“Be graceful with yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are here for a right and holy purpose. You have had all of the experiences in this lifetime that have prepared you to move beyond your neurotic navel gazing tendencies – which is not the truth of who you are – into a contribution. You’re here to be a gift. You’re here to take an inventory of the blessings that you have and then imagine how you can offer them up to those you’re in relationship with.” – Lola Wright
The path toward finding your purpose is littered with fear and self-doubt. It’s easy to let the inner critic grab a hold of your attention, but resistance just creates more suffering. This week, I want to talk to you about the qualities of purpose and why you need to master the art of noticing. Tune in and find out how you can craft your cosmic identity.
Show Notes
When you do the work of finding your purpose, fear and self-doubt ultimately start to creep in. Let these limiting beliefs float by you. Resisting your fear will only lead to more suffering.
For this episode of Find Your Fierce & Loving, I talk about the qualities of purpose and how every contraction in your life brings about an expansion. When you step into your purpose, you let go of the external validation that has been fueling your life.
I have some homework for you this week. To craft your cosmic identity, you need to practice the art of noticing. Notice where your energy rises and falls. This is the space where the work begins. Take a listen to the episode and notice your aliveness.
- (00:39) – A step in consciousness
- (06:36) – Knowledge of self
- (10:51) – Cosmic identity
- (15:10) – The source of salvation
- (20:23) – Breath is your friend
- (22:59) – Living in the flow
- (25:02) – Extra grace required
- (30:36) – Be a gift
- (32:27) – Spiritual Economics
Do you want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created? We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle, a vibrant membership community rich in opportunities for personal transformation and our collective awakening. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle. This winter consider joining us for the Set On Fire Virtual Retreat from December 30 to January 2 – end 2020 powerfully and enter 2021 creatively, lolawright.com/set-on-fire-retreat/
You can follow Lola Wright, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com.
Chicago born and built, Lola grew up in wealth and privilege, yet always sensed something was missing. She sought out aliveness and freedom in music, immersing herself in the hip hop and house music scenes of 90s Chicago. After finding herself on her own at 23, as the mother of two young children, she became determined to create a new experience.
Lola is an ordained minister with a gift for weaving together the mystical and material, she served for many years as the CEO of Bodhi Center, an organization committed to personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community-building.
Theme music by independent producer Trey Royal.
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Transcript
[00:00:01] At a time when protests are sweeping the nation, here’s what I know. Your purpose is your protest. It is the most radical thing you can bring to the world. My name is Lola Wright and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is a wake up call, a road map back to your holy purpose, an invitation to set fire to the box you’ve been living in and watch it burn.
[00:00:39] Wow, what an amazing start to this podcast. You know, we kicked off this podcast at the height of a presidential election and arguably the most important presidential election in modern history. You know, we kicked it off with this invitation into your purpose as your protest.
[00:01:01] And as we wrap up this first month of intention, I want to just distill down why that is so important for me to invite you into. You know, I fundamentally believe that the source of all suffering is a sense of disconnection from our native state. We have lost our way. We have forgotten the essence, the truth, the name and nature of who we are here to be. And so we have so many of us walking on the planet in a kind of sleepy state. You know, doing what we think is right, doing what we were told is a measurement of success, fitting into someone else’s box of our life. So I just want to reiterate this notion that your purpose is a protest is so true for me. I have said yes over and over and over again to who I am here to be. And most often it’s not been very popular. Only recently, actually, has it started to be appreciated. And so that in and of itself is a great gift. For you and I to have to source our own sense of assuredness is a step in consciousness that never goes backwards. You know, one of my early teachers, a brilliant, brilliant woman by the name of Jennifer Hadley, said to me, “Consciousness never contracts, it always expands.” And so you and I are here as intrinsically connected organisms to this vast universe, which is always expanding.
[00:02:44] Any sense of contraction is only in service of expansion. And you could look at a birthing person’s body. It literally contracts to expand a greater experience of life. And so that’s true of you and me. We are never going backwards. We are always moving forward, and it is non-linear. So when you say yes to the big idea of life as you, when you begin to awaken to any ways in which you are misaligned with your current parameters, your current state, you know, there are two things that primarily happen.
[00:03:26] One is a surge of energy, a surge of aliveness. You know when you are in alignment, when you are doing the thing that you are here to be and do, time and space disappears. You do the thing without any exchange of money because you are paid in energy. You are paid in aliveness. You are paid in the sense of being on fire.
