival mode is normal for you. It is your insurance policy, and it is the weapon formed against your potential.
Later you'll be able to say you didn't fail. You were a victim of circumstance; underdog to your scapegoat; prisoner to command performances.
Running in place is now a comfortable alternative to what you really need to do!
It's familiar to remain lost in other people's chaos, indifference, insanity, and outright calculated malfeasance. It is habitual and normal for you to be handicapped by all these things.
It's equally commonplace to continue on, missing in action, doing, doing, doing things that will never actually bring you closer to being the Vanguard and to making your vision a reality. Doing for others, doing what's "right," doing what must be done or the universe will implode. Doing, doing, doing!
Well, and remember all those technological quagmires and marketing gimmicks? If you haven't found them yet, they are sure to find you.
Bottom Line: Instead of realizing your own natural destiny, you swirl endlessly in the rip tides of your own frantic EFFORT, especially the effort to contain the fallout of other people's dysfunction and intrusions.
I mean, what better way to avoid THE CONFRONTATION with the lies you have allowed others to etch into the bones of your inner foundations, tattoo upon the skin of your identity, pour into your life blood like poison?!
And you bought those lies lock stock and barrel, otherwise, you would, by your very nature, stand out as the text book definition of the Vanguard:
Literally, the Vanguard opens up and guards the front. She leads and she preserves the future by insistently thrusting her ideas and solutions into the forefront of cultural, emotional, and practical dilemmas. The Vanguard is essential to the massive surges of success that often follow in her tracks. She is the avant-garde leader standing on the cutting edge of tomorrow. Not the baffled, befuddled mistress of misery facing backwards and constantly fighting the ghosts of a dying age -whether or not the fight has purpose.
So, what is the confrontation to which I refer?
A tremendous irony to be sure!
Deadlocked, Dilemma Destroyed: Instead of frantically trying to launch your dream, it's time to come into the timeless, quiet space of self reflection where you will meet yourself anew. No, I don't mean the kind of urgent, introspection in which you normally engage, your mind on fire with evaluative effort.
I mean it is time to ALLOW deep, penetrating truths to bubble up in their own time, in their own way. It is time to invite them.
It is also time to stop trying to achieve. And it is certainly time to stop trying to overcome your scapegoat. Instead, this moment requires the patient, careful, intentional development that your habitual bid for survival belies. AKA a change in focus (away from your scapegoats and towards your own heart).
You also need a process for bringing your genius to fruition much like the one your caregivers never even knew how to employ. Oh, and you need the kind of structure that will support your dream (instead of supporting your distraction).
Finally, you need someone to sit with you and guide you as you unfurl every blossom of your wisdom. You have been an untended garden. Now it is time for careful weeding and structured, organic growth.
On the other side of this gentle becoming, you will finally be ready to strike forward as the guardian of a future that looks vastly different from the past, both for you, and for the massive waves of change you will lead on the Vanguard's Passion Path.
In short, it is time to put your Passion In Motion™ by, ironically, not moving very much at all. You might be surprised how fast you Destroy the Vanguard's Deadlocked Dilemma.
I'll be with you every step of the way.
"Wisdom" descends from the Anglo-Saxon "wyrd": "the irreversible process of becoming from within. ∞ Robert Burdette Sweet
On the Vanguard's Passion Path, you will become and then transmit, the change you hope to see in the world through the vehicle of commerce. You will use embodied storytelling, targeted marketing, and mesmerizing messages to finally come alive as your dream.
Critical Revelation: That thing knocking around in your belly isn't just the dream itself. It is you, the dreamer, the Divine recipe for disrupting history (a history that needs to be disrupted).
And you are about to re-birth yourself as the avant-garde leader you know you are meant to be.
As the Vanguard you will us the power of words and expression to:
- Face the disorder and distraction created by your relationship with your scapegoat so that you can use it to become and to create from within;
- Harvest the power of your experience, the strength of your essence, and the depth of your wisdom to forge ahead and into the reality you so long to live;
- Craft the products, services, myths, and arts that open the potential for others to build thriving, meaningful lives that reflect their true value and values as human beings;
- Open the door to a new way of being together on this planet; and
- Invite others to cross this threshold with you.