037 - Stepping Over the Threshold of the Last Temptation
This week on On This Walk, we're talking about thresholds — big life thresholds —and how to cross them. We are brought to moments and experiences that when we step into and through them intentionally, we create change. These changes aren't about becoming something different. In fact, they're about becoming more of who and what we really are.
I've been dancing around these thresholds for many years with my clients; talking to you, the audience, about the inflection points that I have faced and many of us will face on this long walk back home to ourselves. Joining me today are two amazing walking partners, Kristina Marie, and Aaron Rose, who know this subject very well, personally and professionally.
Listen in as we talk about the New Myth, the Last Temptation, and the difference between living for compared to living from. In fact, there are two main sources we tend to draw from but one leases to suffering while the other to liberation. My interaction with Kristina and Aaron hit home on many occasions and I am certain it will for you as well.
In This Episode
(05:54) – Creatrix of the new myth helping authors and writers.
(11:44) – The cycle of weaving of different energies that embody within.
(14:56) – Kristina talks about all the thresholds up to the Last Temptation.
(20:38) – Aaron and Kristina reflect on their experiences with the last threshold.
(24:48) – Discussing temptations disguised as sneaky invitations.
(35:59) – How do you know it’s time to move forward as you arrive at the last threshold?
(40:39) – The reality vs the blind faith leap from the outside looking in.
(53:26) – How we live mythically.
(1:00:31) – Living for something vs living from.
(1:06:03) – Connections between the means and the ends.
(1:11:17) – Kristina and Aaron’s advice for people who are at the threshold.
Notable Quotes
-
“If you're listening to this right now, if you're resonating with this, you're exactly where you need to be on your path. And there are more or less aligned choices, but all of it is data collection. We only know about what the know feels like because we've done the know and then we've seen what the result is. So, I would invite Courage to make the choice, you know, you need to make. I would invite compassion for yourself within the process, and I would invite gentle awareness of where you are on your path.”
-
“I wish someone would have said to me then when I was really flailing around and had nobody even to talk to about this kind of stuff, let alone guide me. I was very much a fish out of water doing my own thing, and I feel like the simplest, truest thing I could have heard then is, be still. Just create one minute of silence with yourself. Every day. One minute. Anyone can do anything for one minute. I don't care how busy you are or what you got going on. One minute is possible.”
Our Guests
Kristina Marie is a transformational story mentor and the creatrix of the New Myth. She worked as a journalist and an editor at top national publications, such as The New York Times for more than a decade. Now she combines her publishing skills, intuitive gifts, and creative wisdom to mentor transformational leaders, visionaries, and storytellers. Kristina is also a teacher of The Rising Star, a solar-powered healing modality and unity consciousness transmission from ancient Egypt, and initiates others into this master seed lineage.
Aaron Rose is a writer, mentor, and teacher. He combines transformational coaching, subconscious reprogramming, meditation, and prayer to support leaders and visionaries in discovering their divine mission, following their inner authority, and co-creating their wildest dreams with God.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
Mentions
-
[00:00:00] Luke: Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart-centered guests each week as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul, and with something bigger than ourselves.
[00:00:22] Now, let's go on this walk. Hello there, and once again, welcome to On This Walk. Today we are gonna be crossing a threshold. Let me explain. You see, throughout our lives repeatedly, actually, we are brought to moments and experiences that when we step into them and when we step through them, we create change.
[00:00:43] Things begin to shift. They begin to transform. However, when we're paying attention in a really deep way, crossing these thresholds are bringing about a very unique kind of change. These changes aren't about becoming something different. In fact, they're about becoming more of who and what we really are.
[00:01:02] I've been dancing around these thresholds, the topic of thresholds for many years with my clients. I used to call these cross the line moments, meaning those moments and experiences that when we, we finally crossed them, you knew a whole wave of change was gonna be set into motion. My first podcast even many, many years ago, was actually called The Inflection Point, named after the point on a curve where the curve itself changes directions and thus is never the same again.
[00:01:28] And now on this walk, I realize that I'm constantly talking to you about the threshold moments, the inflection points that I have faced and that I think many of us face on this long walk back home to ourselves. Well, today we enter into this beautiful space once again with two people I just absolutely adore.
[00:01:48] We're gonna be talking about the new myth, meaning this isn't the hero's journey. This isn't the heroines journey, but it's a new myth that is emerging right now in the world. The myth is filled with key thresholds that when we encounter that we do encounter as we go on this ever deepening journey. The first time I ever heard about this, it rang like a tuning fork going off in my soul, in my heart.
[00:02:13] Cause I could feel the resonance and the familiarity of all that was discussed. And we're gonna pay very close attention to one particular threshold today that comes deeper into the cycle, deeper into the. Which is called the Last Temptation. I wanna say more about this, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna refrain.
[00:02:30] I'm gonna let my guests reveal and elaborate so much more about the last temptation threshold, but I will tease that near-ish the end of this episode, we get into a critical choice about what we're living for and what we're living from that you're really not gonna wanna miss. And at the same time, I had to laugh because in preparing for this conversation, we were talking offline, and I kept having these moments of, Hey, wait a minute.
[00:02:55] Are we talking about the show? Or are we talking about my life? I hope that in some ways you have that level of experience with what we get into on today's conversation as well. Without much further ado, my guest, my walking partner for today are Kristina Marie and Aaron Rose. Kristina Marie is a transformational story mentor and the creatrix of the new myth.
[00:03:18] She worked as a journalist and an editor at Top National Publications, including Team Magazine at the New York Times for more than a decade. Now she combines her publishing skills, intuitive gifts, creative wisdom to mentor transformational leaders, visionaries, and storytellers. She guides these new paradigm creators in their living to live their personal myths, telling their stories of divine union and structuring their transformational books based on her signature method.
[00:03:43] Kristina is also a teacher of the Rising Star, a solar powered healing modality in unity consciousness transmission from ancient Egypt, and initiates others into this master seed lineage. Aaron Rose is a writer, mentor, and teacher. He combines transformational coaching, subconscious reprogramming, meditation and prayer to support leaders and visionaries in discovering their divine mission, following their inner authority in co-creating their wildest dreams with God.
[00:04:12] Everything that I just mentioned from both Aaron and Kristina we get into today. I've had the pleasure. As I said, I alluded to, I've had the pleasure and the honor of working with both of these extraordinary humans, and I could not be happier to share their wisdom in this conversation with you today. So now, if you guys hopefully know by now, but just in case, if you are not already subscribed, do me a favor.
[00:04:33] Hit that subscribe button now, so you do not miss any of the episodes we're rolling about weekly. And for all of you who have done all the wonderful reviews and shares, I thank you so much for that. That's such a big part of how we continue to spread the word about this show and about On This Walk. If something strikes you while you're listening, please do me a favor, quote it, share about the episode online with hashtag #OnThisWalk.
[00:04:56] And now let's go on this walk with Kristina and Aaron as we cross the threshold of the last temptation. Hello, hello, hello, Aaron and Kristina. I have been so looking forward to having you guys for this walk for this conversation. So I wanna thank you very much for being here on this walk. Where I think it would probably best support us is Kristina, if we begin with you to set a little bit of this stage with the new myth.
