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The POWER of Experience IS Independent Thought

• THeresa Marie

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What if wisdom isn’t what you know, but what you do—then thoughtfully integrate? We dive into the space between head knowledge and lived experience, tracing how courage, reflection, and small experiments turn ordinary moments into authentic power. From that first “red pill” jolt to the quiet discipline of a 10‑minute sit, we unpack the practices that transform awakening from a concept into a daily way of being.

We explore the mechanics of growth: why reflection is the hinge that converts raw events into usable insight, how confidence compounds through completed actions, and where humility shows up when we ignore our gut. You’ll hear real stories—facing fear on a cliff, navigating medical choices, building skills in a garage—that show how experience becomes a library of wisdom you can borrow from anytime. We also challenge hand‑me‑down scripts about meditation, rest, and routine, and we offer a practical “experience inventory” to surface the lessons you’ve earned but haven’t named.

If you’re feeling stuck in theory, this conversation invites you to test, notice, and adjust—cold showers, hot soaks, a boundary, a first prototype, or a simple breath practice. The aim is independent thought and authentic action, the kind that makes you braver and more aligned. Listen, try the weekend exercises, and share what you learn with someone who needs it. If this sparked something, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it forward so others can turn their lived moments into wisdom too.

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SPEAKER_00:

Wisdom comes from experience. Yet it's also true that experience is often a result of lack of wisdom. So what comes first, humanity? Wisdom or experience? Experience or wisdom? Well, how about we attempt to grab some wisdom from the experience of today's show of Free to Just Be, the podcast empowering humanity to courageously step out of old patterns, matrix programs, heal from childhood traumas and false beliefs, and learn to embrace new ways of being. And I hope this finds us all in the greatest health this morning with vibrant energy today because we have chosen to accept the full responsibility for our body, mind, and souls. Here on Free to Just Be, I will attempt to inspire you to truly be who you came here to be, authentic, free, and aligned with our highest potentials. So join me, Teresa Marie, an ambassador of God's Chi, on this transformative awakening journey to rewrite our narratives and live lives of purpose and passion, to live for what we came for, right? And I just welcome you on this fabuloso Friday, the kickoff to the weekend. And I hope you do actually have a weekend, a weekend meaning two whole days to reset and to rest and to prep yourself for yet another work week, right? And uh we are hitting the end of the week talking about authenticity. And we've written authenticity vertically, and each of the first letters of the word authenticity, we are learning a little bit deeper about what authenticity means. So this week we've talked about how to appreciate the divinity that we are. The human authenticity we explored unlocking our inner child. T was for trusting our inner voices. And yesterday we talked about how we literally help humanity by honoring ourselves. And today the E of authenticity is experience. Now, originally when this dropped into me, I had written the experience, experiencing the power of change. But we've talked at great length about change. Every day we change. But as I prayed and meditated on today's show, it was experience, experience, experience, experience that kept coming up. So let's define the word experience. It's knowledge or skill gained through involvement in or exposure to events or activities. So in other words, experience is not head knowledge. It's not what's between your ears. Because you can have a lot upstairs, right? You can be an incredibly intelligent individual and have lots of head experience. Um, for example, you can have read every book about electricity, but unless you have literally worked with wires, putting them together, um what electricity um feels like, uh the warnings of it, all the head knowledge is not going to help you get up on a power pole and hook up power to a community, right? It would not be a safe thing for you to do that on your own, even though you read every book imaginable on electricity. So experience is like the second part of head knowledge. It's it's actually being in the midst of it. It's like a soldier who goes to boot camp and thinks that they're strong and they're courageous, but then they get put on the battlefield and oh my gosh, and all of a sudden it's it's a real enemy and it's real bullets being fired at you, and all of a sudden, everything that you quote unquote learned has to be put into play, into experiential living, right? So, how do we apply this to our awakening journey? It's literally that you and I, humanity, every day are experiencing more and more of the awakening journey. You never knew what it was like to take the proverbial red pill, that first initial kick in your belly, when you realized that you were being controlled and living life the way others wanted you to live it. And first it was a thought process. You you began to feel constricted, you began to feel like you were imprisoned, and then you had to deal with the heart part of it, the the feeling like oh my gosh, the incredulousness of it, right? You'd never experienced that wake-up call before until you actually felt it happen within your body, right? Until whatever it was that woke you up, woke you up, and and now you're experiencing life through another lens. So now you have a twofold experience. You know what it's like to be asleep and just going through the rote habit of your day. Remember, 95% of