[00:03:50] Now, we want to make sure that we don’t set any unconscious agreements that we don’t want or need money. The reality is we are living inside of a system that is mobilized largely by the exchange of this thing called money. So avail yourself to it. That is always my work. That is my practice to expand my capacity to receive acknowledgment in the form of energy that we call money for the gifts and the brilliance that comes forward as me. And I want that for you also. So two things happen as I said. You’ll begin to notice as you step into a greater sense of purpose that you notice your energy rise. It’s like, oh, yes. And you may also begin to notice all of the fears, all of the criticisms, all of the inner critic and the external critic as its projection, all of the judgments, all the limitations begin to surface also. This is the nature of creation. When you and I say yes to the big idea of life as us, and we begin to move and mobilize towards that, all of our false and limiting beliefs, all of our, you know, that little voice that will hijack your aliveness, that stuff comes up.
[00:05:18] If you resist it, you will create more suffering. For me, the great gift in noticing it coming up, is it’s here as an informant.
[00:05:29] It’s here as my ally. It’s here to indicate to me, where am I still believing that I’m not capable? I can’t count on myself. I need to be rescued. I need the validation or affirmation of the external world to ensure that I really am on the right path. If you and I get the validation from the external world, that’s just like gravy. But when you and I are fully and wholly aligned with who we’re here to be, that is enough. And as someone who identifies as a kind of futurist, as someone who is oftentimes making choices in my life that are for many before perhaps it makes sense.
[00:06:18] I oftentimes don’t get affirmation. You know, I’ve made choices in my life where I’ve just gotten massive amounts of criticism. But something in my gut knew that it was right. And I didn’t even have to understand why that was the case. And so, you know, I want to talk a little bit about this thing called knowledge of self. If you are stepping into your purpose, and I just want to reiterate, you’re stepping into your purpose as a protest. And the reason as a protest is because you and I are swimming in social agreements that are based on consideration and circumstance, which is not entirely bad.
[00:07:01] It’s just consciousness is always expanding. The communities that you have circled in or cycled in in the past have been the out picturing of a previous state of consciousness. So that which is occurring in this now moment, independent of what it is, is the out picturing of where you were sometime before.
[00:07:28] There’s sort of like a catch up or a delayed response in the material realm. So the way that the creative process works is we’re cultivating an inner world. We’re cultivating a relationship with our higher self. We’re connecting with the spirit of life within us. We’re actually turning our attention entirely away from the Earth plane. You know, that is in part the practice of meditation. It is both to bring us into the now moment, but the now moment as the still small voice within you, the secret place of the most high, you know, the high altar of consciousness, as we might say. And so as we cultivate a greater sense of self, we can turn entirely away from the circumstances and conditions of our lives so that we can connect with our intuition, with the spirit of life within us. And so your purpose as a protest is a disruption from seeking validation from the external world as the source of your well-being. And so what we are inviting ourselves into is a more intimate relationship with our inner world as a profound, intuitive guide. You know, for some, this might be referred to as a higher power, as the presence of God. As you know, many of you know, I really steer clear from the word God in a lot of my work, in large part because I feel most of us have not deconstructed that word. And so we’re living inside of a paradigm that is not our own. We haven’t had a reclamation, as we talked about with Bishop Yvette Flunder, to really sort of have a native cosmology of belief or thought. So what I’m inviting us into is a radical act of inquiry into our purpose, which becomes our protest because we are affirming the truth about and for ourselves. We are getting wildly curious around what brings us alive. And we are cutting the cords and releasing our attachment to safety as secured by external validation and affirmation.
[00:10:05] So take a deep breath with that.
[00:10:07] Just begin to notice how much of your life is pacified, how much of your emotional well-being is pacified through external stimulus. And look, enjoy the external world, enjoy this world of form, enjoy this earth plane, enjoy this dimension of reality. Just realize it’s just an aspect of life. It’s just not the all of life, you know, this experience of presidential politics or, you know, these binary structures that create so much suffering is really because we become overly identified. You know, I recently saw a post that Sam Harris did and it was a critique of identity politics. And it’s just so annoying to me, quite frankly, because it’s an oversimplification of existence.
[00:11:02] So you have an identity. There’s great value in us becoming deeply related to our identity on this planet. You know, there are implications to me as a white cisgender straight woman. And whatever your identity is, there are implications to that.
