Ep. 29 What It Means to Trust Your Direct Experience (And Why It's So Hard)

When the maps you’ve been given don’t match the territory you find yourself having to navigate, you trust the terrain itself and your direct, unique experience with it. This is how to honor and live the soul in a world that gives you a million ways not to.

What does it mean to “trust yourself” or “trust your intuition” or “trust the process.” We hear these cliches about trust so often in the spiritual growth and development lanes. But what does it mean to trust? Join me as I unravel these cliches and lay a more realistic groundwork for what it means to trust when you're navigating terrain that is always shifting.

In this episode:

• Three tools that help us trust our direct experience
  • Separating the "should" and the "supposed to's" from the actuality of the experience 
  • Living with ambiguity of soul magic--navigating without the reassurance that you are on the "right" team or doing the right thing all the time
  • Willingness to own and work with the implications and energy you create from following your heart and embodying your magic
• Personal anecdotes of how I work with these tools
• My Unconventional Invocation For Trust--a spoken word piece set to improve piano tunes.

With love + thank you for listening,

McCall

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Transcript

When the maps you've been given, don't match the territory you find yourself having to navigate. You trust the terrain itself, and your direct, unique experience with it. This is how to honor and live the soul in a world that gives you a million ways not to.

Intro

Hello, my friends, I am so delighted. You have pushed play on this podcast, and we get to explore together. What does it mean to trust yourself? Or trust your intuition or trust the process? We hear these cliches about trust so often in the spiritual growth and development lames. But what does it mean to trust? I'm me, so I hardly ever take these axioms at face value. I always need to dig deeper. What are we trusting here? Are we trusting things to work out in ways we believe they should? In ways we feel we deserve? Are we trusting the process to take us where we think it should, and reward us properly for all our hard work and courage? And what are we trusting ourselves to do to be right all the time? Let's get underneath this. What does it really mean to trust our direct experience? And how do we navigate terrain that is always shifting. I'm McCall. Erickson and this is falling into soul.

If you've listened to some of my previous episodes, you may have heard me say this before, that the purpose of the soul is to have a direct experience with life, at least from an alchemical perspective, that is the purpose of the soul. And by "direct" I mean non-conceptual experience, which the soul is equipped to do. The soul seeks not to control or judge the experience, but just to have the experience as it's actually happening, free from conditioning and programming and all the things that tell us what kind of experience we should be having.

This is the whole aim of the great work of alchemy, to clear the conditioning that shrouds the soul so we can have a direct experience and begin to move through life in our own authentic way.

I love this quote from St. Hildegard of Bingen, who was a profound visionary and mystic of the 12th century. She said,

"We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. And interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light ."

To take back our own listening, use our own voice, and fully own our unique and subjective experience with life is one of the most worthwhile reasons I can think of to undertake the great work of alchemy. It's one of the reasons to subject ourselves to the rigors of distillation, which is that advanced alchemical process I explored in the last episode, distillation and the secret medicine. Distillation is the final and quite brutal cleansing we go through to align permanently with our essence within and live from that place of freshness. And why is this place of being in direct relation with life so important anyway? Because from it, from that position, you impart your unique soul energy and gifts to every situation, and everyone you come into contact with, without getting in your own way by trying to fulfill your soul purpose or be a good person in ways you're conditioned to believe soul purpose and service should be.

But it is so hard to clear the way to this place and to really trust navigating in such a non-conceptual way with yourself and life. Because the process first sets you aside from everything and everyone. You don't get the reassurance that you're doing it right. Going through the Soul individuation process means you get super weird and super rare in order to align with and own the perspective and experience that only you have. But the key to remember is this: your experience and your perspective is not right or wrong, it is merely your unique experience.

Thankfully, as we go through these are chemical processes to clear the way we develop tools or abilities that help us trust our direct experience.

Three Tools That Help Us Trust Our Unique Experience

So I can think of three tools that immediately come to mind that I want to explore that help us trust that direct experience. And then I'll give you a few personal anecdotes to help flesh it out further. 

