Intrinsic Abundance

Welcome everyone thank you for being here your presence your listening is a gift what i'm
about to share with you is to take you on a journey of something that i have discovered that is
absolutely magical i would say this is the most profound radical discovery i've made in my life and in
some ways i have never found this anywhere else in the world i call it intrinsic abundance we're
going to go through this piece by piece what i have here is mostly covered up it's a map you can
consider it a map of life itself but we're going to go through it we're going to build it little by little
because it's such a crazy crazy thing in some ways i don't even know how to describe this to other
people and so this is a learning journey for me and i'm taking you along for the ride so in some ways
you could say that this is based on an existing theory and i've expanded upon an existing scientific
theory that has been around since called self-determination theory so yes in some ways what i'm
going to share is totally new i haven't really found it other places but that's you can say this is ten
years of revelations i've had piece by piece and it started to build a bigger puzzle so we're going to
start with self-determination theory inresearchers ed dc and richard ryan were looking at motivation
that some people were very passionate and very motivated and driven it's like they had a vision that
other people didn't have what leads those people to be so passionate and i have to say in my
struggle to find other passionate people in the world it is a very rare thing and you might as well
consider it magic and in their pursuit in being curious about this they discovered something so much
bigger they discovered that people had three basic needs that live them lead them to live a
motivated passionate life and beyond that a life that is liberated that is empowered so it's like well
once you understand it no wonder they're so passionate they are empowered they are liberated they
are free they're deeply alive and we're going to say then what are those three needs well here they
are let's go to the first autonomy this on it on its own is magical so in some ways you can think of
autonomy as freedom or as free will but we're going to go a little more specific autonomy is the
ability to make choices in your own life you could almost think of it as the bond of responsibility and
freedom together and these are really inseparable so if you find it enjoyable you may say well it's
freedom but if you find it challenging you say well it's responsibility but in the end it is your choice
response ability your ability to respond this is autonomy i make choices over my own life and if you
can make those choices you can live within your morals within your values you can live uh the
lifestyle you'll find is meaningful fine is purposeful enjoyable you can pursue those things effectively
what a wonderful life let's go to the second one competence i would say confidence is comprised of
three parts skill wisdom knowledge and so this is the realm of learning if you become very skillful at
something you can do some amazing things if you see an artist that does something amazing
something that's beautiful most people can't do that what an incredible thing to do if you could do
something most people can't and just the process of learning can be very playful and you can feel
excited and interested by immersing in that well this is enjoyable just because it's fun or just
because it's challenging and then you get excited because you get better at it or you discover new
ways of doing things and if you can become crazy skillful then it's a whole different world and then
there's also wisdom maybe you learn about life in ways that makes you suffer less you learn hard
lessons that prevent you from that terrible terrible experience again in the future that's wisdom
[Music] and you know looking at just knowledge too if you have more information and knowledge
about the la the world around you then you can make better choices oh there's the word choices
better choices that's interesting it's almost like these affect each other we're going to come back to
that let's go to the third piece interconnection interconnection are your relationships in life with other
people you could even expand further and say with other living creatures your sense of being in the
forest being with the trees and the birds or if you have a pet cat you know a bond with an animal can
be wonderful but also primarily your relationships with other people because human beings are very
social creatures we must have relationships it is inevitable that we depend on each other to get
through this life now if you have very high quality relationships you have people supporting you and
listening to you through the good the bad the ugly you're in it together you support them and listen to
them it's wonderful it's a great part of life and it makes life very meaningful so if you have
relationships that are respectful to everyone's autonomy those are very powerful relationships it's
not relationships where you have this conflict where people are trying to boss you around or bully
you or manipulate you if you have very high quality relationships you are respecting each other's
autonomy and you've found a way to do that effectively which means you are competent there's so
many ways you can combine these together and it changes everything so i was thinking one day
and i was writing and i was looking at wealth and poverty and i noticed that a lot of people most
people around me and even in economics economics is a topic i study closely because i think it's
highly relevant to empower the individual economic empowerment and so i was thinking about that
that a lot of people when they define wealth in poverty is based on materialism if you have a lot of
stuff and high quality stuff and a lot of money you're very wealthy if you have very little money and
not very many things and crappy quality things you're very poor and i'd never really seen a way of
defining wealth and poverty that was different from that and it started you know i'd always thought
there was something wrong with this but i hadn't gone too far in depth with it i was just like you know
something seems to be missing because you can have people on every part of the spectrum from
poor to rich as people define it very few things lots of stuff and they don't you can find all kinds of
people that they're just not satisfied with life they don't feel very free or empowered um their life is
not very meaningful or purposeful or you can also find people that have very very few things and
they are totally free they feel as if they're living a rich meaningful life they are living a rich life yet
they have very few things and they'd be defined as poor how could they be poor and rich at the
