The Outsiders: Daydreaming & Exit Points (You're in Control)

Topics - Divine Trines, Twin Flames, Wisdom & Intelligence, The Power of Daydreaming, Lines & Lyrics

Rabbit Hole: Looking at death in all its forms in a different way as a lesson in the art of asking why and finding answers that bring you comfort

***Trigger Warnings: 

violence, ganging up, near- death tension, forced drowning, domestic violence, dead parents, power dynamics, running away, rescuing children from a fire, paralysis, death of a close friend, death in general and suicide (lots of talk about these in the rabbit hole)

**Spoilers for the movies: The Revenant

NEXT EPISODE: REMEMBER THE TITANS

*I 100% own my novice capabilities regarding microphone work, sound mixing, and editing. I apologize if the imperfections take away from your experience and will always be working to do better.

Keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving - the answers are waiting for you!

With unending love,

Katie

Medium: medium.com/@genofvenus

Reach out with requests and/or stories: sharethelovewithgen22@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Howdy ho, Ranger Joes, and welcome to Popcorn for the Soul, a podcast where I decode spirituality and universal guidance in our favorite pop culture. My name is Katie, student of life, lover of stories, and cosmic weaver pulling at the threads that connect it all. Top of the episode disclaimer: I am not a critic. I am not here to give you my ratings or tell you whether or not a piece of work is worth your time. I do not subscribe to the idea of other people telling you how to feel about a piece of art. I am also not claiming that anyone involved in the creation of these stories is at all conscious or not of the connections that I will be pointing out. And most importantly, I am not here to tell you that your interpretation or enjoyment of your favorite stories is incorrect. I am simply hoping to offer you a different perspective using my own knowledge and experience. If you have not been with me before, all good. I do recommend at least listening to the introduction episode to understand my framework a little better. But other than that, we are not going in a linear pattern. I do talk about all of these concepts in different nuanced ways throughout each episode, so sometimes I might refer back and having heard those other episodes might give you better context. But this is not a need to know what happened last week to keep up this week. And last but not least, thank you so much for being here. I do hope that I can offer you some insight into life's mysteries. Um even the tiniest spark of illumination is enough because that's where it starts after all. This week we are talking about the outsiders book, musical, and movie version. Trigger warnings, violence, ganging up, near death tension, forced drowning, domestic violence, dead parents, power dynamics, running away, rescuing children from a fire, paralysis, death of a close friend, and death in general and suicide. There is a lot of talk about these in the rabbit hole. That is the main topic. So if that makes you uncomfortable, um, this is your warning. Okay, to kick it off with our spoiler-free general themes: the power of dreaming and wanting more, the resentment that comes from giving up your life to take on certain responsibilities and feeling unappreciated, the importance of communication in general, but especially communication from the heart, what it means to know you have someone who sees your truth and will always be there for you, what it means to lose the feeling that your story and your influence matter, how both sides of an argument can have their merits, and the importance of empathy in trying to establish common ground and forgive shortcomings that stem from differing circumstances and experiences, the attitude of treating other human beings as lesser than, and how it lends to hypocrisy, entitlement, and lack of accountability, the true impact of physical violence, running away versus owning up to your mistakes, the frequency of following intuition in your heart to do good deeds, resulting in clarity and justice, and how intelligence is not a prerequisite for wisdom and love. Okay, we are entering spoiler city. So if you have not seen, read, or listened to any of these versions of this story, this is your chance to go do it and come back to me for this to make the most sense. Okay, starting off with our spiritual journey overview. So, again, as mentioned already, this episode will be pulling from The Outsiders in all its form, book, movie, and musical. But I will preface it by saying that the reason it even landed on my radar is because Serendipity stepped in and sent me to see the musical on its national tour. And wow, how do I even describe it? Incredible, phenomenal, transcendental. Yeah, these words help, but there's nothing like the experience. If you have the chance to see it in your area, I cannot recommend it enough. If you believe you don't like musicals, I'd say step out of your comfort zone and give this one a shot. It won the Tony