This surprising saboteur kept me from launching this one-of-a-kind Sacred Circle Facilitator Training Program & Mastermind until now.
The place that we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper than our petty personal egos. That place is beyond intellect. It is deeper than rational thought.
It is instinct.
It is intuition.
It is imagination…
We can work over our heads. Not only can we, but we must.
-Steven Pressfield (Turning Pro)
I have a condition known as self-righteousness.
I learn or know something deep in my bones, and I silently (and sometimes not-so-silently) judge others whose actions or views violate what I’ve decided to be true.
Thankfully, this condition appears to have gone into remission. And it’s this remission that’s allowed me to tap into my recent bout of extraordinary states of creative flow.
More than two years ago, I took a sacred circle facilitator workshop that’s been integral to how I guide circles. It was this workshop that led me to create circles that prioritize inclusiveness and true equity in sharing, and to co-create and adopt powerful agreements that form the foundations of every circling container I guide.
I’ve also taken a 300-hour yoga teacher training and Becoming The Guide, (both offered through SoulWork). The former introduced me to trauma-informed language, and the latter drove home the incredible responsibility that being a guide for transformation actually is.
And, I’d be remiss to forget that beginning two decades ago and over a period of seven years, I’ve facilitated many, many recovery circles of a 12-step nature. These circles prioritized a collective reading of circling agreements – agreements that did things such as create structure, address conflict, and offer guidelines for sharing.
So, when – out of curiosity – I took a two-month circle leader training last year that didn’t build into its curriculum the importance of any of these things, my condition flared.
Rather than simply offer these practices as a gift to my circle leader sisters, I got all self-righteous; I tried enlightening others as I silently judged those who ignored me.
It was the proverbial “bee in my bonnet” thing.
During that circle leader training, I found myself wanting to create a sacred circle facilitation program so that I could share the teachings that seemed to be absent in most other trainings. But every time I sat down to map my program out, I got stuck. It just wasn’t happening; my heart wasn’t in it.
I knew in my bones that I’d be a phenomenal guide for others in this capacity – and sister, there are very few things I’d ever make such a claim about – so I chalked up my stuckness to mean that, for reasons unknown, this project was simply not meant to be birthed by me.
Anyway, I mostly forgot about it. And I returned my focus to building my Wayfinder Coaching practice (which, by the way, is another facet of the work I know deep in my bones that I was put here on Mama Earth to do).
Then something miraculous happened: my condition of self-righteousness went into remission.
It chose to abandon me, at long last.
And then something equally miraculous happened: my Sacred Circle Facilitator Training Program poured out of me in a way that can best be described as creative divine flow.
Not only that, but it far exceeds the caliber of the training I’d originally conceived back in 2023, as well as that of my Facilitating Sacred Circles Tiny Course. That’s because Wayfinding underpins the entirety of the program, and in addition to the program’s teachings and time-saving templates, it includes group and 1:1 mentoring, a mastermind circle, and an emphasis on developing soul-nourishing sisterhood in an intimate cohort setting.
[Oh, and speaking of the tiny course, I will be overhauling it in the coming months and significantly increasing the price. If you’d like to lock in the current pricing while receiving the new-and-improved version when it releases (tentatively by early December), I encourage you to do so now.]
Deconstructing the abandonment of my self-righteousness and the outpouring of creativity
So, what happened?
In terms of no longer feeling self-righteous, my honest answer is that I’ve matured.
I have a near-daily meditation practice, and I spend a lot of time in svadhyaya. [This is a Sanskrit word that loosely translates to “self-study,” but “self-study” in and of itself is too inadequate of a term to describe what I’m trying to convey.]
And in terms of the outpouring of creativity, I’m convinced that this happened because I got out of my own way.
Feeling self-righteous kept me focused on the problem, on what I didn’t like, on how others were “doing it wrong.” And this kept me thinking and perseverating. This is very “left-brained.”
When I stopped focusing on the problem and (continued to) prioritize practices that kept me grounded in and remembering of who I am, I created space for my creativity to play.
And play she did!
The takeaway
If you’re feeling creatively blocked, attempting to force things might be just what you “need” (note the Steven Pressfield quote I shared), but I’d like to offer you an alternative path: that of curiosity.
I invite you to spend some time reconnecting with your inner landscape, e.g. meditating, walking barefoot in nature, or journaling.
Once you’re in an environment that connects you with YOU, see if creativity flows. If it does and you can sustain it, great! Let it flow. Maybe you just needed a muse.
But if it doesn’t, consider asking yourself questions that get to the root of your block, and give yourself time and space to answer them. [Note: journaling with your non-dominant hand may help.]
And finally, sometimes our blocks aren’t steeped in some greater meaning – again, this circles back to the Steven Pressfield quote.
For example, sometimes I’ll stare at a blank screen when I’m composing my weekly newsletter. Why? Because I haven’t tapped into what I want to say or how I want to say it. That’s all. When this happens, the solution may be to “force it,” but to do so lovingly.
We do this stuff (and more, minus the forcing!) when we Wayfind.
Sometimes our blocks are elusive only because we haven’t learned how to listen to and/or interpret our bodies’ signals.
Other times, it’s because we get caught up in our heads, in our own stories.
And other times, it’s because we’ve “forgotten” who we are. Actually, in my experience (and without exception) this underlies everything.
Wayfinding is the antidote.
That is all.
