Spiritual Awakening: The Ground of Love

Spiritual Surrender, Ego Death, and Transformation: From Comfort Zone into Great Mystery. (EP2)

• OLIVIA FRAZAO

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Ego-death, spiritual dark night of the soul, transitions, and massive soul-level transformations...This episode maps out the 3 stages of spiritual surrender, when life takes us past our edge and we go through the fires of transformation. Whether through a lifechanging life event or difficulty, or even simply by our own choice to dive courageously into the Unknown on any given day, we leave the comfort zone and cross the threshold into the Great Mystery. This episode is equally a guide for those big life moments, as it is a reminder that on the spiritual path we are constantly moving through ever-deeper spirals of these 3 stages.

This episode - and entire podcast series - is for people dedicated to spiritual practice, spiritual healing work, personal growth, and psychology, and who are willing to be forged by the fires of life's great difficulties and daily challenges to be taken ever-deeper into true nature, connection with the Divine, and the truth of Love. 

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Keywords:

Meditation, consciousness, esoteric wisdom, nonduality, spiritual awakening, spiritual practice, mindfulness, psychology, ego-death, meditation, new age, bhakti, buddhism, christianity, hinduism, indigenous wisdom, energy healing work, ancient wisdom, sangha

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Where is the spiritual path really going to take us? Because life is here to teach us and to bring us to our true selves? Where is life really gonna take us? Welcome to the Ground of Love, i'm your host, Olivia Fra, You are someone who is committed to healing, awakening the truth of love and being of service. What you'll receive by listening to this podcast is inspiration and a reminder and invitation, a reflection of your center. So let's consider a framework in which we're in our comfort zone. Then We get out of our comfort zone either through challenge through imposition from the outer world, certain events that are occurring or through choice, meaning our own desire to excavate our inner landscape. And we reach our edge, and not only do we reach our edge, but we have to pass through our edge and go beyond it. So we are. Going through this fall or fallout or dismantling on some level, this transition, this threshold, we're going through it. And then on the other side, we arrive at a direct experience of reality and of ourselves that is more whole and more real. So it's basically these three stages. It's life within the comfort zone. what we feel ourselves to be and what reality is to us within the comfort zone. and how we behave based on all of that That's the first category. Then we have. Going through the threshold now here, our view of ourselves, our view of reality, and our view of how we can take action and what it will result in, all of that gets dismantled, all of it. Our identity, our understanding of the world. And how we can act within it. It all gets dismantled in that second phase, which is going past our edge. Then there is some kind of an arrival, and in that arrival we are more whole, more true, and our understanding of who we are is now in relation to God in a deeper way. Whatever God means to you. Our feeling, our direct experience of love, not what we think of it or what we've made it to be, but our direct experience of love is greater, and the wisdom that we have gained is a wisdom of this entire process. It's an understanding that this is how life works. It's an overall understanding of the journey, and it's a willingness, a trust, to give ourselves to this journey over and over again. This journey of releasing ourselves out of our comfort zone, going through that which we have resisted and avoided, and been afraid of giving ourselves over once again to that which is greater dissolving, dismantling, and being able to land into that, which is awaiting us on the other side, which is true power, true love, true direct experience, truth itself. So that is the general overview. Let's do that again, but now a level deeper. So we can understand what is in these categories. So now, right now we're in the comfort zone. Within the comfort zone. I hate to say this, but it's true. We always have a certain level of arrogance. What does that mean? Let me back up and get back to that. I'm gonna really back up, so stay with me. The reason there are these three locations of our experience in the first place is because there is a separation from wholeness. There's wholeness, which awaits us. And then there's where we are now. And there's the gap between them. We wanna get from where we are now through the gap back home to wholeness to what truly is That gap is some type of a blind spot. There's a block. Where we can't see what's true. Why? Because we have imposed upon what's true, something of our creation that we're looking at. There's a replacement. So rather than seeing wholeness, we're not just seeing something blank. We're seeing what we have imposed upon the blankness because we can't see. Wholeness. What happens is we actually can't see the everythingness of which we are a part. We can't see true love. We can't