Why Your Values Matter
A core focus of what I do is decolonizing/liberating the soul-body. In the process, we become ever-curious about living in more embodied alignment with the essence of who + what we really are. As we do this, it's beneficial to have navigational tools. Often, it can be confusing to discern our soul from our (unintegrated) ego. Living life + making decisions from a soul-based perspective can sometimes feel vague and awkward, especially in a culture that's so invested in keeping us distracted + disconnected from not to mention downright mistrustful of our essence.
This is where our values come in.
Our values are a portal to the soul, our greater Self.
When we align ourselves to our authentic values, we’re in devotion to and in communion with our soul.
By crafting our big + small intentions - or goals - from our values, we’re tuning into the frequency of our soul.
Allowing our doing + living to flow from our authentic values is embodying our soul.
Living a life aligned to our values means releasing the fear-based addiction to external validation, to seeking approval and avoiding disapproval. Because the Truth is, our souls did not come here to be liked and approved of. Kowtowing to the mandates of that aggressive non-culture stifles our essence as we orient towards external validation, towards the insatiable getting of more "likes" and "followers," more external approval, so we can attune to a false and flimsy version of safety and a counterfeit currency of worth and value - all while allowing our true power to be siphoned away.
Meanwhile, living a soul-aligned life means gently orienting our sense of safety within, towards our authentic values.
And like Nature, we’re not static but a non-linear, multi-dimensional process. As such, our values also evolve, change and shift over time.
Making the commitment to live in alignment with our values naturally infuses our lives with life-affirming meaning. It is living in our dharma - the Sanskrit word for our highest, Nature-aligned purpose. We also start seeing + feeling more clearly when and where we’ve been living according to the dictates of generational, cultural, societal and ideological conditioning. We start to feel how much of a toll being in our not-Self takes on us, and stop overriding the body + nervous system's signals of malaise. And as flowering spring blooms naturally turn towards the nourishment of sunlight, we too start to orient ourselves towards the glow of our innate essence, via our values.
One of Root + Rise’s Foundational Practices is Your Soul's Code - an invitation to make the time and space to consciously connect with your authentic values, and to align + design your life in coherence with these. Members who have been in the group for multiple seasons are encouraged to revisit the practice once or twice a year to reconnect, recalibrate, as well as realize where their values may have changed and evolved. It allows us to track the ways in which we may be organically changing and evolving on a soul level.
Spring is the perfect time to elicit our authentic values. Once connected with and inhabited in them, the exploration we take with the season's story can guide us with more depth and resonance.
And while we're on the topic of values, here are some elaborations on two of Root + Rise's core values, biodiversity and liberation, so you can feel into whether it's resonant for you:
Root + Rise is a space where:
it is safe to have different perspectives + points of view
not only is difference safe, the respectful expression of diverse + diverging viewpoints is encouraged, because this is how we can all grow, change + evolve
we learn to how to feel safe in our own bodies, and resourcefully engage with any triggers that arise, instead of projecting them onto others, and expecting the world to bend to their demands
we get to mature out of the limited/limiting experience of safety as sameness, where everyone always agrees with us + our worldview, and has the same filter through which we experience the world
the monoculture of groupthink, dogma, and the dulling weaponization of the rich + subtle nuances of race + identity politics are not a good fit
we cultivate the capacity to recognize the aforementioned groupthink, dogma + weaponization of subjective human experience as veiled expressions of colonial oppression/manipulation
we remember that the ontological roots of colonialism + empire demand a rigid sameness + subjugation to one dominant narrative, and the silencing/cancelling/censorship of anything that differs from that. We learn to dissolve + compost this same energy within our own psyches, bodies + nervous systems
we remember that the work of decolonization in the external can’t be done with integrity if the fear-based psychological structures of colonialism aren’t dismantled first; that liberation is an inside job
we’re enthusiastic about co-creating a world where choice on all matters is Queen, and where we have way more to choose from than this vs. that, left vs. right, good vs. bad, etc. We’re enthusiastic about embodying the truth that we all deserve better; we’re enthusiastic about being the alchemical space in which these polarities get to unify and birth new ways
we know that each of us is here to sing our individual soul’s song in this world, in our own way, to thrive doing that, and that it’s perfectly safe + natural for some to feel a dissonance to that, just as it is for some to have a resonance to it - without any of it meaning anything about us or them
we learn to cultivate the safety + capacity in our bodies to sing our soul’s song in our own way and in our own time, knowing that as we do this, we are attuning to the World Soul, the Anima Mundi, which requires the nourishment of biodiversity in all forms, just as our soul-bodies do.
If this sounds heretically yummy to you, come play!
Registration is currently closed for the season. You can sign up for the waitlist here to be notified of when doors reopen.