[00:13] Opening Credits

 Aloha and welcome to Your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality, and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky-Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.

[00:36] Introduction From Dr BethAnne

Aloha, everyone, welcome to Your Heart Magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky-Wright, and today we are talking about “I thought I was aligned AF. So, where's my flow?”. 

I love this topic for so many reasons. The title came from an article I thought about writing a few years back - actually, the article that was not an article, it was a piece I had the idea to write - with the premise behind it being that so often when we are on what many of us would call our spiritual path, and we're being conscientious and we're really trying to do the work, we are really trying to root out old stories in our life - we are … maybe we've made some big changes - and followed our heart or followed our more spiritual soulful wisdom and left something behind or made a big change; we are to the best of our ability, really walking the path. 

So often, we feel like when we're doing that, that things ought to line up. And there's this kind of myth or expectation that has evolved, I believe, in the spiritual community that when we're in alignment with ourselves and alignment with our soul, that things flow to us with grace and peace and ease and flow. I love that idea. I love that idea. I think it's a beautiful idea, though it's not always the reality that we encounter. 

 And when things feel really out of alignment, or we feel like we expected things to go differently, and it's all falling apart. Or we already went through the spiritual awakening, we did the big changes. So why is it getting worse now? Or why are we suddenly feeling bad or depressed or really struggling somehow? 

There's sort of this question of like “WTF universe, like, what is going on? And where's my flow? I thought I was doing it right! So why are these things happening to me?” and the human tendency that we often have is to one: either get mad and scapegoat the universe. And somehow feeling that it's being done to us, or two: we turn it inwards, and we kind of overthink it and think, “well, maybe I'm doing this, maybe I've attracted this reality into me, maybe I'm not as evolved as I thought or whatever”, you know, funny stories that our mind loves to tell us about the interpretation of the events going on in our life. 

And so, we can spend a lot of time spinning our wheels and really beating ourselves up. And what if it's not the universe's fault? And what if we're not actually doing something wrong - you can't see my air quotes. But I kind of say “wrong” and do these air quotes with the idea that right and wrong is a very kind of human way to look at these things. It's not always spirit's perspective. 

But from our perspective, what if we're not actually out of alignment? What if we are in alignment, and there's other reasons that things aren't quite super flowy and Zen like for us?  So that is what we are exploring today on the podcast.

[4:10] What Is Flow?

And I want to kind of clarify that the idea of flow - there's some different concepts that are out there. And there's this idea of flow state, that originates from positive psychology, that is often intended to mean - kind of being in this state of being immersed in something that you really love - where you're really focused, and you are just kind of lost in it and you're having this optimal performance. And they use flow state a lot in coaching. And as I said, positive psychology, but the idea of flow state in spirituality is slightly different. 

So, I just want to clarify that when I talk about flow, I'm not talking so much about the positive psychology of flow state. I'm talking more about spiritually, this idea that we're really centered in ourselves, and we're really awake and conscious and aware and we are surrendering to the path that is unfolding in front of us. And we are allowing it to flow and unfold. We're not resisting, we are surrendering into that. I'm talking about that. 

And talking about this myth that when we're in alignment, somehow everything flows in our life. And if it's falling apart, or we're struggling, that somehow it must be us, or we must be wrong, or we must have done something wrong. “Why is this happening to me?”… so that's the stuff we're exploring today. 

[5:30] The First Reason Why Things Might Not Fully Flow

 And let's dive in with that. I created this content today with some bullet points. And we're gonna go over five reasons things might not fully flow and talk about what those are. 

And these aren't well developed, I actually put the intention out there before I hopped on and recorded this today that I wanted this podcast to flow. And I wanted to - I wanted to be in the flow state of just kind of surrendering to what wanted to come through. So, we'll see what comes through today and what we’ll create with that, and what wisdom spirit might have for us. 