what we human beings do are on repeat. We do the same things over and over and over again. Until what? Until you experience a shift in your energetic field and you recognize, well, I I don't want to do this thing anymore. And suddenly you're in that new experience of, yeah, but how do I step away from it? I've never done this before. Those are words that literally, humanity, we should speak every day. God, give me the experience of something new today. Teach me something new today that I have to walk through. You've never changed a tire, boom, now you're on the side of the road, there's nobody with you, you have to get to the next location. Oh my goodness, you might have the experience of literally changing a tire all on your own. And what does that experience avail you? Confidence. We talked about building confidence yesterday, didn't we? When we uh talked about honoring yourself. You don't know what that looks like until you actually do it. So the experience itself becomes the greatest teacher. You cannot know what it's like, for example, to be on the planet for sixty-four years until you have been on the planet for sixty-four years. You cannot extract wisdom until you do something else with those experiences. Now, if experiences are knowledge or skill gained through involvement in or exposure to events or activities, how do you learn further from that? Well, it experience isn't exactly what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you. It's what you do with it. So you have the experience of that first wake-up call. And so there it is. What are you gonna do with that experience? You got kicked in the stomach because you recognized that yes, indeed, our governments are trying to have way more control over us than they should. All right, so you woke up to that, but then what do you do with that experience? That whatever catastrophic event that the catastrophic event that woke you up, then you had a decision to make. Am I going to delve deeper into this or am I going to choose to put my head in the sand? So it's not exactly wisdom extracted from an experience. No, it's what you do with that experience, right? We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on the experience, is what John Dewey was quoted as saying. And I imagine, you know, since he he um he created the Dewey system, which libraries use and catalog systems use, I imagine his experience was um sitting amongst volumes and volumes of books and recognizing the need to be able to find a resource at the drop of a hat and not being able to find it, which led him to the revelation of, well, somebody needs to create a system so that we can easily find these volumes of information that somebody needs to answer their questions. So he experienced a challenge, and then he looked at that experience of challenge and decided that he was the one called to create the solution to that problem or that challenge. So experience itself offers us the free will choice. And isn't it interesting? Eckhart Tolley says, Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. So whatever you needed to wake up, guess what? Life gave you that particular experience. But how do you know that this is the experience you need? Eckard continued. And he completes the quote by saying, Because this is the experience you are having at the moment. So at the moment, my fellow human being, maybe you found free to just be randomly, but there are no random cawinky dinks. Maybe you needed to hear this particular show on the wisdom that experiences give us. Because that's how life works. Truly, truly, truly, our thoughts and the words that come out of our mouth set the stage for the universe to bring to us exactly what it is we are looking for. For example, right now I am seeking the answer to why I have everything I need to literally create three or four different courses. Why can I re uh why can I do that? Why can I create a crow a course right now? A written experience, a written program. A written course. Program is one of those words that trigger a lot of people. But I could literally write a program on how to walk out of the matrix programming. And my question to the universe, to the Spirit of God, is what is keeping me from doing that? I have the time. I know that it would bring in resources which I need. And I know that that is the call on my life. But for some reason, I don't know if it's lack of self-confidence or what have you. But I am asking and I'm putting that forth. And now I'm putting it forth right to all of humanityville. And now I am going to watch the experience of how that wisdom is going to come to me and how I'm going to know the key to unlock the door of whatever it is that's stopping me. I mean, I am literally paying monthly for an incredible system called the mastermind system that Tony Robbins and Dean Grassio created to help people just like me who don't know anything about technology, don't know how to do the marketing. It literally walks you through from start to finish, starting with what are your values? Why is it that you want to do this? Answering all those questions to the point where it will bring it to market. All of that is at my hand. I have these things in my fingertips, and I have not moved as fast as I think I should move. And so my question is, why? And truly, truly, I will tell you that in my experience of 64 years on the planet and 20 on this awakening journey, I know that as I put forth that question, soon and very soon I will understand why. And then I'll be able to turn around and share my experience and how pondering what came in, what got downloaded to me, how it how it'll come in, I don't know. It may be a conversation with a friend, it may be in prayer time or in meditation, but someday, very soon, because I've been asking this question for a couple of weeks now, what is stopping me? I know it's me, but I don't know what part of me it is. And that is what experience avails you. And it is an