The Heroine's Journey Part 10: The Reward

In this recording from a live event on Insight Timer, Marcella guides you through Stage 10 of the Heroine's Journey: the reward.

After enduring the Ordeal of confronting her deepest fears and shame, the Heroine emerges victoriously with a willingness to love herself in ways she once thought impossible.

In this highly interactive talk, Marcella will guide you through EFT Tapping to help you receive the blessings of sat (truth), chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss) that are the essence of your true nature.

Transcript

This is maybe one of my favorite topics in the heroine's journey to talk about.

The gift of the goddess.

And this is kind of like the punchline to the whole joke.

So for those of you who might be new here or new to the whole paradigm of the heroine's journey ,

We start out with a sense of blessed discontent is what I'm feeling inclined to call it these days.

The sense of dissatisfaction or discontentment in our lives that prompts us to inquire and investigate our circumstances.

You know we try to figure out what's going on.

But that invariably leads us into a call to adventure where we're being called to become bigger and brighter in some aspect of our lives.

And then immediately following that is the resistance like ah no not me not today.

And then we might encounter a mentor.

And that mentor helps us to cross over into this realm where we actually commit ourselves to the journey.

We say yes and we go forward.

And then we meet our allies and then we have tests and temptations and struggles.

And you know through each of those phases of struggles with the support of our allies with the wisdom guidance of our mentor you know we build this strength or we build this muscle to see ourselves differently and to uncover the resources that we have within us that we didn't know we had.

The capabilities that we didn't know we were capable of.

The things that we didn't think we could do.

Okay then all of that gets put to an even deeper test when we approach and go into the ordeal which is what we did last week.

So for those of you who were here last week you remember last Sunday we were getting really deep into the swampland of shame.

What Carl Jung called the swampland of the soul.

We did a lot of tapping with that.

So we prepare for this journey.

We marshal all these resources to support us.

We go through this whole ordeal and then we come out the other side.

Ginger's saying lots moving through can't tell what's what to be honest.

Okay great.

Perfect.

That's great.

Lynn I have been more aware and kind to myself when it comes up.

Beautiful Lynn.

That's really great to hear.

Okay so now we are talking about having survived the ordeal and actually not just survived but having unmasked the monsters of our deepest fears,

Our deepest shame,

Our deepest sense of unworthiness,

Our deepest traumas.

What happens on the other side?

This is where we receive what Joseph Campbell called in mythological language the boon.

B-O-O-N.

The good and later on in the next couple of stages we're going to bring that boon back into our community.

We're going to return revisit where we came from.

Come full circle.

But right now that boon is what I like to call the gift of the goddess.

And this is the gift of unconditional self-love.

This is the wisdom that says I love you no matter what.

I want to invite you to say that to yourselves.

Maybe place a hand on your heart.

I repeat after me.

I love you no matter what.

I love you no matter what.

I had a very vivid experience of this in my about 10 years ago when I was really in the throes of my own heroine's journey.

And I've shared some pieces of this with you like circa 2013,

20 to like 2016.

And my life just went completely upside down.

Everything was just really hard and really traumatic.

And that I had been priced out of the San Francisco Bay Area and was transitioning out.

I was getting ready to move here to Southern Colorado.

And the bottom,

The lowest point was basically I had been homeless.

And a girlfriend of mine said to me,

Marcella,

You are not allowed to use that word.

You are not homeless.

You are in housing transition.

But long story short,

My old situation had fallen apart and the new situation hadn't arisen yet.

And I was couch surfing on somebody's couch,

A very,

Very generous friend of mine.

And I was sleeping in her office slash study.

And the conditions of my life had been so stressful that I really seriously was wondering if I was going to make it.

How can I say this?

I felt my sanity kind of like it was going down the drain.

Like I didn't know if I could hold on.

I didn't know if I could make it.

And I had never felt quite that way before.

I mean,

Obviously,

We all go through challenging times,

But then there's times that become really challenging.

Like there's challenging and then there's like a whole other level of when things get challenging.

And just as I was saying a few minutes ago,

This is when our deepest capacities get called into service.

You know,

They get called into question,

Like,

Can I do this?

And I wasn't sure.

And I was sitting in this room in her study and on her bookshelf was the Tibetan Book of the Dead,

Which I had read before being a student of Tibetan Buddhism,

But had never really gotten into it.

