Navigating Your Lifepath: Reclaiming Your Self, Recapturing Your Vision
Section IV: Transforming the Dragon
In Section IV, the material and assignments are focused on the areas below to support your process.
Tasks:
— Creating mindfulness
— Kenosis
— Widening Possibilities
Metaquestions:
— How do I inform my life?
— What are my gifts?
— What do I transform?
Presuppositions:
— The map is not the territory.
— People always do the best they can base on what they believe is true at that moment.
— You are not your behaviors.
— You always have a choice.
How You Fulfill Your Destiny
There is something you ought to be aware of by now,” don Juan said. “I call it the cubic centimeter of chance….Chance, good luck, personal power, or whatever you may call it, is a peculiar state of affairs. It is like a very small stick that comes out in front of us and invites us to pluck it. Usually, we are too busy, or too preoccupied, or just too stupid and lazy to realize that that is our cubic centimeter of luck. A warrior, on the other hand, is always alert and tight and has the spring, the gumption necessary to grab it.
— Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan
You are thinking, walking, talking perpetrator of your own existence. Whatever you hold in your mind, will come true in your experience. The quality of your life is dependent on the quality of your thoughts. The potential for your destiny is resident within you. These may seem like strong statements — and they are true. If all is going along well, you are working through beliefs that serve you. You saw evidence of this in the Panning for Gold exploration. If things aren’t going so well, you are also working through beliefs. If you find that you are spinning your wheels, then, more than likely, you are somehow holding a limiting belief. Either way, the process for creating beliefs and how they impact you is the same.
We will use the word “event” loosely here to mean a precipitating situation and/or verbal or non-verbal communication. In the forming of your life beliefs, there was an original happenstance, or something transmitted from a significant other, to which you had a response. The response in belief formation relates to the mental interpretation of the event. This original interpretation becomes coded in the mind as a belief about self, others, and/or the world at large.
Coming close on the heels of the interpretation is a feeling — usually lodged as a body memory. Through the feeling, you develop a mindset. Through this framework, you behave in certain ways that match the beliefs you hold. Due to these filters and subsequent behaviors, you draw to you what you expect. As you continue to attract the situations and people that match your life beliefs, you further validate and deepen what you hold inside as true. Thus, you hold within you self-fulfilling prophecies — both those that propel you forward and those that hold you back.
Your beliefs filter outward from the mind and color your abilities to manifest. They also affect your communications, health, and relationships — virtually every part of your life. Beliefs, acting through memories, are also resident in the physical and subtle energy body. They are triggered in everyday occurrences and communicated to you through mental images, bodily felt sensations, and self-talk; less often through smells and tastes. You can think of these communications as surface structure clues, like the proverbial tip of the iceberg, to something much larger than rests in hidden waters. While some of your beliefs may be conscious, most of them are unconscious and unknown to you. This fact may not be of concern unless you find yourself continually bumping against some barrier, and you don’t know why. Then it’s worthwhile to do some detective work.
Your feelings are clear indicators of resident beliefs. Below are some examples of “heavy” feelings that would indicate a limiting belief is a likely to present.
If you feel . . .
apathetic… doubt… discouraged… nervous…
fatigued… confused… angry… hopeless…
shy… humiliated… undeserving… stupid…
helpless… jealous… overwhelmed… lonely…
frustrated… offended… scared… anxious…
disappointed… pain… embarrassed… irritated…
. . . . then look deeper. While many of these emotions are valid during certain times, if you have a pattern of experiencing any of them repeatedly, a limiting belief is triggering them.
Here’s the good news. Limiting beliefs can be transformed into ones that serve you. Indeed, as you experienced in Panning for Gold, beliefs that serve you can also be “amped up” and given wider use.
This is a time to have compassion for yourself. Be assured that you are and were positively intended. Remember that you only know what you know based upon where you have been. Everyone has had limited choices in thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating. This is the nature of existence. You also have a choice in the matter and can experience a much wider, meaningful, and happier way of living through consciousness.
You may choose to do the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) before beginning your discovery work.
Emotional Freedom Technique
You may use this technique anytime you are experiencing a heavy feeling. For more information, go here.
1. Set-up. Focus on the problem or limiting belief. Bring up the emotion or issue caused by the problem. This is called an emotional aspect.