same time so something about the definition of wealth and poverty seemed wrong as if materialism
is not the answer as if materialism was a myth or an ideology materialism almost like a religion so i
asked myself well if materialism is not wealth what is wealth and then i thought what if self-
determination is true wealth wow what an idea and so i played around with it autonomy i make
choices in my own life i can live within my moral values i have flexibility i don't have to stress out
because i have to put up with things i have no control over i don't have to tolerate terrible things
because i can choose something better i don't have to be concerned about disasters or tragic or evil
things happening because i have the choices to work around it so even if terrible things happen i
can respond effectively that sounds like wealth to me what about competence well i'm maybe i have
some wisdom so i can respond to life's hardships and difficulties wisely so that i'm not just aimlessly
suffering or i'm not maybe i'm not making the same mistakes over and over again i see that i've
made a mistake i learn from it i can free myself from having to do it again i'm knowledgeable i'm
skillful i'm wise i'm strong that sounds like empowerment to me it sounds like wealth what about
interconnection think about someone close to you in life or the last time you had an experience
where someone really listened to you they heard what you were saying they listened and they had
the opportunity for empathy and they said it sounds like you're feeling this way i can't imagine that
feeling or that experience that sounds very difficult if you had a rough time and you felt very
supported and you felt heard that sounds like a really good friend now what if you have a good
friend where you challenge each other you see your friends struggling and you support them and
you say i really believe you can do something wonderful and you can get through this and i'm here
to support you and they do and what if they do the same for you and they support you through the
ups and downs and you celebrate together you are cheering each other on it's like having an
audience watching the movie of your hero's journey imagine you have an audience of people that
love you and support you and they're cheering you on and they're seeing you on your path and you
are doing that for them too that sounds like wealth so in some ways i look at intrinsic abundance
bigger picture here as i've described it as a map a map of life but i'd also say this is the game of life
it's as if you're playing a game so without interconnection the game has no meaning but without
competence you don't understand the game yet without autonomy there is no game at all autonomy
is i choose i'm the player in the game competence is i'm learning i understand the game better i play
it better interconnection is we play together we don't play alone and it has meaning that sounds like
true wealth to me well if self-determination is wealth what is poverty so i had to say well let's assume
autonomy is wealth in that case lack of autonomy would be poverty so what is lack of autonomy
maybe it's dependence oh if you lack autonomy you're very dependent you're dependent on what
happens to you you feel powerless and out of control if good things happen it's lucky if bad things
happen it's unlucky it's almost like the game of life is no better than gambling and if you feel
powerless that sounds like poverty feeling powerless that's not empowered that's disempowered
and you you know when we think of dependence we think dependent on other people so even if
your relationships are really really bad and you're struggling you're kind of stuck with them you're
stuck in a crappy job because you don't have the skill and so on and so forth that doesn't sound
good that sounds really tragic well then if competence is wealth lack of competence would be
poverty and if you're lacking skill lacking wisdom lacking knowledge you'd say maybe you're
ignorant you have ignorance that you are struggling with you make the same mistakes again and
again you stay stuck in the same habits that are harmful they're not helping you you feel kind of
trapped maybe you don't even see how you are harming yourself you know when people have
addictions or bad habits they go around and around in circles maybe some part of them is
convinced that if they make the same decision it's going to lead to their life getting better but
because they have ignorance it just keeps making their life worse there's something they haven't
learned yet or they simply don't have the skill or the wisdom or the knowledge to make a better
change that improves their life that sounds like poverty well then if interconnection is wealth lack of
interconnection would be poverty and if you really really lack relationships in your life you
experience isolation my god isolation anybody who has struggled with this can tell you that this is
not a good experience now maybe some people are better at dealing with it than others and some
people are more introverted and less extroverted but you're still interdependent on each other if your
relationships are poor quality then yes you're dependent and you struggle and you have conflict and
you feel trapped but if your relationships are higher quality you feel empowered again you have a lot
of autonomy in your interconnection and they interact with each other now if you look at isolation
you could think you maybe you don't have a job maybe you're and therefore you don't make money
at all and so you're you're homeless that's a very severe form of isolation where you have a really
hard time getting a job at all and so maybe isolation for most people is not absolute but it's just you
are limited in the relationships you have so you're kind of stuck with crappy people in a crappy job
and you have fewer choices and you just lack the skill or the wisdom to make better friendships you
see how they start to interact with each other more and more the quality of your relationships is
lower and you have less fewer options and you maybe you're lonely and so all of these dependence
ignorance isolation as i was discovering is a more clear and true definition of poverty we can
measure it in a completely different way we don't have to look at necessarily the five basic needs uh
food water shelter oxygen um and whatever the last one is i don't remember offhand i'm sure i'm
missing one but maybe safety but we can measure basic needs in a completely different way and it
gives you a different way of measuring your progress in life and measuring what types of choices
you want to make and the outcomes of those choices now we're starting to see this is like a map of
life and that maybe you want to overcome poverty and transcend it into self-determination and that
is how you define wealth this can be much more individualized because not everybody is going to