[00:11:26] Where suffering begins is when we think that is the all of who we are and when we only relate to one another through identity. So know your identity, form your identity, create and craft your identity, claim your identity and understand that you are not only your identity. You actually have a kind of cosmic identity. And that’s what I want to invite you to find. I believe that your fierce and loving self is found in that secret place of the most high within you. And when you connect with that and then you walk in and as your material identity on the planet, you become a provocation. You become a disruption. You become an invitation into greater freedom. And that is ultimately what I believe you and I are here to be. An invocation, an invitation into greater freedom. So remember, there are two things that oftentimes come up when you begin to claim your purpose and do so in a way that really is a protest that isn’t about ensuring the safety of your parents.
[00:12:41] It’s really about, you know, because so much of our life is really about trying to reclaim or rediscover or reform or form at all, because in some cases we had no relationship with our parents.
[00:12:55] We can be these sort of little kids that are just trying to get some kind of external validation and love. So again, claiming your purpose as your protest is a radical act because it is a return to your native state. As I oftentimes say, you have pressed into this dimension of reality at this time in the evolution of humanity to be a holy contribution. And you and I are each here to find out and determine, discover what that is. So our aliveness may go up and then our fear may go up.
[00:13:34] We may begin to have a greater sense of sensitivity to criticism.
[00:13:43] You want to be more alive. You want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created. We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle. This is an affirming and radical space that will gather weekly on demand or live, whatever works best for your life. For more information on how you can engage in our circle, visit lolawright.com/our-circle. I’d love to have you with us.
[00:14:27] Many years ago, when I began to start radically saying yes to the wholeness and the holiness of me, when I began to disconnect from an idea that something was inherently wrong with me, and again, I didn’t get that. I can’t tell you the moment I picked that one up. It’s really the soup that we’re swimming in. That something’s inherently wrong and that we have to constantly be in a state of fixing it. It’s why we love religion. It’s a place that we can get saved. And of course, the question then must be asked, saved from what? And I would say you are the source of your own salvation. And I’m not talking about you as your ego. I’m talking about your essence again, this still small voice, this intuitive nature. You can connect with that indwelling presence as you and feel a sense of deep, deep restoration. So many years ago when I started untangling this inherited cultural agreement that something was inherently wrong with me, I remember meeting a teacher. And I walked into a class one evening and this was at Bodhi. This was probably 15, maybe 16 years ago. And this particular human being, an incredible man named Charles, said to me, “You know, how’s it going?” And I said, “It’s going really great.”
[00:16:00] And I was like, I could feel my fear when saying that, like, oh, the other shoe is about to drop, Charles. And it was this sort of tentative enthusiasm.
[00:16:17] And do you know that experience when life is starting to hum along, you’re experiencing good and greater good. You know that you’re expanding into a greater idea of who you’re here to be. And then fear is just like right there ready to take you out.
[00:16:31] You know, I oftentimes talk about like a thermostat. You know, in our house, we have these very sophisticated thermostats that are digital. And you know, have all kinds of underutilized functions that can really determine a set point. So it says, you know, don’t ever go above. I keep my house sort of warm. Please don’t judge me. But I keep my house like about 71. Now, I was raised in the house that was like 64, put a sweater on, get your life together. I don’t know. But 71 feels very comfortable for me. So the set point, 71. And if you start to creep above seventy one.
[00:17:09] We’re going to bring you back down.
[00:17:12] And my guess is that as you expand into your purpose, as you expand into a higher and greater and vaster idea of who you’re here to be, you’ll hit a little ceiling.
[00:17:27] And as Charles said to me that evening, he said, “Wow, Lola, that’s incredible. It sounds like you’re really expanding. Like I can feel your joy. I can feel your aliveness. I can feel the enthusiasm, as you.
[00:17:44] I said, so here’s my one tip, and I was like, please give it to me. Keep expanding your container for good.
[00:17:55] The greatest mistake that human beings make in this process is retaining a previous container that we’ve outgrown.
[00:18:08] And when we don’t expand our container with our growth and evolution, the good that we’re calling in spills out and over because we have not reconstituted ourselves.
[00:18:21] And so that’s really the opportunity. When fear comes up, it’s not to say, what the heck, get out of here.
[00:18:29] I can’t afford fear. I’m expanding. Geez.
[00:18:35] No, that’s all right. That’s actually just what happens in this process.