[00:05:22] You know, I mentioned in the, the intro this is, uh, which I love by the way, the creatrix of, of the new myth. I absolutely love that. But this is something that's, to me, it's so unique cuz it emerged out of, of your professional background of all the things that you've been doing in, in the publishing, editing, writing, as well as then teaching and coaching arenas.
[00:05:40] And now it seems like this is not only the way that you've helped and supported authors and writers, but it now actually is taking on this whole new form of helping people actually live into this new myth. And so I was wondering if you could, you could begin there.
[00:05:54] Kristina: Yes. Thank you so much. And what I'll say, just in terms of,
[00:06:00] How this evolved was through my own study of, of myth and kind of the the bigger, collective universal story that we've been living for so many thousands of years, and so much of, at least in the western world how we understood that was through Joseph Campbell's work and, and the hero's journey, and that being kind of the first map we had from a cultural perspective, from a kind of individual evolution perspective and much of our stories, our movies.
[00:06:36] There was so much in our world today that used that template as a map for the journey that we're on. And one of Campbell's students, Maureen Murdoch, saw her own evolution of that, which was the heroine's journey. And for her, she felt that. For women specifically that the hero's journey took a bit of a different turn.
[00:07:03] And so kind of the, the evolution that came from the hero's journey was the heroine's journey was much more internal. And although she spoke about it for women specifically, the way that, that the new myth came together was that I was actually seeing the way that the hero's journey was more of this masculine energy.
[00:07:28] And that's for both men and women and how that was kind of a stage one of the journey and the understanding of how we individuate that first stage of evolution and the heroine's journey being kind of the next step. So when the hero has done all of those, you know, slayed all the dragons, found all the treasures, brought them back to the world, and then the hero drops the armor and goes within to reconnect with that feminine energy again for both men and women, that begins the journey of wholeness and, and those parts of ourselves inside and outside coming together.
[00:08:12] And what I was seeing beyond the heroine's journey is what has now become the new myth, which is that the story that we're living now collectively from this place of wholeness, from the adventures in the outer world, and all that we've created and achieved from the deeper inner journey that we've taken to reconnect with ourselves, this new myth is really about.
[00:08:40] The deeper connection of not only our individual wholeness, but this place of, of divine Union. And coming from, you know, first really reconnecting with ourselves from that place of wholeness within the heroine's journey. And as we do that, we have the capacity and we're more available to reconnect with the higher version of ourselves, with the divine.
[00:09:10] And from that place, there really is no map for us for the story that we're living now. And, and that's, part of the, the beautiful mystery of, of this time and, and of the new myth itself. And yet there is this universal process of change. And we see that expressed one way in the hero's journey. We see expressed another way in the heroine's journey.
[00:09:38] And then the new myth, which is the map that I've seen emerging for this moment in time. This is we're living this map, we're creating it, we're co-creating it with the divine in every moment. And so the Joseph Campbell in, you know, 2,500, 5,000 years, who looks back on, what was that template of the story that, you know, we're living now.
[00:10:06] I believe that this, this new myth framework of these phases and, and thresholds of change will be kind of the new template that can be seen.
[00:10:17] Luke: Yeah. I want to get into some of those thresholds, but just a, a few points and then Aaron, if there's anything here that you want to want to add some, uh, some more to as well is, there's a few things.
[00:10:26] One is I like one of the things that stood out, not just like, but one of the things that stood out to me was the way that you were able to describe the weaving together of these different energies that we have gone and, and actually embody within us. But typically we were just expressing from one side or the other, and as we begin to weave together, one of the other things that caught me about how, how you were able to depict this is that this is less map.
[00:10:53] As it is more the cycle as you were just describing, this universal pattern that we're going through. Right. And it's this recognition, and I think that's one of the things that sometimes we lose in this process is a process called life, is that we believe that we're on this seemingly linear journey of, of, you know, going from one place to the next to the next.
[00:11:13] And we, we lose that recognition of the cycles that we're consistently going around and. And what you have captured is that in that round and round that we go, it's much more of this spiraling process that the more we get tuned in, the more that we get conscious of the way that we're navigating it. It's as if we are able to consistently, yes, we're gonna revisit certain things, but we're revisiting them from a completely different consciousness, completely different perspective each time we come around.
[00:11:41] And so it weaves together very, very deeply that way.
[00:11:44] Aaron: Well, I agree that it's, it's such a powerful weaving together of the inner and the outer. And the first time that I encountered the new myth expression through Kristina, it hit me like that piece of truth where it was just this resonance of, oh, this is the story that I have been living.
[00:12:04] This is the story that I personally have been walking through on my own path of transformation. And I can see the world going through as well, because whatever your vantage point is right now, you know that something is shifting, something is shifting outside of us, and something is also shifting inside of us.
[00:12:23] And the new myth and, and these different phases that we go through, they help us locate ourselves. So rather than feeling utterly bewildered by the, the process, like the, the winds of change, picking up externally and internally and feeling like we have to completely chart our own path on every level, there's really a medicine that I find within the new myth of being able to see, okay, I am on a completely unique path.
[00:12:52] I am playing my own personally unique role in this larger process that we're all in. And other people have been through these different archetypal moments before and I can't know what's gonna happen next, third dimensionally for me. I can't predict where I'm gonna be in a week. Or even in two hours in some situations.
[00:13:18] But I can see this map of how I'm gonna be moving through the process emotionally, energetically, internally. And in my experience, when we can see that, it allows us to go that much deeper where it's like, okay, if I really understand where I am, then I can fully surrender to the medicine of the moment.
[00:13:40] Luke: Yeah, it's a great way of saying it in a great perspective because it's even at times, like you said, I may not know the details of exactly what's coming next, but if I can identify where I am in this process, in this cycle of things, it does bring that added ease, that added spaciousness to just allowing myself to experience where I am.
[00:14:01] Knowing it's the knowing that you're still in the process, right? That you are not stuck in this one finite place in time, that there is movement that is still coming. And by knowing that it just like, the mind releases a little bit, the energy just kind of calms a bit, and we can just be present with what our experience is, which of course is actually what we need to do anyway, if we want to be able to move through these, because the less present we are, the less we move.
[00:14:29] So I really appreciate that. Kristina, if I, if we can turn back is, we're here, but the, the thrust of our conversation, the, where we wanna go to is these thresholds and one in particular. But if you could take us through the thresholds and then we will get to the last temptation threshold, which all three of us have had quite a good, that the relevance of this to our lodge right now.
[00:14:51] Yes. Uh, so let's, let's, let's start with what the other thresholds are and, and we'll, we'll come into it.
[00:14:56] Kristina: Okay, perfect. So if you imagine a circle, kind of a wheel, and at the very top at 12 o'clock, that's both the first and the last threshold. It's the same point, that zero point where separation begins at 12 o'clock. And from separation, we move through identification into the first death, which is the next threshold.
[00:15:25] And that's at imagine three o'clock. And so from that first death, we move through purification and down to what I call six o'clock with God, which is the point of surrender. Just that bottom of the bottom rock bottoms, basement, moment of divine surrender. And from there, if you imagine as you move from six o'clock to nine o'clock, the energy begins to build again.