need the same type of stuff or materials everyone uh is gonna say i'm happy or satisfied with a
different level of material wealth in my life you know i don't need a big mansion some people might
say i need a big mansion i'm gonna make a lot of money and if for anybody who has worked a high
paying job they can tell you there's some big sacrifices you make for sake of having a high paying
job so there's a lot of trade-offs there and when you pursue materialism it has no guarantee of
increasing your self-determination to an extent you can buy more choices in your life but you can't
buy all the choices and it also if you have to make a lot of money it kind of makes you dependent on
money so there's really no guarantee that it's going to empower you there's a lot of trade-offs and
you can't really buy your way into learning those life lessons i guess you could pay for some classes
just so to some extent you could buy your way into learning more but you can't really guarantee it
there's certain things you learn through hardship through pain through loss certain things you learn
through direct experience and also if you pay for those classes and you don't do anything in the
classes you don't put in the effort to learn then you're not going to learn and in some cases you
might find i'm trying but i'm not really learning i'm struggling so you have to become more skillful
knowledgeable and wiser about the process of learning itself and likewise with isolation can you
really pay your way into better relationships huh that sounds like prostitution and you can't get very
far with that so you really got to put in the effort of how do i form high quality relationships how can i
be a good friend a better friend how do i find people who are the right people for me who are
compatible who accept me who maybe become good friends over time who are going to treat me
right these are all processes of playing the game of life that really you can't guarantee with the
materials you have you can use materials like tools you know a hammer is a tool but it can't do
everything there's a lot of tools in life and we can use them in a lot of different ways but it can't do
everything and so let's reverse that what happens if you pursue self-determination how does that
impact materialism in your life well if you become highly skilled you can get a pretty damn good job
and you have the leverage to have more choices because you your employer your boss your co-
workers managers they do have a general idea that you are valuable to the organization and so you
have leverage where you can stand up for yourself you can set boundaries and if you have a job
that's just treating you poorly where your relationships are really crappy you say all right i'm gonna
go to a better one because i have the skill to make that choice and that gets you more money wow
well then if you have relationships where you're supporting each other you feel fulfilled you know
when bad things happen to you in life you have that support and listening you need you can get
through those hardships it helps you take on life and you feel strong and you feel resilient i've been
listened to i've been empathized with that can help you maintain a job maintain your responsibilities
and you can continue to have the materials and the money that you need in life well then what about
autonomy well if you find a way to have better choices in your life maybe you're more motivated
because you have a job where you find some sense of purpose in it you find something that's
meaningful you find something you love so even if you find you have a lot of responsibility maybe
your job has some challenge and it's high pressure but if you find i can do this thing that's really
purposeful and it is within my morals so i'm really helping people i can keep doing that job and this
can have a ripple effect throughout all of your choices throughout your skills throughout your
relationships and so your materialism does not guarantee to improve or increase your self-
determination but your self-determination can have profound effects on your materialism so then it's
up to you whether you decide if you want to map your life based on materialism or if you want to
map your life based on self-determination which is the better compass for the game of life the choice
is yours

Okay welcome back everyone i'm so excited you're here your presence and your listening is
a gift to the world and to give to me now um this is part two of the most radical profound discovery
i've made in my life if you are watching this before part one look away this is top secret information
that reveals the mysteries of the world before in part one we discovered a map for life that defines
wealth and poverty and it gives you a compass to guide yourself in pursuing true deep wealth and
we're defining it in a way that is intrinsically connected to empowerment and liberation so it's not
based on money or materialism and so we discovered that true wealth is autonomy competence and
interconnection and these three universal human needs are self-determination so if you want to look
this up this actually exists it's self-determination theory this is a thing in the world that's already
found and i'm building on it but then going beyond that we discovered true poverty is dependence
ignorance and isolation it would not be a heroic journey if there wasn't the possibility of terrible
things happening and that is where we start to continue on and build more of the map of intrinsic
abundance so then uh you might ask yourself why is it that there is the possibility for terrible things
to happen to me you know there's something about me that means uh even if i strive for wealth
there's always that chance that i could fail things could fall apart there's things out of my control you
know this is not a utopian view of the world where you can have everything where you can be all
powerful almost like a god and you can ensure that nothing bad ever happens there's always the
possibility of bad things happening and the possibility of good things happening so you might say
that life has limitations the fundamental limitations of life that define everything else so if you are not
all powerful um you you know you may be affected by your environment and by other people they
can hurt you you're not invincible you're not immortal you are vulnerable bad things can happen to
you but also good things can happen to you to be vulnerable intrinsically inherently as part of life
that is inescapable means that you can be affected by the outside world i would recommend the
work of brene brown she's written tons and tons of books on shame and vulnerability the power of
vulnerability i think is one of her most famous ted talks um one of my favorite books from her is
