Rise Above the Suffering Loop

“There is so much investment made in your brokenness and your woundedness. There is so much investment made in the drama of the human condition. How will you disrupt that in 2021?” – Lola Wright

After a year like 2020, there is a temptation to circle the drain of survival. What if you and I unhooked from our need to allow external circumstances to guide our moods? What if we got more curious about the truth of ourselves? What could be possible? We are here to disrupt the suffering loop. Let’s tap into our Fierce & Loving in 2021.

2020 was a year of tipping points – from a global pandemic to toxic politics to an awakening around the hundreds of years of racial injustice in the United States. The unworkability that has existed in human consciousness is beginning to surface. This is good news. While awakening is upon us, human beings remain largely pushed by pain, and you may even find yourself attempting to make resolutions, goals, intentions, and commitments based on a kind of intolerant state.

On this episode of Find Your Fierce & Loving, I’m asking you to step out of the loop of suffering. As one of my great mentors and friends, Michael Beckwith says, “pain pushes and vision pulls.”

We need to get curious about a life pulled by vision rather than a life driven by adrenalized goals, commitments, and resolutions. Join me. Let’s do this New Year a bit differently. Let’s tap into your fierce and loving.

• (00:41) – Pulled by vision
• (08:21) – Cosmic perfection
• (13:39) – Manufactured suffering
• (22:18) – Level up your community
• (26:46) – Disrupt the inertia
• (29:25) – You are glorious

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 engagement and transformation. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle.

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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Podcast episode production by Dante32

intro [00:00:01] Personal transformation and collective awakening involve being the most alive, brilliant, inspired, creative on fire version of yourself. A version that is not consistent with the status quo. My name is Lola Wright and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is a wake up call, a roadmap back to your holy purpose, an invitation to set fire to the box you’ve been living in and watch it burn. 

[00:00:41] OK, here we are, it’s January of twenty twenty one. And we could really easily kick off this podcast episode with a kind of aggressive exploration of your big, juicy vision for 2021. And I’m reluctant to do that. I’m reluctant to do that for a variety of reasons. In my experience human beings come out the gate really strong in the month of January, and our capacity to sustain that level of intensity is not there. We, you know, get so adrenalized. You cannot maintain an adrenalized state for a prolonged period of time. So I want to give us a little bit of a different context for the kickoff to this calendar year. 

[00:01:47] First of all, let’s take it back a moment. What occurred in twenty twenty? We began to have a mass awakening in consciousness. All of the breakdowns that we perceived from a global pandemic, to toxic politics, to an awakening around the hundreds of years of racial injustice in the United States of America. There seemed to be a kind of tipping point, an awakening in the consciousness of humanity. We began to feel intolerant of circumstances and conditions. That is good news. As one of my great mentors and friends, Michael Beckwith says, pain pushes and vision pulls. Human beings are largely pushed by pain, and you may even find yourself there in January of twenty twenty-one. You may be making resolutions, goals, intentions, commitments based on a kind of intolerant state. There is nothing wrong with that. Often times we need that tension. We need that kind of power to move us into a new direction. But you can’t do that forever. Like being motivated, mobilized by pain becomes exhausting and fatiguing. 

[00:03:34] So when you realize that there’s an alternative that you could actually be pulled by vision, we then begin to get curious as to what that might look like. Now understand a life pulled by vision is very different than a life driven by adrenalized goals and commitments and resolutions. Oftentimes, our goals, our resolutions, our intentions are rooted in scarcity. Very frequently we look at our lives and we say, what’s the problem here? And I’m going to solve for that. So before we go down that road, because I’m not your girl for that, 

[00:04:21] I want to reacquaint you with the essence of what I’m inviting you into. And it starts with this. Who you are is an individualized manifestation of the universe, you are literally a channel of and for love, joy, peace, harmony, vitality, wholeness, creativity, order, balance, beauty. That exists right where you are without you having to effort towards anything. It literally is your native state. And so in the spirit of kicking off 2021, what we actually could say is that there’s far less for us to work towards and far more for us to undo. And that has been the gift of twenty twenty. All of the unworkability that has existed in human consciousness is beginning to surface. And as one of my other great teachers and friends, Jim Dethmer, says, you cannot shift what you cannot accept. So we are in a sobriety of sorts. We are in a kind of spiritual maturation. And in order for us to continue to support the evolution of humanity, I believe we must do this New Year thing differently. 