 So, the first thing that might be a reason that things are not exactly flowing in your life is - I wrote this down - I call it ‘big roots, small pot’. And I want you to imagine that there is a beautiful house plant that you have, and you have watered it and it's growing, and it's doing really well. And at a certain point in time, it starts to wither. And you can't figure out what’s changed -you are watering it the same thing you always have – it’s getting the appropriate amount of sunlight, nothing big has really changed. And maybe somebody comes along with the green thumb, and kind of picks up the pot or looks at it and says, “oh, this plant is really root bound, it's growing so much that it no longer fits this pot, and it will really start to flourish again, if you repot it. And if you put it in a bigger pot and give it room to root down and to stretch out its roots”.

And this idea came to me - this is actually something that once came through when I was doing an angel message for - I can't even remember what - I just asked them what's the energy right now. And this is this beautiful illustration that was given to me that many times when we are growing as a person, and we are growing spiritually, we can be like that plant that becomes root bound. 

And we might outgrow the spaces that we are currently inhabiting. Or maybe we've had a ton of growth. And we went on a retreat or did something and came back with all these spiritual principles, and all this personal growth and development and we try and start living it out in the vehicle that we've currently created for life, and we find that things just aren't flowing. 

Sometimes what is going on is that we have outgrown those spaces, or what we are bringing into spaces that we have previously been a part of is out of alignment, in some shape or form. So, this might happen if in a relationship where you have all this growth, and you come back and you bring it into the relationship and you know, the friendship - we will say it's a friendship - and you've always been in sync before and all of a sudden, things start to feel really out of sync. And you can't figure out what is going on. “I've always been like such in step and in tune with this person.” And there might be something happening here, where either you've outgrown the relationship, or you've outgrown the current form that that relationship has taken. 

You know, we don't always outgrow relationships in our life. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, but that is a very like individualized case by case basis. But there is the possibility that things aren't flowing because it's just no longer in alignment with where we're at. And let's say the other party isn't interested in being in a space where they are maybe working on being their best self or their higher self or they're just interested in something else - they're on a little bit of a different path. So, there are times where we'll get really out of sync with something or someone in our lives, and it can mean that we are outgrowing that space. 

[9:45] Maybe You’re Not A Houseplant 

Another way though, that this often presents itself, because many times when somebody is feeling this, like “where's my flow?”, they've actually already gone through some form of a process where maybe they've even transplanted themselves and they're like “I found a bigger pot, you know, I like let go of a lot of things that were no longer serving me. And I've really stepped into this bigger vision of self. And I feel like I'm embodying that bigger vision of self. And I took that big leap of faith. And nothing's in alignment, did I get it wrong?”.

The same analogy applies in a slightly different way. And let's say that, you know, whatever our proverbial plant is, this green growth thing isn't growing. And we think, “oh, my goodness, you know, I need a bigger pot, or I need to, like I need something slightly bigger”. What if spirit knows that you are not a house plant? And you are not meant to have a bigger pot, because you're not going to become a bigger house plant. What if you are an oak tree? What if you're meant to grow a rose garden and create something that has like multi-dimensional bigger branches? What if your energy is meant to become something even more than what you previously imagined? 

 And so, the kind of growth that you were going through wasn't just uprooting your life or changing your life to try and step into a bigger version of self - but now you’re in that bigger version of self. You think the growth is kind of done - or the worst of it's done -And spirit is like, “no, no, no, this is an invitation to really become like a mighty tree, and to really sink deeper roots”. So, you're not just being put into a different pot, you're being transplanted. And you are being put into brand new soil that is so much more nutritious, and so much more nourishing, and have so much more in it, that is going to feed you and it's going to strengthen you. And it's really going to help you become who you truly are. 

Sometimes this is what's going on in more of a soul purpose, spiritual sense, where the individual truly is like staying on the path the best they know how; they are doing the hard work of letting go, of trying to create those bigger spaces to embody who they are. And it's just not quite lining up because they're not done yet. And part of their path is to really realize that they're still thinking too small. In order to become this bigger version of self and to really embody it and believe it - not just try and live it and act it - but to truly to become that, there's this bigger energetic transplantation that is going on. 