daring greatly and there's uh it's based on this speech by one of the famous presidents i don't i think
it might have been teddy roosevelt i don't remember for sure but the idea is um the one who is
courageous is not the one who is guaranteed to win but the one who goes into the fight into the
game with the potential of loss of struggle of making a fool of himself the one who is courageous is
the one who is daring greatly you're embracing vulnerability it's a limitation it's a part of life well then
another way of being limited is you don't know everything you are not all knowing so you know you
can become skillful and wise and competent you can overcome your ignorance but you can't really
know everything and i'd say that's because as an individual you are fundamentally subjective you
have a unique experience of this life through your own body your own breathing your own taste your
own vulnerability you live in your body you have a subjective experience nobody else lives life
through the experience you have everyone has their unique experience of life and you can't really
escape it and so that is a limitation to not be all-knowing or objective and then the other limitation
that we've already kind of hinted at is individuality you live through one individual body you live as
one person uh you don't live everywhere at once through all bodies you are not all present or
selfless you know you are an individual and so this means you have the potential to be isolated as
an individual you are disconnected from the presence of other people the presence of other living
creatures any lonely person will tell you having a cat as a companion feels great unless you don't
like cats and maybe dogs or turtles or whatever thing is but because you're an individual it leaves
you vulnerable to the possibilities of being isolated or interconnected so let's pause for a moment
you notice that one of the metaphors i use to describe intrinsic abundance is that it's the game of life
so we're calling life a game let's imagine you were to create a game let's say a board game or
maybe a video game um well you need defining boundaries so that there's characters that are
separated from each other and there's objects you know the ball can bounce off the wall so things
need to be separated and have boundaries and if they have boundaries that means there's an inside
and an outside you know imagine yourself as a human being you have an inside experience of your
own body your thoughts your awareness your consciousness you have your own internal
experience and that makes you vulnerable and your internal experience is what's we usually call
that subjective the internal is the subjective and you're an individual because you are separated
from everything else so if you are creating the game of life it needs to have these boundaries and
these limitations so it is defined without limitation there's no choices and what happens if you have
no choices you have no autonomy you have no game at all now what happens if you don't have a
unique separate way of experiencing the world well you can't really learn because learning happens
to you individually when you're learning something it's a very personal internal experience it's
actually quite subjective it doesn't mean your subjectivity prevents you from learning the irony is that
it actually allows you to learn and become skillful one of the ways you can think of this is the doctor
or the trainer can't lift the weights for you you know they can show you how weights are lifted and
you can kind of see by watching them do it but eventually you have to pick up the weights with your
unique individual body and you have to have the subjective experience of what it feels like to lift the
weights and so then if you're an individual really if there's no separate people or living beings there's
no relationships if you think of the definition of a relationship it is between two people or two living
creatures you and your cat have a relationship you and your friend have a relationship you have to
be individuals for there to be any inter connection and so these limitations set up the game of life
there is no game if there are no possibilities and so playing a game there's no guarantees you might
win you might lose anything in between you don't really know what exactly is going to happen in the
game of life but it's a dance and you play because you're not the creator of the game of life you're
the player and being able to recognize can be a liberating experience where you don't try so hard to
be all powerful as if you're the creator of the game as if you are a god you don't try to control things
or grip so tightly or struggle so hard because if you have the experience of being playful it's a very
it's pretty joyful experience it's very free and relaxed one of my favorite quotes from alan watts great
philosopher by the way is when he says if you hold your breath you lose it if you let it go it comes
back to you and so it's not so much that our limitations are a prison you could say they're
inescapable as long as you're alive you are vulnerable subjective individual but it doesn't have to be
a prison just because it's a requirement this is building a bigger picture here our limitations can
humble us and remind us of why we're struggling i mean for one if you reject and resist limitations
it's kind of like rejecting reality itself you're not gonna get very far and it's kind of ignorant and so
sometimes we resist our limitations or we resist our poverty because it can lead us to bad
experiences that are painful that we don't want to have and we want to get rid of it we struggle with it
i define suffering as resistance and cartoli sometimes describes it the same way resisting reality
resisting what is eckhart tolle says when you resist what is its insanity because it's already here
what's the point of resisting it you know you're not accepting it you may make a choice there's
autonomy you might respond to it you might say i need to solve a problem but the resistance isn't
necessary it's making you suffer we're going to look at what happens if you have resistance or
suffering and sometimes it becomes an identity ego there's this false identity that says i hate
limitation i do not want to be vulnerable i want to be all powerful well if ego says it wants to be all
powerful instead of becoming autonomous it becomes an authority ego becomes an authoritarian it
wants to be all powerful over everyone else and everything else it does not want to be dependent it
doesn't want to be vulnerable it wants to control people it wants to control life it's almost as if ego
says i am god i'm the creator of the game i'm going to control everything and that's authoritarianism
now if ego doesn't want to be subjective or ignorant it's going to reject those things it wants to be all-