[00:06:01] Again, there is something that lives at the very center of your being, there is a unique purpose of and for your life. You have pressed into this time and space to be a holy contribution. And you know what that is? It might be deep down in you. It may feel difficult to access. It may feel like long lost as a dream. But it’s in you and it is accessible at any given moment. See, you are living in three primary dimensions of reality. You’re not just this meat suit. You are so much more than this meat suit. 

[00:06:53] So we’re going to spend the month of January speaking radical truth about you to you. That has been one of the greatest recalibrating practices for me in my entire existence. Most of our lives, we are inundated with messaging that is geared towards your woundedness, your brokenness and your vulnerability. And I don’t mean vulnerability from like a clean and clear place. I mean, like we’re getting in on your like, you know, how can we get in below the belt, so to speak. Most of our programming and messaging is inside of something’s wrong here and we have to fix that. Which is precisely why I say I don’t want to start the year with you that way. I don’t want you to start the year that way. 

[00:07:48] Who you are as you are, is a glorious demonstration of this universe. So let’s reacquaint ourselves with that. If, in fact, you are this perfect expression of life itself, if in fact there is a unique and holy purpose in you that only you can bring to this world, then I want to keep speaking radical truth about you to you so you wake up to that. Ernest Holmes, another great philosopher teacher, not a friend, died long before I pressed into this dimension of reality. But, you know, he has said many times in different iterations, humanity has learned all it needs to learn from suffering. And you could say to yourself, then, why do we keep suffering? We’re in a kind of loop. We’re in a pattern where we keep reinjuring ourselves. 

[00:08:54] So that’s my desire for you and for me in twenty twenty one, that we step out of that loop of suffering, that we step into the high altar of consciousness, the secret place of the most high, and not only in our meditation practice. Like what would it look like for you and I to have an integrated existence where we realize the potentiality that exists in every cell of our being at the level of body, mind and soul? 

[00:09:27] It would completely alter reality. And so here, here, here’s where we are, we remain in a global pandemic. We remain in a toxic political climate. We remain in an incredibly vulnerable economic state. We remain in a series of conditions that has a gross economic wealth gap. We remain in a country if you’re in the United States and probably where you are to because anti-blackness is a global virus. We remain in a state of racial injustice. Like all of the things that occurred in twenty twenty  in terms of circumstances and conditions are still here in twenty twenty-one. 

[00:10:17] So who will you be in the face of that? Llike we can have the external world dictates our reality or we can look at the external circumstances and conditions, understand the place from which they come, which is fundamentally a dualistic framework, a deep addiction to separation, an acute attachment to individualism. All of the social ills that exist today are rooted in this seduction of separation. 

[00:10:57] All of the ills that exist in the human condition today could be rectified in a relative nanosecond if we chose to accelerate human awakening, the awakening of human consciousness and realize our oneness with all of existence the way we are interrelated, interconnected, and then honor the wholeness that is who we each are. The extent to which we realize our wholeness, the perfection, and I don’t mean our human perfection, I mean our cosmic perfection, the extent to which we realize our divinity is the extent to which we can realize greater peace, abundance, love, joy, harmony, wholeness on the planet. 

[00:11:52] So I just am curious, in twenty twenty-one, if you and I unhooked from our addictive tendencies to look to external circumstances and conditions to guide our moods, and we got more curious in the truth about ourselves, what then could be possible? Perhaps you’ve heard this expression hurt people, hurt people. You know, wounded people, caused wounds. Now, of course, we understand that we are each, you know, completely capable of interpreting whatever comes at us in whatever way we choose. Like, you know, things are going to happen in life. You’re going to get your feelings hurt. Now what you choose to do with that, who you become in, that is entirely up to you. 

Our Circle [00:12:54] 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. 

[00:13:39] You know, we talked about the practice of forgiveness in the month of December. I have done deep and profound forgiveness work in my life. I have had experiences in my life that I think most human beings would say, no, I’m sorry that right there is beyond capacity to forgive. And yet I interact with people all day long that have experiences that they really do believe are inexcusable. And I look at the circumstances, I say, I don’t get it. I don’t get it, but when you’re caught in the delusion of your humanity, you get your feelings hurt, you believe you are your opinions, and you’re addicted to your preferences. That’s not what I’m talking about. 