2. Measurement. Step into the emotion. (If it is a very traumatic event, bring up only enough intensity to be able to measure the strength of the emotion.) Then measure on a scale of 0 (none) -10 (most) intensity.
3. Tapping Sequence. Find the points as shown in the picture below and tap with both index fingers around 5–7 times on each point in the sequence shown. At the same time, say out loud “Even though I am feeling, I fully and completely accept myself.” Say this sentence while tapping at each point.
4. Repeat Sequence. Repeat the tapping sequence, this time say “ This .” Say this reminder phrase at each of the points.
5. Re-measure. After you have completed both sequences, take a breath or move around a bit. Now focus back on the initial feeling. Measure it again 0–10. The intensity should have dropped.
6. Remaining Emotion. If the number hasn’t dropped all the way to 0, begin in step 3 and repeat the sequence saying, “Even though I still have this, I fully and completely accept myself.”
Uncovering Limiting Beliefs
I’ve had a lot of trouble in my life. Most of it didn’t happen. — Words from a deathbed, anonymous source.
1. Discovering a limiting belief. Think of an outcome where you have been taking steps, but you feel stuck. Or you’ve been getting somewhere but not without many challenges. Write the following sentence on a piece of paper.
The reason I can’t have (outcome) is. . .
Now begin to write — stream of consciousness — whatever comes into your mind. Write until you fill up both sides of the paper. Write some of the limiting beliefs below. They will usually have a common theme and have to do with possibility, capability, deserving, and safety.
2. Positive Intention. Behind every unresourceful behavior is a positive intention. A behavior or thought may not serve you, but what is behind it, at its innermost place, is positively intended. If the action doesn’t match a core intent, then it’s related to intention and misses the mark.
Any of your thinking and behavior strategies are learned. If the strategies limit you in any way, you are operating within a small band of choices due to lack of sufficient information or experience to make other choices….until now. Ask these questions of the limiting belief(s) that you uncovered.
— What are the actions coming from this limiting belief?
— What is the positive intention behind the action(s)?
3. Transforming Beliefs. Consider the limiting belief, actions coming from the belief, and your positive intention. Ask these questions to begin the transformation process.
— What belief would better serve me?
— What actions would manifest from that belief?
Clearing Limiting Beliefs
The old forms always blaze out like the sunset before they go down forever.
— Jean Houston
There are a number of ways you can leverage change in a limiting belief. As you create wider choices, you will have different responses than you had before and the belief will shift.
Belief Level. Perhaps the most profound and timeliest change in beliefs takes place at the unconscious level. Various spiritual practices such as ceremony, meditation, and prayer provide opportunities to reach outside yourself and create stillness so that you are able to make in-roads to deeper understandings. Healing modalities such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnotherapy work with the structure of the mind to alter and transform perceptions and beliefs. It’s also valuable to concurrently work with the physical and subtle body. Forms of massage and breathwork assist in relaxation and can dislodge memories residing in different parts of the body. Methods that work with the subtle energy body, such as energy medicine and some shamanic rituals, allow traumas and limiting ways of experience to vacate the energy body.
Feeling Level. Reframing a situation brings in additional information. By widening your perception, you can leverage a change in beliefs.
Widening Assumptions:
1. Choose a specific limiting belief that you wish to transform. Now choose a specific situation when you activated that belief.
2. Below are a number of assumptions to widen your perceptions. Choose several but play with one at a time. Feel free to add your own presuppositions with which to experiment.
The world is more than the ordinary reality you have been presented.
All are one.
Life is level of learning.
When the student is ready, the teacher will be there.
You co-create your reality.
The real action is in non-action.
You exist in systems that affect each other.
The map is not the territory.
The more flexible you are the more you control the situation.
As you change your response, you change your emotions.
The choice is better than no choice.
Behind every behavior is a positive intention.
You do the best you can with the information you have.
You are not your behavior.
You have all the resources you need to make the changes you want.
The meaning of communication is the response it elicits.
There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.
Any problem is a symptom of misalignment to your true nature.
Every symptom is a communication from the root cause.
You can use small chunks to learn big chunks.
3. Choose a space (A) on the floor and step onto that space accessing the situation with the limiting belief you wish to change. Notice any mental imagery, self-talk, and bodily felt sensations.