knowing i want to know everything i am all-knowing i'm god it enters an ideology an ideology these
this is not the same as competence these are very different from each other it thinks it's all knowing
a person who's highly skilled and competent keyword wise will still be humble enough to know they
don't know everything and they can accept it as part of life but ego says my view of the world my
values my morality my desires this is the way the world is not just me it this is the way everything
needs to be and it really suffers because it's so rigid and locked down it sounds very serious and not
very playful well then if ego resists individuality because it doesn't want to be lonely and isolated in a
way you could say ego doesn't want to be an individual you know ego wanted to be all-powerful it
wants to be all-knowing it wants to be all present all present that's so not really a word that we use
very often i sort of had to make it up another way of looking at all present is that you're rejecting
being an individual rejecting the self it's almost like ego wants to be selfless so you think all present
you think selfless and where does that lead well selflessness egos desire to be selfless leads to
abuse that's kind of crazy most people wouldn't think that b trying to be selfless leads to abuse it
seems like the opposite and so if ego is rejecting its own individuality the self you could say it's not
successfully getting rid of the self it's not literally being selfless it's failing to do that and what
happens self hatred what happens instead of being selfless self-hatred i mean have you ever met
someone that experiences self-hatred they don't tend to treat other people very well in a way you
can say how you treat yourself is how you treat others and that shows us how connected every
piece here is because you not only have relationship to others you have a relationship to yourself a
relationship to yourself and if your relationship to yourself is based in self-hatred that's pretty
abusive and it's probably going to lead to abuse of other people or abuse of drugs drug addiction is
abuse it's a relationship as johann hari has said in his profound research on addiction one of his
quotes is the opposite of addiction is not sobriety it's human connection it's human connection and
so the relationship to the self is very painful when you have this ego it's a struggle it it hurts it's
abusive and it leads you down a very dark path and so when looking at the darker part of life we
start to get a very deep picture not just of our limitations that humble us not just of the potential for
poverty that is very painful and can lead us to suffer but how much worse it can get if ego gets
carried away i call this false wealth the path of ego corruption the path of ego corruption is very
corrosive and it's very tragic and it is the thing of nightmares people can become absolute monsters
now you might tell a story or have a false or uh bad interpretation of why you need to be the
authoritarian i must boss people around blah blah blah blah abusive parents do this with kids i have
to control everything the kid does because they can't be trusted to do it themselves whatever the
story is they tell it's that story is the ideology that justifies the authority that justifies the abuse so
ideology is my way or the highway my way is the only way if you look at dictators over um horrific
governments in history the terrible things they did millions of people killed genocide uh if if
somebody gets in a position of power that's the authority who is very ego corrupt it could be the
thing of your nightmares now this is a very dark part of life it's very painful part of life it is a series of
harsh brutal lessons but we do not want to shy away from this because if you learn it you can have a
more a better and deeper and more defined clear crisp understanding of the game of life and the
ways you can play the game if you do not take seriously the dark side of life you might find that you
are corrupted and you've gone down that path and didn't recognize it you did not recognize that
making some bad decisions led you to an addiction it was very hedonistic you're pursuing pleasure
avoiding plain pain next thing you know you're addicted you got a bigger problem to deal with that's
an abusive relationship with yourself drug abuse now likewise with all of these things you might think
you're learning but if you're getting rigid and stuck or addicted to the belief addicted to the belief all
of a sudden you have an ideology and maybe you are finding that you're kind of gripping tightly and
you're not aware of it you're not paying attention you're not being curious or playful and you're
starting to get a little too locked down a little too serious and next thing you know you're trying to
control life there are very subtle ways that these experiences can come up in life and so if you have
a marker a definition for each piece it can get easier to recognize it it can be very humbling because
it can be very subtle most likely people who become ego corrupted are not going to be flashy
sensational dictators of major countries maybe they just hurt the people around them maybe they
make very bad decisions and they become homeless and broke you know a materialistic form of
poverty that suggests the deeper poverty and it's subtler it's more personal and sometimes it's
internal it's inside of you and so this is a process of self-discovery it's much it can be much subtler it
can hide in ordinary experiences things we say our ordinary everyday life might not be normal
maybe maybe you could choose something totally new something totally different and so part this is
why i call this the game of life because it leads us to being curious to being playful to letting go and
wondering what are the possibilities is this what i really want where can i go from here so this is the
majority of the map the game of life intrinsic abundance it's not quite the end but now you have a
pretty clear map that can help you align to your highest conceivable good and do something
wonderful only you can do i'm so excited for you i'll see you next time

Okay welcome back everyone thank you for being here your presence is a gift so we are at
part three of intrinsic abundance let's do a very brief recap you may notice that it appears we've built
an entire map for the game of life but there's still something covered up and it's at the very bottom
what could possibly be left that we haven't covered here you may have noticed that when i describe
limitation i say when you are born you are born limited and so if this is built like a house and right
now this appears to be our foundation you might say what is the house built on top of if this is the
foundation of the house the house may be on the earth so what is it built on top of alan watts has a
quote and he asks do you know who you were before you were born in fact you might even say do