It's kind of like,

Oh,

Yeah,

It's one of those books,

You know,

We should read that sometime.

And I pulled it off the shelf.

And I read this passage that said,

Child of noble family,

Do not fear the appearances of this world,

But recognize them as the nature of light.

Have faith and supplicate.

Now I'm paraphrasing that.

It wasn't exactly that language,

But that was the idea.

And I sat there for about an hour.

And I read these words over and over again.

And simultaneously,

I absolutely understood what they meant.

And I had no idea what they meant.

And my mind kept going back and forth and back and forth like,

I get it.

I don't get it.

I get it.

I don't get it.

I sat there for a very long time,

Seemed like about an hour.

And then suddenly,

It was like a bubble coming up from the depths up to the surface of the water.

And what came to me was,

I am not my traumas.

I am not my traumas.

I am not the sum total of every terrible thing that has ever happened in my life.

That is just,

It was like an erasure.

It was like a chalkboard had been erased.

It just was,

It was not,

This isn't who I am.

And I am not defined by the circumstances of my life.

I am not defined by what I believe to be,

And there go all those hearts.

Yeah,

Okay,

Good.

I am not defined by what I believe to be shameful or wrong.

I am not defined by my judgments.

I am not defined by my opinions.

Do you see?

I'm not defined by what should have happened,

What shouldn't have happened,

What did happen.

I'm not even defined by who I think I am.

And then suddenly,

Everything that I thought was unworkable about my situation,

You know,

Everything that I've been beating myself up about,

Everything that I thought was shameful,

It just like went poof.

And I just thought,

Well,

Okay,

If I have to be a person and sleep out of my car for six weeks or six years,

It doesn't matter anymore.

It doesn't matter anymore.

I can do this.

It doesn't matter because it doesn't define me.

It's not the essence of who I am.

And then of course,

You know,

So there was this moment of complete surrender.

And then of course,

What happens after that,

You know,

This door opened and then this door opened and then this door opened.

And I kind of made my way through it,

Not just surviving,

But like lovely,

You know,

Like things were very,

Just came together very auspiciously and like the right person at the right time and all of that.

So I want to suggest to you,

This is the gift of the goddess.

This is the harvest or the boon.

This is what we get when we do the work.

This is what we get when we enter the deepest,

Darkest caves that we dare not enter.

This is what we get when our worst nightmares come true.

And instead of running away or blaming ourselves or blaming other people,

We gather our mentor,

We gather our allies,

We go on the adventure and we step right up to those monsters.

And we look them squarely in the face if they have one and we just reach up and pull the mask away to see what's really behind us.

What's really behind that seemingly terrifying appearance.

I see a lot of hearts bubbling up.

What is speaking to you?

What's speaking to you in what I am saying here?

From my own experience,

Can you identify with?

That hardship gave you immense freedom.

Yes,

The hardship,

It did give me immense freedom.

It's not to say that things don't still come up and we will talk about this next week.

You know,

We'll just leave that there for the moment.

But our relationship to them changes.

So circling this back around to women,

Food and forgiveness.

What I have found with the women I have worked with,

You know,

I have a,

I mean,

I love all of you.

You're all my Insight Timer tribe.

I have a whole other even closer inner circle of women who have worked with me.

One woman has been with me for nine years.

Another one has been with me for eight.

Most have been with me for like five or six.

And one of the women that I have been with for the past four years,

I have asked her within my academy to step into like a higher level of responsibility.

And she said,

Well,

You know,

I still kind of binge sometimes.

And I said to her,

Yeah,

I know that.

You're not kidding me.

But the point isn't that you do everything perfectly and you're at the perfect body weight and,

You know,

You have achieved this level of perfection relative to your ideas of what you think you should be.

That's not the point.

That's not the point in Marcella's world in any case.

There are other tapping programs that do that,

Like,

You know,

Fit into those skinny jeans and do,

You know,

30 days to the beach body or whatever.

Fine.

They can do all that.

But the reason why I asked this woman to step into this higher position was because my observation of her is that she has found that gift of the goddess in that unconditional self-love that becomes the anchor in the storm.

So it's not that the binge doesn't happen,

But that maybe it happens less frequently.

It's not as severe when it does happen.

The takedown isn't as severe and the recovery is faster.

That's what I observe in her and that's what I observe generally in the women who have been really close with me for long periods of time.

