The Smoke Trail - Deep Conversation with Dr. Michael Brabant
Season 1, Episode 4
Summary of Episode 4: The Smoke Trail Deep Discussion with Dr. Michael Brabant
In Episode 4 of The Smoke Trail, Smoke hosts Dr. Michael Brabant, a coach specializing in psychologically safe environments for transformation, for a rich, hour-long conversation blending spirituality, leadership, and personal growth. From Sedona, Smoke credits Michael’s nudge as the catalyst for launching the podcast, setting an intention to explore deep topics—spirituality, leadership, trauma healing, and higher power—fearlessly yet respectfully, aiming to inspire listeners through authentic experiences. Michael aligns, intending to serve the moment authentically, fostering a “1-degree shift” toward heart-opening and soul connection.
The dialogue begins with Michael’s childhood—hypersensitive and alienated in a conventional world, compounded by parental “weird stuff” and intergenerational trauma—leading to a breaking point of depression at a young age. Quoting Krishnamurti—“It’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society”—he reframes depression as suppressed expression, a soul misalignment that drove his search for more. Smoke resonates, sharing his own childhood incongruences—adults lacking integrity—fueling a hyper-independent, competitive ego that propelled entrepreneurial success but hindered trust and inner peace.
They delve into leadership’s energetic ripple effect. Michael highlights how CEOs’ unconscious need for control, rooted in childhood lack, creates incongruence between words and vibration, undermining team safety—a subtle echo of parental disconnect. Smoke reflects on his past “need-driven” deals, achieving paper wins (e.g., $5-50 million swings) but facing chaos until aligning with wholeness, now attracting others’ vulnerability vibrationally. Practicality emerges: Michael’s CEO client struggles with feedback despite seeking it, fearing trust loss, while Smoke admits resisting Michael’s input on his YPO talks (Miami, Istanbul), learning to integrate it despite ego defenses (“Perky”).
The episode explores ego as multifaceted—Michael breaks it into developmental “parts” (e.g., a 5-year-old needing love)—requiring specific inner “medicine” beyond generic meditation labels like “thinking.” Smoke’s “talent stack” of techniques (e.g., A Course in Miracles, plant medicine) unwound his ego, yet defensiveness lingers, now playfully acknowledged. They contrast external validation’s addictive ease with self-esteem as a verb, advocating fullness over consumption—an abundance mindset that enhances decision-making (e.g., avoiding misaligned deals).
Michael closes with a meditation, guiding listeners to step back energetically, breathe into sensations, and befriend a loud thought or worry as an asset, not a problem, fostering inner safety. Smoke praises Michael’s approach, sharing contact info (candorandcoherence.com) and affirming the episode’s depth charges—practical yet profound seeds for leaders to pause, probe internal causality, and lead from solution consciousness, not problem fixation.
How It Fits into The Smoke Trail Overall
Episode 4 deepens The Smoke Trail’s mission, aligning with its three content buckets—learnings, universal truths, and experiential examples—while advancing its themes of spirituality, leadership, high performance, perfect health, and bliss, as seen in Episodes 1-3.
Learnings: Michael’s meditation and ego-parts approach, alongside Smoke’s feedback integration, offer tools akin to Episode 2’s grounding breaths and Episode 3’s presence, emphasizing self-inquiry and vibrational alignment for high performance and health.
Universal Truths: Fullness vs. consumption, congruence as leadership’s core, and ego’s alchemy into soul echo Episode 1’s nonattachment, Episode 2’s energy management, and Episode 3’s impermanence, with Krishnamurti’s lens adding philosophical depth.
Experiential Examples: Michael’s depression-to-purpose arc and Smoke’s need-to-wholeness shift mirror Episode 1’s healing, Episode 2’s trauma resilience, and Episode 3’s cancer reframing, showcasing “integrous” journeys.