[00:15:57] The, we're sort of moving up again toward what we're gonna talk about today, which is the threshold of the last temptation. Imagine that at nine o'clock. And then as you cross the threshold of the last temptation, which can also be thought about as a kind of second death. And that three o'clock first death and that nine o'clock second death are really there.
[00:16:24] They mirror each other in a lot of ways. And so as you move through the last temptation, as you crossed that threshold, you move through an integration period back up to 12 o'clock where you began. Except at this moment, you're in a point of union. And once you hit that, that full integration and that point of union, the cycle begins again on another layer on, you know, in another area of life.
[00:16:53] And as you mentioned, Luke, it's not a linear process. And so oftentimes in different areas of life, we're in different phases at different thresholds, and any moment in time, We're kind of all over this non-linear wheel of experience, and so this is part of the kind of multi-directional, multi-dimensional story that we're living now.
[00:17:22] Luke: Okay, so let me, let me see if I can offer what stood out to me. As I mentioned in, in kind of introducing both of you is again, for everybody I've had the honor of, of being able to work with you both in different capacities from a, a coaching and also specifically learning some of this process with you, Kristina, and as we to kind of set context further with some of the last temptation, I've been through this journey that's so much of what's chronicled on this podcast is the processes that I've gone through that have moved me in from this, this scene, tangible outer world into the unseen, intangible inner world. And as we cross those, those thresholds that you're describing specifically at three o'clock and at nine o'clock of the first death, and then the last temptation, the second death is part of that crossing, right, of the, the inner and the outer of part of the way that that manifests.
[00:18:17] And as I've gone through this, and especially into that first death, it feels very much like the crumbling of your identity. It is the death of your identity, at least to some degree, if not a very large degree, depending. Is going on and how many parts of your life this is affecting at one time. Right. And as I've gone through that and hit my, my rock bottom moment or moments, uh, get a few.
[00:18:41] And as I've come through that, what really caught my attention about this last temptation and why I think it's so relevant, and I was so happy that you guys were, were talking about this right now cuz it is so relevant, I think to so many people is that it seems like there's a lot of us. Maybe, maybe it was some of the, the pressure cooker of the pandemic.
[00:19:00] Maybe it's the pressure cooker of all these other things that are going on right now, politically, economically, socially, whatever. But there's something that has taken a lot of us into this inner exploration where we've been willing to lay down different parts of ourselves. We've been more willing to surrender to what seems like this inner connection, inner voice, call it divine, whatever.
[00:19:25] Language works for, for each of you listening. And now that we've gone through that and we're starting to rebuild, we're starting to get like this zest, this confidence, this aliveness that we wanna charge out with, then all of a sudden it's like, great. Now bring it out in the world and let everybody see what you're doing.
[00:19:42] You're just like right at this moment where it's like, well, maybe I'll think about it more. Maybe I'll sit with this a little bit more. Right. But I think it's, it's so relevant to where we are right now, is it feels like we're, we're so many of us are reaching this point where it, it absolutely feels like a threshold.
[00:20:02] And we're trying to figure out, how do I do this now? What is it really gonna take? What do I need to tap into to actually say, I'm gonna put this back. I'm gonna put this out into the world. I'm gonna put my, this version of me out in the world. It doesn't need to be a project or anything. And so I'm, I'm curious less about the teaching for a moment and more about the experience.
[00:20:22] That you guys have been having with this last threshold. And whichever of you want to jump in, jump in of, of sharing from that perspective.
[00:20:31] Kristina: How much time do we have today, Luke?
[00:20:33] Luke: Everybody. This is a seven hour episode.
[00:20:36] Aaron: Get ready, get your beverages. Yeah. We both in, in so many different ways. And the way that I experience and think about the last temptation is this process, like what we've been through before we reached the last temptation is that shedding of the layers that you talked about, seeing the old way that we've been living and all of us have intricacies to what that old way was, but it's generally characterized by finding our, our value and our safety and our stability and what we're creating externally.
[00:21:13] And it often is in relationship to the programming and the conditioning of. The norm of, of the world. And it's this process of, of seeing how we've created a version of ourselves that works in a certain social construct and a certain way of being that also generally has a quality of sort of fear or scarcity, or you better act like this or else, however back brain subconscious that is, right.
[00:21:42] Or you better act like this and then you'll get everything that you want. And then going through that process of letting those versions of ourselves die and being willing to be stripped away to who we are in a more fundamental level. And like Kristina said, that six o'clock with God moment where it's just like you and your maker and there's a willingness to, to let something new emerge.
[00:22:04] And then the last temptation comes when it's like, okay, what are you really made of? Like, are you gonna try to go back to where you came from? Or are you gonna step across and, and fully. Fully live it. And in my experience, it often shows up as both a carrot and a stick. Right? If we use that metaphor.
[00:22:24] Where sometimes the carrot comes first, where it's like, if you stay this way right, then you'll, you'll get this thing that you really want. And then if you don't take the bait of the reward, which has taken many different forms for, for both of us, then often the stick comes out, which is like, well, I sure would hate to see what would happen if you don't comply with the way that you've been. And it's so fascinating the way that reality presents these, these different examples. And it requires us to like, dig deep into the faith that we've been cultivating in that unseen world in order to have the courage to see through the dangle of the thing that we, that we used to really, really want.
[00:23:08] Or the, the fear of the punishment or the threat of. Whether that's social rejection or, or something else. That thing that was keeping us from being the truest version of ourselves until now.
[00:23:20] Luke: Yeah. The way that I've seen it and experienced it is that these temptations come in as these really, really sneaky invitations.
[00:23:29] Yeah. Right. Now just come on and we're gonna invite you back this way. Look at that. Right. And just for context, I'm curious what maybe some of these, these invitations have been for you. Yeah, for me, you know, over these last couple of years, as I did start to clear out and I created so much more space and I was opening up to all of these extraordinary messages, and just to be this like really sneaky invitations of, Hey, here's this beautiful opportunity.
[00:23:56] It seems really aligned with where you're going. We're just gonna ask you to step back into the roles that you used to play in order for us to do this. And I'm looking at 'em like, Oh, that's that, that, yeah. A lot of carrots. Lot of carrots, right? It, it hits the, it hit the identity piece. It hit the ego piece.
[00:24:16] It hit the material piece, and it also checked a box of purpose and meaning. Right? But it really, it was asking me to fulfill that purpose and meaning in old ways still, to still be part of the old way of doing things in the old paradigm. And that's where I flirted with it. It flirted with me. And I was able to then say, you know what?
[00:24:39] This doesn't, this isn't right. This is not, I'm gonna let this go. But it's sneaky. It's really sneaky. What have been those invitations? Yeah. What does it look like for you?
[00:24:48] Kristina: It's interesting because I feel like a lot of the examples here, there's some sort of typical examples we could use. Like, you know, money is a great one.
[00:24:59] So let's say there was. Some old project or role or,
[00:25:06] Aaron: well, actually I can give an example if you want here. Yeah. Which is way back in the day when I did my first like true divine surrender where I like got on my knees and I was like, God, I give my life to you. Like do with me what you will. I'm ready to be who I'm really meant to be.