And that all of that takes a back seat to what I'm describing as this gift of the goddess,

This unconditional self-love,

This love that does not depend on conditions.

I'll love you when you're 10 pounds thinner.

No,

I'm going to love this body of mine as it is in this moment.

Okay.

Mary Pat is saying,

I can resonate with the concept that I am not my traumas,

But it seems to stay in my head and not quite make its way to my heart.

So Mary Pat,

If you want to say a little bit more about that,

Like,

Okay,

I get that I am not my traumas,

But if I am not not my traumas,

Then what am I?

So I want to talk a little bit more about the gift of the goddess through these three Sanskrit terms that Joseph Campbell was very fond of.

Joseph Campbell was a big fan of the Sanskrit language.

He said,

Sanskrit is the spiritual language of the world.

I love that.

And being a student of Buddhism over the years,

I've had this opportunity to kind of not really learn Sanskrit per se,

But become familiar with,

You know,

Some words and some terms.

Self-love,

Noah.

Self-love,

Self-forgiveness helps me when I want my past not to define me.

Yes,

That's right.

Yeah.

You are not your traumas.

We are not just simply the sum total of everything.

There is a divine essence in us that undergirds and underlies and pervades the whole drama of our lives.

So let me give you these terms.

And some of you,

Let me know if you've ever heard these before,

But these Sanskrit terms are Sat,

Chit,

Ananda.

Sat,

Chit,

Ananda.

Sat,

Chit,

Ananda.

Anybody familiar with this?

Okay,

Just let me know.

Sat is a Sanskrit word for truth.

And the truth is not just simply a relative truth like,

Okay,

Today is December 6th and it's cloudy outside and my name is Marcella Friel.

Sat,

Chit,

Ananda.

Sure.

Yes.

And I know a guru of that name.

Yes.

Yeah.

Hey,

Rebecca.

Yes.

One of my favorite to meditate with.

Perfect.

Becky says Ananda.

Yeah.

Say more.

Feel free to say more if you want to say more about it.

A ginger saying,

I don't really identify with my past traumas as much as feel fatigued from all of this deep healing work.

Okay.

So maybe we need to work on that.

And those of you who are familiar with these terms,

Please add to what I'm saying.

Okay.

Please add your understanding.

So Sat.

Sat is truth and Sat is non-dual truth.

So it's not truth relative to falsehood,

But it is simply the truth of what is.

It is the truth of the pure awareness of this moment.

So if you just sit for a moment and if you want to place a hand on your heart,

You could do that.

Let all the words fall away for just a second.

Okay.

And I want to invite you to just look straight ahead,

But look as if you are looking from behind your eyes,

Allow your eyes to rest back in their sockets and your eyes are facing forward,

But you're in a state of panoramic awareness,

Holding simultaneously your energy in your heart center and in the space around you.

And just see if you can tune in right there to a sense of sovereignty,

A sense of being.

So this is a little doorway into Sat.

Then we have Chit.

Chit is,

Debbie said,

Chit is the mind.

Okay.

Yep.

Chit is generally defined as consciousness.

However,

Those terms mind and consciousness get a little bit misinterpreted in our Western world where we tend to live from the neck up.

So I want to invite you to regard Chit as the consciousness that dwells in the heart.

Okay.

So again,

Here,

You know,

From this place of just sitting,

Sitting in space,

Sitting as a dot in space,

Perhaps place a hand on your heart.

And just as we did at the beginning of our time together,

Just place your energy,

Your awareness and your attention in your heart center.

So there's Sat and then there's Chit.

What is the native energy of the consciousness of your heart?

What is that?

Well,

That leads to Ananda.

So,

You know,

A plus B equals C.

Sat plus Chit equals Ananda,

Which I think Becky was saying,

Bliss.

Now,

Bliss is not,

Oh,

I'm having a great hair day,

Or gee,

I just got a big chunk of money,

Or wow,

My number on the scale.

This is unconditioned bliss.

And the other Sanskrit term is Sukha.

And there's a term Mahasukha.

Some of you might be familiar with that great bliss.

So it's deeper than happiness.

It's the sense of well-being and joy that pervades your experience.

24-7.

Yeah.

So Joseph Campbell had this famous saying,

Follow your bliss.

And after he said that,

Everybody got kind of got their underwear in a bind,

Like,

What are you following your bliss?