for Best Musical for a reason. Well, many reasons. You might just change your mind. Ponyboy Curtis is the 14-year-old baby of a group of three brothers who are just trying to survive after the death of their parents. His oldest brother Daryl has taken on the role of father and mother. Sodapop, an intensely deep feeler, is living in a state of heartbreak, and Pony Boy is a reader, a dreamer, a believer, loved but unseen. They are on the side of town with the other youths labeled as greasers, which we can essentially boil down to meaning living in poverty and despairing situations. They spend the story contending with the socias, the upper class, clean and pristine youths who, of course, also have problems, but use their privilege to take it out on those they deem to be beneath them since they can't stand up for themselves against the real problem. Hmm, that's not a thing that happens in the real world, right? We follow along with Pony Boy and his narrative perspective when it makes sense, as he goes on a journey of discovery regarding what it means to live on a frequency rooted in fear, lack, survival, and low self-worth versus that of one based in joy, love, and following your heart's true passions and North Star. All of the main characters struggle with their own embodied interpretations of their living conditions, social status, and financial burdens. We see the individual misalignments and how they weave in and out of the misalignments of those around them, creating friction and causing distress in relationships that otherwise are intended to be loving and supportive. As the story and the stakes progress, we get to see a lot of character development with group dynamics and the one-on-ones as it relates to the importance of communication and cultivating empathy to find common ground and hopefully resolution. If you're someone who is already in a place where you can take in multiple opinions and perspectives and consider the fairness in all points made, you'll fall in love with every single character. If you're someone who has a hard time putting yourself in someone else's shoes to understand where they might be coming from, you may find it pretty easy to root for one over the other. But the point of this, in any story, is to show you the behind the scenes of why a character, a person, might be seeing things differently from you. Gaining that understanding creates awareness, and I will forever and ever say awareness is the first step to making any real, worthwhile change in your life. Awareness of others and their stories is actually the easier step before self-awareness. Most of the time it takes caring about other people to actually start caring about yourself. It doesn't make sense until it does. This story is quite blatant in its representation of karma. Bad things happen after bad things happen. But because we tend to absorb from a place of generalization over detail, it's easy to lose the nuance within the cause and effect. We can say Johnny killed Bob because he was killing Pony Boy because Pony Boy had encroached on his territory in the form of his girlfriend, and Bob clearly has anger issues and blah blah blah blah. All of this is true. But what's also true is that Pony Boy and Johnny had done good at the drive-in. They were respectable, stuck up for their enemies against one of their own, and helped pave the way for a woman to stand her ground, free to go home in triumph, however small. But because Pony Boy was late and Daryl is self-admittedly a mess, he is subjected to violence in the one place he's supposed to feel safe. Running from there puts him right back in the path of an actively drunk, humiliated, revenge-fueled narcissist. The high intensity of emotions of all as they are reeling from their own recent events puts everyone on the same wavelength of taking things too far. Some fueled by hate, some fueled by desperation. As Dallas points out to Daryl, Pony Boy wouldn't have been there if not for the backhand of betrayal, which isn't to blame Daryl entirely, but he did the opposite of protect Pony Boy, taking away what Pony Boy thought to be his safe space. The timing of it all escalated things to a place where Johnny, another child, had to take desperate measures to do that which should have already been done. Protect Pony Boy. Life is really hard. Daryl is the perfect example of how it can drop you Wizard of Oz style into situations that you appear to have little control over and in which you need to sacrifice personal interests for responsibility, but how not finding ways to take care of yourself in the process will ultimately do more harm than good. I and many others say that comparison is the number one thief of joy. I would make a strong argument for resentment as a very close second. The outsiders is a real testament to the truth of both of those things. I'm not gonna go into the divine trines too hard because I do think these ones are very obvious, but just to remind you, um, these are the archetypes that represent the energies that are within all of us, regardless of gender, and we must balance the