[00:14:27] When I say imagine twenty twenty-one could be a year that really accelerates the awakening of humanity that occurred in twenty twenty. The deep, deep discomfort that we manufactured. We manufactured a significant amount of discomfort in twenty twenty.  So much of the suffering, if not all of the suffering that exists in the human condition. And by the way, this is true at the level of the personal and this is true at the level of the collective. You can look in your life and say, I understand how I have created the suffering that I experience. Remember, there’s a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is inevitable, suffering is entirely based on interpretation. Now, suffering is largely a part of the human condition, but when you realize that your humanity is an aspect of your being, not the entirety of your being, you do not have to remain addicted to suffering. Most human beings are addicted to suffering. And there is so much good material to suffer with today. So the question is, what will you do to keep your mind right? 

[00:15:50] If you indulge your thinking mind, your unconscious mind, the one, the ego construct, the identity that loves to story write, that loves to loop in its wounded ness and brokenness, you’re going to have a particular experience. But when you can transcend, rise above the suffering loop, new choices become available. That’s what I’m creating for myself in twenty twenty-one and that’s what I want to invite you into in twenty twenty-one. Independent of circumstances and conditions in the world and in your personal experience, you can create something more than what meets the eye. Hey, look, if I had, you know, had my circumstances and conditions be the reality that carried forward, I would be in bad shape. And I had to get to the point where I was like, no, hell no. Hell no. Is this going to be my perpetual reality? No, no. And sometimes in life, you have to just be like, no, I do not accept this. 

[00:17:08] You know, I love to practice the art of affirmative prayer. The kind of prayer that has been deeply, deeply transformational for me, the non-religious style of prayer, and it’s really about aligning yourself with your wholeness. Realizing that you are part of this mystical reality, and you are not bound by your false and limiting beliefs. You are not bound by your family agreements. It’s a way to recalibrate your existence. 

[00:17:41] And for me, one of the most powerful parts of the practice of affirmation is denials. I deny that that set of circumstances has any, like, dominant power over me. You know, I told you when I brought my kids home March 13th from bedside Brooklyn, and I said, look, I don’t know how long this is going to last. Something is happening here. It was very clear, like on March 13th when I flew them home, we were in the midst of something none of us had ever experienced. And the only guidance I gave them is you will have to choose over and over and over again who you are going to be in the midst of this. In the midst of this nonsense, because really much of what occurred in twenty twenty was really just straight up nonsense. There were a million ways that we could have managed circumstances and conditions differently from our political landscape to our public health landscape to our economic landscape, to our education landscape. I mean, it’s actually quite funny. Certainly has had devastating impact, and that is not funny, but there’s something like absurdly comical about the human condition that is addicted to suffering. Holy shit. 

[00:19:07] Like if I have one request of myself and a view in twenty twenty-one is lay down the fucking suffering. You are not here for that. Let me tell you what you and I are here for. You actually are here to live a glorious on fire existence. Long before a fall and redemption theology existed, a creationist paradigm which basically said you are an original blessing. Your life can be that of play and joy and freedom and possibility. And then something happened in the human condition where we got looped in, locked in with the grind. 

[00:19:53] I’m at a point in my life where if you don’t want to create joyfully, I have no interest in creating with you. If the way that you organize your existence is inside of struggle. Bye. I will love you and I will leave you alone. I have very clear boundaries these days, and those boundaries include an orientation, a predisposition, and a commitment to freedom, to joy, to peace, to aliveness, to creativity and collaboration, and not as a spiritual bypass. I’m not asking you to take on a kind of positivity bias such that you become like, you know, a fragile flower that has zero resilience. In fact, flowers are incredibly resilient, they can move through all kinds of season changes, all kinds of conditions. I’m not talking about your fragility. I’m saying, hey, I’m here to lay down suffering, I’m here to live a fierce and loving and fabulous existence because that is my birthright and it is yours, too. 

[00:21:11] So whatever family agreements that you come into twenty twenty-one with, whatever cultural agreements you come into twenty twenty-one with, whatever economic agreements you come in to, 2021 with, whatever religious agreements you come in to twenty twenty-one with, whatever educational agreements you come in to twenty twenty-one with, whatever relational agreements you’ve come into twenty twenty-one with. You better be clear. Do they work for you? Because if they are inherited agreements that you are not a whole body resounding, yes with. Rest assured, you will experience suffering. And sure, we could take the position like that’s part of your growth. That’s part of your journey. That’s part of your edge. And, yes, it can be. But some of us are addicted to our suffering, Yeah. I have no interest in it, I really don’t, I really don’t, I have zero, I have just I have compassion for it. But I’m not going to hang out with you there. 

[00:22:18] So when I think about, like, what has amplified or leveled up, because here’s the thing, that’s the game I’m playing. I understand the consciousness is always expanding, and if I am a portal of consciousness, then I too have the opportunity to expand. And I would like my expansion to be one that is inspired. And in order for me to level up, to expand, to vibrate at the frequency that I am a resonant match for, I’m going to surround myself with human beings that call me forward. 