[00:25:22] I'm ready to be of maximum service. These kinds of pairs should have fine print because all kinds of things happened right after I said that comprehensive demolition of my life and I had been in a job that was, it was like the best job I had ever had until that point. I was, I was more recognized, I was more compensated.
[00:25:42] I was more in my authenticity than I ever had been, but I was still working for someone else and I had been hearing kind of that like back brain ping from God for a while. Like, you're not supposed to be working for other people, Aaron, like, yes, you can collaborate, but you're not supposed to be using all of your life force.
[00:25:59] To propel someone else's vision, you have a vision you need to give space to. And I was like, okay. Okay. And I was kind of. Cheating the loophole with God because I was just like a contractor who was like advising on the project. Um, wasn't like a W2 employee. So God saw it right through that and it was revealed to me that there was unethical behavior happening within the company that I was supporting.
[00:26:23] And it was one of those like cinematic moments where the veil gets lifted and I realized, whoa, there's, this is out of integrity for me. It's the only time I've ever gone back into the, the office somewhere packed up my stuff, said to the CEO, I'm leaving right now and I'm not coming back and walked out with no idea what I was gonna do to pay my bills in a couple of weeks.
[00:26:44] And you know, I remember it was like a cold day in New York City and I'm standing there with like all of the courage of my conviction and no proof of what was gonna happen next. And I got the carrot and the stick, right? I got the stick of, you're crazy kid. You know, this is an amazing opportunity.
[00:27:01] Multiple different people calling me trying to, trying to kind of persuade me to come back. And then I got the carrot, which was, we'll give you more money than you've ever made in a year, in a month. Just stay a little bit longer and give us all the intellectual property, all the stuff we need. And then you can go.
[00:27:21] And I was looking at, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my rent in two weeks. And this is more money than I've ever been offered. And that's a very like, quintessential last temptation moment. Yeah. I didn't take the money. Yeah. I went on a wild ride with God instead. Um, but that was an opportunity to collapse under the weight of the stick and say maybe, I don't know better.
[00:27:42] These people are twice my age. They're successful in the careers that I want to be successful in. I've been doing good work. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I should give it another shot. And then, you know, the, the carrot of the resources.
[00:27:55] Kristina: We'll make it worth your while. Yeah. To stay just right.
[00:28:00] Aaron: Just a, just a little deal with the devil.
[00:28:01] Kristina: I would say like that's one of the most. Obvious forms that the last temptation can take. But as you were speaking to Luke, there are much more subtle, sneaky forms that, especially as we, I would say, as we become more aligned and evolved on our mission and in our purpose, there are ways that this sort of external world can just dangle a carrot in the right area of overlap, which is, you know, this is really gonna help people.
[00:28:43] You already have all these skills. You could do this in your sleep. Whether the, the sort of carrot is something like, you know, financial compensation, it may also be something more around accolades or achievement or a kind of recognition that can show up very subtly. And while none of the things that we're talking about are wrong or misaligned or incorrect, meaning like, yes, be compensated for what you're doing and be in a powerful reciprocal exchange there.
[00:29:23] Like be recognized, be of service, be building this legacy. All of those things are, are beautiful and you know, it's not wrong to, to want or desire those things. And yet the opportunity we have at the last temptation and the invitation we have there is that we can receive all of those things. We can create all of those things.
[00:29:50] We can experience all of those things from a different foundation, from a different perspective in a co-creative field with whether that's the divine, the planet, our community, our colleagues, our collaborators, it's, it's not that the action or the form or even what we're receiving changes necessarily.
[00:30:20] It's about the fuel that we're using to create. Are we being fueled from fear, from scarcity, from kind of the, the old programming of, of the control system, of that external kind of industrial patriarchal construct, or are we going to choose to create all of the things we just mentioned from a deeper well of faith, from a place that really like values, our health and wellbeing is in right relationship with resources and with the planet. And it's interesting because sometimes at this threshold, it's not even so much that external things change form. You know, you could cross this threshold and come back into the scene world and kind of look around at many of the same circumstances, and yet what has changed is your perspective, your foundational kind of life force fuel that you're creating with. And there is often at this threshold, in my experience, there have been the times like, you know, Aaron’s example of the full no in that moment and, and kind of the blind faith leap into the yes of whatever's next.
[00:32:01] And there have also been moments for me where I kept coming to this point of feeling this, this kind of soul-led, heart-led pull in another direction. And yet as I would sort of have my bags packed and go to open the door, like someone would knock on another door in another part of the house and I'd go over there to answer that.
[00:32:33] And so from one perspective, I could have seen like, wow, I'm, I'm being called in this other direction, but I keep feeling this sense of I'm meant to help this person, or I'm meant to work with this person, or I'm meant to continue this work with the new myth. And, you know, with birthing people's books and, and doing these things that were so of service and that were very life-giving to me.
[00:33:04] And yet I kept feeling this, this pull. And so, you know, there was a real design in that, in me sort of hitting that last temptation and going back. We wouldn't be talking right now, we wouldn't be sitting on this couch together right now if in that moment because I kept getting pulled back to this work with the new myth.
[00:33:33] And yet I was feeling called in this other direction. And the reason I was sort of feeling this pull was this deeper soul voice. It wasn't the, the sort of external pieces that were carrot or sticking me. It was like, wait, there's, there's something here. Okay, let me just I'm gonna put my attention here sort of one more time
[00:33:58] Luke: Just for everybody, we're gonna come back to like this, this where you're sourcing from, like where are you living from, kind of fuel. We're gonna come back to that. I don't wanna lose that, but I, I wanna stay on the thread that you've opened up here because there is this, I know offline we described it as kind of this looping that we do very often at this last temptation threshold.
[00:34:21] And there's something in what I'm hearing is that there was still that guidance, divine inner guidance that was going on that was saying, Hey, wait. There's some more exploring, and excavation to do, whether it's with you or with others that are kind of calling you here. And the reason why I wanna point this out is that when we reach that last threshold, I have felt this so deeply of arriving that last threshold, hearing that call to come back and say, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[00:34:55] There's a bit more. Do a little more here. And then this other part of my energy, which might have to do with the ego, is like, but come on, you've done this already. Yes, you should be ready, you, it's time. You need to move forward now. And it creates this whole other looping effect, right? That's, it's still part of that surrender that we're also still going through.
[00:35:21] And I, I think maybe that's one other thing to mention is that these thresholds that we experience, we experience them in so many different ways. They keep coming back. Every single one of these thresholds feels like it's represented in each threshold as well. There's a whole micro, macro fractal thing going on here.
[00:35:38] Right. So we'll try to only lightly touch on that. But it's this feeling of like being so close and yet feeling like, well, is it time or is it not? Yes. That's something I'd love for you both to speak to because you've had different perspectives, you had different experiences on how do you know when it's actually time?
[00:35:59] Kristina: Yes. And the reason I tend to use this last temptation example where I was being pulled back is because the medicine is different for each of us. And so if the muscle we need to build is trusting ourselves and that voice so much that even when it's giving us seemingly contradictory information, we are given this opportunity to feel into the discernment of, okay, am I being called back from here?