[00:18:42] So if you know that. If you know that the inner critic is going to get activated. If you know that the ego is going to flare up. If you know that your previous cosmology of belief and constellation of thought is going to be challenged, then breathe with it. This is where, again, we move into our loose knees. We sway our hips. This is where some good music. Let me loosen this energy because I’m starting to get really serious. It’s starting to feel like if I grip and brace and hang on tightly to this life that I’m committed to creating, if I don’t do that, I’ll lose it. And paradoxically, the more we grip, the more we strangle this purpose that we’re on the planet to experience, the more easily it slips through our fingers. So this is where breath is your friend. This is why I include some kind of immersive experience in all of my work so that we can not just live at the level of the thinking mind. You know, we’re always going to explore this practice of moving your body. And moving your body lives both in your personal domain and in the collective domain. So I literally mean, move your body, get up. You know, whether it’s yoga, whether it’s a brisk walk. But there is great value in elevating your heart rate. It actually creates a shift in consciousness. So move your physical body, your literal body, and then metaphorically move your body, get into action. Don’t just stay in this esoteric realm of existence. You are in this dimension of reality to have an embodied experience. And, you know, very often the practice of consciousness or, you know, Spirituality or Metaphysics can live very cognitively. And I’m going to ask us to be in an embodied practice, an integrated existence with that which we want to create. So move your body, provoke your mind, and this is where we draw the distinction between the thinking mind or the neurotic mind and your conscious mind, your divine mind, your infinite mind, your creative mind, and then awaken the soul. And we’ll get to this as we continue on this journey together. In my experience, we bypass the soul all the time. The soul is our houser of beliefs. It is the storehouse of our thoughts, our memories, our opinions. And we like to go from this very material existence to this very, very spiritually bound and connected and, you know, get the sage out and you know, get your smoothie.
[00:21:40] And, you know, I mean, it’s all fun and good, but we have to do the work to mine the gap between those two things. We have to do the work to mine the gap between the body and the mind. So this is where as we begin to say yes to our purpose as our protest, we begin to pay attention to where our homework. Our homework is to pay attention to where our energy goes up, what brings us alive, and to create more and more of that in our lived experience. You know, as I’ve designed this new evolution of my work, I’m being incredibly intentional about what I say yes to. I don’t want to be in a suffering relationship with this lived experience. I don’t want to be in a suffering relationship with my clients, with my family, with my community. I want to have an experience where I’m living in the flow. There’s an expansive and free engagement of energy. Your purpose is not a job title. Your purpose is likely more a quality of being. Like I am here as a kind of provocateur, as a loving disruption to the sleepy state of humanity. That’s my purpose. And every time I resist it, I create suffering for myself. And every time I judge myself for the holy gifts that have been placed in and on me, I create static in my life. You have ways of being that are native to you.
[00:23:21] Now, they may feel very distant because it may be that you’ve organized your life inside of so much social consideration that there is a lot to untangle. The place from which I am speaking around this topic of purpose as protest is like 20 plus years in the making consciously.
[00:23:47] You know, I’ve been in my own examination around who I am here to be as an embodied portal of love for 20 plus years.
[00:24:04] So if this is a new inquiry for you. If this is like.. if your awakening is relatively young, be patient with yourself.
[00:24:18] You know, I oftentimes have said, particularly during this pandemic, we are all extra grace required. That’s a context that one of my teachers, Jim Dethmer, brought to Bodhi when we were there. And, you know, for those of you are just catching up, you know, I had the opportunity to lead this incredible community for seven years called Bodhi Center and met so many extraordinary people while I was there. And really, I would say was the apprenticeship for who I’m here to be on the planet. And that’s the thing. You could really look at your life, and you could ask yourself, how is everything that I have done up to this now moment in service of my purpose? How has it all been a training ground? You know, like, you know, a couple episodes ago, I talked about this idea of looking to my mom, looking to my dad, looking to my brother, looking to my husband, who from my perspective had all identified their unique contribution to the planet. Like their, you know, in old school terms, we would call it like your ministry.
[00:25:26] And really what that means is just how are you here to serve? How are you here to be a contribution? And so what is the contribution that you are uniquely here to make? And at the time when I was spending years at Bank of America, Credit Suisse, at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and any number of banking institutions. Or, you know, Coldwell Banker, Sutler Sothebys. I mean, I have been to all of the places and at the time it really felt like, oh, my gosh, I’m circling the drain. This cannot be what I am here for.
[00:26:03] This is not it.
[00:26:05] And now I look back and I say to myself, I was just being prepared. So wherever you are right now, imagine that you are being prepared for what you are here to be and do.