incredible thing when you you come through something. For example, look at your dark nights of the soul. You you usually learn so much about yourself, right? But it's not until you come through it, until you feel energy again, until you feel like yourself, until you feel motivation, until you feel joy and happiness. And then what? You're able to look back at the experience of your days of being in a fetal position and crying and feeling like you didn't want to face the world, and feeling depressed, and going on autopilot to get you through whatever you have to get through the days. You know those days, humanity. And then all of these bells and whistles and lights go off, and you recognize, wow, I went through that because of this. And this is what I learned in that horrible dark period of my existence, whether it was two days, two weeks, two months, two years, or maybe a couple of decades. We've all been there, done that. But then all of a sudden, you glean the lessons of that experience. And life, as Chip Gaines says, opens up when you bring your experiences, but not your expectations to all you do. So now you have this knowledge base, you have this experiential existence, you have gone through so many by the time you're in your 60s, you have gone through all everything, the puppy love, the marriage, having children, um, having children leave, um feeling what it's like to be alone, you've gone through death, you've you've by the time you're in your 60s, you have all this experiential knowledge that a 20-year-old quote-unquote whippersnapper doesn't. And this is why so many in my generation have such a hard time going into whatever job position, job being just overbroke, because all of us should be um becoming more and more independent from this systematic way of living and venturing out into new experiences, forging your own way instead of getting paid to build somebody else's business up, because there's an entrepreneur in all of us. We just haven't been one yet. So this is when others' experiences become invaluable to us. This is when we begin reading biographies of those who are where we want to be, and we read and begin to get head knowledge about how they did it. Because that type of experience where you're soaking in and you're soaking in gives you the courage to step into the experiential court. All right, I've learned this much about being an entrepreneur, so now I can take the step of giving my two weeks' notice or or um getting the equipment to begin the process, like my friend Tracy did. He had a desire to learn something new, and so he began honing that skill in his garage. And now he's selling the product, the wonderful product that came out of all that experiential learning. First he read about it, first he watched it, then he began to do it, then he began to get better at it, then he began selling it, now he's marketing, and on and on and on. Life is a continuum of curiosity. Oh, well, this person does it this way, gaining the knowledge, then taking it into the skill field, then having the experience, and experience breeds wisdom. So we can learn so much about ourselves from the experiences that we went through. And if you have not taken an experience inventory of your life, I highly suggest that this weekend you do. Because when you literally sit down and you know, enter this experience, quote unquote, with prayer and meditation. Spend five or ten minutes and say, God, I really want to see what I've done with my life so far. And so as I step into the arena and ask that you help me recall all the experiences that I have been through. Help me to just throw them out on a page of paper and sit there and just be still for five or ten minutes, and then pick up your pen or pencil and begin writing without any thought all the things that you remember doing. I learned to walk, I I whatever. Maybe you start by listing all the jobs that you had, all the things that you did that you never thought you were going to do, all the travel that you did, all the experiences in life. I went away to college, I traveled on a plane, I traveled on a boat, all list all the experiences and you will be blown away. And then if you want to deepen this experience, take that list and on the side of that list, list all the wisdom that you gained from being on naval ships, or from having seven children, or from walking through cancer, and you will be amazed at the storehouse, the library of wisdom that your experiences through this life availed you, and now I want you to take it to the third step. How can your library of experiences, which created so much wisdom in you over the years, how can you take that and turn it into a contribution to humanity, though? And therein, dare I say, probably lies what you are called to be an entrepreneur at. Because the very thing that you are passionate about, you probably have all sorts of experience at. My whole life. So I know that the purpose of why I'm here on this planet in Earth School is to effectively use my communication skills. Now, how to use my communication skills, that is still part of my evolution. I know that it's right now it's before this mic, and I'm speaking to whoever needs to find me, to hear my voice, to hear the experiences that I've walked through to encourage them. I believe the next step is to make that connection more real. In other words, real-time connection. In other words, live shows. That's probably where I'm going to go next. So experience experiences. Where today have you not stepped out of the box? Where is wisdom lacking? Because Gandhi told us that every new experience brings what? Its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision. But you see, we have to take a step into the unknown. We have to be like Peter, who said, I want to walk on the water. He didn't know how to do it. And sometimes we have to trust that maybe we need to experience stepping out of that boat. And maybe the first time we experience it, we