The episode ties high performance to Michael’s leadership coherence, perfect health to Smoke’s ego unwinding, and bliss to their shared fullness, fulfilling the podcast’s ethos. Leadership shines—Smoke’s YPO evolution and Michael’s CEO work reflect guiding from wholeness, not need. Sedona’s calm backdrop enhances the spiritual tone, while practical calls (e.g., pausing reactivity) ground it, making Episode 4 a pivotal bridge from personal awakening to organizational impact, inviting listeners to take their first step inward.
About Dr. Michael Brabant
Michael is a seasoned expert in fostering psychologically safe environments that lead to authentic and lasting transformation within CEOs, leaders and organizations. With a rich background in clinical psychology, leadership development and integrative practices, Michael brings a unique, precise and holistic approach to his consulting. His deep understanding and skillful facilitation of individual, relational and collective dynamics allows him to guide teams toward greater coherence, trust and performance. While strategies are shared, the potency of Michael’s work is in his ability to create contexts where people can reveal what is real, honest and true.
By exposing the elephants in the room in a playful and dynamic way, huge amounts of trust and creative energy can be tapped into in a short period of time. This reorganizes the way people think and the ways that teams communicate. Organizational and leadership development theories without embodied practice and commitment to implementation become easily forgettable. By going through a transformative journey, people and organizations evolve and embody the learning that leads to lasting and ever-deepening tangible results.
Michael began his graduate studies in clinical psychology only to find that the best-practices in the field were sorely lacking nuance and depth to help people heal their past and thrive in their present. He transferred from his clinical psychological program after five and a half years and 120 pages of his first dissertation, to a non-clinical PhD in psychology and interdisciplinary inquiry. His second dissertation studied how transformative learning, mindfulness, collective intelligence and embodied forms of education were able to qualitatively expand people’s worldview that led to a more skillful and compassionate leadership style.
Early on in his career, Michael led meditation retreats, had a private counseling practice and consulted at universities developing transformative learning curriculum. Throughout his life he has studied with shamans, meditation teachers, psychologists and indigenous wisdom carriers. Since 2017, he has been working with business leaders and CEOs, synthesizing the most potent forms of personal growth from depth psychology to integrative spiritual practices and making it accessible and practical to leaders.
His devotion to his own learning and growth is the center of all that he offers to others. He is constantly learning, refining and integrating the feedback from everyone he works with and from life itself. Michael walks and lives his talk, so his approach is a living transmission that is catalytic and transformational for all whom he works with.
The Smoke Trail - Podcast Pre-show questions
The Smoke Trail is a podcast built on themes of understanding, life, spirituality, and enlightenment, all while navigating the challenges of living in the material world. Through these conversations, I aim to explore each guest’s unique journey—how you’ve discovered what truly matters, confronted your shadows, and learned lessons that can inspire and help others on their journey.
This is about sharing deeply and thus giving back, an incredible gift to others really. A key theme throughout is leadership, as many of my guests are CEOs or leaders in their fields. I’m especially interested in how you’ve integrated personal growth and spiritual insights into your leadership style and decision-making.
Below are some key questions designed to prepare you for our discussion and to serve as a guide for exploring meaningful topics.
These questions will also be shared alongside the podcast to give The Smoke Trail audience a deeper insight into the conversation and provide thought-provoking areas for reflection.
Journey of Self-Discovery:
“Please share a pivotal moment or experience in your life that shaped your understanding of what truly matters? When you realized what truly mattered to you, did it challenge or conflict with how you were living at the time? How did you reconcile that?”