4. Step out of the space to neutral one (B) leaving all experience having to do with the limiting belief in (A).
5. Using one assumption, think of a specific situation when it was true for you. Create another space (C) on the floor near (A). Step into (C) accessing the time when the assumption was true for you. Be aware of your mental imagery, self-talk, and sensations related to this experience. As you are aware, create an anchor to that experience by touching yourself with a slight pressure somewhere on your body, e.g. your wrist or a finger.
6. While still holding the anchor and standing in (C), see yourself in (A) with this different understanding of the original ‘limiting’ situation. Notice how the event shifts.
7. Still holding the anchor, step into (A) and experience the wider perception and the resulting experience of the original situation. Be aware of what changes for you.
8. Step back to (B) and continue exploring other presuppositions in the same way, creating different spaces on the floor for each assumption
Attitude Level. Even though you may currently have the limiting belief and the accompanying feelings, you can choose to take another attitude “as if” you already have the belief that serves you well. As you change your attitude, you will affect your response.
Behavior Level. You can do something different in similar situations that accompany the limiting belief than what you had done before. By exploring other behaviors, you will begin to act on the systems in ways that allow wider choice.
Understanding Homeostasis
When undergoing a shift, it’s important to understand the dynamics of homeostasis. Although you live in a much wider environment, you use filters to create a “safety zone” in the systems in which you live. Whether these filters and how they manifest serve you or not, they’re familiar to you. Homeostasis includes all areas of your life. For example, it’s the weight you maintain, the thoughts you have, the ways you relate to others, etc. When you institute a change, you begin to stretch the “safety zone.” While some stretch is acceptable, a large stretch puts you in conflict with what you know as normal. When this happens, the fight or flight response is enacted. Stress hormones are released and your brain seeks to bring what is different back to what is familiar — and therefore, what seems safe even if it isn’t.
Understand that, for your brain, excitement and fear are very closely linked. It just senses that something is unknown. Therefore, a rubber band effect is created. You may even experience a more extreme nature of your challenge until your brain feels comfortable once again. For example, if you typically spend a lot of time alone and decide you want to be more social, you may spend much more time out with others. Then, what may seem inexplicable considering the change you want to make, you find yourself spending much more time than you ever did before shut away by yourself at home.
The point here is to be aware that the homeostasis dynamic exists inside you as a biological function whose positive intention is survival. When the rubber band effect happens, understand it for what it is. Be with the discomfort or urge to retreat. Then move forward anyway. While you may experience the tension of opposites for a while, your brain will adjust to what is new and integrate it into a new, more expanded safety zone.
Elements of Reformation
Alchemy can be defined as elements recombined to create new forms. When beliefs are re-formed, arising out of what was, rebirthing takes place.
Resistance is necessary as a form of progression. In order to resist, the mind has to consider something new. Otherwise, resistance wouldn’t happen. Imagining something new begins to create substance. The greater the level of resistance, the more potentially profound the new creation may be — and out of the comfort zone. The more rigid we are in our own thinking, the more inertia we will experience against moving forward.
To create, we must push through the membrane that separates what we’ve preserved as real from the newly imagined reality. Becoming aware of our own thought patterns that contain the status quo is paramount to the process.
What are the faces of inertia? Fear, confusion, doubt, apathy, overwhelm are some.
The creative impulse is always within us. How active or dormant it depends on the strength of inertia. The resistance or membrane we must move through is really about our self-image, the beliefs we hold about the nature of our own operating identity, what we hold possible for ourselves as individuals.
Resistance guards the doorway against freedom of choice.
The combined focus of heart and mind distills energy in such a way that it becomes an attractor. Random events and possibilities are vibrating in the ether, but are drawn in to a person’s reality depending on what they hold in their mind — with laser-like precision. Two people can be in the same situation and experience it differently because their separate realities are divergent.
When faced with a challenge does your mind go to thoughts of:
Opportunity?
Barriers?
The great possibility?
Perpetuation of limitation?
The desire to evolve is innate. Therefore, we are all predisposed to be facing ever-present conflict, the degree of which is up to us. It depends on the lens through which we view change, our own level of awareness, and what we give focus. In our evolutionary process, when we step off what has been the beaten path, we throw things into chaos until a sort of order begins to settle in. Too much order and we become entrenched and unmovable. Order will seek disorder until order occurs. Then the cycle repeats. This is the natural progression.