see that we are embedded within all beingness. We can't see that we are held and protected and guided. We can't see that there is a greater plan at work. We can't see the larger field that's holding us and that we are a part of, and thus, what's the result? We feel alone. Now, I don't just mean, oh, I'm lonely. Let me go look for a friend or a partner. I'm talking about something bigger than that. I'm talking about the thing that actually leads us to arrogance. Now, people aren't gonna like me saying this, but think about it this way. Do you know any narcissists out there? Have you related with any narcissists? Those people have probably zero capacity to empathize with you. Right? They're not, they don't care about your perspective. Why? Because to them, your perspective it's not a part of their matrix of reality. It doesn't exist to them. It's not like it exists, but they don't like it. It simply does not exist. It's not there to even get assessed. So in a way, this is a little extreme, but in a way, in a, at least in part of their perception, you don't exist to them. Why? Because they're alone. Because they experience themselves as alone. Yes. It probably feels offensive, but that would assume that they actually have someone they're being offensive towards. They don't even have that. They're alone. You don't exist as a living, being that they are capable of feeling and truly relating with, you're an object to them, like their refrigerator or their car. Now I'm obviously talking about someone who's a super full-blown narcissist, they are so, so, so alone. They're alone. That's why they're not accommodating to you. That's why they don't wanna know your opinion. That's why they're not trying to negotiate with you or co-create with you because there's no one to do any of that with, according to them. There's only them and their reality, and everyone else is a pawn in their very, very, very lonely world. So this is the part that I feel like people aren't gonna like to hear. How are we like that? There's something in each of us that feels alone. There's something in each of us that has 100% certainty about our aloneness to the extent that it's totally subconscious and we don't realize we're doing it. There's something in us that's like, nobody's here. Nobody in this case is who, God, whatever you call God. I'm not trying to define God in any particular way for you to be clear. I don't mean anything based on any particular religion. I mean that which is greater, however you call that. It's something, it's the thing. It's everything that holds us, that guides us and that we are right. There is a need there for an intimacy, for an embeddedness, for a love relationship, for a trust that's not present. There's something that's not present. We don't, we don't have that relationship. Maybe in certain places of ourselves we do, but in others we don't. And in the places where we don't, that's where. We have this searing subconscious aloneness that we have no idea we have. So what happens with that aloneness? That's called separation, by the way, right? A lot of people use that term, separation is really what's going on here in. You know, the, the reason why we're not all enlightened, right, is'cause there's separation. So what's that separation? It's the blind spot from true connectedness that makes us feel alone and not even realize that that's even happening. So from that place of aloneness, if I'm the only person in town, then I'm the one who has to figure everything out. the one who has to go out there and gain the information that I need so that I can understand what's going on. I'm going to accumulate knowledge and theories and teachings so that I can have a paradigm of reality. That's my view of reality. And not only that, not only am I, constructing an understanding of reality, but I am going to be righteous about it. I'm gonna really, really rely on it. And so it's gonna solidify, I'm gonna have a worldview that. I'm not gonna be like, oh yeah, I'm kind of holding this worldview. I'm seeing how it holds up. No, I'm gonna be like, this is reality. That's the issue. I am now imposing my construct of reality, my limited understanding of reality onto reality, to such a degree where I'm gripping it so tightly because I need certainty. And predictability so badly that I start forgetting that that's actually something I constructed for myself. And I actually think it's the ultimate ground of how things really work. So it's like I put a sticker on top of the true ground of reality, and I can no longer read what's underneath because I've now. Stuck my sticker onto it. And what I wrote on my sticker is, this is how things work. And this is what this means. And this is who I am and this is what's gonna happen in the world. And this is what my place in it is. And this is what these other people are. And right, we make a whole narrative for ourselves. People. We rely on narrative. We live in narrative, right? Storytelling is a necessary basis for how humans get around in the world. The issue is, is when we actually forget that we created this story so that we could live within it. To help us as a tool. It's different, right? It's like, oh, hey look, this is the map that I created from what I'm able to see out there. Cool. And then one day you're walking and you