Ep #137: Diving into the Big Water

There are some episodes of The Art School Podcast where I know in advance the topic, the content. I know what I want to say. I’ve known for months. I have more topics outlined in a notebook overflowing with ideas than I will ever get to.

And there are other times when there’s just something that feels like it really wants to be said; something that I hope is exactly what you are needing to hear. And today’s episode is of the latter category.

And perhaps this will seem out of the blue but hang with me and you’ll understand more. Here is the message. That something in you that has been with you for as long as you can remember, that is real. That is valid. That is big. It’s sacred. It’s profound. It’s holy. And let me say again, it is real.

And your life will change profoundly. You will be transformed if you allow yourself to surrender to that greater, more profound vision for your life. So, if you feel like you’ve been running around like a hamster on a wheel or in circles, even if you’re dinging every one of your goals and it looks great on paper from the outside in, but you don’t feel like you’ve touched the essence of that potential that’s been inside of you, of that dream, of that vision, of that knowing, that doesn’t mean it’s not meant for you and that doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen.

I just returned from a week-long advanced meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza and I had a lot of time to look at my mind and my process up close and personal. This episode, I’ll share a couple of those insights relevant to this message as well as another message for you. So, I hope you enjoy this episode.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I just got back from Mexico, from that week-long, and I can’t sum it up and it doesn’t fit into a neat conversation about, “How was it?” Oh my gosh, that’s such a hard answer. I do want to share a couple insights from it though which are in no way a summary.

I’m still processing and integrating myself and also recording this for you now before I head to Iowa to meet up with my family there and spend some time with my entire family on my parents’ farm in Northern Iowa. So, looking forward to that reunion as well. So, my mind is really struggling to create some sort of pithy summary for you of what this week-long retreat was like.

Oftentimes, we meditated at least eight hours, sometimes nine – I lost track. I stopped keeping track or trying to keep track – a day. One morning, we had a meditation that started at four and it went for over five hours. And that day ended at 8:30 with other meditations in between.

And again, I hesitate to summarize it because I feel like nothing in summary will come close to doing justice to the experience. And I don’t want to do that to myself and I also don’t want to do a disservice to you and just, for the sake of being rushed, try to convey something that is going to be an inaccurate representation.

But I do feel like the message that I feel compelled to share today comes from that time, comes from the depth of that experience and the profound nature of that experience, and also a little backstory, it comes, arises from conversations, including one I had today with a woman that I’m working with as a private client, who has worked with me in the Art School. And it comes on the heels too of having returned and I’m just starting to read through some of the reviews.

We send out a survey for Art School participants and so I’m reading the submissions that we’ve received back so far. And I’m so struck and in awe and grateful that this is one of the things that arose, is how deeply people are met and nourished and how their lives are changed by what seems simple, but it’s not. And that’s like making that connection that the dream in you, the potential that you sense, you know, no matter the amount of evidence that you’ve created for it yet, that that is real.

And that’s something that came up a lot in me on meditations through the course of the week and then also in the teachings about the neuroscience of developing connections in our brain. Because in order to create something, we have to first be aware, perceive that it’s possible. And then we have to make this vital connection. And this is so important. Don’t miss this part. This is so important.

We have to make the vital connection that what we perceive is possible is also real. That once we can make that connection that something can be real for us, even is real for us is a different level. That’s a total gamechanger.

And I sat with myself in my mind for hours and hours and hours. And sidenote, I also contracted food poisoning while I was there, so I had a lot of extra things, my own personal physical challenge to sit with as well, which I think is not ancillary or oppositional to the experience. But I do think was meant to be part of my experience as well. But that’s another tangent and another episode because that was actually a very profound part of the week for me as well. And I had some very profound breakthroughs because of that and around that.

But I want to come back to the number of times, even though I live this work, I have been for years, I meditate at least an hour a day, sometimes two, two and a half hours a day. I do the thought work. I am a coach. I receive coaching. I don’t just want to regurgitate information. I want to share what I’m actually living and what’s working.

So, I was struck by the amount of interference that my brain still allows and experiences around that it is real, and I’m going to say this again – and I can say it, but it’s an entirely other thing to experience it.