My journey of hitting a rock bottom happened early when I was 22. After battling mental health issues for 7 years at that point, prior to entering into graduate school to be a clinical psychologist, I knew that my presence and the way I lived my life needed to match my desire to help others or I would be a charlatan to others and lost within, due to the incongruence of not living what I was trying to help others live. I tried everything I knew from therapy, medication, exercising, eating healthy, etc. and there was a darkness within me that led me towards an existential crossroads where suicide seemed like the only viable option. Out of desperation, I received an energy healing session, something that I didn't believe in at the time, and it turned on my soul to seek what was really true about this human life and what was the root of the suffering I was enduring. This pivot led me on a search to find meaning in my pain and thrust me on a journey to access a sense of internal peace that I had never tasted but sensed in my bones was possible. From that moment on, growth, healing and soul embodiment has been the center of my life. Everything "external" is simply a vehicle that delivers experiences and lessons that deepens my internal understanding and faith that my mind and intelligence is but a fraction of what is guiding my soul through this human experience. This worldview challenged everything about what I knew up to that point and yet the deeper soul knowing truncated the clearly dysfunctional ways I had previously viewed and moved through the world. I reconciled this through gathering direct experience data of this new way of living clearly provided more fulfillment and connection than how I had previously been living. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of faith in what is unknown than the certainty of what is known, which has continued to deepen every day of my life since.
Overcoming Shadows:
“What internal challenges or fears have you faced, and how did overcoming them shape your personal philosophy or leadership style? What’s one shadow or fear that still lingers for you today? How do you confront it, and what does it teach you about yourself?”
I have come to believe and experience that all shadows within me are also within all humans. The details of my life, although seemingly personal to me, are simply a slight iteration from everyone on the planet, with different details, context, mental interpretation/worldview and level of privilege. The list is too long to name them all and to name a few...facing the fear of abandonment if I don't be who others I care about or want to be in relationship with want me to be, fear of not being enough in my being so parts of me radically compensated through compulsive doing/achieving/"helping" others, the fear that God doesn't exist and the world is a random and chaotic mess of infinite variables, the thought that I must slave away at things I don't enjoy in order to "survive" within this sick society and cultural context, the idea that my thoughts are real and coming from my own mind rather than a deluge of ancestral inheritance/subconscious beliefs from childhood/humanity's collective thought patterning and programming, that my sense of attractiveness is based on what my body or face or any external factor looks like as opposed to the congruence I live from my heart and the radiance of my soul to name a few.
Each shadow I’ve faced helped me see the universality of that shadow in others and enabled me to have compassion for others after having compassion for myself. When I am non-reactive and agendaless towards other people's pain or struggles and can empathize in a way that they feel seen/recognized, the level of trust between me and others grows and I can share my own experience in a way that empowers them to face and learn from their struggles. I went from trying to be some kind of leader that I thought people would trust to simply being myself and became more influential because of my deep congruence with my soul. This supports me to trust in other people's path in a way that I don’t need to change or meddle in to fulfill my own sense of insecurity. I can be neutral, loving, clear, discerning and share what is coming intuitively to me to others in a way that empowers their next evolutionary steps and invites them into a space of their own knowing/wisdom.
A remaining shadow today that feels like it has infinite layers is that of control. I notice the pattern of control whenever parts of me want something to occur before it is ripe and tries to force things (even subtly), having an opinion that parts of me want to share with others when it wasn't asked for and also when I am experiencing emotional discomfort that I want to end or try to mentally understand the roots of. Control, however subtle, from my experience is an expression of fear and that fear can be so buried in my subconscious that I wouldn't even be able to identify it as a fear if someone were to ask me how I'm feeling. When I notice myself pushing an agenda towards myself, a project or other people, I know that I am in this familiar cycle of fear/control and it is an opportunity to cultivate faith by letting go of my ideas and getting really curious as to what the situation before me is inviting me to let go of and learn from.
Spiritual Awakening:
“How has your understanding of spirituality evolved? How have you integrated this understanding into your life? Have you ever faced skepticism or criticism for incorporating spirituality into your leadership? How do(did) you stay true to yourself in the face of that?”
My sense of spirituality is always evolving and maturing. It began as a thing or a practice of doing something to heal myself or prove myself (to myself and others) or reach my potential. My sense of the divine was outside of myself as something that I needed to appease or follow blindly or win the affection of.