And that when we go through things being out of alignment, it often challenges us spiritually. And we are often asked to really come back and lean heavy on our spiritual relationship and lean heavy on our faith, and really kind of rock our spiritual connection however we understand that to be.  

These times can be really big testing times for us and really big times of trials. But often there are these hidden gifts and hidden light that can be found during those times, where we develop some form of an inner strength, or some form of an inner belief, some form of realizing that we still had some like dead old roots and old limiting beliefs that were holding us back. And we wouldn't have been able to access them or root them out in any other way than to be in the circumstances that we were in.

 A good example of this - I will give you a personal one. Earlier I said this was from the angels. And last week, we talked about the Akashic Records. And I talked about my work with the Records. And I think at some point in this podcast, I've talked a little bit about my angelic connection and how that was a gift that grew for me as well. And that gift came from being in a place where I was experiencing big roots, small pot, and I thought I'd gotten a big enough pot that I was really growing into what I needed. 

And I kind of learned on my own journey of like, “oh, no, no, no, you know, you don't need a pot, like you're gonna go plant yourself in the ground. And you've got some more growth to do”, which was quite hard on my ego at the time. But it was part of my spiritual growth. And it was during that time that I really began to tune into feeling the angels, specifically the archangels and really having a sense of that connection and receiving messages from them and having a more profound growth and relationship with that. I would not have been able to access that gift if any other way, I certainly wouldn't have been able to access it, if I had kind of gotten what I wanted the first go around, the only way to get to it was to be in a space of deep need. So, there are times where there is something that we're growing into. And we're really being invited to not only expand our mind, but expand our energy and expand our hearts, and the power of our heart and the love in our heart and a bigger way. 

 And when we go into the heart, and when we work our spiritual connection, when we come back to our spiritual connection, and we say, “I'm really mad at you guys right now”, maybe I'm the only one who does this. But this is something I've been known to do. And “I'm not happy with how things are going down here. And I don't understand it. And I'm really angry, and I'm kind of on strike. And so, I'm sort of not talking to you. But I also still believe”. And when we do that, and we keep coming back and saying “yeah, I still believe in this, even though I don't like it right now. I'm still on the journey. Even though I don't understand it right now, I still know there's something bigger for me, even though I'm really confused right now about what's going on”…when we're doing that, we're growing our heart, we are growing our faith, we are growing our spiritual groups, we are growing our dependence on our spiritual connection. And we are growing our embodiment as a spiritual being on this earth, you know, experiencing humanity, and here on this human journey. So, there are some really valuable things that can happen when we're going through that. 

[16:43] Ego and Expectations

Second thing that might get in the way of having things go flowy in our life when we think we're in alignment is: ego and expectations. 

 If we were to deconstruct the story that I just told you - this little snapshot about where I was at - that was the summer of 2019, by the way, I remember it vividly I've written about it, wrote about it in Revelations Of The Sky. So, I've been kind of vocal about how that was a hard year for me. 

But if we were to deconstruct what I just shared, you can feel and hear in my words, the ego that was there, and the weight of the expectations. And when I say ego, what I mean is this attachment, this kind of egoic attachment to “but this is what I wanted, this is how I thought it was supposed to look, this is my assumption of what being in flow looks like. This is why I moved to Hawaii, I came here to manifest this thing. It's not manifesting the way that I want. And I'm feeling more lost and confused than ever, what is going on?”. 

There's so much ego attachment involved in that. And I kind of saw it at the time, but kind of couldn't see it, which sometimes when we're in the mix of it, that's just how it is. And there was also this really huge weight of expectation that was also attached to what I considered alignment for myself. There was this weight of expectation that since I had taken this big leap of faith, and I had really kind of shaken up my life in order to follow the soul calling to this island and sort of saying “yes!” to what I felt was my clarion call, that something big was supposed to happen, and it wasn't happening, not in the way that I expected it to. And I was pretty upset about that. 