[00:23:02] I think community is one of the most powerful paradigms in the human experience. And I think you got to get really honest with yourself, do the relationships in your life bring you alive or do they weigh you down? I have gone through many, many periods of time in my life where I had to love you and leave you alone. 

[00:23:28] You’ve heard me talk about times in my life where I was dating and it became very clear that the three primary friends I was in relationship with were constantly in collusion with me around the inadequacies of the people we were dating. I had to cut those relationships off. Because they weren’t serving me and they weren’t serving them. If there’s something that you desire in your life, make sure that you’re surrounded by partners. Possibility partners, people who are holding you high, because when you forget, who are you going to call on? 

[00:24:09] I’m not trying to be around folks that, you know, can’t hold the high watch when I forget. One of the gifts of my partnership with my husband, Nathan, is that usually when I am forgetting who I am. When I am circling the drain of existence. Looped in and locked in on my suffering, which gratefully happens very infrequently, but when it does and it does who are you going to call on? Who is in your back pocket? Because most relationships in the human experience thrive on drama. Most relationships in the human experience are rooted in competition. 

[00:25:06] So in the month of January, our theme is speak radical truth about yourself to yourself. Become increasingly skilled at saying what’s true about you. You get to say and if you don’t know what’s true about you, guess what society will tell you, your family will tell you, your job will tell you, your partner will tell you, your kids will tell you, your neighbors will tell you, the TV will tell you, social media will tell you. 

[00:25:36] Are you OK with those messages? Do those messages work for you? You want to be real clear that the messages you’re swimming in are in service of your aliveness, of your bigness, of your boldness, of your fierce and loving presence. You are needed now on the planet, twenty twenty-one is your year. Why? Because you get to say. You get to say. 

[00:26:13] You’re not here by accident or coincidence, be highly discerning around the community you keep if you do not have access to conscious community and like minded people that are calling you forward. Go find some. 

[00:26:30] I’m happy I’m happy to have you join me in Our Circle. I know the power and potency of relationships that speak life into me. There is so much investment made in your brokenness, in your woundedness, there is so much investment made in the drama of the human condition, how will you disrupt that in twenty twenty-one? 

[00:27:07] Are you skilled to be able to see what’s happening in the world because I’m not asking you to disassociate. I’m not asking you to deny the lived experience of humanity. We are in a global pandemic. We are in a profoundly unjust economic experience. We continue to have racial injustice baked into our society. Politics isn’t changing overnight because of a new president. There is massive temptation, seduction, invitation and investment in you and I circling the drain of survival, of suffering. That’s not what twenty twenty-one is here for, for you. You are here to disrupt that inertia, you are here to tap into your fierce and loving, independent of all that nonsense, so much nonsense in the human condition. 

[00:28:30] You know, when I look at sacred texts, you know, I love, I’ve been talking about this a lot lately because there are these sort of scriptures that have become almost like adages in our culture. Devil get ye behind me. Perhaps you’re familiar with that one. Maybe you heard your grandmother or someone in your world say that. Metaphysically what does that mean? Nonsense. Get em back. I’m not here for that. False and limiting beliefs out of the way, please. I’m not here for that. But again, if you don’t know the truth of who you are, believe me, there are plenty of people that will tell you. And again, you better be aligned with those messages because they will create your reality. 

[00:29:25] So let me leave you with this, I would like to tell you who you are. You are a glorious demonstration of this universe. You are the presence of all that is. The infinite is nearer than your breath and vaster than your being. You are not abundant, you are abundance. The presence of peace resides in you and as you. Joy is your name and your nature, freedom is your birthright. 

[00:29:59] When you hear me say that about you, what do you notice in your body? Do you notice resistance, do you notice repreve? Do you notice cynicism or sarcasm? Do you notice a tendency to understand that conceptually but not feel that in your body? 

[00:30:24] You are glorious. And the extent to which you realize that not as a concept or an idea, but the extent to which you realize that as a shift in consciousness, your entire reality will alter. I have managed, I have mastered, I have navigated and moved through this past twelve months. Of massive transition, much of which had nothing to do with the state of the world. I have navigated all of the transition of my life over the last year and quite frankly, my entire existence tapping into that reality of truth. When the world wants to tell you otherwise, what do you lean on? What’s in your back pocket. 

Outro [00:31:25] 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. 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 Dante32 with theme music from independent music producer Trey Royal.