To be honest, the concept of spirituality feels dead to me while the divine and my soul's unfolding lives at the center of my life. This paradox has come from continuously dismantling the compartmentalizations of my psyche and antiquated belief systems passed down from my ancestors and from the larger culture I've been reared in. Now, spirituality is simply life, being human, being honest with myself and others, and dedicating my will to a larger intelligence that is orchestrating my own and all of life that I am not separate from. True spirituality is about letting go of my sense of self while also being an embodied human that is kind, humble, open, discerning and real. To do this, I hold my emotional reactions and personal needs as sacred. Honoring their existence and tending to my “human” self, while ultimately knowing that who I really am is beyond all of that. I embody my true self through honoring and tending to the full spectrum of my human experience. Spirituality is becoming increasingly congruent and coherent in all parts of my psyche, all aspects of my life and being the same authentic person in all the contexts and relationships I find myself in. Spirituality is finding that I am connected to a larger Source and my very existence implies an inherent worthiness and goodness. There are consequences that occur when I am out of alignment in any way and those misalignments and consequences deepen my integrity, humility and wisdom.
I've been devoted to a spiritual path long before I was a leader in the business context, so there was no identity conflict around being a deeply "spiritual" leader. The only conflict was learning how to translate the deeper truths that I knew and am always discovering, with people who are earlier on their journey and hold skepticism (fear) around a spiritual path. This skepticism is justified as there are so many examples of deception (self and other) and true harm being committed through religious and/or spiritual rationale or intention. I am continually refining the way I speak and act that enables the greatest rapport with others and translating the deeper spiritual truths into secular and practical language and concepts is how I am guided to share them. It is self-serving for me to share my experience in overly nuanced and esoteric language when no one can truly understand or benefit from it.
A core tenant of a mature spirituality for me, is placing more emphasis on my internal reality, validation and truth than that of external people, metrics of "success" or conventional ways of being/thinking/doing. By being internally validated, other people's reactions to me do contain feedback for me that I need to integrate. At the same time, I cannot truly be spiritual and "give my power" over to others, external systems or beliefs and be led down an authentic path for my own soul. This commitment to my soul authenticity is what enables me to support others to find not what has worked for me, but what will work for them to become who they truly are.
Balancing Material and Spiritual Life:
“How do you navigate the tension between pursuing material success and staying aligned with your spiritual or personal values? Was there a time when you felt trapped by the pursuit of material success? What did it take to break free, and what advice would you give others in the same position?”
Thankfully, pursuing material success on its own was never something I could entertain or engage to any significant degree or for any length of time. Starting my career focused on becoming a clinical psychologist, was something that would have provided me a good enough living but was not something that was steeped in material success or ambition.
To me, a sense of tension between material success and being aligned with spiritual/personal values is a false dichotomy born from the internalization of values from our culture that are deeply misguided. We are also bombarded with the ambition and material focus within advertisements, media and other people's striving for that around us.
Spirituality is not a bubble that is adjacent to material success. Spirituality for me is all-encompassing and my business, my relationships, my hobbies and everything else lives inside of "spirituality." There has also been a direct relationship between my willingness to take risks in being myself and following my intuition, with the increase in the revenue that I was able to generate. Each year I am increasingly aligned with my spiritual values and each year my revenue continues to grow.
Having worked with so many materially successful people, I have seen first hand, over and over again, the existential crisis that occurs when people reach a level of material success that they have always dreamed of and the feelings they expected to feel are completely absent or are fleeting at best.
The advice I would give someone who is striving for material success or struggling with balancing that with personal/spiritual alignment is to pause. Pause and really ask yourself is the energy that I am living from and the sacrifices I am making for a "future" scenario, the type of energy and way I want to be living if I were as successful as I desire to be? What are the current consequences of compartmentalizing my spiritual alignment? Who am I harming? How is my health? What does financial success feel like if I do not have love and connection in my life and a healthy body and mind? While attending to the larger alignment within might require you take longer to make the money you want or might require you to change the way you go about it, I guarantee you will feel more peace on your deathbed and fulfillment in your life now, than if you simply powered over and powered over your feelings and needs and the feelings and needs of those you love in some sort of "ends justifies the means" approach to your business and life.