And then there were some personal hardships going on at the time. And all sorts of things that if you would have looked at my life then -  I looked at my life then and that was really the summer that I was like “have I made a mistake? Like did I miss the boat here? I've just like really kind of screwed myself for a while. And you know, gotten way off track” - like that was the summer that I was really kind of coming face to face with those questions for myself. The ego and expectations that we sometimes have, like why we think we're called into something and what we think we're going to get from it and how it's going to look are not always the plan that our soul has for us. Notice I did not say spirit, I said our soul.

And what I mean by that is our higher self, whatever part of ourselves is spiritual and is connected to the truths and the mysteries and knows that we're eternal and knows that we're timeless and knows that we are here for a purpose and there's things that we came to learn and experience. 

You know, that part of us has this eternal wisdom. And sometimes we call this like the soul blueprint of what somebody might be here for spiritually. And there are things that we are meant to experience and things that we need to have happen in order to truly become like who our soul knows that we can grow into. So sometimes from our limited perspective, we can't imagine what that is. And let's give ourselves some grace here. We don't know what we don't know if we have not experienced something. And we don't have a mental template for that, and have some kind of roadmap in our brain and cognitive template and felt-sense template in experience of what that might feel like and what that might be, like, how can we imagine it?

So, when I say ego and expectations, this is nothing to beat ourselves up for. It doesn't mean people aren't being spiritual. Or if we have an attachment to how it's gonna look, you know, and we have some ego that we're like, “I'm really mad that you know, spirits, not giving me what I wanted”. It's not a bad thing, this is not a negative thing that we should judge ourselves for, and kind of send ourselves back to the spiritual drawing board. It's something to grow from, and it's something to learn from, it's something that's really normal on the path. I think everybody experiences in it. They just don't always talk about it. 

And part of what happens with that is we just can't envision how things might look, because so often, we haven't created it yet. We haven't experienced it yet. We have no sense of how it could be. So that sometimes - it's why we have this attachment to how we thought it would look because we're envisioning things based on what we think we know. And so, for us, this is the next natural conclusion of how it's going to look. And it's very disillusioning when it doesn't work out that way. 

And spiritually, we get really tangled up with thinking somehow that we're off path or out of alignment. And if sometimes it really just is that our attachment, our ego attachment and the expectations that we attach to it - that's what's out of alignment. 

And it's not because - like we add the intention of our spiritual work and the intention of what we're trying to create on our path - it's usually not because that's out of alignment, it's more that we've got these old stories and old templates, and old ways of being and old ways of understanding the world that are being challenged. And that kind of ties in with this idea of growing bigger roots. As that stuff is being challenged, we expand our minds, we expand our understanding, and we become bigger. So, these things go hand in hand. 

[22:41] The Greater Ecosystem

Number three, we are part of a greater ecosystem. 

 So, this is the third thing that I wrote down about why sometimes we get out of sync, or we can feel out of sync. So often, we are so beautifully self-centric, so much of the time. 

You know, “I'm trying to manifest this, this is what I want to create”. And even if it's for a heart-based reason, like “I feel like this will really help people”, you know, a lot of spiritually conscientious people are not trying to live from a place of being self-serving, let's just give ourselves a break. 

You know, most people who are wanting to create something beautiful, it actually transcends themselves, especially people who identify in some shape or form of being on the spiritual path, they want to do it for the greater good, or because they have a calling to like help the environment or to help women, or to help a certain community, to help social justice, to help the animals, maybe they're creating it, because they just really want something beautiful for their family and their children. And if their families are supported and taken care of, they know that they will be a brighter light to shine. 

So often our reasons actually are altruistic. But still, when we're focused on what we're manifesting, like, we have to bring it back to the self. And we have to bring it back to our understanding of our manifestation, our heart, our intentions, what are the dreams in our heart. So, there's this interesting tension, even when we're trying to manifest it for something bigger than ourselves, that we actually have to focus on the self, and what's in our heart in order to do that. 

It's not a bad thing. But sometimes what happens is we get really caught up in like in what we're trying to manifest and what we're trying to vision and we forget that we exist in this greater ecosystem and that this greater ecosystem is composed of the people around us, and their freewill and their agendas and who we might intersect and interact with. And we forget that we are also umbrellaed under some of the bigger cycles that are happening in our world; the cycles that might be happening for us seasonally or geographically, the cycles that might be happening and more of a cosmic sense, and more of a greater collective cycles that everybody is going through. 