three to be our best selves and reach our highest potential. I believe stories provide objective viewpoints of each perspective through the individual characters. And the archetype you most align with may change depending on which relationship dynamic you're looking at. So as a reminder, uh the masculine energy is all about structure, logic, action, grounding, reason, the material, conscious, and active energy. The mother is intuition, compassion, nurturing, emotion, empathy, subconscious, receptive energy. And the child is that of innocence, wonder, imagination, creativity, unconditional love, the superconscious, and neutral energy. So what we will call the home trine of the family dynamic. The masculine is obviously Daryl. You know, he is literally the logical infrastructure of running the day-to-day and keeping this family together. Soda Pop is absolutely the mother. He is full of love and trying to show Daryl and Pony Boy how to love each other the right way. And the child, of course, the dreamer Pony Boy. And then the Catalyst trine, we will call masculine Dally, Mother, Johnny, child, pony boy. I actually had Johnny and Pony Boy switched at first, but if you're paying attention, Johnny is actually the one to be taking care of Pony Boy. You know, he encourages him to stay gold, continue being himself, um, keep looking at sunsets. You know, he's one of the few people that sees them the way they're supposed to be seen. And that's the mother encouraging the wonder in that child energy. I'm also not going to talk too long about the twin flames. Um, I just want to point out kind of the cool thing that I noticed in this. So if I were to assign it to anybody, it would be Pony Boy and Cherry. But the dynamic isn't, you know, super played out, other than they are from two completely different worlds, and it seems impossible that they could ever be together. But in the musical, after they meet at the drive-in and they sing a song about how, you know, they could talk to each other all night. Pony Boy walks away in the middle of the conversation, and I forget the exact words, but he says something about it felt like his stomach and his chest and his throat, or some combination of the three general areas along that part of the body felt like they were spasming or contracting, or and it how it felt like an electrical current had literally lit up along that pathway. And that is exactly what kundalini activation is. So kundalini energy is this visualization of a coiled serpent at the base of your spine that as you open your chakras spiritually awaken from your root all the way up to your crown chakra, that serpent uncoils its energy as it goes bit by bit. So by Pony Boy saying that, he's literally describing that process and kundalini activation or any of the other versions in whatever it means in every different culture, that's what happens after you meet your twin flame is that electrical current to awaken you to your soul's counterpart and kick off your journey. Okay, so one of my topics of choice specific to this story is that of wisdom and intelligence. So I can't say whether or not it was the performer's choice and purposeful, or if it can be explained simply by the mechanics of talking versus singing, but I want to dissect something that I absolutely loved about the musical, provided by the character I am personally most endeared to, Soda Pop. The middle brother, he's in a place where not much is expected of him. Since Daryl has taken on the parenting role entirely, Soda, our divine mother archetype, is spending his time in heartbreak and wallowing, lamenting the loss of a great love who moved away. That's the story in the musical. They don't even mention it in the movie, and in the book, um, he's actually missing a horse named Mickey Mouse that he used to visit at the stables. But anyway, when the plot is following the masculine energy of control, reason, and action, he's not much at all involved. But when the integrity of their family and Pony Boy's mental, emotional, and physical return hinge on his need to be reminded that he is loved and seen, Soda steps up to the plate in a way that nobody else seems capable of. And this is where we can recognize the truth that intelligence and intellect are a separate energetic wavelength than wisdom and love, the divine masculine and the divine feminine archetypes as they are represented in their separate forms. In Dungeons and Dragons, wisdom and intelligence are two separate character stats. Wizards, whose magic comes from books, study, and components, tend to buff up their intelligence. Clerics, whose magic pulls from the wellspring of healing, tend to prioritize their wisdom. In straight scenes, the actor who played Soda Pop talked noticeably slower and honestly a little funny. I don't want to say he seemed dumb because that's just so rude, but there was something to the pitch of his voice and cadence that suggested he isn't stereotypically what you would call sharp or bright. And PS, Soda literally calls himself dumb in the book. So that of course makes sense. But, and again, I don't