Leadership and Enlightenment:
“What does enlightened leadership mean to you, and can you share an example of how you’ve practiced it in your work? Have you ever made a leadership decision that, in hindsight, went against your personal values? What did you learn from that moment?
Enlightened leadership for me, is the understanding that I am not in control, I have some clarity but not all the answers, I am a fallible, expressing vulnerability around my mistakes creates more trust and safety in the cultures I lead for other people's growth and our collective innovation and performance, and fulfilling and sustainable change in companies, systems and projects requires me to be congruent in my thoughts, subconscious beliefs, words and actions.
I share my own learning lessons and foibles into my leadership with others to normalize and empower people to learn from their own mistakes, rather than perfectionistically trying to avoid them. I am constantly expressing to others who I am leading what my learning edges are and reconciling anything that is even slightly out of alignment that I say or do as soon as I notice it.
The leadership decisions I have made that were against my values had to do with me sacrificing what I truly needed to feel and live a balanced life based upon a scarcity consciousness around money or a codependent idea that I need to be something for someone else. While I did experience certain forms of financial security, the toll it took on my body and soul far outweighed the temporary and ultimately surface "security" that I received in exchange. I learned that sacrificing my true needs or acting from ends-justifies-the-means consciousness may lead to partial and temporary success but actually creates a bigger hole for me to dig out of down the line. It also makes me a less trustable and effective leader to others. It's clear that living in congruence with my deepest values at all times, attracts aligned opportunities in business that help grow me as a person and bring financial results that are congruent and sustainable.
Lessons from Adversity:
“What is the most significant lesson you’ve learned from a failure or challenging period, and how has it influenced your approach to life and leadership? During your darkest moments, what thought or belief kept you going? If you could speak to yourself in that moment now, what would you say? Have you ever taken a stand on an issue that was deeply personal but controversial? How did you navigate the fallout, and what lessons did you draw from the experience?”
The most significant lesson I have learned was probably related to when I was younger and felt that I needed to start looking within for answers. I remember being depressed as early as age 6 and yet was not diagnosed as such until I was 15. That whole period was rooted in me looking externally for validation and answers to questions from people that couldn’t provide the guidance and clarity my soul needed.
While there have been so many challenges since I began looking within, including a period of about 10 years where each night I didn’t want to wake up and each morning, wished I hadn’t, the process of self-discovery has been so rich and contains the full range of human experience. Navigating the contours of “my” suffering for so long, developed so much compassion, grit and surrender to a much greater flow of intelligence.
The belief that kept me going was something along the lines of “life is trustable, more will be revealed.” Whenever my mind gets confused or feels stuck, it is a sign that I need to lean back, be patient and look for the openings that will emerge over time. I don’t have the answers but I can be receptive to guidance when I let go of trying to control the outcomes of anything.
I would tell my past self that your life is trustable and you will learn all you need and let go of all you need to in ways and through circumstances you wouldn’t believe if I told you. You just have to keep going and have the faith that your soul knows where you are going and you will be continually growing as long as you remain curious and willing to grow, get knocked down and keep getting up.
I stood up to a mentor in front of an entire community of people that I was a part of and as a result, was slandered by this mentor for 2 years. While I received information from friends about the slander over those years, I knew that what was being shared wasn’t true and it was a tremendous lesson of not needing to be defensive towards what is false and trusting that my integrity would speak for itself. If someone is going to believe a lie about me, then that person is not someone that I want in my life. It required a massive upgrade in self-validation and trusting that the truth will prevail no matter what, in ways that I may have the opportunity to witness and if not, at some later date, even perhaps after I die.
Unusual or supernatural experiences:
“Many of us have had unusual or supernatural experiences but never talk about them. Sometimes we call these synchronicities. Can or will you share such an experience you have never shared publicly before? Or would you elaborate on one you have shared?