realize that your map isn't holding up. You're like, ah,, my map isn't holding up. Okay, time for a new map. Right? That's the ideal versus what do you mean? This is reality itself, capital R, that's where we have an issue because we feel alone. What else happens? Our view of what we need to do, how we behave, what actions we take, how we move in the world through our lives is all about control because I'm the only one here. I'm the one constructing the castle that I'm now living within, right? The castle, meaning my framework of reality. I've constructed my territory and now I'm moving around in it. On my own. What does that mean? I need to have the motivation to take action. I need to be the one to take the action. I need to be the one to take the obstacles out of my way. I'm the one that needs to, convince other people to do things the way I want them to do them so that what I want will happen. I need to go out there and manipulate my environment so that it becomes the thing that I want. So that's called efforting. That's called control. That's called being annoying to other people. That's called what we do all day. This is why we then get down on ourselves when we want to rest. We're like, oh, I'm being lazy. Why? Because we're relying on our industriousness to even move forward as if the world would stop spinning if we stopped spinning on our own treadmill. Whereas when we eventually let that go, what is underneath that? What's on the other side of our dismantling of that belief when we realize that we're not alone and we're not the sole actors and we're not the director of our play, is that there's something taking us and all we need to do is have the faith. To float down that river that's already moving. Now, that's a lot of faith. I say it as if it were easy. There's no point talking about it. The point is learning how to do it and learning how to do it isn't about constructing a skill. It's about throwing ourselves out there the way that children, that small children learn how to swim. That's how we grow our faith. It's like the toddler that you are literally throwing off the edge of the pool to land into the pool and look like that kid underwater flailing, eventually getting up and gasping for air and through that process, learning how to swim. That's faith. It's jumping before you know how to swim. And the truth is, there's a teacher there catching the kid when they land underwater. That can be a metaphor for God. We're not gonna learn how to swim first before jumping into the pool. So growing our faith is by testing our faith. So the other thing that happens from this aloneness and from this construct of the world that we've created, and from the ways that we have moved around in the space that we created for ourselves, kind of. Pushing and tugging things and people this way and that to create the environment that we want for ourselves. We've created a comfort zone. It's like with our paradigm of reality. We built a house of cards around ourselves, and then with our control and efforting and manipulation of others, we've furnished the house. So now we're comfortable in here and in our comfort, we are resisting. Things that are outside of our paradigm, we are fighting with or avoiding things that we can't control because we're encasing ourselves. And when we encase ourselves into this little world, we feel comfortable. When we feel comfortable, we can start thinking pretty highly of our achievements. Look at me. Look how calm and peaceful I am. Yeah, that's'cause you're not in a war zone right now, like those other people and war zone doesn't literally need to be a war. There are a lot of different types of war zones, right? If I use that term as a, as a metaphor as well. But we all know that there are life events that take us to our edge. I mean, even if we're not in one of them right now. Life is waiting for us, so we can only uphold our arrogance up to a certain point. But while we're upholding it, we're gonna enjoy a lot of self-aggrandizement, and we're gonna show our perfect life to people on Instagram with all the filters and all of the pomp. And we're gonna think pretty highly of ourselves. Oh, I'm really good at such and such. Oh, look at me. I really got it together. Right? That's the part of us that's like, oh, I'm really enjoying this comfort zone. Let me now get my, my followers online, or whatever it is that I'm doing, and be like. Oh yeah. Look at me. I'm such a cool leader. Let me build myself up in my personal brand as this person who really knows what's going on and who's achieved so much. Meanwhile. At some point, we gotta go through the wringer. So we either choose that or life chooses it for us and everything. All of this gets dismantled, right? At some point, each piece of this gets dismantled. So what happens here? We end up past our edge. What does that mean? Past what we understand, and we realize that we don't actually know what's going on. Our framework is no longer working. Our understanding of reality is being debunked, and we don't have a replacement. Oh, we've tried. We've really tried to tack on a replacement there as it's crumbling, we keep trying to, it's crumbling down. We keep trying to tack on, we keep trying to put on new things, but that doesn't work eventually. And then we realize there's nothing I can