know if it was a conscious design. Here's what I noticed. Oh man, when it came time to spit the things that Soda was really feeling, he would talk perfectly clear. In his songs, which were always about deep stuff that gave all the feels, his singing was so strong, bold, confident, and pure. In those moments, I would call him bright in an entirely different sense. We talked about the spectrum a little bit in last episode on The Mummy. Intuition over intelligence, heart overhead. Soda absolutely thrives when he's speaking from the heart and being completely honest about the feelings he's having, not logic, not detail, not a bullet point list of reasons telling Pony Boy to behave a certain way or make certain choices, but deep, heartfelt interpretations of what those reasons mean when coming from Daryl. When we've discussed the throat chakra in the past, we used Rumi from K-pop Demon Hunters as an example of how holding back truths can cause loss of voice. Not speaking to your truth can also cause a sore throat, neck pain, etc. And from what I've seen in my own best friend, acid reflux that can damage your vocal cords. Which, I guess looking back, I've seen that in myself too. So when you start to use your voice as a conduit for setting boundaries, standing up for yourself, speaking what's in your heart, making others feel seen and loved, your voice heals and settles into its genuine tone. That static, stuck energy is free to move through in its fullest form because it's no longer being overpowered by lies, gossip, judgment, etc. So when Soda sings, it's just plain beautiful. The one song is called Soda's Letter, which is what he writes to Pony to convince him to come home. And honestly, it's the same for Daryl. His straight scene vibe is angry and uptight, but when he sings, he somehow makes every line an impactful power ballad. Soda Pop is a young man who finds his strength in the parts of himself that are usually suppressed in boys and men. He admits that he couldn't run the household the way Daryl does, but also that he is entirely aware of how that has become a burden. Some lyrics here. You think that I don't see it'd go to hell if it was left up to me. He brings Daryl back from the brink with his wisdom and his love. The insights he is more naturally drawn to because he doesn't have the capacity to overthink, judge, question, and rationalize. The events at hand and his love for his brothers offer him the chance to contribute in the way he's most capable of, the way that is most natural for him. Here's some lyrics regarding specifically giving Daryl advice on how to treat Pony Boy. I know you love him. That's all you gotta do. So given this chance to step up and feel like he can share his love again, though not in the way he had imagined, Soda Pop finds the truth in himself, finding his voice and shining brightly enough to guide Pony Boy back home. I am completely aware of how much I just used the word love, but Soda just has so much to spare, and I felt it all down to the deepest parts of my own heart. Alright, next I want to talk about the power of daydreaming. I've daydreamed my whole life. Does that make sense to you? I feel like most people have. Society calls it escapism, and I believed that for a while too. Now I think that our daydreams are the most powerful tool we have. In the intro episode of this podcast, I labeled stories as our greatest tool. Are daydreams not stories though? Just in a different type of media format? In fact, isn't that where all stories are brought to life before being put onto paper? The vision before the manifestation, the soul before the body? Playing out stories in our heads is a natural instinct, but the stories you're focusing on mean something. If you're stuck in the past replaying over and over a situation that elicits lower frequency emotions, you're reading. If you revisit the situation to see how you would have liked to have handled it better, you're editing. If you're visualizing the life you truly want, the one that lifts you to your highest potential, you're writing. You need to reread to understand what you've already put down, and you need to edit to know what you desire to change. Learning from the past to shape the future that is in perfect alignment with who you really are. But people get stuck in the past and the pain, looping, cycling, spiraling. You can and should visit, but don't get lost. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't. You can't change what happened, so dare to do it differently next time. Dare to dream. Pony Boy daydreams a lot. The movie can't quite convey that. The musical does a pretty good job, but the book makes it obvious. He goes off on internal tangents both ways, beautiful scenes he wishes were his current reality, versus a million different threads that are terrifying and end badly. And honestly, you should imagine all of them, but you need to know how to navigate what they're trying to teach you or risk getting stuck. Henry David Thoreau said, the world is but a canvas to our imagination. My belief is that if you can imagine something existing, it can exist. Why else would you be able to envision it? I feel like most inventors and innovationists probably subscribe to a similar way of thinking. That's the power of the human mind. If you can see it, you can do it. Then the question becomes, what is worth doing? That's where I feel it becomes important to consider the undesirable timelines. You have to know what you don't want before you can know what you do. What sits cold and heavy in your stomach, fear, versus what lights you up and what warms your heart, love. Fear is meant to deceive you and hold you back. Love guides you home. That's what a spiritual journey is about. And to be completely honest, it's currently my own philosophy around the meaning of life: to learn how to discern between love and fear. What's worth doing is the thing that leads you to love. Love of self, love of others, love of the world, no conditions. And as Tony Robbins says, where focus goes, energy flows. Compare timelines, but don't concern yourself with the details of the painful ones. Drop in, learn what about it you don't like, then pivot and use that to fuel focus on the details of the beautiful one. The right story is the one that makes it easy to decline every other option. What would it take to make that happen? Do you think meditation is about emptying your mind completely? Nah. Maybe it starts that way and maybe it stays that way for some, but in my experience, it eventually becomes about putting so much focused, hopeful, believing energy into the vision of your dream life that you access your blueprint and receive practical steps as an epiphany, a revelation, a hot drop of intuitive knowing, a download, a process that requires a whole lot of discernment and a whole lot of faith. It was while finishing Harry Potter as a child where I started to realize how stories must be written. For things to come together so perfectly in the end with all of the little Easter eggs along the way, the author had to know where she was going with it from the start, right? And maybe that's obvious to a lot of people. But back then, when I mentioned this revelation to my closest companion at the time, his response was, I doubt it. So, you know, shoulder shrug. Just the big picture, of course, always leaving room for things to pop up and naturally fall into place. We call that divine intervention. During a spiritual awakening, you are rereading your life to find the breadcrumbs that led you to where you are and have made you who you are. To wake up is to then see your brightest future, actively step into your role as author, and start consciously placing breadcrumbs from those scenes back to where you're at now. Then when divine time Presents one of your breadcrumbs on a silver platter, don't hesitate. Eat up. Disclaimer: this is in no way a linear process. It is fluid, it is a dance, it is a symphony, one that can and will drive you crazy more than once. Buckle up, Buttercup. When you align with your highest timeline, it's like a key turning the lock. Your soul recognizes home, so your mind starts to analyze the steps it would take to get there. You're remembering forward so that you can work the story back to where you are, effectively building the bridge needed to make that life your reality. This is where daydreaming becomes building, becomes manifesting. The perfect balance of vision and action. It's not just belief. You can only believe so hard. Mantras alone are empty words. Waiting for the right time is a trap. You have to implement the steps, not just write them down as goals. Do them. It's certainly no overnight process, and you're going to have to figure out how to incorporate it into your 3D responsibilities. But that is where you learn about the surrender to divine timing and the shedding of that which no longer serves you. Non-negotiable skills needed to survive the journey. The answers will come to you, clear as day, but you have to be brave enough to ask the right question. If I am living in my highest timeline, what is the next step? Then you have to want it enough that it motivates your action. The story that actually drives you to follow through with hyper creativity and full passion is the story you're meant to write. In the spiritual community, this is called the home frequency. In Pony Boy's lowest moments, he taps into the visions of his happiest life with his brothers, all of them smiling and clowning around, literally at home. That's the timeline where he survives all of this and becomes a cycle breaker and a light worker, the writer of his story. So, yes, believe, but don't act like you do. Do like you do. For lines and lyrics, I just want to touch on the one song called Great Expectations that Pony Boy sings. Yes, he is reading the book. So this one I'm kind of just gonna like read some lyrics and then give you the quick hit of you know what it means to me when I am in real time seeing and hearing these lyrics. All these great expectations, I see that as reference to our truest desires. He says, meet these grave revelations. I see that as ego death, shedding of old