When I was 5 1/2 years and 120 pages of my dissertation into my first doctoral graduate program, I received the intuitive guidance that I should leave my current program because it wasn’t aligned with my path any longer. I was almost complete with classwork, needed to finish my dissertation and do one more year of internship and I would graduate. While I struggled to remain committed to the program despite my academic success since basically the beginning, I knew I had to take a leave of absence and find another way to complete my PhD.
I was racked with fear and doubt as I made this decision and yet I knew it was the right thing to do. After pausing for a bit, I started to look at different programs to complete my PhD that felt more aligned with my values. I came across a program that felt like a perfect ideological fit. I reached out to the program and they informed me that the type of doctoral program that I had come from, would not enable me to enter into their “PhD completion” track and that I would have to start all over from scratch if I went to their school.
While this was discouraging to hear, I knew in my bones that this was the place I was supposed to be. I pressed the person I was speaking to and asked if I could get a meeting with the head of the program. She reluctantly agreed and after 15 minutes of a conversation with the head of the program reviewing my stellar transcripts and recommendations from previous professors as well as getting a sense of who I was, she paused. She said, “Michael, right now I am looking at my desktop and it is of the blue sky that represents the clear light of the mind. There are a few clouds that represent the thoughts in the mind that can obscure the clarity of awakening.” I later came to find out that she practiced within a similar meditation lineage that I did but this statement from her in the moment felt out of place and like it was out of a movie. She then went on to say, “your grades are excellent, your recommendations are excellent and you are an incredible person. The good thing about being the boss is that I can change the rules. You will undoubtedly be accepted into the PhD completion program, just simply fill out the formality of the application and I will approve your admission.”
After leaving the phone call, I realized that my mind and fear will always try to deter me from the knowing of my heart and soul. While it seemed like an irrational move for me to leave my previous doctoral program, I knew I had to. While I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to find another program where I wouldn’t have to start over (and pay several hundred thousand more dollars), as soon as I came upon the webpage of the school I eventually graduated from, I knew in my bones it was the next step on my path. Despite some barriers, I was fueled by my knowing to persevere. This experience showed me that my mind will always obscure the destiny my soul senses and if I can continue to be persistent and trust that when a breadcrumb of my destiny reveals itself, I simply need to follow and trust and doors will emerge when all I previously saw were walls. I take this lesson with me everyday and follow the resonance and intuition that presents itself on my path and if there is no clarity of where to go next, my task is to patiently wait with a curious and open mind. The wall is not a wall, I just can’t see the door yet.
Influence and Impact:
“Who or what has had the most profound influence on your journey, and how has it shaped your understanding of life and leadership?”
So many people have had a profound influence on my journey and I will say the most has been my Beloved, soon to be wife. She has been the first person whom I feel really reflected my soul to me in a way where I could really see all the layers of compensation and conditioning that were covering my essence. This helped me relax into the inherent value of my being, rather than any compulsive or compensatory “doing” for others in some subtle or overt way to try and prove my worth. This has and continues to be a slow and systematic unwinding process. These dynamics I am speaking to are subtle and yet in seeing and integrating them, so much bandwidth has been and continues to be released. Life is so much more a mirror for my consciousness and situations come to me, rather than parts of me feeling like they have to chase, create or do anything outside of what feels inspired and alive within me. She also helped me see that leadership is less about mindset or strategy and much more about entrainment. If I am leading myself and embodying the qualities I want to support others in cultivating, then my energetic field is a transmission that others can learn from through entrainment, which all happens below any words or actions that are expressed. She also has shown me how insidious the conditioning of being a man in this society is around entitlement, arrogance and over reliance on the mind as an accurate medium of perceiving reality. She has helped me uncover the intelligence of my innate knowing, my heart and my body that are much more direct and accurate ways of perceiving that my mind can then filter and organize the details of. I really could write pages on her influence on me but for the sake of brevity, I’ll end by saying she helped me be who I am and not settle for any other expression than my soul’s authenticity. She is my true mirror, inspiration and love of my lifetimes.
Practices for Inner Peace:
“What practices or habits keep you grounded and aligned with your purpose amidst the pressures of leadership? When life feels chaotic, what’s the one non-negotiable practice or belief that brings you back to clarity? Why does it work for you?”