[00:26:20] And that could be preparing yourself to be a channel for forgiveness in your family system. I don’t know. I mean, it could be like you’re presently a hospice nurse and you see over and over and over again the pain that lives in family systems and how, you know, trapped people are in their own righteousness and how much we are robbed of peace in our own being at death and dying because we’ve spent decades being right about our judgments of our family members. I’m just saying, like, what you might realize is, wow, my purpose is actually to be a portal of and for love in these family systems I’m engaging with as a hospice nurse. My purpose is to be a channel, of and for forgiveness and grace in my own family system.
[00:27:15] I do that uniquely. That could be what you’re saying to yourself. What are the qualities, that if you were to do a kind of inventory of your personhood, in your relationships. See, the people around know what you are on the planet for. Like the answers, if you don’t know what you’re on the planet for, they’re very close.
[00:27:39] You know, in my forthcoming book, there’s a whole section on, you know, doing an inquiry within yourself and within your community around the gifts that people experience in relationship with you and how you’re here to offer those up. But again, this is why I have such a reaction to the idea that you and I are flawed or wounded because it is a massive distraction if you have bought into this system that something is inherently wrong with you by virtue of any qualities. You know, even if you’re living inside of a context that says, well, by virtue of being human, there’s something inherently wrong with you, you’re flawed. Oh, my gosh. That is just not the world I live in. That is not the philosophy in which I live. I have resistance to when people say I’m perfectly imperfect. There’s nothing fucking imperfect about you. There’s nothing imperfect about you. You are on a journey. You are in this plane of existence as a kind of earth school. You’re here to have an awakening.
[00:28:47] That’s the whole fucking point. So be graceful with yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you.
[00:28:52] You have had the right and perfect life experiences to form you in a way that you can be a contribution to the human beings that you’re here to serve.
[00:29:02] But when we get in our neurotic state, we have to create things like I’m perfectly imperfect. I’m flawed. I must need something to work on to fix. You know, I said to my client recently. I said, ”You know, I am very different than any work that you may be doing in other modalities because I’m just going to sit here and keep being the voice that reminds you that who you are, that your native state is whole, holy, perfect and complete.”
[00:29:32] I got an email recently from a family member saying, I don’t know why you have to keep saying that. You know, it’s just, you know, it’s just like so dramatic. I mean, why do you have to keep saying we’re whole holy, perfect and complete?
[00:29:44] Well, because there is so much noise suggesting the alternative. So I leave you with this.
[00:29:55] You are here for a right and holy purpose. You have had all of the experiences in this lifetime that have prepared you to move beyond your neurotic navel gazing tendencies, which is not the truth of who you are into a contribution. You’re here to be a gift. You’re here to take an inventory of the blessings that you have and then imagine how you can offer them up to those you’re in relationship with.
[00:30:30] You know, I love gift giving for this very reason. I love looking at what I have and getting wildly creative around how I can offer that up to the people I most love and I am in connection with. Our gifts, our blessings, our resources are distinct and unique for all of us. They are not measured by a net worth statement. They are not measured by your portfolio. They are measured by the richness of your inner life and the greater relationship you have with this indwelling presence, with the secret place of the most high, the more easily accessible the material experiences are for you on this planet. You know, I have spent thousands of hours with people that have tons of money, and what I’ve come to understand is that that is not the source of our happiness. And you could say, OK, really? I mean, who doesn’t know that? Yeah, but we live like it is. You know, there’s a great book called Spiritual Economics that I’ve taught for many times, and many of you are familiar with, and it’s written in some sort of old school language. But if you can listen to the wisdom in it, you’ll hear about just incredible human beings that have lived a life of great generosity and purpose to be a contribution. You are here for more than acquisition. You’re here for more than consumption. You’re here for more than Navel-gazing. The more we begin to realize our intrinsic connection to the lives we interact with and look for the ways we can be a gift for ourselves and for others, freedom is activated. So this week, practice. Practice where you notice your aliveness. Practice noticing where your energy rises.
[00:32:45] Get curious about where you’re being stingy, where you’re holding back, where you’re clenching your fist, where you’re suppressing your enthusiasm from fear.
[00:32:59] Walk down the street dancing. Get weird with it. Move your ever loving body. It will shift you out of a sense of scarcity, lack, limitation into an elevated and ecstatic state of aliveness. Your purpose is your protest, and I am so here for that.
[00:33:24] If you enjoyed this show and would like to receive new episodes as they’re published, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and consider leaving a review in Apple podcasts. Your reviews help others find this show.
[00:33:40] You can follow me @lolapwright on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com. This episode was produced by Dante 32 with theme music from independent music producer Trey Royal.
[00:34:08] Wherever you are right now, imagine that you are being prepared for what you are here to be and do.
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