It's not impossible to find your own sense of flow if a cycle is not supportive of that, let's say, Mercury is in retrograde. 

 And that is not always the optimum time to, you know, bust out with, I don't know, the launch is something or the release of something. But maybe it is. And maybe if you bust out with the launch of something and say, well, “retrogrades are often a time where we're realigning and recalibrating, and we're ironing something out. So, I'm gonna like launch this, but I'm going to let go of expectations that how I'm launching it is the exact finished product, like maybe I'm just going to launch it and like, let the retrograde be a time where I keep recalibrating, at least I'm getting my work out there. And as I recalibrate, I will polish it up. So, this is the soft launch. And as I feel more confident, I will do like the bigger one where I'm like, okay, this is how I feel about the final product.”

So, we can work with the cycles, it's not like you can't do something, we're not being dogmatic here, we're not saying you can't ever if the moon is in void or something like that - we are working with cycles with conscious wisdom and conscious intention. And there are certain cycles where the timing just truly isn't there. 

And a really good example of that is, what if you have a beautiful message, some kind of offering, and it's part of your soul purpose, it's part of why you're here you have something that you are meant to use your spiritual gifts, or you're meant to serve humanity in some shape, or form - and there's a beautiful offering - maybe that you're going to create, let's say that you have a gift for music. 

And maybe you are musically inclined, and you're gifted with writing your own songs. And maybe you have this really cool idea come through of creating some kind of a meditation class, where you want to teach other musicians how to kind of channel music, and like really tap into their spiritual connection in order to create music that opens the heart chakra, maybe that's your gift, you connect musicality to different chakras. 

And you have a lot of wisdom around that. And so you want to teach this, and you want to make this offering. And it's really beautiful. And every time you think about doing this, you're seeing the 222s, and you're seeing angel feathers, and you're getting all these signs and symbols. And you have all this support, and maybe you talk to a psychic or something or somebody who's gifted with intuition. And they say “yes, like you are on the right track. That's a huge part of your reason”. And it lights your soul up, like your heart gets excited when you think about offering this gift. 

 And you create it, you package it, you put it into a class, and you put it out there, and it just doesn't go anywhere. And it's just dead, and it's just sitting in the water. And you really start to question if you were even meant to do that at all. Because it makes no sense to you that you were guided this far on the path and here you are, and nothing's happening with it. 

Well, what if something's happening in the greater collective cycle, where people who typically would be writing music aren't writing music right now, because they're really stressed about the economy, or they're stressed about something that's happening, you know, globally, something that is happening that impacts humanity? And there's a lot of hardship or challenge or tragedy going on in our world. And so, everybody's attention is on that. Because it's meant to be on that – there’s meant to be a consciousness being raised around some of these things that have been happening around us, so that people feel more connected and more aware of what is going on in the world around them. And we are growing our awareness that we're part of a greater ecosystem. 

And so, what's happening to somebody over there actually does impact us over here. And if everybody's attention is focused on that … all these people who can grow from this beautiful musical chakra course that you've created, which by the way, I’m sure something like that's out there, but it was like “how fun does that sound like?” - I want to take that - I'm not a musician, but that sounds like super fun. 

All of their attentions are turned elsewhere. So, nobody shows up, or maybe one or two people show up. Now let's pretend that your soul, your higher self, your spirit self, your spirit guides, you know, spiritually that your angels know, that if you were to create that and put it out there, in - we'll say two years’ time - when some of this stuff has died down or some of the stuff has shifted, or some things are kind of back in flow again. And now people are wanting to write music, their attention isn't so distracted, they're a little bit more focused. And if you offer it at that time, you will have a waitlist or you'll have 50 people who show up to take the beta class that you put together - might there be the possibility that things don't line up for your creation, or that's why it didn't do well. 