Once you can connect and hold, linger with a knowing, not just a concept but a knowing that that truth within you, that potential that you sense, that is real. That is valid. That is sacred. And that is holy. And if you can stay with that, with that sense of it that is outside of the realm of the senses, outside of the 3D of your physical senses, if you can stay with that and make that a truth, a truth more vital and deep and vibrant and alive, and again sacred and real for you, the anything that’s currently in your physical environment, the entire game changes. You change.

And I flirted with the edges of my own emotional belief and something that Dr. Joe would say over and over again in the course of the week, which I’ve thought about so much, but I felt like I took it to entirely new levels this past week was, you know, go beyond your emotional belief.

And to me, that means you go to a place where you know and you hang there and you focus and you give your attention to what you choose to know and to what you choose to be the truth. And again, I think I have, thought I had pretty rigorous mental discipline around this. and by discipline, I just mean being dedicated to following the knowing in my heart and to living, walking soul-forward in the world.

And this was just a beautiful way to experience what more is available to me. And it also illuminated how important it is – and this is the message that I wanted to bring back – how important it is for you, for us to make that vital first primary connection, to no longer flirt in that space of, “Is it real? Is it not real?” But to commit, to decide, to say, “I am surrendering to this truth that’s been with me,” it feels like perhaps it’s chosen you, feels like it’s never going to go away, even if you try to repress it or distract yourself.

And oftentimes, it will feel like you get to distract yourself with smaller goals, that looks good, but you’re still hanging out in the realm of the how, and it doesn’t have that same feeling as when you let yourself really take off the constraints and let it be big. Let it be so big.

And that was another breakthrough I had. I thought I had that practice already, of knowing when I’m keeping myself small, even with goals that seem and look audacious to other people. But I can tell, it feels tight to me and it feels constrained, and I just let myself move past a point that I have not moved past or touched before in terms of allowing myself to get big, allowing myself to sense something to vast and so expansive, that there is no way I could rationally, lineally figure out how the old me, the me that I have known to this point in life so far, how to figure out – there’s no way for me to figure that out. It has to be a leap. It has to be something outside the realm of analytical how and of past.

It has to be a letting-go of so many thoughts about the old self, which I got to see them all. They all came up. And so, again, to reiterate, making that connection about what you are sensing is a potential, is a vision, is the dream, is the truth, and honoring that, declaring that it’s whole and real.

And here’s how you know if you’re really doing that or if you’re just paying lip service. Your life will start to change. If you surrender to that and now you’re serving that, you will start to make different decisions. You will make different choices on its behalf.

And then secondly, allowing yourself to let it be what it wants to be, not trying to fit it into a tidy box that you can figure out because likely if you can figure it out and you can strategize your way there, it’s probably not it and you’re also probably going to know that because you’ll feel like you’re forcing, like you’re constraining, like you’re tightening everything up and narrowing your focus and figuring it out.

So, I may have mentioned in earlier podcasts that one of the reasons I wanted to attend this retreat was I wanted depth and immersion. I wanted a place to sustain focus and really go deep and to be able to watch my brain try to go back to old ways in an environment where I could stay with the potential, with the truth, and linger there longer and linger there longer.

And so, you know, while there were 1400 people from 47 different countries at this retreat and so many beautiful, amazing people there – and I did meet so many beautiful, amazing people, I intentionally chose outside of our learning time and meditation time, I really kept to myself because I wanted to stay aware of what was happening inside of me. And I could see myself, even with strangers, hastening back to old ways of being, of old ways of wanting to connect, of losing myself or giving myself away in conversation just in order to be with kind people who are interesting.

But when, if I were to honor why I was actually there, what I actually wanted, I wanted to hear my heart speak. I wanted to hear my soul speak. I wanted to know my brain better and I wanted to be able to focus on lining them all up.

So, I did that and then I also had this other experience with food poisoning that was pretty intense. Soo, that gave me many additional opportunities to be with myself, to go beyond the edges of my emotional belief, to see lots of old patterns come up, lots of ways where I would think were justified for giving up on myself.