fail miserably and we feel like we're sinking. That's an experience. And then you reflect on that experience and you say to yourself, well, you know what? My trust trust level was only one step. But you know what? That one step, I was above the water. And then I doubted and I sunk. So the next time I have to remember to breathe and trust God and re-remember, imagine in that connection. I am always connected with God. We are never separate, ever, ever, ever. Therefore, I know that I can take that next second, third, fourth, fifth into literally feeling like I'm walking on water. Maybe that's where your experience has to be. Maybe you need to experience the building up of your faith muscles more. Maybe you need to experience getting before a mic, like my husband, as we've been playing with the mic, he's recognizing, wow, I can hold a conversation, a very deep conversation, before a microphone and hold my own. Whereas two years ago, he couldn't hold a conversation in a group of people without feeling incredible anxiety. But you see, he had to step out of that. He had to recognize the powers and the skills that he had and the wisdom that he had. Now the reverse is also true. There are people that will get will get very arrogant and very um full of their ego, and their ego leads out and and has that persona presented to those around them that says, You're not my age. You've never been through my experiences, so you don't know. Well, the first time that a child knocks an adult off their proverbial throne with a word of wisdom in front of a group of people, oh buddy, that puffed up individual will have the experience of being humbled. Because you see, the universe knows that we need humility, that we need to know that all things that we need come from our Creator God, that we literally are nothing without Him. Without the Spirit of God, we wouldn't be breathing, we wouldn't be conscious, we would be a puddle of nothing. And so we have to be very careful to not equate all the wondrous things that we have learned with us being better than others, because we will surely get knocked off that high horse, and that's an experience too. So, what kind of experiences do you want? I remember um our youngest daughter, Daphne, she wanted to experience what it would be like in another country. So she went and taught in South Korea for a year. She went totally by herself, not knowing the language, the Food, the area, and I would suggest to you that that was an incredible act of courage, especially from one who suffers with a lot of anxiety issues. But I'm telling you, there's going to come a day when Daphne is going to look back on that experience and recognize the courage, the strength, the fortitude, the determination, the absolute lioness that she was and is. There are people on this planet that would not even consider doing something like that for the anxiety that even thinking about it would evoke in them. So, see, that's where writing down your accomplishments can really give you a perspective on just how much experiential wisdom you have. Because it's all well and good to have intellectual knowledge. But until you put that knowledge into practice, it's not an experience yet. So, as this weekend comes upon us, remind yourself that life opens up when you bring your experiences and all of that knowledge that you learn through experiences into your next new chapter. Remind yourself, you know what, I did all of these things, and you might have pages of experiences that I don't have, and I might have pages of experience that you don't have. But that should propel you, my dear, dear human being family. That should propel you and remind you, hey, why am I afraid of stepping into this new chapter? I did all this other stuff. I'm already a badass. And fear is nothing but false evidence appearing real. And then when we change our attitude to, oh yeah, I'm gonna step out and walk on water again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump off the cliff, I'm gonna try something I've never tried before. Because you know what? I have a track record of experiences that taught me so much wisdom. And I'm not afraid. The only thing to be afraid of is fear itself. And you know, I have this experience of turning and facing that fear. See, I always go back to that first major fear that I looked at, and that was my fear of heights. And what experience did the universe bring to me? Two sons, Clayton and Joshua, dogging me for a whole trip to where we were going on that youth trip. You're not gonna do it, mom. You're afraid of heights. Uh and I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna do it. You're not gonna do it, mom. And then that brought me to the moment of truth. Are you gonna repel today, ma'am? Yes, I am. And then hearing, no turning back, no turning back, and then sweating bullets, and then being so scared, and then having that experience of the women screaming, hanging upside down on the cliff next to us, and then doing it anyway, and walking into that fear, and walking into that fear, and then what? At the end of that 40-foot repel, which was nothing, but when my butt hit that ground and I turned and I kissed the ground, and I thanked God when I stood up, I was a brand new person. I was an empowered person. I was a person that that knew that I knew that I had courage, that I literally faced a major fear that had me trembling and sweating bullets, and I faced it. And do you know what? From that moment forward, I have drawn up that experience over and over and over again, every time I'm scared. Remember repelling Terry? Yeah, I was Terry then. Now I'm Teresa Marie. And not only can I repel off a cliff, but I can repel in a cave, in complete and total darkness. And that cave taught me that I really needed to pay attention to detail. And that lack thereof, of paying attention to detail, because I hadn't repelled that much, cost me a torn meniscus. And that torn meniscus taught me that