make of this right now. There's only one narrative left, which is the narrative of going home, going back to God. It's the narrative of giving it all over. That's the only narrative left, and that's where we go from knowledge to wisdom. Knowledge is, oh, I've, I've read these books, and they say that the world is on an ascension journey. And they say that right now I'm individuating from my mom. And they say that, oh, so what I believe about myself is this, and so what I'm gonna do is this, and thus I've achieved this and let me show off about that and then it's, boom, the whole thing crumbles. And all of a sudden, all those places that we were holding on to, they're not there anymore. But there's one place left, which is God has been waiting for you this whole time, which is ultimate reality. Truth, the ground of love, whatever you wanna call it, has been waiting for you this whole time to be done with your theater performance with yourself. And you come home. You come home to the blank page. After you've read the script and been the playwright and been the actor on the stage, the lights go off and everybody goes home. You go home, you don't go nowhere. That's the limiting belief when you're going through that second stage of dismantling, right, where everything's crumbling and falling and it's really scary. But the wisdom comes from knowing that that is a stage, that that is a necessary movement. That that pain and that helplessness is actually the greatest moment of growth. Not growth becoming something, but the growth in unbecoming, in unlearning, in undoing, in, dismantling, in becoming- these are strange words, but in becoming less than you were before, so that you can be more, so that you can be who you really are. Because once that identity is done, it melts into the greater one. That's always been, but that's been waiting for space to actually be, to actually express, to actually be known and lived as. So what is this strange threshold place. It's all of your fears. I can't sugarcoat it. It is extremely scary. But it's true. I'm speaking about it because this is what's true and because it's true, this is what we can count on. We can count on this when we can't count on anything else. We can't count on who we thought ourselves to be. We can't count on someone else being there for us. We can't count on who we thought somebody else was. We can't count on the narrative of what we think life is and what we think the world is of even that holding up. The only thing that we can truly count on is that when we keep giving over the things that are crumbling anyway or that will crumble eventually. When we keep giving over that, which we have constructed, that which we have created for ourselves to believe that, which we thought we were, that which we have been holding onto even our greatest dreams. When we give all of that over in trust in faith, There will be something else. We're not gonna dissipate into oblivion. We're not gonna just crumble and stay on the floor forever. Even if it might feel that way, in that moment, there is something more, there is a greater reality awaiting you. If you let go of this one completely. I, there is a greater reality awaiting you and you cannot let go of this one 99%. You gotta let go a hundred percent. Because there is a greater reality awaiting you. And you don't need me to promise it. You can feel the promise inside yourself. We all are that living promise. And trusting it's there even when we can't hear it. That's faith. That is the true resilience. That's resilience on the level of your soul. That's you getting through whatever you're getting through. Because you're back home in your soul and your soul doesn't die. So everything else can, because as you let it, you find what doesn't you, and you can live in that and that will hold you. There is firm ground. It is not the ground that we have been holding onto. It's not the things around us. It's not the people around us. It's not our achievements. It's not even what we hope to feel when we get our dreams. There's something else. More basic, more right here. More already, more always. The more that we turn towards that ground, the more that we throw ourselves into it like a toddler, learning how to swim, jumping into the pool, knowing that the teacher will be there, air to lift them up so that they can breathe again. We jump. And the truth of life is that either we jump or we will be pushed. That's the choice that we have. And when we are pushed, because that will happen too, no matter how often we jump anyway. We still have the choice of keeping our eye on the ball of knowing where we're going through the confusion, through the sorrow, simultaneous to the confusion, simultaneous to the sorrow through the loss, simultaneous to the loss. We are in the arrival as we are arriving to it. It's both. And we hold that because we know it. Not because I'm saying it, but because you know it to be true, because you've already experienced it and because you feel it in your core. Hold onto that arrival inside of you that's already there as you're arriving to it. That's the journey. That's our empowerment, that's our wisdom. That's what we get to keep. When everything else falls away, when we are asked to let go of everything, when we need to open our palms and let it all slide