In order to create, we must dispense with the idea of separation — any thought that we are separate from our creation. Otherwise, the past, present, and future fold over on themselves as one and we’re likely to remain inert — until a new pathway is envisioned. Then even the past can change depending on your perspective. A former identity as the victim is converted to that of the spiritual warrior.
Insight comes in the hiccup that deletes autopilot.
1. What is your typical form of resistance?
2. If you dissolve this veil, what would be revealed?
3. Through your intent, what would fill that space? What do you need to take you beyond the threshold?
Section Four Assignments
1. Continue to:
a) take steps toward your outcome(s);
b) perform your chosen practice;
c) journal your dreams, experiences, resistances, learnings, etc. Begin to note any common themes.
2. Choose one method to begin clearing a limiting belief that affects your chosen outcome(s).
3. Read:
a) Calling Our Spirits Home, Chapter 4 “The Masks We Wear.”
b) Standing Stark, Chapter 7 “The Space of No Need” and Chapter 9 “The Edge of Limitation.”
c) All material in Section 4.
4. Listen:
- Lifepath Session 4 (MP3 file, 108.9 MB)
- Bonus Audio: Who Is Holding Your Reins? (MP3 file, 109.1 MB)
Note: Access Calling Our Spirits Home and Standing Stark in serial chapter format in the publication Illumination on Medium for free. Chapters in assignments are linked above.
- Transforming the Dragon (PDF file, 348 KB)
If you need assistance with the material or outcome you seek, please refer to consultations.
Bio
Carla Woody is a spiritual mentor, writer, and visual artist. She is the founder of Kenosis, an organization based in Prescott, Arizona, supporting human potential since 1999 through life enhancement coaching, retreats and spiritual travel programs working with Indigenous leaders and healers in the US, Mexico, Central, and South America. In 2007 she founded Kenosis Spirit Keepers, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization to help preserve Indigenous traditions threatened with decimation.
Table of Contents
Section I: Preparing for the Journey
Jack London Quote
Questions We Live By
The Re-Membering Process Model
Presuppositions to Support Your Journey
Our Work
Tenets of Intent
Setting Intent
Readiness
The Cycle of Fulfillment
The Threshold
Understanding Your Values
Commitment
Journaling as an Ally
Section I Assignments
Section II: Setting the Direction
Life Energy
Whole Life Balance
The Bright Hope
Setting The Direction
Setting Outcomes Worksheet
Systems
Voice and Expression
The Juxtaposition
Building a Foundation
Section II Assignments
Section III: Entering the Forest
Success
Mining Resources
Panning for Gold
Learning Discernment
Section III Assignments
Section IV: Transforming the Dragon
How You Fulfill Your Destiny
Emotional Freedom Technique
Uncovering Limiting Beliefs
Clearing Limiting Beliefs
Understanding Homeostasis
Elements of Reformation
Evolutionary Dimensions of Archetypes
Section IV Assignments
Section V: Uncovering the Jewels
Doing and Being
Striving to Surrender
Activating the Witness
Telltale Signs
Creating Space
Starting Within
Paving the Pathway of Your Future
Spiritual Travel: Destination or Process?
Section V Assignments
Section VI: Engaging Your Allies
Hafiz Poem
Embracing All Parts
Relating to Relationship
Section VI Assignments
Section VII: Negotiating the Landscape
The Art of Reciprocity
The Principle of Seed Money
Giving and Receiving in Relationship
The Energy of Money
Section VII Assignments
Section VIII: Bringing It All Home
The Outcome of Intent
The Point of Re-Entry
The Disney Creativity Strategy
Sorting and Behavioral Styles
The Importance of Acknowledgement
The Nature of True Community
The Stages of Learning
An Autobiography in Five Chapters
Walking the Edge
Your Legacy
The Despacho Ceremony
Excerpt: Portals to the Vision Serpent
Section VIII Assignments
Copyright 1999–2021 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this manual, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, info@kenosis.net.
Also by Carla Woody:
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Portals to the Vision Serpent. Coming soon to Illumination Book Chapters.
