Hello Enrealed ones!
I have much to share. First, I am working hard to complete my ‘Enrealment Method Audio Course’, which will be available as a download and an interactive course in September. Looking forward to getting all of this material in one cogent and integrated place. Second, I am working on a Book Proposal for my next book: ReBrave: A Blueprint for Individual and Collective Empowerment. In a world that has been highly effective at keeping most of us trapped inside of disempowering paradigms and self-concepts, it is clearer than ever that we MUST find a way to revolutionize a way of being that is truly democratic and inclusive. Not the diversionary version of democracy that we have been fed by self-serving power seekers, but a version that is truly, madly, deeply, honoring of our shared humanity. This is particularly essential now, because humanity is stepping into a time of great challenge, and we are ripe for the picking by elites (and elite-wannabe’s) who will prey on our vulnerability to consolidate power. And, as always, those tyrannies will be packaged as acts of benevolence. If we do not find a way to ReBrave our consciousness, we will not only fail to see through the veils, we will be in no shape to regain our rightful individual and collective sovereignty. ReBraving is our best hope for the co-creation of that world. More to come soon...
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My newest book, Humanifestations: On Truth, Trauma, and Transformation, has launched! Below is a little video we put together of my formally opening a box of books after they arrived. Truly one of my favorite moments on the book writing journey. I wanted to share it with you:
If you are interested, copies of Humanifestations can be ordered at…
Signed copies of Humanifestations (and any of mine or Susan’s Books) can be ordered here, if you are a lover of signed books:
The audio and e-book will be available soon!
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My latest Enrealment Hour podcasts have launched! In the first, Spiritual Counselor Gavriel Strauss and I critically review and examine patriarchal spirituality, discuss the meaningful distinction between a sky-down and feet-up spirituality, differentiate self-avoidant versions of awakening from self-honoring versions, clarify how it is that one can alchemize their localized and expansive threads of consciousness into one purposeful form, and lay down some of the tracks for an Enrealment Method that begins deep within the healing and development of the self, and that moves outward, and inward from there. In an enrealed world, we will no longer Godjectify and glorify so-called holy men. We will be too busy living our spirituality as humanness to waste our time pretending that there is such a thing as an enlightened master. There isn't. It's a delusion forged in the fires of patriarchal dissociation and ambition. And it has held many us back from embodying our own inherent majesty.
Available everywhere you listen to podcasts and on Spotify. Please subscribe and recommend, if it resonates...
In the second podcast, 'Clearing Method' Founder Shauna Quigley and I bring her healing story to the world: her early life traumas, the rise of the 'witness observer' in adolescence, her attempts to spiritual bypass, the return of the witness after becoming a Mother, and the healing method that was then birthed in the heart of her journey. Shauna has found a relatable and revolutionary way to alchemize the witness observer with the healing of our core wounds. This is brilliant stuff, and a model well worth plugging into...
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Here are a few of the ideas that I lean into in Humanifestations:
“There is a big difference between projections and hard-earned wisdom. All too often, people are accused of projecting when they make bold statements about human behavior. And sometimes this is true—our perspective can emanate from our own unresolved issues. We still have a chip on our shoulder, and that chip influences our view. But sometimes, our perspective is a reflection of what we have gleaned from our experiences. Sometimes we have learned a little something from all we have endured. So let’s not turn everyone’s wisdom into a mirror projection game. Because sometimes we are actually seeing through the veils to a truth that demands expression. Sometimes our insights are fully grounded in reality. Sometimes we are seeing things exactly as they are.”
Note: Having been around the spiritual bypass community for some time, it became obvious that one of the ways that they desacralized our inherent (and hard-earned) wisdom was to claim that everything we see in someone else, was a projection. These beliefs likely came into vogue because a variety of gurus and religious figures wanted to be able to get away with things that were unacceptable to the naked eye. The best way to do that was to persuade the sangha, or their parishioners etc., that what they saw was little more than a projection, or a mirror, or something that they had no right to judge. If all else failed, preach forgiveness in an effort to sidestep accountability. In this quote, I invite us back to reality, where some things are surely projections, and where others are as real as real gets.
“All too often, freedom is confused with escape. As in ‘freedom from’ something… freedom from society, freedom from family, freedom from authority. This was my idea of freedom for many years, but then it began to feel like a strangely constricted prison. One where I could only feel free if I was running from or to something. One where I needed a very particular set of circumstances to make me feel safe. And then it occurred to me that I didn’t know a thing about freedom. I had escaped, but I wasn’t free. Because real freedom isn’t an act of rebellion. It’s not a flight of fancy. It’s about finding freedom at the heart of the everything. It’s about feeling free everywhere. Free at last.”