Like,

Everybody thought it meant like,

Or not everybody,

But there's a lot of commentary about,

Oh,

That's just indulgence.

That's just hedonism.

Follow your bliss.

So I'm going to go out and do whatever I want.

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

That is just about as erroneous as it could possibly be.

Follow your bliss.

Follow your truth,

The truth of your being.

Follow the consciousness of your heart.

And that leads you naturally into the bliss of being.

Joseph Campbell said the gift of a lifetime,

The greatest gift of a lifetime is being who you are.

So who are you?

Okay.

You're not your traumas.

Okay.

If you're not your traumas,

Who are you?

Sat Chit Ananda.

Am I making any,

I'm probably not making sense.

I hope I'm not making sense.

I hope I'm speaking to a different level here than just simply logic.

Yep.

I see a lot of hearts floating up in the side here.

Let me know what your thoughts are.

Let me know your thoughts or let me know your non-thoughts or your questions.

Ginger's saying it's more of a vibration than mental activity.

Perfectly,

Perfectly articulated.

That's right.

Debbie says,

Word that comes up for me is authenticity.

Authenticity.

That's a great word.

Another great word is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm.

Earl Nightingale defined enthusiasm as being infused with the,

The Thu syllable of enthusiasm is the Thu is the same part of as Theo,

As in theological.

God,

To be infused with God,

To be infused with Sat Chit Ananda,

The God consciousness that is your true nature,

Authenticity.

When you spoke of Ananda,

Mary Pat is saying,

When you spoke of Ananda,

I had this flutter of joyful energy in my heart,

In my heart area.

That is your true nature.

That is the gift of the goddess right there.

Kim,

Just as you said earlier,

I get it and then it goes out again and I recognize it,

Which is a comfort.

I want to stay curious.

Oh,

I love that.

Curiosity.

Great.

Noah,

A lot of questions come up.

Deep questions.

Beautiful.

Good.

Good,

Noah.

Great.

If those questions are coming into words,

Feel free to put them in the comments and if not,

You can message me or yeah,

We could find another way to continue the conversation.

When we clear away the debris,

When we clear away the detritus,

When we go into the wreckage,

We discover the jewel hiding amidst all that wreckage and this gift of the goddess,

The joy of unconditioned being,

Infused by love.

I love you no matter what.

So when you say that,

If you say that to yourself again,

Just placing your hands on your heart,

I love you no matter what and just sit with that.

Mm-hmm.

What happens for you?

What happens?

How do the challenges of your life look when you take this as your prayer?

I love you no matter what.

Okay.

I want to invite you to practice this week.

When you start to feel yourself spiraling out,

When you start to feel yourself getting speedy,

Drop back in.

I love you no matter what.

Okay.

Let's do some tapping right here.

Mm-hmm.

Tapping on the sides of the hands.

Even though I like this idea that I am not my traumas,

Go ahead and just repeat after me.

Just say as I say,

Do as I do.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

I like this idea that I am not my traumas and I want to experience that at a deeper level.

Mm-hmm.

It's easier said than done.

Okay.

And as Noah said,

It brings up a lot of questions.

Okay.

Good.

Let's take a nice breath here in and out of the nose.

All of that is perfectly fine.

Mm-hmm.

In fact,

It's perfectly natural.

And I love myself even with this.

Nice.

Very good.

Let's go up to the top of the head.

Okay.

I am not my traumas.

Okay.

Inside the eyebrow.

I am not my traumas.

Side of the eye.

I am not the sum total of all the terrible things that have happened in my life.

Under the eyes.

I am not all the terrible things that I think about myself.

Under the nose.

I am not all of my opinions and all of my judgments.

Under the mouth.

I am not even my thoughts.

Okay.

Good.

Collarbone.

And part of me knows this.

Under the arm.

But it feels very difficult to sustain that understanding.

Yeah.

Good.

Top of the head.

It feels hard to bring it down into a deeper level.

Okay.

Inside the eyebrow.

Yeah.

Some part of me must resist this.

Right.

Side of the eye.

Certainly some part of me forgets a lot.

Often.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

Under the eye.

And that's okay.

Under the nose.

I don't have to have a perfect experience of this.

Okay.

Good.

Under the mouth.

But even just a spark of awareness.

Collarbone.

A spark can become a flame.

Under the arm.

I can blow on that spark to make a flame.

Good.

Top of the head.