you know what you were before you were born before you were vulnerable before you were
subjective before you were individual what could possibly be underneath that something that we
cannot usually perceive because of our limitations so if you know if you look at this as the container
it's like a glass and there's water inside of the glass and the water takes the shape of the glass if you
pour it into a fishbowl it takes the shape of the fishbowl and so if this is the glass we have to say
what's the water who were you before you were born you might also notice that i defined ego's
desires in a very sp very specific way that ego desires to be all powerful it desires to be all knowing
it desires to be selfless or all present and ego desires these things because it is suffering from its
limitations ego hates being limited because it feels incomplete and ego wants to feel whole again i
do not want to be a piece of something that is limited and defined i want to be whole so i'll leave it at
that and we'll return to it and i will tell a story from my life i've experienced this multiple times and i
call it disillusion but most people would describe it as ego death it was the dissolving of a deep
resistance and i saw in a totally different way i experienced reality beyond and beneath my
limitations and i was taken on this path as peyma shodron has said she's she is one of the most
remarkably wise people i've ever encountered in my life she wrote a book called when things fall
apart i highly recommend it it is intended for exactly what the title says for when things fall apart and
she has said that a lot of people treat this path of uh wisdom awakening spirituality as if you are
climbing a mountain and you're getting higher up the mountain and you're getting better and better
but she says that this is a misunderstanding and a better metaphor would be to view it as if you are
going deeper inside of yourself you're not climbing this mountain in the outer world building yourself
up you might actually feel as if you are breaking down you're having a break down and you are
hitting rock bottom and you're going deeper inside of yourself and this is often felt this way because
it is ego death and so it is a loss of something that brings you to a deeper place it is not always
about building building building up sometimes the wisdom is to allow yourself to experience loss it's
a very painful difficult counter-intuitive experience and that's what happened to me and so in my
experience of disillusion loss i learned a powerful lesson loss is liberation loss is liberation another
lesson relevant to this pain is not a punishment pain is communication and that has a lot to do with
vulnerability it has a lot to do with your limitations that pain is your body communicating with you and
often we react and resist pain resist ego suffering because we feel as if it is a punishment that this is
a bad thing i need to get rid of this i don't want to experience it but if you can feel letting go and you
just feel whatever you feel and you're like i'm just gonna feel like a piece of right now that's the path
of going deeper in yourself and this is what was happening to me and so as i got deeper in that path
and what i started to feel was a more intense sensation in my own body and so i was leaving behind
the mind i'm gonna think my way through this and solve problems and tell a story about my life and i
just started to be with it the big thing that led me to this particular story i'm telling was actually
computer addiction internet addiction because i thought that i didn't deal with addictions specifically
that i was very autonomous i discovered autonomy long ago by the point this happened so the fact
that i saw myself stuck dependent almost as if i was deterministic all i could do was see my
powerlessness and watch it and in watching it i started to feel more i felt my own presence my own
presence i am here and i started to sense this sense of watching i'm seeing i am observing i watch i
perceive and then i started to feel my choices as if things were happening to me and i was also
choosing them i choose to breathe i choose to move i'm choosing to watch and let go and be
present i am i see i choose consciousness the origin of everything and so if these are limitations and
this is when you were born then before you were born you may say you were unlimited you were
part of the whole consciousness where consciousness is all-powerful all-knowing and all-present or
selfless and when i was in this deep meditation and i felt ego dissolving i was finally able to
reconnect with this sensation of consciousness that is within me this is why it's not climbing the
mountain but it is actually going deeper within yourself because going deeper within yourself is
going back to the origin of what you were before you were born consciousness is the origin of
everything and it splits off into separate things and beings to create everything else at this point i will
pause and i will say that this can sound a little out there it can sound maybe religious like here's god
or however you would like to interpret it and it's a bunch of bold claims and i'm not too concerned
with how real this is so much as i am with this as a metaphor to represent something we struggle to
understand that really has some big implications for the rest of the map i am not a religious person
myself i don't really resonate with most religious ideals but you could interpret this in a secular way
or with religion is really up to what you find makes the most sense and your own exploration and so
with that being said this is something that i want to explore with curiosity and the reason i'm not as
concerned with how real or unreal it is is that it's more about the physical experience and your own
you know subjective path and curiosity how does this feel to you when you experience it what are
you learning in the process what are you going through and only in some ways only you can identify
that you know i have this perception that every ego is unique that it attaches to different things it has
different misunderstandings and so then if every ego is unique every ego death is unique but there
are ways that we all kind of come to the same place of origin and so you might notice something
here well i'll point it out it may not be that obvious that there's been a long-standing disagreement
about whether the self is real or not real and i'm also not as concerned with that because you might
say here is the self in the place of limitation you are born as an individual with limitations and so the
self is just a way of understanding that and understanding the game of life but then you still can
experience that deeper sense of consciousness whereas you feel beyond the self and people who