Note: Freedom is an interesting word, often interpreted as something relative. That is, freedom by comparison to that which felt imprisoning. And this can be helpful, but it can also imprison us in a reactive and inherently limited notion of liberation. When I was in my early twenties, freedom meant getting as far away as possible from my toxic family. It meant going into the woods with or without a tent, and being able to finally regulate my nervous system in a safe space. These were essential steps, but as time passed, I have come to believe that freedom really is an inner experience. One where we can feel spacious and liberated, even when we are under difficult circumstances. Not all difficult circumstances, but some. What helped me to reach this place was some combination of clearing emotional debris, and finding my sacred purpose in this lifetime. In other words, expanding my capacity for presence and strengthening my connection to purpose. With more space inside to experience and accommodate reality, and with more clarity as to my path, I found myself more and more buffered from the madness of the world. It was surely there, but there was a sense of internal ease that interfaced with it and made it far less significant. Do you know what I mean? What is freedom for you??
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PATRIARCHAL SPIRITUALITY
Patriarchal Spirituality: Those ungrounded and inhumane “spiritual” models that have been fostered by emotionally armored, self-avoidant men.
These models share some or all of the following beliefs:
• The ego is the enemy of a spiritual life
• The “monkey mind” is the cause of suffering
• Your feelings are an illusion
• Your personal identifications and stories are necessarily false
• Witnessing your pain transforms it
• Your body is a spiritually bankrupt toxic quagmire
• The only real consciousness is an “absolute” and “transcendent” one
• Stillness and silence are THE path
• Isolation is the best way to access “higher states”
• There is no “self”
• Meditation is THE royal road to enlightenment
• Enlightenment actually exists
• Formlessness is superior to form
• The ultimate path is upward and vertical
• Real spirituality exists independent of our humanness
In fact, most of the above is a blatant lie. Here are more accurate hypotheses about the nature of human life:
• A healthy ego is beautifully essential to healthy functioning
• The monkey mind is a reflection of the monkey heart (the unresolved emotional
body)
• Many of our identities and stories are fundamental to who we are, where we have
been, why we are here
• Healing our pain transforms it; watching it is only a preliminary step
• Our bodies are our spiritual temples
• The only “real” consciousness is one that integrates all that we are and all that this
life is
• Stillness and silence are only one path; many people prefer movement, sound, and
expression
• There is no “higher” state (we aren’t birds). But inter-personal connection may be
the best way to access deepened states
• There is a magnificent self; the work is to align it with your sacred purpose, not to
deny it altogether
• Meditation is not THE royal road; it’s one road, and it is not any more effective than
embodied movement and emotional release as clarification and transformation tools
• Enlightenment does not exist; Enrealment does. (Be real now.) And it’s a relative
experience, changing form as our self and our life changes form
• We are glorious form, and we are here to inform our humanness
• If there is an “ultimate path,” it’s downward, rooted, and horizontal
• There is no distinction between our spirituality and our humanness
The wool has been pulled over our eyes. Men who were too unhealthily egoic to admit
that they couldn’t deal with their humanness, their feelings, their traumas, had to find
a system that smoke-screened their avoidance. They found it. It’s called
“Enlightenment.” It’s also called “Spiritual Mastery.” And it usually involves leaving
the world, in one form or another. This way, they can convince themselves and others
that they have mastered the one true path.
In fact, Enlightenment is just a construct that is designed to avoid the multi-faceted
nature of reality. In fact, they are mastering nothing. They are merely fleeing their
fragmentation, their confusion, and the fact that they don’t know how to find their
center in the heart of the world. Don’t be fooled. They know less about reality than
day-to-day people. They know less about reality than those who live from their hearts.
They are camouflaging their unresolved trauma beneath a ‘realization mask.’
What we need now are models that lead us back into our hearts, into relatedness, into
a deep and reverential regard for the self. Those models may invite us to detach
temporarily in an effort to see ourselves through a different lens, but they will not
leave us out there, floating into the eternal emptiness and calling that a life.
Detachment is a tool—it’s NOT a life.
The models we need will then invite us back into our bodies, back into our feelings,
back into connection with our marvelous planet and with each other. No more
“enlightened” masters sitting in caves while the women of the village bring them
food. If you can’t find your transformation in the village, you haven’t found shit. The
new models will invite us to integrate what we find “out there” with who we are “in
here.” They will invite us to embody the now, rather than to pretend we
have found it in the heart of our dissociation.
It’s time to co-create spiritual models that begin, and end, within our wondrous
humanness. It’s not “out there,” dear friends. It’s right here, inside these aging body
temples.
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Blessings to you and our shared path, Jeff