And I don’t mean that from a way that I was hard on myself or I did violence to myself or forced myself through anything. None of that at all. But seeing how I could be with myself lovingly and from that loving place, allowing myself to believe that I am stronger, like so much stronger, and so much bigger than I have ever allowed myself to consider before.

And again, so much of this came because I was just craving immersion. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen this week. That’s also part of what I was signing up for, was the unknown. I just knew I was craving a big experience and a profound and immersive experience. And as it was approaching, I kept thinking of a poem that is actually the first poem in my book Wild Blue Yonder. And so, I wanted to share that with you because too I have a connection to make for you there as well.

The poem is titled Tiny Poem from the Big Water, “You standing there on the brink, growing more parched every moment you spend contemplating the deep swim. Don’t content yourself to drink from a glass just because everyone else sips neatly from their thimbles. Dive in. Lose yourself in me.”

That’s it. Dive in. Lose yourself in me. Surrender to that thing that is calling you. Actually, as I was reading that poem, I was like, “Did I share that already?” I don’t think so. But even if I did, it’s relevant again here today and it goes right along with the energy and the message of this episode.

Allowing ourselves to stop limiting and constraining who we know ourselves to be in our heart of hearts and the soul of our souls and the marrow of our bones, not constraining or keeping our goals small, even if they look audacious and big to someone else, not just giving ourselves little sips of whatever it is that we need that would nourish us, that would serve the dream, serve our gift, serve our soul. But what would it be like to stop looking at what everyone else is doing and kind of competing, “Well they’ve got their neat little thimbles. It seems to be okay for them. Maybe I can just get better at competing, doing shots with the thimble-drinkers. But hey, I’m doing pretty well because everyone else is drinking out of thimbles, but I’m allowing myself a glass.”

What would it be like to just unzip your soul from your body and allow yourself to dive in, you know, naked as the day you came, full soul, full body, immerse yourself in that big water which is calling you? What would it be like to take that big swim? To dive in? To stop contemplating that, to stop talking yourself out of the fact that you are parched because you’re like, “How can I be parched? I have a glass full and I drink more than everyone else does from their thimbles.”

And to, again, allow yourself that losing of all of the old self by surrendering to that greatness that’s calling you. And other podcasts with other communities I might feel the need to explain the big water and thimbles and metaphors. I don’t think I need to do that here. I don’t feel like I want to butcher the meaning of that by trying to dissect it here. I think I’ll trust that you all can sit with that.

But the other thing that I did want to say is that one of the ways that that poem came about first to me was I actually had an experience of this. It was both physical with water but then also to me felt also of the realm that was like spiritual and metaphorical and energetic.

But that title came, like clear and in language. Here is a message. It’s a tiny poem from the big water. And that’s another message that I wanted to share today. To not dismiss the ways that your soul, your genius, your creativity, God, life, the universe speaks to you just because it comes sometimes in a tiny form, or in a whisper, or in something that you might dismiss as, “Well, that’s not real.” You know it. Back up and trust that feeling, that inner knowing of, “What could be more real than that which has occurred to me? It wasn’t planted in me. I didn’t consume it. I wasn’t conditioned. I have just received it or felt it or known it.”

So, that brings me full circle. What is in you that’s been with you for as long as you can remember? That, my friend, is real. It is valid. It is big. It is sacred.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. I think you got it just right there. What is that thing for you?

And perhaps you have already identified it, but the message that you’re meant to hear again in this episode are what are the ways, maybe because you’ve been pursuing it for a while and you have created some success in this three-dimensional world, so you’ve actually started to pull back on the bigness of the vision. Because you’ve moved into the realm of the expert, where you’re like, “Well, I know what it’s taken to create this,” and therefore your mind starts to do the calculations of how much more training, how much time, how much money, how much investment of other resources.

And so, therefore you’ve pulled the vision back and dialed it back and made it smaller. And so, if that’s the case, how do you immerse yourself again and dive into that big water and lose yourself in the immensity of the true vision, the grand vision, the one you can’t figure out, the one that you are like, “There is no way the me that I have known to this point is going to figure out how to pull this off. It has to be a leap. It has to be something unknown to me, so much bigger than me. How can I surrender to that?”