off our fingers when we are completely naked and completely down, there is a belonging and a truth, and an empowerment, and a holding, and a witness, and a presence, and a self, and a complete beingness. That's saying welcome home, and here you are going through the greatest storm, but you can feel deep inside you. Welcome home. So next time it happens, you jump. You don't wait to be pushed. You know the push is coming, you jump. And you know the helplessness, but this time it scares you a little less because you know that your helplessness is no longer from that place of separation. That place of believing in your aloneness, where your helplessness basically means being completely ruined and everything, the light's turning off on all of reality. Right. No, you know that's not true. From the one who fell alone and tried to control and was in the comfort zone and thought that they had a handle on life. Sure. To that person, helplessness is the end of everything. Right? And when we go through it, it's gonna feel that way, but there's another part of us there, knowing that that's not true. There's another part of us there being like helplessness, bring it on. Because God is on the other side of that because the more nothing I know myself to be, the more I know that I am nothing without God. The more I am in the direct experience of that gratitude because I know that I am held and I know that I am guided. And from that place I know how loved I am. I know that I am love and I know that I'm immersed in love everywhere, and that's faith and that's trust. And that's the true power of love. Not the power of power. That's true trust. Not the self trying to effort, but the self-giving everything over because we know that there is something greater taking us. And we don't need to know anything anymore. We don't care about knowing because the love is so much more beautiful and it captivates us and we're so filled by it, and we feel so whole that don't need to understand anything anymore. And thus, the more nothing that we are, the more in the everything we are and we need to go out and gain something. We don't need to prove ourselves. We don't need to get into arguments about what's true and not true. We don't care anymore. We're basking in the grace of it all. We're held in the safety of the true ground that can't fall from under our feet because we're not the ones that built it. Whatever we built, it's already gone. We are landed into the true holding, the true ground that holds us. And here we're nothing. We don't need to be anything because the more nothing we are, the more we're simply open vessels and, and what pours in is the pristine, majestic beauty of love itself. Not love in any of the ways that culture has told us. I love you, you love me, you love this person, or not that person. I love this thing. It's not transitive. It is the grace that we're bathing in. So this is the Journey home, and we do it again and again and again, and every day is for this, the easy days and the tough days. Every relationship is for this. Every project that you do, every family member that you take care of, every work endeavor that you pursue, everything, every conversation that you have is for this. Every experience is showing you. Where have you created a little world to live in? Where are you stuck in your comfort zone inside of it, thinking that you own your little world, and where is it being challenged? Constantly challenged. And are you fighting that challenge? Are you just being defensive constantly in resistance to what that challenge is actually requiring of you, is actually inviting you into, or can we take those challenges as knocks on our door of this constructed house of cards that we created for ourselves and realize, there's something greater awaiting me. There's a greater reality on the other side of whatever I'm living in right now. Let me release into it. It's gonna be amazing. thank you for being with me in the Ground of Love. You can subscribe to this podcast to receive the next episodes, and who is it that comes to mind to share this episode with? Who Could Benefit? Is it a family member? Is it a friend, a client, a colleague who would be inspired, reminded of what matters to them by listening to this, by being in our energy that we've shared here today. So please go ahead and pass this along to them and go ahead and leave a review or a rating if you wish. That would be great because that's how I end up being seen on these platforms, like iTunes and Spotify is when people leave ratings and reviews. So if you'd like to support this, if you'd like other people to see it, leaving a rating or a review is very helpful, and I thank you for that. For more information on other offerings that I provide, you can go to the ground of love.com and see other projects and work there. I also provide one-on-one healing sessions and meditations, and I will also be offering a group membership. All of that is on the website, the ground of love.com. Blessings to you. May you be protected, held, generated, centered. And taken forward with all light, love, truth and highest and best health and wellbeing on all levels and taken forward to make the greatest, most beautiful impact doing exactly what you're here to do. God bless you. Protection, grace, protection, grace. So it is