 And it's not because you missed the mark. It's because your umbrellaed in this greater ecosystem, where it just wasn't the right time. Or those who are meant to receive your offering haven't gone through what they needed to in order to be in a space where they're ready to receive it. So that's what I mean, when I talk about the greater cycles, the greater ecosystem. Sometimes it's planetary transits and planetary energies. Sometimes it is things happening to all of us in the collective that impact all of us, there's many ways these greater cycles can take place - you would not try and grow a flower garden in the middle of winter outdoors.

And if you did, and you said, “hey, everybody, I had a miracle happen, I grew this flower garden, come see it”. And it's the coldest winter on the record. A lot of people might say, “that's amazing, I don't want to go outside, I'm really cold. It's not the right timing, I'm going to stay indoors where it's really warm. I don't want to freeze in order to see this,” because their attention is focused elsewhere, and they're worried about their pipes freezing or something like that. 

So, there are times that we just have to remember, we're part of something greater. 

[32:26] Meaningful Sacrifice

And that brings me to my next point. Number four: why things might not be in flow; it segways really nicely into what we were just talking about in this point I titled ‘meaningful sacrifice’. 

So, the title of that is from a card in Alana Fairchilds’ Crystal Mandala oracle deck; her oracle decks rock my world, they have been a friend to me for many years, and they've really helped me through a lot of times in my life. And the summer of 2019 that I kind of referenced earlier, when I was really coming face to face with myself, and I'm over on this island and everything's going wrong. And I was really having a tough time and thinking that I had just missed the boat, I was way out of alignment, I had no flow. 

 You know, that was the summer that I was really working with that oracle deck and there's a card in the deck called ‘meaningful sacrifice’. And she connects each of the cards to an archangel, or to some form of a spiritual being, and so that one is actually connected to Jesus. And the meaning behind the card is kind of that old saying of like, “what if rejection is God's protection?”, and the idea behind the card is there's times where we just do not get what we want. We do not get what we desire, we desire to teach the music course and to create it and have everybody come take it, because we have this beautiful offering of light to give humanity and hardly anybody shows up. 

And there are times where we are denied what we want. And we are asked to make a meaningful sacrifice in that moment and sacrifice like what we want, in order for a longer gain - in order to grow that garden when everybody is actually tuning in. And they are ready to come see the garden and they're ready to receive from the garden and they're ready to be inspired by the garden that you grew - the course that you created. 

 And they are ready to take whatever light you have felt called to offer and help that spark something in them so they can shine a little bit brighter and then create whatever they're feeling called to create. That's how we inspire and ignite the light in one another. We create these things to help somebody else like ignite their light or discover their light or maybe work on a talent or gift that they might not know as much about. And so, they want to kind of shore that up and learn about it. And it inspires them to go forth and to create, or to just feel more supported, so they feel like they're in a more flowy juicy place in their interactions day to day. 

So, meaningful sacrifices - what that that was called - and I got that card so much that summer, and I got to the point where I'd be like, “oh, man, it's the Jesus card again”, you know, and I say that tongue in cheek - because I actually found it very comforting. Simultaneously, I found it very frustrating. And I had no idea at the time, this was the summer of 2019. Of course, I didn't know the pandemic was coming. I did not know the changes that would be happening in our world over the next few years, I did not know that we would go through this mass spiritual awakening that happened in the year 2020. When basically the world shut down for a while with everything happening in the pandemic, and the universe sent us to our rooms to think about what we had done. And everybody had a chance to do a lot of introspection, a lot of shifts and changes came from that time, they are still happening. I had no idea any of that was coming. 

And so there are times where we get the Jesus card. And we are asked to make a meaningful sacrifice. And the timing just isn't there. And we have to learn to surrender those egoic attachments and that over identification with how we thought the plan would be so we can just receive where things are at now. And what does spirit have for us now? And what is showing up for us? What is presenting itself to us?  And work with that. 

And so there are times that we really just learn to ride the tide. Instead of trying to direct the tide or influence the direction the tide goes in, just receive from what is showing up and work with it as consciously and intelligently as we can. 