1. Tool number one is the ability to separate what's being imposed upon you, versus what's compelling you from the inside, what you should be doing or feeling, or what outcome you should be having from following all the right steps, versus what is actually happening for you, what's you're actually feeling and experiencing. This goes along with separating the subtle from the gross or the essence from the form, which is one of the main building blocks of alchemy. And we can get really good at separating out subtle differences between outer impositions and inner intuition, to the point that the difference is not so subtle anymore. So tool number one: Anytime you find yourself thinking the words should, or supposed to start questioning, I should feel this way, or I should be doing this, or I'm supposed to be at this certain point doing this are huge signs, that conditioning is sprouting the soul, follow the should, and unravel it all the way down to actuality, and start there, figuring out how you actually feel versus how you think you should feel, or how you've been taught to feel, is the very thing that saves and reveals the soul. 
2. Tool number two, is the ability to live with ambiguity. This is huge, the ability to live without the reassurance that you are right or wrong, so that you can just allow yourself to be in the experience to become sacred magic. You have to relinquish judgments of what you think you should be doing or what sacred magic looks like. You have to relinquish judgments about what is the right thing to be doing in order to answer what the soul is calling for you to do. And you have to be willing to do it without knowing what exactly you may create or effect by doing it, you follow the pull of your soul, not because you think it's all going to work out how you want it to you follow it because that's what you have to do to remain true to your inner alignment. You don't dictate all outcomes and processes, you engage in the energy that comes from staying in alignment. 
3. Which brings me to tool number three, owning the energy that your choices create. So when you're living in ambiguity, and you don't know whether you are on the right team, or whether you are good or bad all the time, that does not exempt you from moral or ethical responsibility, it actually means taking more responsibility, because you don't get to outsource your actions, or your reasons for doing things on a belief system outside of yourself. You are moving in accordance with your soul, you embody your magic, which requires you to take responsibility for the energy your actions and choices create, you do a thing, take a step, assess what comes from it, see how the universe responds. And you adjust and take another step and so on. It's a constant conversation with anyone or anything you are in the relational space with. You're constantly listening and receiving, and making a move and responding and adjusting. You're constantly shaping and being shaped by all you are in relationship with.

So to sum up, the three tools that help int trusting your direct experience are one, separate the should, from the actuality, what should be happening, how you should feel, what results you should be getting, and start with the actuality and go from there. Tool number two, practice living with ambiguity. You and your magic are not right or wrong, good or bad. You are just you. And number three, be willing to own and engage in the energy that your magical choices, your magical will your moves create in all your relational spaces. 

Personal Anecdotes

So I'll share a few personal examples of how I work with these tools regularly. I had a moment recently that sums up how I feel. When I'm truly in the flow of trusting my soul. My partner and I were having a challenging relational moment that I didn't automatically know how to deal with in a matter of seconds. I went through rapid cycle alchemy or what I call rapid transmutation, like going through a checklist in my head of all the good advice and ways to have a healthy relationship and build intimacy. Every book and article I've ever read about this particular issue we were facing, laid beneath my feet, like a path of stepping stones, that led to the actual moment where I realized I had to let go of trying to get it right. And just trust myself to take a step, dive in, do something right or wrong, I had to just go for it. I had to go beyond everything I learned about it, in order to start having and owning my own unique experience with it. And in that moment, I said to myself, I have no idea if I'm doing any of this right. What is strange and beautiful life. And it made me laugh, and loosen up to hear myself saying those words myself, it freed me to just be in the experience.

Once again, this is the paradox in order to trust your experience, you have to give up the reassurance that you're doing it right.

In some ways, this is opposite of what we think of as trust, we're conditioned to think that trust means believing in certain things. But certainty cuts the mystery out of the picture. And if there is one sure way to squelch the soul, it is to cut the mystery out of the picture. trusting ourselves, trusting the mystery, and the bigger workings of life means trusting in what we can't yet know. It means we are in conversation with life, always listening to what it has yet to say. This means you can take a step in a desired direction, but life is also going to take its own step in return. And then you make a decision based on that. How could there possibly be a map for this? This is organic living in concert with life in the mystery. It's a way you pave based on interacting with the ever changing terrain, as you walk on it. You have to trust that actual interaction, more than any map, more than anything, trust the energy that your interaction with the terrain creates, and go from there. It's not about adhering to a certain method to get a certain result. I mean, you can do that, and it will work sometimes. But there's a difference between adhering to methods from the outside and following the weird, strange, unique pole of the soul that comes from within.