Because whether I can sustain this awareness or not,

Inside the eyebrow,

The truth of it does not change.

Side of the eye.

The truth is,

Under the eye,

I am a spark of divine love.

Under the nose.

I am a divine being.

Good.

Under the mouth.

My nature is divinity.

Great.

Collarbone.

And all of the traumas of my life.

Under the arm.

Are here to catalyze my evolution.

Back up to the top of the head.

Toward that realization and that understanding.

Inside the eyebrow.

Toward that experience.

Okay.

Side of the eye.

So even though it might be hard to really,

Really connect to this,

Under the eye,

I allow that flame of unconditional love to infuse my entire being.

Yeah,

Good.

Under the nose.

And I allow myself to just rest.

Under the mouth.

Rest all of my thoughts and my mental activity.

Collarbone.

Into that vibration of love.

Good.

Under the arm.

For the highest good of myself and the highest good of all.

How are you all doing?

The gift of the goddess.

So when you look at yourself and you look at your life through that lens,

What does it look like now?

Ginger,

It feels like there's a lot more work to do ready to experience the benefits now.

Okay.

The benefit,

Ginger,

Right here in this moment.

Right here in this moment.

You've done the work.

And I do know this about you.

You've done the work of 10 lifetimes.

See,

That whole idea that,

Oh,

I have to do more work,

You know,

That's like when kind of self-improvement becomes a project.

That what if there is just,

What if there's no more self-improvement?

What if there's no more work?

And it's not to say that things don't require our attention.

Or our care.

But we don't have to work,

Work,

Work,

Work,

Work.

Yes,

I have.

So I'll allow and receive.

Exactly.

And what you are,

And in this stage of the heroine's journey,

The gift of the goddess,

What you are allowing and receiving is what?

What are you allowing and receiving?

And I'll just ask this broadly to everybody.

Yes,

Ma'am.

That's it,

Debbie.

Divinity.

The unconditioned divinity of our,

Our being.

So Neville Goddard,

One of my favorite mystics,

Mystics,

He likes to say,

I and the Father are one,

But the Father is greater than I.

Right?

The tree and the fruit of the tree are one.

The tree is what gives birth to the fruit.

You know,

The ocean and the wave are one.

I and the Father are one.

I and the divine are one.

Mm-hmm.

The divine is greater than me.

But I am one with that.

I am of that.

Sat Chit Ananda.

Okay,

Here's Mary Pat.

I believe in the power of tapping and have even trained in it,

But I have yet to feel the powerful effects on me.

Or maybe I'm just not recognizing them.

Maybe that not quite to the heart thing again.

Yes,

Mary Pat.

Okay,

So Mary Pat,

You've,

You believe in the power of tapping.

Okay.

So what you're saying here,

It's like there's a,

I'm getting this image of like a gate or a doorway.

Like I'm standing at the gate and I want to open the gate and walk in.

But there's some piece of me that's holding back.

Okay.

Mary Pat,

If you know how to tap on your own,

You could tap right on that.

Even though some part of me believes in this and is ready to cross into it.

Another part of me is just kind of holding back.

And rather than trying to push through the holding back,

I want to be respectful toward it.

I want to allow it,

Love myself right where I'm at.

There's some wisdom in that holding back.

There's some wisdom in standing at the gate,

Not being able to just walk right through.

I don't know if that's speaking to you at all.

Just let me know.

Okay.

Wow,

Ladies,

What a wonderful time we've had together here.

I can't believe it.

This time has gone really fast.

Love the spark that grows to a flame.

The change I want seems more possible,

Not without obstacles.

The gate opens slowly,

But opens.

Oh,

I love this,

Noah.

Love it.

Okay.

Mary Pat says,

Yes.

Thank you.

Beautiful.

Jamie,

First time here.

Welcome,

Jamie.

Very interesting.

Great.

With gratitude,

Stumbled on this today and grateful.

Wonderful,

Kim.

Thank you all for being here.

I want to invite you to go forward into the world,

Holding this flame.

The gift of the God is unconditional love.

Yeah.

No matter how things appear,

Do not be daunted by the nature of appearances.

Recognize them as swirling spheres of rainbow light.

They arise,

They dwell,

They dissolve.

The love that you are in your essence always remains.

I'll leave you with that.

Marcella here.

All right.

See you all next week.

Lots of love.

Bye for now.