[00:36:36] From my mind, from my ego, from what makes sense, from what I quote unquote know? Or is there this deeper unknown, can't explain it. Just I feel called to, although my bags are packed and I'm really ready to move in this other direction, there's, I feel the truth of the calling. At that other door, on the other side of the house, right?
[00:37:08] And so for me, the muscle I needed to build there and the reason I kept getting pulled back was not because the call I was feeling in the other direction was incorrect. No, that's still alive and still kind of incubating and gestating within me and I'm still living that. And so the pull of me kind of seemingly returning to what I would've called the old was my training and me building a muscle of trust within myself and with my own voice of the soul and of the divine in a way that I could hold both of those truths at the same time and still feel into my inner authority saying, you know, there's something over there.
[00:38:02] I'm gonna, like, I'm still gonna hold this within my field and my vision and my heart, and yet my attention and my energy is being called to be with this new myth, you know, to, to work on this book. To meet Aaron, even to meet you. Yeah, right. Luke, it's, that was still sort of in my, like, I'm on a creative sabbatical, I'm doing this other thing, and that was what I needed.
[00:38:30] That was the training at that moment for me and for other people who might need to work the muscle of courage, for instance, it might be more of the blind faith, jump off the cliff, say that final no, and move on with the force of that, that yes, that faith, that unknown, and so the last temptation will show up differently for them.
[00:38:58] Luke: What you just brought up. And what I'm recognizing is, in part of the looping that I've done, it sounds very, very, at least similar, very, very different context, I'm sure of what you're describing is that I'm getting more and more tuned into that inner channel that allows me to feel that deep resonance, that deep truth, that deep next best step that is in front of me at any given time so that when I do cross the threshold on whatever the next thing is for me to face or choose on, I'm going forward with that.
[00:39:36] And I, I, I'm actually going through that experience right now where I have actually moved forward on a few different things and I still feel those invitations to, no, no, no, go back to doing it this way. And instead it's like, wait, no, I've got quite a few experiences with this now. And as opposed to me trying to figure things out the way that I've always used to, my way of dividing the next major direction is that I'm not gonna sit down over a spreadsheet and try to figure it all out.
[00:40:01] I'm gonna go out in the woods and I'm gonna go sit and talk to a tree. Yeah. It's gonna be very, very different now. Right? Totally. And because that's part of what helps me drop into that. And I guess that's, that's Aaron for you. I'm curious because as, as you know,Kristina, you just put it, you know, there is at times that, that no, and that blind faith leap from the outside looking in, it seems like that's something that, you know, you're already a tuning fork for, for what that truth seems to be.
[00:40:28] But what's the reality? Right? I can, I can say that outside looking in, very easy for me to say that, oh, it looks, wow, you got it all together. You got your, you know exactly where you're supposed to be. What's the actual experience?
[00:40:39] Aaron: That's a beautiful question. We're all human, right? There's always a lot more nuance and I'd say that it's, it is about a long-term devotion to living by, you can call by many different names.
[00:40:52] The logic of faith, the logic of love, divine guidance, inner authority, and choosing overall to orient towards that rather than taking the bait in any situation of what the mind thinks is most correct. And even getting to a place where you can see, oh, my mind is like, this looks great, but I feel dissociated from my body and there's other sensations I'm not noticing.
[00:41:22] That's a very powerful place to get to and I've been blessed in my walk with God to have many situations where the mind and the fear has been saying one thing and I've made that choice to, to walk out on faith in some way, which is building that reinforcement of, okay, when I move with the logic of love, when I listen to my inner authority, or even when I just don't listen to the external noise and my mind and I just don't make the choice that's being dangled in that way, it's building this strength and it's building evidence over time.
[00:42:00] And I'm a big fan. We both are of human design as a perspective on the practicality of intuition because we can talk about it in this very general way of like, follow your heart, follow your gut, listen to your inner authority, pray and see what God says. And that's a muscle that's very atrophied for a lot of us.
[00:42:20] And the human design perspective is that the inner guidance shows up differently for different people. Right. I won't get too into the nitty gritty here, but it feels relevant to say I have an authority within the human design where decisions come in what they call splenic, which is an instant intuition. So that's how I operate.
[00:42:41] Yep. It's like something just drops in and I know Kristina has an emotional authority, which is a process people with that need to sit with things longer, sleep on it. There's a different way the energy moves and there's, there's multiple other authorities. But even starting to attune to that and to notice where the yes and the no is showing up in your body is really powerful.
[00:43:04] And that's really supported me. And I will say on, on what you were just speaking on that I hear this ongoing theme of the difference between the form and the energy within it. Where, yeah, what is the old is a fear-based mental choice, which could be I need to cut and run and get outta here and like even though something feels unfinished, I'm bolting for the door.
[00:43:31] It could also be I need to stay here because I'm scared of what happens when I walk out the door. And I think what we're talking about is, is a whole different orientation towards creative living. Yes. When I think about a version for me of the seemingly going back, but not going back was when I was making a choice of where I wanted to move a couple of years ago.
[00:43:56] And my dream has always been, I grew up in New York City in a one-bedroom apartment with five other people. I have always wanted to live spaciously in nature, and I was unclear on where I was gonna go next, where that was gonna be, and I hadn't yet met Kristina and the sort of mental soul story was just go buy some land somewhere, build a cabin, and like I can't possibly go back to a city.
[00:44:25] Right? That would be misaligned for me because I've already seen how cities are incorrect for my soul path, right? That's kind of the mental story. But when I went through a surrender where I kind of put it on the altar before God and said, I don't know where to go, where would you have me go? Yeah, I want to be in nature, but I also would love to meet my beloved as soon as possible.
[00:44:48] And I was given the instant splenic hit of a city that I was supposed to move to, and I could have been in. The mental story of that was probably incorrect because I am done with cities. And it is a compromising of my values to go live in a place where I have to be in a car mm-hmm. And buy, you know, groceries from a major chain or whatever, or hear other people from my home,
[00:45:15] Luke: My inner authority must be wrong this time.
[00:45:17] Aaron: Yes. Yeah. Like, I must override this with my mind because we're on a mission. And it needs to be different. But I think the Lord surrendered to that and saw that I was, I just, I felt the resonance of this is a yes, I have to go to this city for whatever reason. And I moved there and six weeks later I meet this wonderful human being and, and the rest is history.
[00:45:41] And now I'm in nature. Right? Yes. So there was a divine timing that I had to surrender to, and that's what I mean about the creative living. It's like my overall intention, living in a beautiful place in nature with my beloved required a winding path of compromise and uncertainty. To actually bring that into form.
[00:46:03] Kristina: Right. And those stepping stones too, which is, which is part of, you know, whether it's the big leap that you're taking for the, you know, the full no, into the kind of unknown blind faith yes. When you haven't built that muscle, it's like, all right, well, jumping out of a plane's gonna do something, you're gonna, there's something you're gonna build in that process and there's some medicine there for you.
[00:46:31] And in other cases it is more of this incremental kind of stepping stone, small choices that you're, you're not seeing how the dots are connecting in real time necessarily. You are just in a moment by moment, day by day listening and just taking each next tiny action, whatever that might be. And one of the questions we get so often in our work individually and also, you know, as we've been teaching together is how do I know if it's the voice of the ego or the voice of my soul?