have these psychedelic experiences they start to feel a sensation of going beyond their individual
experience that they're connected to everything all present or selfless and this is same here that you
start to become aware of watching the sensation of being aware itself and that you're not just stuck
in your own movie of life but you start to sense watching the movie watching the movie and so you
are aware there is this sensation of being aware and watching and seeing and likewise if you feel it
and sense your own vulnerability you can feel your heartbeat you can feel your breathing you can
feel your aliveness it almost feels like aliveness vulnerability helps us feel alive and if you feel
beyond that you feel that there's this aliveness is coming from a deeper place and this is the place of
choosing and you perceive this almost as free will the realm of power where it comes from and so
you can say that not only is there these horizontal categories but there's actually vertical categories
here and here is the realm of power false power is authority real power is coming from within and it
goes through the limitations of your vulnerability because you are not all powerful and you have the
potential for less power for struggling with it or for bringing it more into your life into autonomy and
so the power of intrinsic abundance is that this true wealth comes from within you at the most
fundamental baseline origin if we are suggesting then that this raw material of wealth comes from
within you then you can tap into your consciousness and bring it into the world and that everything is
derived from this this is why i call it intrinsic abundance another thing a quote from payment
showdrone one of my favorites of all time let's see if i can remember it exactly i might paraphrase a
little bit only when we submit to annihilation over and over again to do we discover that which cannot
be destroyed i'll say it again only when we submit to annihilation over and over again do we discover
that which cannot be destroyed breathe it in sense your own breathing in this particular moment it
doesn't have to be sensational or flashy it could be a very ordinary experience and as you feel your
breathing you can sense your own presence i feel this breathing i'm feeling my presence i am and
as you sense it you may become aware i'm watching my breathing i'm aware of it i perceive i see
and you keep sensing it you have this sensation of i'm choosing to breathe especially if you're aware
that you're breathing more consciously and you are choosing to watch it and so it's i choose i am i
see i choose being consciousness cannot be lost stolen or broken and so no matter what happens
to you in this life or how devastating or tragic or evil it could potentially be or how good or beautiful
this origin is still underneath all of it and it is beyond all of us and so if you are in a deep state of
poverty you always have that opportunity to learn your opportunity to learn cannot be taken away
because you see you watch you are aware and so your opportunity to learn is the opportunity to
become wiser and more skillful more knowledgeable your opportunity to choose can't fully be taken
away there is this underlying power i choose now this one is very radical for people this is very
radical to imagine because you think of something you know terrible terrible things that happen in
the world that really violate and suppress autonomy with you know the authoritarian ideological
abuse of people and structures in societies that form throughout time that it can be very damaging to
autonomy and it makes you feel as if you're in a prison sometimes literally people are in prison or
they're enslaved or they're in indentured servitude and so they feel as if their autonomy has been
broken or stolen or crushed but there is that little piece the gem of consciousness within you that
comes from within that cannot be stolen lost or broken so i'll tell a brief story about that to show you
just how radical this is because it is incredibly liberating but in some ways it's also very painful and
it's very humbling and it's very difficult to grapple with such a way of looking at life and so this is a
story from marshall rosenberg the founder of non-violent communication it's a style of
communication used for deep listening and empathy that allows people to resolve conflicts and build
really beautiful empowering relationships and so he was talking to one of the leaders of a middle
eastern country and he was talking about how nobody can force you to do anything this has to do
with autonomy and its relationship to consciousness nobody can force you to do anything this is
radical people can't stand this idea they immediately think of something terrible someone did that
was incredibly abusive or was a betrayal and they think of it as look at what this did to me they're
trying to force me to do something and so marshall rosenberg was talking about this and the middle
eastern leader tells him but there was this time i was held at gunpoint and i was forced to undress
and it humiliated me so the idea was the person held holding at gunpoint the terrorist was trying to
humiliate him in front of his people and he was forced to do it because he was literally held at
gunpoint and marshall rosenberg responds and says you may have chosen to do it because you
wanted to live and you were afraid and you needed safety but it was your choice you could have
said no and the middle eastern leader responds and he says i said no because i care about my
dignity so he actually said no in that circumstance even when his life was potentially under threat
and so it's not that his autonomy was actually stolen from him it was that his vulnerability was used
as a weapon against him to try and scare and manipulate and abuse him to making a choice out of
fear and it made him feel very disempowered because our relationships are really important to us
but it did not take away his autonomy even if he was held at gunpoint he was the one who said yes
or no or made a choice and so that little tiny piece of the origin of autonomy in consciousness is still
there i choose and that's a very radical thing because you might have to humble yourself in realizing
in these very destructive painful experiences of life that sometimes you make choices you don't want
to make because you're in a very tragic place in life and you hate those choices and maybe you're
not proud of it and so you want to say that you were forced to but the reality is you made a very
difficult painful choice in a tragic or evil or corrupted situation and this is humbling to us in life that
the game of life can take us in a very a myriad of places and it can take us to very dark places we
don't want to go and so in the lesson of that is to breathe deeply and experience the consciousness