ways. Then he says, Am I the one in control? Is it all predetermined? Am I playing a role? Part of a story foretold. This represents waking up to the truth of the universe and your soul blueprint. Who knows how far in this life he could go if he had played a different part? Talking about Daryl. If he played a different part, aka chose a different timeline. I look around at all of my friends and I still feel alone. I would follow them, but their story is not my own. So this to me is when you're accepting that your current life is not conducive to your best life. And then torn between what is and what could be, it's hard to write the story when the story is writing me. So this is kind of the breaking point before an awakening journey where you're feeling like you're not in control. And as Tony Robbins again says, that life is happening to you instead of for you. And the awakening the journey is all about taking control of that pen and realizing that you are the one writing your story if you're willing to. Okay, we have arrived at our rabbit hole, so this is where I ask you to trade your PC thinking caps for your mad hats and follow me down. This one might cause a little controversy, but I'd like to remind you that the point of the rabbit hole is to speculate, question, and consider. It's not to give absolutes, blame, accuse, or determine one right answer over another. It's meant to get you thinking and challenge you to take on a different perspective. I use the word challenge because to do so can really be described as exactly that. We get so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget to recognize that others will not see things the way that we do, from things as simple and tangible as someone who is five foot three not seeing the same world right in front of them as someone who is six foot, to what the concept of family might mean to someone who grew up in a loving home versus to someone who was abused. There are a million different ways that these perspective differences show up in a single day. The way you start to recognize them is by really looking at your frustrations with people or miscommunication in an argument and dissecting it all down to what information you are working with that your counterpart is not, and vice versa. Is there an email you read that they didn't? Did you advocate for a certain person or topic without providing why your personal experience gives you that lens? Did you catch something in the midst of chaos that struck you as extremely important or profound, but was small and missed entirely by everyone else? That's why communication matters. That's why I give you multiple examples and threads that weave into answers that make sense to me that provide me comfort at the end of the day. The spiritual downloads I receive only drop in after I've been exposed to enough earthly evidence and contemplation to make them into a cohesive personal philosophy. They don't come from nothing, just like you don't. You can believe whatever you want. But if you're unhappy, it's okay to review those beliefs and wonder if they're actually providing for you. So, with all that being said, we are going to talk about death and what are called exit points. This is the spiritual concept that when our souls draw up the blueprint of our life before incarnation, they add in these exit points throughout. Pit stops along the way where our higher self checks in with our 3D body and circumstances. Picture it as your yearly review at work, but not yearly, and most likely without your real-time awareness. They show up as your more obvious near-death experiences andor near misses, crazy timings, accidents, intense illnesses, etc. The purpose of these meetups is to determine whether or not you should continue your earthly life. If all is well and on track, you continue on your path. If you have successfully completed your divine mission, you can choose to cross over. I believe in the forever sense at this point. So this kind of makes me think of Jesus, right? But they can also be used as an opportunity to reflect and take stock of your journey thus far in order to determine whether or not your life has veered too far off the rails to complete said mission. And if it has, you can choose to cross over and start over. The idea that death can be so abrupt and out of our control has always scared me. Exit points make me feel better about that by looking at it a different way. Heart attacks, accidents, illnesses, and hospitals unnerved me so much. I quit nursing after only six months of working in an ICU. Six months after surviving four and a half years of college to get that degree. If I look back at all that traumatized me as patients in their exit meetings, I can find a way to appreciate how modern medicine and hospitals allow a person to take their time in those soul-level chats. I've never jived with calling suicide a selfish act. I personally think that to call it selfish is selfish. I think people go there because of the hurt at the loss and the guilt they feel to believe they could have done something to sway a person's mind. The