[00:47:14] Or how do I know if it's fear or it's, you know, the divine or, and that's, it's if a course gonna be different for everyone and yet there is a similar frequency or resonance that that old way has to it. And so yeah, it might sound like the voice of an external authority, whether that's someone from childhood or a boss, or it might kind of come in with this certain tone or this certain frequency of whatever that external authority is, sort of like symbolically represented by in, in your own experience. You know, it could come up as little characters who, like, I know for me when there's a real task master I have who comes in, who's like the editor-in-chief who's the one with the spreadsheet and the one who's like, here's the cost-benefit analysis, here are the numbers, here are the stats.
[00:48:22] Like this is my report and this is what you need to do. And whenever I feel that character pusher, task master, EIC arriving, you know, sometimes there is information there and also I know where that energy is coming from. And so it really is about working the muscle within yourself and giving yourself the space.
[00:48:51] To learn more and experience more about how that shows up for you. So that, and sometimes it is gonna be those little steps in real time where you get that feedback, you get that evidence, you get that proof when you're at that choice point, and maybe you take the carrot or the stick, if you're paying attention, you're gonna see where that leads you, how that feels in your body.
[00:49:17] Yeah. Is it delivering what it presented, right. Or do you feel Yeah, that same kind of disappointment, unsatisfied. Are you back in the same place feeling that like something's missing after you've sort of bowed to the stick or taken the carrot? Okay, now that's more information for you and so it, it really is such a process of cultivation, you know, with these voices, with these choices, and with our own internal mechanism and, and really building that.
[00:49:56] Luke: The development of that inner muscle and that process. I will say for me, and I'm actually, I'm really glad Aaron, you brought it up, that me going into and understanding a bit more from a human design aspect was really important.
[00:50:11] Didn't actually for anybody look a handful of episodes back to, to the human design episode with, with Nik McRae. To just give you a, a real like first step here, I'm also a splenic authority. For someone who has been so mind-dominant, that really has screwed with me. Yes. And because it it's created, it had created such a conflict that that authority was trying to speak for so long and it was at such contrast to the way that I had built myself up in terms of relying on my mind.
[00:50:45] Cuz it was my mind that kept me safe. It was my mind that kept me achieving all these things. And very often that inner authority was saying, no, no, no. You need to go in a completely different direction. Let's look over here. And so for me, my first exposure and actually that feeling tone that I developed around that inner authority was when it would speak.
[00:51:05] I knew it was real because my first reaction to it was, oh hell no. Yeah. That's how I knew it was actually coming through, because I, I could feel it was in such contrast to what I knew and what I felt. And the distinction you then made is that once we start to lean in a direction to feel how congruent our body, our heart, our emotions are with what seems to be that message from spirit, soul, inner authority.
[00:51:35] And if you feel like you're starting to get a leaning, but the body is disconnected, the body's not feeling it, that's such a wonderful sign. Go back in. Take a look at this, feel into this, because most likely maybe it's on track, but maybe it's still missing something. Or maybe it's really not on track, but it's, there's some great signs there that we're looking for this integrated feeling of coherence among all of our systems, right?
[00:52:06] So I think that's a wonderful distinction. I think the other piece that I just wanted to bring back in and then go to this conversation around where are we living from? Because Kristina, to, as you said, there's like, there's all these, the, that voice can come through in so many different ways of. The, the what we've experienced in life, there might be people that symbolically represent that authority, that deeper wisdom for us.
[00:52:32] And that really, the way you describe it is to me, wonderfully expressed of how we live mythically. Yes. We get so caught up in living with what we think is directly in front of us and assuming, oh, what I see in this movie screen called life is reality, and we miss this unbelievable mythical, imaginal world that we happen to live in.
[00:52:54] We miss all the ways that it's trying to speak to us and show up. And the more that we can live with that imaginal energy, meaning to know that there is something here that is trying to dance with us, that is trying to speak to us. Look for the myth. Yes. Right, because it's it's all around us. And I know that's been true.
[00:53:16] I mean, I know that's been true for you guys with, with just the, the journeys you've shared and the stories that you've shared. So just please add onto that and we'll, we'll come back to the,
[00:53:25] Kristina: that's something I'm, I'm so passionate about. As I started to understand my own personal myth and what that meant in terms of, there is a kind of symbolic site.
[00:53:36] There is an archetypal site, there is a mythical site that is like putting on a certain pair of glasses where you can see who you are, who the characters are in your story, and even just what it is you're living, what it is you're learning and. Without that expanded site, it's, I wouldn't even say it's a three-dimensional, it's more of like a two-dimensional site you have without that awareness.
[00:54:14] And so one of the things I love doing with people is helping them kind of discover what their personal myth is. And the way that you begin to see yourself, and just as a fun exercise, one way you can begin this process is to think about growing up, we don't, culturally, we don't have a lot of myths, but we do have Disney movies or we have superheroes, you know, in the west.
[00:54:45] We're less connected to our, our deeper kind of oral traditions and, and myths that come from our ancestors. Our version of it has become the kind of Disney movie or superhero. But even using that, you can still begin to see the thread. And so you feel into, like, if I were to imagine myself as a Disney character or as a superhero, or you know, what's, what is your favorite story?
[00:55:15] What is your favorite movie? What do you feel most resonant with in terms of that protagonist? And you can just begin there and start to deepen into some of these more universal kind of character arcs and stories and what that shows you and how it, it can really expand your awareness. Is, is not. To see, okay, I resonate with, let's use like, I don't know, Cinderella or Simba of the Lion King or something.
[00:55:53] Right? It doesn't mean like, okay, now I'm gonna go live that story. It's about you seeing, okay, here's archetypally, what that evil stepmother shows up as in my world, archetypally, here's this story of me denying my, you know, like in the Lion King denying my heritage. Or whatever my destiny is, and, and going to try to live as another type of creature or another, you know, hide away in another world and being confronted with that and needing to make that return home to stand for.
[00:56:34] Who I am and, and my community and my, you know, family, whatever that might be. It gives you the cast of characters and kind of the environmental understanding of what you're living so that you can step into that as the writer, the actor, the director, the cinematographer, and now begin to shape it knowing what you're working with, what is the story you want to create, right?
[00:57:07] And it helps you like see the villain or see, you know, the shadow parts of yourself. From more of a witness perspective and be less entangled with it in this way that's about blame or shame or right or wrong or good or evil. And more about the full picture of how all of this energy works together and how you are the one at the center.
[00:57:33] You are the protagonist. And so I love that you just kind of spoke to that piece because I feel like that's a great entry point for people to begin to see through that mythical lens and just understand more of their creative power and more of their universal destiny and story that is completely unique to them. And also part of this universal fabric that we're all living.
[00:58:03] Luke: The way that you just described that and, and run through that. Speaks so deeply to me and, and reminds me of why I have loved the cinema for as long as I have my life and the really weird gift I have to find messages and even the worst movies possibly imagine, but nonetheless, right, because there's, there's always that bigger story.