that they could not take away from you and that a lot of times these abusive or tragic or terrible
experiences maybe it's a natural disaster and that leaves you in a state of poverty or maybe it's
other people doing terrible evil things and it makes you feel very disempowered and small and hurt
and broken and in that moment you can pause and you breathe in deeply into the pain the pain is
the communication it is not the punishment and when you have nobody else you can be there for
yourself and you feel it breathing in i am i see i choose the origin of everything this is the practice of
intrinsic abundance and i am only beginning to understand this path it is a very difficult path and it is
very humbling it's very challenging and is very profound so this is only the beginning this is only a
glimpse of what cannot be lost stolen or broken and what you can do with that inner power if you
learn to connect deeply to it in meditation in recognition so this is intrinsic abundance the game of
life the only question left is how you want to play

The magic of self-determination

Every human being has three universal needs autonomy the space and ability to make
choices over your own life competence the skill knowledge and wisdom to overcome challenges and
interconnection mutually supportive respectful relationships these three traits are not just a checklist
these traits are the primary colors of empowerment itself and when combined create a radically
different way of experiencing life and that is called self-determination and this is the magic of self-
determination if you develop the quality and realness of your autonomy and competence and
interconnection in your own life on your own hero's journey you will discover such a profound and
deeper wealth and develop the traits of independence and mastery education caregiving boundaries
and solidarity and this is only the beginning so you might notice that this is not just focusing on your
pursuit and your journey as an individual but that it's also emphasizing the community it's
emphasizing the group and so both of those are essential and so you could develop these traits as
values for a community based on self-determination that could be strong and resilient that
encourages active self-direction and participation in each person's own unique way and encourages
competent people to be in their best roles and others to learn together and also encourages
respectful healthy supportive relationships and this protects against corruption and abuse and
authoritarianism it protects against ignorance and allows people to experience the true wealth of
self-determination and so in other words this isn't just your hero's journey you could also say this is
the game of life itself to put it in other words without interconnection the game has no meaning
without competence there is no understanding of the game but without autonomy there is no game
at all and so it starts with you as one individual on your hero's journey and you listen to the call to
adventure where you surrender completely to the natural wilderness of the real world around you to
your autonomy and say i am choosing to dive in and experience this world and this life as it is you
explore you are immersed in it and through that grappling with that reality and that exploration you
start to learn become more skillful wiser and more knowledgeable about your environment and how
you could respond to it more aligned and integrated less chaotic and on this path in this profound
personal development you will attract different kinds of people to you mentors who recognize the
power and profound nature of the path that you're on and even other people who are on their own
hero's journey will resonate and see maybe even instinctively that you are both in the same journey
and this can get very deep and go to a profoundly deep inner place to for some people ego death
enlightenment to the origins of autonomy to consciousness itself and this as a completely new
fundamental layer to how you experience life and it goes deeper so now there is a new layer
developing of your relationship to autonomy and competence and in this profound personal
transformation it brings you back into the world from that deep inner place into society community to
friends and family and you are now a transformed person that can share it with others and so this
journey is not just about each of us individually but also how it is shared with others it is a profoundly
intimate and personal journey that is also fundamentally shared and so this is the past that i am on i
want to make self-determination as accessible as possible to everyone and anyone so that we can
share this wonderful incredible and challenging and scary and crazy experience together because
that makes it meaningful to share it together and so there's a couple of ways you can move forward
if you are curious and really interested to explore self-determination and how you could take those
first steps there's a couple of ways that you can do that through the work that i produce the first thing
i would recommend is to get familiar with self-determination in your own life and start exploring how
you could take those first steps forward what changes you want to make what skills you want to
develop and so here i have my first steps writing exercise this is available free on my website
nemosundry.com so it helps you get familiar with the three traits more intuitively it's not just
memorization but the ability to think about this creatively and independently and realize how it all
starts to work in real life and there's a series of questions that you can write about to help get to
know your own situation through the lens of self-determination the other way to pursue self-
determination besides simply in your own life as one person is to develop a community space or an
organization with these values in mind as part of your foundation at the community level and for that
i recommend you check out my spectrums of self-determination these are three maps that are free
in my website these maps show how disempowerment and empowerment actually function and are
developed and so there is the possibility of disempowerment that continues to drag you down further
and further and yet there's also the possibility of hitting the spark that spark igniting that awakening
that discovery and seeing those opportunities where you can turn it around and become
transformed and empowered and so this shows it at the individual level at the program level and at
the community level those are the places i recommend you start if you want to discover the magic of
self-determination in your own life then i welcome you i'm excited for you i'm so glad you're here
your presence is a gift so i look forward to what you can do is the unique and beautiful things that
you can do in this world now go out there and be an example for empowerment