[37:11] You Cannot Shortcut Humanity

Right last talking point for today. Number five: one of the reasons that you might be in alignment with your spiritual path, but things might not be flowing is: you cannot shortcut humanity.

This is such a hard one for us. And it's actually I think, a whole other episode. So, we're only going to lightly gloss on some ideas around this. 

There's the term ‘spiritual bypassing’, I don't know who to credit with originating it, I haven't looked up that up. But it's a term that's kind of being thrown around for a while. And it's this idea of when somebody kinds of ‘love and light’ their way over something. And it's actually not a love and light moment, you know, there's an opportunity to see somebody suffering or see somebody in pain or acknowledge something like systemic racism, or something that's really hard and gritty, something that's awkward and messy for us that we are grappling with, to acknowledge grief. Somebody who's grieving and they're depressed - they are struggling in their grief. And somebody kind of does the “well, you know, they're in a better place”. And let's give that person a break. Let's pretend like they actually don't know what to say. And that's the best they know to offer to the grieving person. 

But you know, we kind of use the term spiritual bypassing and sometimes, spiritually, we think that somehow we can, like, get around, having to deal with some of these messier moments in life - that if we're just in alignment, that things will come to us with grace and ease. There will be no bad days, things will unfold before us. And I think the truth is, at least this is what I found from my own journey and working with so many other people, is that we're really here to become a true human. 

 We're here to be as real as possible. We are here to learn to embody our authenticity, and to learn to be the most real version of ourselves that we know to be. And the only way to do that is to have the human experience. I call really bad days where like nothing right happens - and I remember having one of these I wrote a blog on it years ago - and I was in Carrs Grocery when I lived in Alaska at the end of a really long workday. And I think I got like a bag of oranges or a cup of soup. It was something like that where I'd filled a container or something and like the bag broke or I dropped the soup and it went everywhere. And I'm like awkwardly squatting down, it must have been oranges. And I'm kind of like gathering them up in this very awkward way, you know, at Carrs-Safeway at like seven o'clock at night, you know, after this long workday, and it felt so undignified, and I probably was about like five seconds away from bursting into tears because I was so tired out. And I just wanted to go home and have dinner. 

And I remember writing a blog the next day and calling it like, I was like doing squats, right. This is like the equivalent of doing squats as a human. You know, we do squats sometimes and a workout in order to build those muscles. I call it an exercise in humanity, I was just having a challenging undignified moment where I was reminded that sometimes life just happens. And we make mistakes and hard things happen. 

You know, and in a kind of bigger sense of that word, you know, it really is grit. And the darkness really is where we find what we're made out of. It's where we're tested, it's where we understand the dark so that we can have a choice about choosing the light. 

So, part of why we're here is to have the human experience. And it's to learn as much as we can about being a human, and to embody our humanity as much as possible. Don't forget, you're already spiritual where you came from. So, it's kind of interesting to me sometimes when people will really follow this path, and I guess they're wanting enlightenment. And, you know, enlightenment to me is just turning the lights on in a space that was dark before and examining what's in that space. But sometimes we think of enlightenment as somehow ascending all these petty human trials and sitting on top of a mountain top, and like having all this wisdom, it's very guru like, and there are some people who are probably called to that journey. And they're probably not listening to this podcast, they're probably on a mountaintop somewhere, a temple or an ashram or something like that. But for those of us who are normal people tuning into this, we're really here to learn what it is to be a human. And to just be our most authentic self, our authenticity is part of our heart magic. 

 And so, when we can have a human moment and work with it constructively, and not try and shortcut it, or feel like, like to not spiritualize myself and be like, “wow, I'm bad, because I got really upset that I dropped the oranges in Carrs, and the bag broke. And maybe I like said a bunch of curse words or something out loud, or I was rude to the person at the check stand. And I feel bad about that. And I'm this bad person. I'm so not being spiritual.” How can you work with that constructively? What can you learn from that? 