The foundational practice is becoming increasingly congruent in all areas of my life. If I am incongruent in what I am eating, how I am recreating, who I am in relationship with, how I am treating others and any number of things, there will be a foundational friction and dissonance within my heart and soul that will prevent me from feeling peace. I have taken so many risks in my life that have seemingly hurt others, been perceived as crazy, and required me facing so much fear. Yet, those moves from getting divorced, to leaving a company that felt ideal on the outside, to leaving my first doctoral program, and all manner of things that didn’t feel like the easy way, I became increasingly congruent and coherent in my life structures that were aligned with my soul rather than my ego’s idea of who I was supposed to be. I could do all the meditation and other spiritual practices in the world for hours every day, and if I am out of alignment in a core area of my life, peace will elude me.
From a tactical standpoint, the two practices I find essential are working with my parts and listening to divine guidance. My parts are the aspects of myself that have at times opposing feelings (one part is tired, another wants to achieve at any cost OR one part of me knows I shouldn’t this food, another is ravenous and doesn’t care OR one part feels like this opportunity is great, another senses something is off but can’t say why). If a part of me is at odds with what I am doing or is feeling overwhelmed, I spend time listening to and tending to their needs so I can come from a place of inner coherence. One part of me might make a commitment that clearly was not taking into account so many other needs and if I don’t pivot on that commitment, I will deeply break trust internally that will cause a lot of suffering within and most likely a poor outcome with the original commitment. If I spend time every day listening to the parts of me that get emotionally upset, overwhelmed, angry, etc., I don’t make rash decisions. I don’t break trust with myself. I remain in a place of authentic calm where my personality feels dynamic and coherent rather than static and compartmentalized.
I also start every day listening to guidance from a power greater than myself. I ask what I need to be made aware of and might ask specific questions and then I write the responses I receive. After being deeply dedicated to this practice, I have come to open a broad channel of what you may call “divine” guidance that brings simple, clear and step-wise solutions to every seemingly confusing or complex situation I am facing. It shows me that my mind is limited and that rationale and logic often misses the nuance of variables that I cannot yet perceive. By relaxing into a larger orchestration of my life, I can receive intuitive guidance of how to approach all aspects of my life in a way that is much wiser and leads to more peace than if I were to use strategy based on the context that I can perceive mentally.
Mentorship and Guidance:
“Who do you turn to for advice or mentorship, and how have they helped you navigate personal and professional growth? Have you ever had to let go of a mentor or influence that no longer aligned with your growth? What did that process teach you about evolving relationships?”
I have had many different teachers and mentors over the years. At this point, my main mentor is life itself and my deep curiosity and humility to be shown where my blindspots are through my emotional reactions, expectations and curveballs life throws my way. By viewing reality as a mirror, there are many reflections that I receive and also great discernment that is needed to not over-interpret things that happen.
The other person that is a constant source of reflection is my Beloved. She is able to sense when I am out of presence or acting out of integrity with my soul and our relationship agreement is such where she is deeply invited to share her wisdom with me. Again, curiosity and humility are necessary for me to receive her wisdom, whether she shares directly or whether I impact her and sense her energy shifting. To be able to have my blindspots revealed, I must recognize what it feels like in my body when I am defensive, because blindspots usually are not the most welcomed experience by my ego! When I notice defensiveness, my practice is to call that out ASAP and get curious as to what truth might be present, that parts of me feel they need to defend in some way.
I also work with a therapist and have relationships with others whom I feel safe enough to share vulnerably and receive their honest reflections. Having several people in my life where I can speak with candor and they can reciprocate that candor is essential to constantly be growing in a good way.