[00:58:28] Yes. That's within there. That's speaking to us in some way. We're not gonna go into this now, but you also gave me a really cool idea. Maybe this is a whole other conversation of actually what, cause I've done this before, watch a movie and then assume that you are every character. Yes. Because every character represents a part of who you are.
[00:58:47] A hundred percent. And that opens up a whole different perspective and ride that you can go on, which is kind of fun. What I wanted to come back to before, because I want really wanted to get into this before we, we do wrap up, is something that you brought up a while ago. It's also something we've spoken about quite a bit offline and it seems to be something that's recurring right now of conversations I'm having, which is this question of where are we sourcing from?
[00:59:12] And the way that, and, and I think this is so relevant to that last temptation because what, what I've seen, if I express it in language that I've, I've very recently heard actually the last episode of Ryan Hartley speaks to this in his way is that at the last temptation I have stood there and thought of, am I going to live for something or from it?
[00:59:33] Right? And so I didn't originally resonate with that idea. I doesn't feel like I'm living from fear, but when I start to look at what I was living for, I was living for validation. I was living for affirmation, I was living for this, all these other external materialities. Right. Well, it's just a flip side of living from fear.
[00:59:53] It's, it was just a different way because I was living for something. Because when you live for, there's this assumption that you're coming from a place of lack. Like you don't already. Right. As opposed to when you're living from, and I think that to me, that's been one of the, the representations of this last temptation that has been so true is, am I going to start living from what I know is this deeper source love and truth and peace, or am I gonna keep living for? And even that idea of living for love, or for truth or for peace makes it other than us. Right.
[01:00:31] Kristina: I love this distinction. One of the things about the last temptation and about your story as well, Luke, which is so unique, is that your identification phase began from a very aligned place.
[01:00:46] You know, much of what you built initially was already very aligned, very on purpose. Many of the things that, that people go through a number of cycles to sort of build to which, which brings in the kind of subtle sneakiness that we've been talking about. Because as we become more evolved and advanced, in that authenticity and alignment, the only way for these things to get in is, is covertly.
[01:01:17] Because we've, we've kind of, you know, gone through the more obvious versions of it or like, kind of skipped that step. And so in this same way about where are we sourcing, and I love the distinction of the living for which is always external, right? Whether it is love or, or you know, truth or service and the living from, it's like this capacity that we need to build through the layers of living we can live for kind of the, the lower desires. When we skip that though, we, we kind of start from living for the higher desires, which seem aligned because we are living for things like love and service. And yet that to me, so much of like the core and the foundation of what this new myth is about is living from our center and being sourced from within, from our true creative power, which is eternal.
[01:02:44] And when we live from that place, we're not drained or depleted or we're still in relationship with the external, but we are not living for the external, or let's say being circumstantially affected by it in any way that is swaying our inner foundation or knowing. And it doesn't mean we don't, we're always gonna be learning, growing, experiencing challenges, having these opportunities to cross the thresholds and grow.
[01:03:19] And yet there's a certain point at which our inner foundation becomes strong enough that we can see through the carrots, the sticks, yeah. The parts of ourselves that might still, you know, be coming up to be brought into this, this new foundation. And that shift, that true embodiment is where the new is born.
[01:03:48] I mean, this is really what we're living right now, and that's why there are no maps for where we're going, right? Because we are living them from this, this new foundation and those of us who have chosen to, to pave our path first and to kind of go first and come back with, you know, some of the evidence and, and also the scars and the sort of like war stories of what we experienced along the way.
[01:04:22] It's, it is such, I feel it's a courageous act to be living from these places that are not yet recognized or understood, or even necessarily, you know, supported in certain ways yet because we are just beginning. And I love that, you know, those of us who are on this journey at this phase have the courage to ask these questions and to really live this in a way that we can come back and tell it.
[01:05:00] Because that's the only way to create true transformation through your story is, is to have lived it in such a way that your experience is the gift that you bring back to inspire another's leap, another's choice, another, you know, another's unique path.
[01:05:23] Luke: Aaron, if, if, because I've heard you speak about this for years, and it's another way of explaining kind of what, what Kristina and I are getting at right here is that connection between the means and the ends.
[01:05:35] That is something that's been so attuned. You've been so attuned to, from words of Martin Luther King, and I believe Gandhi as well, who have spoken about this and can be really challenging when to, to, to get into this notion because now it's to live from this place to have the means and very often the rest of the world wants a very different ends and it wants you still connected to this old paradigm.
[01:06:00] Hmm. So I'm wondering if you could just speak a, a little bit about that.
[01:06:03] Aaron: Absolutely. So this is a principle that's been guiding me for quite a long time since I, I started my work in the world as a pretty traditional activist. Like, I looked around at the world and I was like, there's a lot going wrong and I want to do something about it.
[01:06:20] And was in a very like 3D action place about that. Protesting, chaining myself to government buildings. And in that process I was brought into the awareness of, at a certain point, I hit this like burnout level of like, there's only so much I can yell at these supposed bad guys, and they're not listening and nothing's changing.
[01:06:39] So how does change actually happen? And it brought me into an awareness and a study of people who'd actually affected almost supernatural change on the planet, changed entire institutions. People like Martin Luther King Jr. Like Nelson Mandela, like Gandhi. And they all had this same principle in common.
[01:06:59] They all had deep devotion to God and a surrender to the divine. And they all had this awareness of what I call, how we do the work is the work from a quantum perspective, from a metaphysical perspective, literally everything is now. And so the energy that you're holding now is gonna impact the result that you create.
[01:07:20] So this desire to create peace, but we're doing it from a place of warring to stop the bad guys so we can have peace. That's literally only going to recreate more and more war. And I've lived that. I rock bottomed out of that in my professional and personal lives in terms of how I was trying to, I call it like move the external chessboard pieces around without changing the, the inner landscape.
[01:07:48] And I really feel like this is, this is what divine mission is in this new season as we live. The new myth is being the change that we wish to see in the world and not making these external compromises to justify a compromise of our values because it's gonna lead to some results. Oh, just make this little compromise because it's for love, because it's for the mission, right?
[01:08:15] Yes. It's not completely aligned. And you feel, to me, there's a somatic sensation of like vacating center where you're just like leaving yourself. It's like you're literally like walking away from your core. And we've lived in a world where it's like, that's literally how it operates. Leave your essence.
[01:08:34] Yeah. Leave your true nature. Be what you, what the external world says you have to be to accomplish this result. And that creates this like downward black hole spiral of more and more exhaustion and more and more compromise that a lot of us are like climbing our way out of that. Back to a, yeah. A zero point to be creating.
[01:08:57] Creating in the new, and I love what you said about creating for versus from, because we're, and what you said about no maps, because we've lived in this world that says, just make these critical compromises on your values and your essential nature and you can have everything that you need in this world and just follow these steps.
[01:09:21] And now we're letting go of that certainty in exchanging it for a different kind of certainty, which is the certainty of the peace that we feel when we are ourselves. And that's that piece that leads people to do the most courageous acts and have that calm and the eye of the storm, where it's like, you can come at me with any temptation, with any carrot, with any stick, and I'm not gonna be moved from who I truly am.