And that's what I want to offer today is kind of the - I guess, the anecdote to all of this - you know, so like, what is flow? It's many, many things where I think people could say that they're in flow, but I want to offer a path that I think kind of invites us to accept that we're actually in flow every day. And if we can understand that we are here to learn about being human - and as we're growing spiritually, and as we are embodying our gifts, and expanding our minds, and doing all that juicy, awesome spiritual stuff - we're also here to understand the dark and the grid, and all of those things. 

And so, we become experienced collectors, where we are collecting experiences of the very many facets of what it is to be human. And if we can learn to bring grace into that space, and learn to laugh at ourselves, and learn to say, “wow, yesterday was not a good day. Like, I do not want to have a repeat of that. I'd like to not be in Carrs tonight, you know, doing squats because I like dropped the oranges or, you know, dropped the cup of soup. That was embarrassing. And it dysregulated me and I became stressed out and then I snapped at people. I don't really want to repeat that. Well, what can I learn from that? But how can I give myself grace? How can I look at it and instead of haranguing myself for it, just be like well, that was a really human moment?”. 

And how many people can relate to having something where it's been a long day, and you're just trying to run a simple errand, and something goes wrong. And your stress threshold is triggered. And now you are not your highest self. You are not your best self. You are your worst self. And you become like the angry T-Rex, who is like wanting to wreak destruction on everything around you. I mean, that's so relatable. Can we give ourselves grace for that? Can we give ourselves grace for imperfections? When we feel like we've had a missed season where we really weren't our best self and we were really struggling -  how can we bring grace into that? How can we bring self-love into that? How can we in any given moment, just ask ourselves, how can I love myself through this? And sometimes loving ourselves is just like the Carrs night - and I probably needed to go home, have a hot meal and have like an early bedtime and just get a good night's sleep. That is an act of self-love; I probably felt better the next day, if I had gifted that to myself - sometimes self-love can take the form of a little bit of tough love with ourselves. 

And if we're in a better place, we can say, “okay, I can give myself grace for acting that way. But that's actually not who I want to be in this world. So, I'm going to sit and take some time in my journal and write down how could I have reacted differently? How could I have been a responder instead of a reactor, you know, and maybe I'm going to watch this YouTube video on managing stress and kind of work on the strategies, so I don't reach that place again, where I feel like I'm flying off the handle”. 

So, love can look differently in different guises and different situations and different experiences of ourselves. But if we can find a way to bring self-love, self-empathy, self-grace into our day to day, we're actually creating our own path of flow. Because we learn to accept ourselves and just accept ourselves as these whole human beings who have like so many rainbow colors inside of us, and so much that we are embodying, and we learn to find grace and love for that. 

So, instead of wasting all this time beating ourselves up for it, we actually move through it so much quicker - we surrender to the work that we need to do so that we can work on shifting blocks on working on our shortcomings and working on our challenges. And when we do that, like we actually do create a beautiful center of love inside of ourselves. 

 And so potentially, we become a little less reactive to what's going on in our environment. And we're able to come back to a more grounded space inside of ourselves and say, “well, what would love say about this? And how can I love myself through that?”, and we know change is an inside job. So, if we began to change that inside of us, and we began to tune in to the vibration of love - the frequency of love more often inside of us - it's obviously going to change how we're interacting with the greater ecosystem around us. And we create a lot more flow in our life and a lot more ease and a lot more joy and a lot more peace. 

And when it's all out of whack, and we're not creating those things, we are able to say, “how can I love myself in this?” and when we talk about love, we are rocking our spiritual connection, even if we're not doing something particularly spiritual.

[47:59] Ending and Next Episode 

All right, I am looking at the time and seeing that it is time for me to wrap this up for today. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Next week, we are going to be talking about “my spiritual gifts are opening. So now what?” and that will really be about those times that we really start to have something new happen spiritually or intuitively - or we feel like I'm supposed to grow at this point in time - but like we have no idea what the next step is. Because there's not some manual saying your spiritual gifts are opening. Here's the next step. And we're going to talk about what comes next and how to figure that out for yourself in a way that is aligned for you. 

With that, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today. And until next time, be love, be well, be you and be magic.

[49:04] End Credits

You've been listening to Your Heart Magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky-Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life!