"Your technique is a disaster"

Here's another example of that. Recently, I reconnected with playing the piano after many years of being separated from it. Separation brings us closer right? see episode 23. And when I first sat down with my new piano, and I played, I was struck with this huge rush of freedom. That enough time and enough alchemy around my failed musical dreams had passed, that I could effectively forget everything I learned about how to play the piano. And I could finally just play the way my soul fingers wanted to play the way I played as a toddler, the very first time I played before someone told me how to play. I started playing the way that actually flows for me. And I can tell you right now, the way that actually flows for me is not the right way. I suck at playing the right way. Technically, I am a terrible player, I will admit it. I do all sorts of weird things with my fingering. I do it because it's what feels more natural to me. My technique is a disaster, which is what my classical piano teacher told me my first semester of college, which made me promptly change my major from music to something else. I am so glad I had the good sense back then, to know that I would drown under the weight of trying to learn proper piano technique. Not that technique doesn't have its place. It's just that I mostly fail at making myself adhere to it, especially when it comes to playing musical instruments.


"You're not supposed to play with the capo that far up the neck"

For a while during my years of separation from piano, I learned to play the guitar. I mean, I learned to play it the way I thought sounded great, the way that worked for me. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just doing what felt good and flowed, what actually worked. I would hear the music in my head. And then I would do whatever I had to do to get it to come through the strings and my fingers. Well, one night, I was playing a show and some guy came up to me afterward. He was carrying a guitar and wearing a cool hat that signified he was definitely an artist or musician. And he said to me, "Your songs are good but you're not supposed to play with the cable that far up the neck." And he walked away. At first, I was mortified. I was flooded with the feeling of oh shit. I'm doing this wrong? But but but but I was following my instincts, I was letting my creativity flow. How could that be wrong? It felt so right.

Well, I always managed to talk myself down from those kinds of ledges because I know it's not about right or wrong. It's about what works to bring the music through. It's about finding and staying in the groove. I learned a long time ago that listening to my intuition, and following my heart does not make me right. Hearts are not right and hearts are not wrong. Hearts are just good at leading us into really great adventure zones. And hearts are actually dangerous in this way. There's always an edge of danger in adventure because you never know exactly how things are going to go. Listening to your heart and following the pull of your soul is not about some guarantee of safety. It's about the willingness to come fully alive.

In closing, I would like to share my Unconventional Invocation for Trust.

I wish for you to trust yourself enough to not know enough to take a step and fall and through every fall find unexpected beauties. See what you could not see before always stumbling into some kind of grace.

Trust that no matter how hard you try, and how pure your intent, you will mess things up sometimes. Your best and most honest efforts will sometimes not be enough. No one of us was meant to be everything on our own. So trust your limits, and your needfulness of others.

Trust your complexity, your humanity dancing with your divinity. Trust yourself to be brilliant and boring. Inspired and motivated. Right from one perspective, wrong from another. So terrible and lovely as most humans are.

Trust the pull of your soul, not to take you where you think it should take you, but to take you where it takes you. And trust yourself to live from that place. Trust it to mean something you don't fully understand. Trust enough to leave it open ended untidy and unwrapped. Honoring your soul in this way is big, even when it may fall short against popular and made up standards of a healed and enlightened life.

Trust this life, the one that is aching to be lived through you, not the life you want so desperately wanted and thought you deserved.

Trust every descent into darkness. Trust that each one comes to repurpose you, to excavate unconscious truths and reconnect you with forgotten pieces. Even though it almost always feels like shit when it's happening. Trust the shit, the organic compost of your soul. You are continually being made and remade many times over in this life. Trust that you cannot control those processes, despite what you've been told and sold about happiness and how you can escape suffering with the right attitude or enough money.

Trust, the sadness, the anger, the inability to just let go sometimes, for being as real and honest as you can about how you actually feel releases your soul into its own magic flow.

Trust the times when you're too tired and sore to trust. Discover then how much is given that doesn't require trust at all.

Which brings us to this: you can just be. You can just be in breathe now, wherever and however you are on this ride.

For this, we do know life in the flesh is a strange, terrible and wonderful, wild ride.

Outro

Thank you for tuning into this episode. I appreciate you being here more than I can convey. Just a reminder that you can listen to my new audiobook of the second half of the mountain a Guide to personal alchemy after awakening on Audible or you can get a special podcast listeners discount and support my independent sales of the book through the link in my show notes to all who've purchased the audio book, or continue to donate monthly to support the show and my work, thank you so much. Until next time, be well in soul.