[01:09:50] Luke: The way you describe that, the certainty of peace, of being ourselves. Right? And how many people just listening right now, you can feel that, right? You can feel the energy of that. You can feel the vibration of that. And from this kind of complete opposite side of things, we have used that phrase of the ends will justify the means.
[01:10:10] For the past, however many centuries. Does anybody think that we're better off having lift that way? Yeah. I can't imagine that there's many people who feel like, oh yeah, no, totally worth it. Look at where we're, and we're all kinda, things are great.
[01:10:23] Aaron: It's bottoming out of that, like many of us are just reaching that final point where it's just like, this isn't work.
[01:10:29] I'm awake enough to see like, fool, shame on you, fool me 500 times. I gotta dean more choice. And yeah. I did want to just bring one little point of clarification to what you said about being driven by the validation or the success not being about fear. And I actually really believe that if you go to the deepest root, there it is the fear, right?
[01:10:55] It is about, it's not necessarily like absolutely a conscious fear-based impulse, but it is. If we track, why do we want the validation, why do we want the recognition? It goes to core fears of worthiness, of acceptance, of belonging, which of course is connected to. Survival, you know, wanting to stay in the tribe.
[01:11:13] So I just felt like there's someone listening who exactly needed that point. Needs to keep hearing that.
[01:11:18] Luke: Absolutely. So just before we wrap up, one last thing, because I feel like we're at a threshold, all of us, not just individually, but collectively right now, to all the things that we're speaking to of the fact that we are being asked to start living from a very, very different place within ourselves, from that inner authority, from that divine, from that piece, from that love.
[01:11:41] And so I'd love to just hear from both of you, for those that are listening, for those that are recognizing that you're standing at that threshold right now, what would your words be for them?
[01:11:55] Aaron: What I would say is, first of all, if you're listening to this right now, if you're resonating with this, you're exactly where you need to be on your path.
[01:12:06] And there are more or less aligned choices, but all of it is data collection. We only know about what the no feels like because we've done the no, and then we've seen what the result is. So I would invite courage to make the choice, you know, you need to make, I would invite compassion for yourself within the process, and I would invite like gentle awareness of where you are on your path.
[01:12:38] The metaphor I'm seeing is someone who knows that they wanna run a marathon or 50 miles or something like that, and they, they know like, this is, this is like a capacity I have within me is to run a long distance, but they haven't run more than half a mile or a mile. And if they go out and they're like, this is, I have the potential to run 50 miles and I'm just gonna do it, that's going to be a very demoralizing experience.
[01:13:04] And I think about our intuition and our faith muscles like that. Actually the image I'm getting is from the movie The Matrix, when Neo gets pulled out and he's basically like unable to use his muscles and he's very, very atrophied in all of these ways cuz he was plugged in to a system running in a different way.
[01:13:26] He got unplugged and he was basically like a newborn deer, like wobbling around, very unclear on how to operate and it took him time to build his strength up and it's no small thing to pull the plug on a fear-based system that has you operating in a conditioned way in service of another vision. And to pull the plug on that and to reconnect with yourself, with your soul, with God, and to operate in a different way.
[01:13:53] And for some of us, we may be trying to call God, having and our, and our inner authority having not talked maybe very much this entire life, and then wondering why it's not clear or judging ourselves for not knowing what's next. And it's like, do the equivalent of stretching and going on a half-mile walk and start to work your intuition.
[01:14:18] Start to be in relationship with your higher self, with your soul, with God, so that that relationship can strengthen over time so that when you come to these massive choice points you have, those muscles aren't as atrophied, right? And if you are at a choice point and you feel like you're belly-flopping out of the matrix, like have some compassion for yourself because everything in this world has been set up to keep you from doing what you're choosing to do now.
[01:14:45] Kristina: I actually wanna come with something really simple and after, you know, living and working, I mean working in Times Square all these years, being like opening my, my bodies and fields and energies in a place like New York City, living very much in these two worlds for so long and just kind of on a crash course with all of that.
[01:15:16] What I would say that I, I wish someone would've said to me then when I was really flailing around and had no, nobody even to talk to about this kind of stuff, let alone guide me. I was very much a fish outta water doing my own thing. And I feel like the simplest, truest thing I could have heard then is, Be still, just create one minute of silence with yourself every day.
[01:15:54] One minute, anyone can do anything for one minute. I don't care how busy you are, what you got going on, what's there one minute is possible, and that one minute of just being still and being with yourself and being in silence, even if your mind's kicking things up and you know you're, that one minute of silence is actually just one minute of you.
[01:16:24] Like just, you know, all the things that you, you haven't listened to, that you give yourself that one minute and it's all pouring out, whatever, whatever it is, just honor yourself in that simple way. Start there. And from there, so much more is possible and available. And it can be that simple. I know it sounds too easy, which is usually when you know it's true.
[01:16:59] Luke: Yeah, yeah. No, for, for everyone hearing that stillness used to be something that was one of, you've heard me say it on the show, one of one of two terrifying things, stillness and silence. But what I came to know is even in that minute that you just described, Kristina, that's actually the path to spaciousness.
[01:17:25] And in that space, you can start to hear again. You can start to tune into something different again. So I want to thank both of you. I have been so looking forward to this. Now I more than confirm because this has just been a wonderful, wonderful space to share with you both. Uh, I wanna thank you for just the, the energy, the wisdom, the experience, the stories, all the things that you guys have brought to this, to this walk to this conversation.
[01:17:55] And I thank you for the work that you're doing in the world cuz it is important stuff and we thank you for it.
[01:17:59] Aaron: Thank you so much, Luke.
[01:18:00] Kristina: Thank you. Such a pleasure.
[01:18:02] Luke: Hey everyone. Before you sign off today, I actually just wanted to tell you about two specific events and programs that are coming up with Kristina and Aaron that you really do want to check out.
[01:18:13] To be honest with you, uh, I'm gonna put some links in the show notes, but for the first one, it's called Emerge, which is a two-day virtual retreat. It's gonna be running June 24th and 25th. So if you're a leader, creator way, show who's ready to really start tapping into this energy and strength through the new chapter of your life, your creation, your mission.
[01:18:33] You're gonna wanna join Kristina and Aaron for this one. It's a really great way to build more empowerment within yourself, live that new story, upgrade your vision and expression, and really start to flourish in this new world that has just been born, the one we've been talking about pretty much all show.
[01:18:48] The second one that I wanted to tell you about is an eight-week immersion program called Sacred Passage and this is actually the full transformational journey of the new myth. And so they're gonna take you through all the phases, all the thresholds of change and the applications are being accepted right now for that new group, that new cohort for Sacred Passage.
[01:19:10] The links are the show notes, but I do want to give them to you here. But first one, Emerge. If you just simply go to voyagesofthespirit.com/emerge. That was voyagesofthespirit.com/emerge. And the second one for Sacred Passage is simply the-sacred-passage.com, the-sacred-passage.com.
[01:19:36] Like I said, I really strongly encourage you guys to go further. If you love this conversation, you're gonna wanna check out these two programs and see which one is right for. Thanks everybody, and once again, I look forward to seeing you On This Walk. Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk.
[01:19:52] Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com, and click on community in the upper right hand corner.
[01:20:17] It's free to join until we go on this walk again. I’m Luke Iorio. Be well.