By outgrowing so many mentors over the years, I’ve learned the overt and subtle mechanisms that parts of me use to abdicate my authority and discernment to others. I am both the person that knows me and what I need the best AND have more blindspots around my perception because I am embedded in it. I’m constantly open to life as a mentor as well as physical mentors and I also have come to such a high standard of what kind of humility, self-awareness and consciousness I need in a mentor, that I don’t find many options. However, my openness to be taught by life, my Beloved and trusted friends, gives me more than enough feedback to work with and grow from.
Legacy and Wisdom Sharing:
“What wisdom or advice would you pass on to the next generation of leaders about integrating life’s deeper lessons with leadership? What’s a decision or action you’ve taken that you’re most proud of, and how do you hope it will shape your legacy or impact the lives of others?”
The advice and action are similar for me. The action is to relentlessly trust my inner knowing over fear that passes through my mind as doubt and judgment of myself and external reality. By following that knowing, even if it feels unconventional, risky and counterintuitive, so much has become possible that I could never have even imagined. By following strategy or what is mentally perceived alone, there is only available the data that is known and is more like rearranging furniture rather than upgrading the entire context or environment that I am in.
The advice would go something like, when you are confused or uncertain, wait. Listen and receive clarity through an inspired movement in the body or a download in the mind. Disengage from the issue at hand and stop trying to hyperfocus on an issue. Rather, detach and do something completely different and trust that your subconscious and a higher intelligence is reorienting your perception and the variables at play in a way that will be greater than you ever imagined. Cultivating the ability to refrain from trying, ruminating and forcing, will reveal a flow of possibility that works with life, rather than needing to push against what is to create what you think is the most desirable outcome.
I believe the way that I am, not what I do, is the greatest transmission of the legacy my soul is here to leave. When I can truly be who I am, people can entrain with that field of authenticity and become who they are. Not by emulating what I do, but rather receiving the invitation to trust their own knowing and learn to more consistently tap into the inner wisdom of their soul. If we had 5% more people on the planet living from the intelligence of their soul, I believe unfathomable amounts of innovation that would serve humanity would manifest. I also feel that more and more people will want to live from that same place, creating a cascade of soul awakening across the population.
Bonus Questions: Comment or share your understanding on any or all of the following:
- “Free-will”
I believe free-will is iffy. I’m not sure it ultimately exists. One way to describe it could be the agency to direct attention in a specific location. There are however, ways in which I feel at times, I am powerless over this or if I were to direct my attention towards a belief or affirmation when my body needs to grieve, then I would be bypassing the lesson I am being shown through the grief. For me, balancing a sense of agency to act in ways I am inspired while also surrendering to the unknown helps me live in peace most of the time and be agile and ready to respond to invitations from life that come my way.
- “Evil”
Counterforces against life itself that are actually distortions of goodness or light. Aspects of creation that have forgotten their own nature and seek to create more distortion to validate the existence of their own. As my partner says, evil is educational in that it shows the cracks in my own integrity and awareness. Fear of evil makes it grow, awareness of it and direct facing of it, reveals its ultimately illusory nature.
- “Synchronistic occurrences”
The way the larger intelligence orchestrating life directs individuals towards the path that is most aligned with their soul. I consider these winks from the universe.
- “intuition”
The type of knowing beyond the mind that has a more parallel/non-linear processing feel instead of a serial/linear processing feel. Tapping into intuition can occur through the mind, the body or the intelligence of the heart to name a few. Like a mentor used to say, “I don’t know how I know but I know.” Learning to trust that innate knowing, even and especially when there appears to be no rationale as to why you know what you know.
- “death”
The physical death as an end to the body being animated by one’s soul. The psychological death is an end to the usefulness of a certain way of being that requires grief and resting in the unknown to be shown what is more real. The more I can learn to die to what is known psychologically and mentally over and over again, the more I live from a state of peace and the more open and trusting I will be when the time for my physical death occurs.
- “true happiness”
Happiness feels like a misnomer and not a really useful thing to chase. For me, unconditional joy is a more useful aspiration because it includes the openness to whatever state of mind, type of emotion or situation that I find myself in. I am in peace not because my expectations are reached, but because I can open to and trust the intelligence of whatever is happening internally and externally.