sometimes it is better to put aside your complete and total dislike and distrust of the medical system and actually go and get some help first. Because waiting 10 years taught me yet another lesson that I didn't need to be in pain for 10 years. And then it taught me not to be impetuous because I impetuously went to the first surgeon, and then I didn't listen to my body language, and my body and everything in me. I'll never forget being in that office with that man. I knew that I knew that I knew that I did not trust him. And yet I went ahead and let him cut open my body and put metal in my knee, and it was not a good thing. And what did I learn from that experience? To further not trust man-made medicine, and to trust that my body will tell me what I need, and God is my healer. But all of that would not have been ascertained in my life had I not gone through every one of those experiences, and every day I get to choose. Oh, I have this ache in my body. Will I go to the medicine cabinet and get a tylenol? Well, no, I won't because there isn't any Tylenol or aspirin in our medicine cabinet. Because we don't use that stuff anymore. We use peppermint oil for pain. But you see what I'm saying? So experience is the mother of all invention, is one of those old adages. And it's true. How many experiments did Thomas Edison have to experience? How many times did he have to be wrong before he became right? And every experience taught him another lesson to go out and experience it again and again and again until all of a sudden, bing, the light bulb went on. Experience is invaluable on this awakening journey. And the way that we become more conscious is beginning to try some of those things that maybe we were told were not good for us. Take meditation, for example, take being still, for example, take resting, for example. These are all things that for years we were encouraged to not do. The religious world would I remember being told you do not want to empty your mind because then evil entities will enter it. What about the opportunity of hearing the voice of God clearly? Well, you'll never know what sitting quietly and focusing on your breath will do now, will you? If you've never done it. How can you possibly say that something is wrong? Well, we'll use meditation as the example. Meditation's bad. You can't, you know. How can you say that if you have never read anything about meditation? How can you say that if you've never sat in a chair or laid down and literally did nothing but breathe and meditate for 10 minutes? If you have never experienced that, how can you possibly speak against it? And yet that is what the Matrix does. It tells you what your experience will be. Well, dare I say in closing, do not allow anybody to rob you from your own experience. Because experiences are incredible teachers, and every day is a new one. Every day is a new experience. What are you learning on the daily humanity? What is it that you want to learn? What are you being held back from by not stepping in to a certain experience? I'll give you another real-time example. You hear so much talk, and there's even the dude that's called the iceman, and you know, there are those that have the train of thought that says putting your body in an ice bath will do XYZ. And then, you know, I've read a little bit about it. I've read a little bit about what your body does internally when it's suddenly thrust into the cold. And I don't like being cold. But I never was sure that my body would have certain experiences unless I did it. Now I've never done an ice bath. But I want to see, I want to experiment with if there is literally a difference in the way my body feels if I allow it to be exposed to cold water on the daily. So what is Theresa Marie doing? I have begun, before the cold weather gets here, to end my shower on the daily by turning the hot water off a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more each day. And I'm actually quite amazed at already how cold I can allow that water to get and still stand in it. Same thing. I know people that absolutely refuse to do the reverse. They don't want to get into hot water with jets in it. Why? It just makes my heart feel weird, or um, you know, I get lightheaded or what have you. And um maybe they've never had the experience of their muscles relaxing. Maybe the reason they don't want to get in a hot tub is because they don't want to let down, because they're afraid of literally relaxing, because then their mind stops. So see, everything is an experience. So in closing, I'll leave you with this thought. The power of experience is independent thought. Now, if you are truly on the path to be a free-to-just beer, free to just be who you are, then you would prefer to be an independent thinker. And this circles us right back to that resurrection of inquisition, doesn't it? If you want to be a free thinker, then be a free thinker and begin to challenge yourself to have new experiences often, because the power of experience literally is independent thought, and this is where innovations come, and this is where you turn around and you give those independent thoughts out to humanity, who can now experience your wisdom from your experiences and give them the courage to go out and try something new and have their own experience and then gain their wisdom, and so it goes, and so it goes. And humanity, I hope you take some of these thoughts and ponder them. I hope that you experience a 10-minute meditation and then brainstorm. Just literally write every experience that you can think of that you've already been on a piece of paper, and then visit it. Visit it often, especially when you feel afraid about anything, and you will find that it has absolutely accelerated your awakening journey. I was long winded today, but maybe use today's podcast as part of Saturday, too. I love you, humanity, and I hope this experience of free to just be today availed you some wisdom as well. Peace.