And sometimes, that’s the harder place to be. Because then you have to put down all of these skills, all this success you’ve accumulated to go deeper into the process and do this again.

So then, I think that same message is valid, that to go back and trust that that vision is real and it is sacred. And if you’re not having fun and if you’re feeling tight and not free and like you’ve lost the magic, it’s time to remember how big it really wants to be. It’s time to surrender to that and to allow yourself to know that you can become just as big as you need to be to match it.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I am grateful. Thank you for listening. And if you would like to help me spread the message and reach more people and create a bigger impact, the best way to pay it forward is to share, to subscribe, and to go to iTunes and leave a review.

And when you are ready to take this work deeper, if there is a next level in your creative life, in your financial life, in your overall life that is calling you, if there is a potential, a dream, a bigness, a vision that you want to dive into, no more sipping from your thimble or your glass, you want to dive in and experience a profound lifechanging transformation, we would love to have you join us in the upcoming Art School.

The Summer Workshop series is happening beginning this June. The Summer Workshop series is included for anyone who enrolls in the fall Art School 2021. And this week’s workshop takes place June 29^th and the topic is The Energetics of Abundance.

And I am particularly excited to teach this. I always love talking, teaching money. It is sacred work. And I am even more clear and more on fire and passionate to talk about this after this last week.

So, that’s going to be an epically awesome class and I would love to have you join us for that. Again, if you’d like to sign up for the Art School, which includes that upcoming bonus workshop, you can do that by going to www.leahcb.com. You can also email us, support@leahcb.com, whether you have any questions or would like to talk with a member of my team about whether or not the Art School is a great fit for you. This is not a sales call at all. We don’t like that. We don’t like experiencing that. We don’t like dishing it out.

So, it’s just way to provide a service to make sure that we curate our community so that the chemistry is epic and is a match, an energetic match for everybody. And that’s available to you. Also, I have a free workshop coming up on June 24^th and I would love to have you join us for that as well.

Finally, I do have just two spots open this summer for short-term private coaching. Private coaching is a significant investment, so it’s a significant investment for me, of my time, and I bring it. I give my all to my clients. And it’s a significant investment, as I think it should be, for the private clients. And so, the opportunity with this summer series for private coaching is that it is my full private coaching rate, but it is pro-rated for a shorter amount of time in the summer.

And you can choose from one session to three sessions, to six sessions. And that’s not something that I do during the course of the year because I’m focused solely on the Art School, the mastermind, and just the few private clients that I do take full time. And so, two of those spots remain if you’re interested in that.

You can email support@leahcb.com and Nikki, my amazing head-of-team, will respond to you with the details of that and an application if you are interested.

So, in close, I wanted to ask you again how your life would change if you made, truly made that connection and then dedicated yourself to building a stronger and stringer bridge. Think in terms of both your neural network and then also your emotional relationship with yourself. If you made that dream real and was unavailable for anything else, trained yourself again and again to come back to knowing that truth and then building that truth in the world, that that knowing in you, that potential that you sense, that dream is real, really think about this. Not just in a fleeting moment.

Take it to your meditation. Take it for a long, long walk. You might even want to sit with it for hours. When I did this, something just shifted dramatically. And I thought I had already done this. And I have at some level. But it just took it to a whole different level.

So, when I went all in and went for that swim in the big water, when I dove in and lost myself, allowed myself to let go and surrender over and over again, in that, I caught some pretty big fish. And you can’t do that when you’re still standing up there on the brink, contemplating that.

So, that’s what I’m wishing for all of you. And I know it’s absolutely available for you there. That’s just something I can’t say enough after watching my brain. I’m like, “Holy smokes. What is available for us if we can just really get this? How much opportunity for mastering our mind is available to us, how that infinite levels of possibility, if we’re mastering our mind, how much our lives could change if we could just get a better hold on those ways where we hold ourselves back, where we tell ourselves we’re diving in, where we tell ourselves we’re committed and we know that it’s real, but we’re then available for so much interference.

And it’s a diving in and then it is a training, right? And then you’re in the water and you’re doing it. But what I wish for you and I know is available are many deep swims, diving in and catching some pretty big fish of your own. Have a beautiful week, everyone and I look forward to talking with you next time.