ego turns that guilt into shame and anger that seeks someone to point fingers at. Who better than the person who caused the pain in the first place, right? We don't want to feel like we had any part in somebody's sadness or hurt, just as a universal truth. Unless you're a malignant narcissist, of course. So even on the less intense side of things, when we fight with a loved one, it's hard to swallow our pride and admit we may have landed a blow. Suicide multiplies that pride swallowing tenfold because of the depth and finality of the consequence. I've learned from my own struggles that when someone gets to that point, it's because despair has won. Yes, there might be a little spite behind it, but that's all ego talking. If someone's motivation to kill themselves is because they really want you to suffer, they were too far gone in a different way. But when someone tells you they just feel like a burden to everyone around them, they're not trying to burden you with that. They're not trying to blame you. They're trying to talk out this existential void and suffering using the words that make the most sense. They don't walk around like a shadow to get your attention and try to make you feel bad. They do it because that's truly what they can offer. It's never your fault that somebody chooses suicide. As we talked about in the episode on Foot Loose, everyone has the ability to choose whatever they want for themselves. And we as humans have to allow that and forgive that when it hurts us. But I will say this: if you know someone is struggling, you do have options. If you're strong enough, just sit with them in it. Don't force a conversation. Don't try to convince them not to feel that way. Just be. That is a beacon of light in itself, and just maybe you can show their soul the way back to its home frequency by reminding them that they are not alone. If you can't handle that responsibility, it's totally okay because it is a really big one. And then it just is simply not your place to help. But what you definitely shouldn't do is say things like, I'm tired of you always bringing this around me. I don't want it anymore. When you walk into the room and I'm here, you smile and you're happy. Got it? Also, don't assume because of a familial connection that you have a right to insert yourself, especially if your advice starts out by saying, Now, insert name here. I think it's safe to say we all know you're a drama queen, okay? Just don't fucking do it. Stay in your narcissistic bully lane and shut up. Comments like those will be remembered at decision time. Suicide is devastating, but it is not selfish. That I've always known in my bones. Exit points help me understand why I feel that way. The ego sees it as the only way to have mattered, to be remembered. The higher self recognizes that the soul has succumbed entirely to the belief that it is not worthy or capable of a beautiful life. What can you do with that? Where do you go from there? What soul wants to live that way? And I think back to a video about survivors who jumped from a bridge famous for suicide, and how basically all of them said that as soon as they made the leap, they had the epiphany that they didn't want to die. So, what if, what if, what if? Anecdotes like these are the closest supporting evidence that we have to exit points as a real thing. Well, Katie, maybe those who died had the same thought, but it just didn't work out like that. Well, firstly, we literally have no way of doing that, do we? So, secondly, why not? Why did it not work out that way? Why do miracles happen for some people and not for others? Why could this not be proof that in that split second those survivors met with their higher self and thought, wow, you're right, I have more to do. And everyone else decided no, they were ready to go. Car accidents, where there's no way they should have survived that. Or how about in high school, when halfway through my back tuck on the hard track of our football stadium, I freaked out and landed directly on the back of my head, blacked out, rolled backwards over myself with my neck as a hinge, and came out crying tears, not of pain, but of confusion, unscathed, except for a broken big toe? What was that black buzzing peace I experienced before waking up with multiple people crouched over me, making sure I was alive and could feel all my limbs? One of my friends recently shared the story of how his mom basically healed herself of stage four colon cancer through the power of her mind and belief. And I do plan to have them on this podcast as guests to tell it in its entirety because it's just so beautiful. But essentially, she was told to start getting her affairs in order because she wouldn't make it much longer. My friend and her reflected on the fact that she had a young granddaughter to stick around for, and he said, See, you're not done. And she said, You're right. And she is alive and cured. Pony Boy met with an exit point when the socias attempted to drown him. But he had a lot more to do in the world, so circumstances played out that he survived. Want to take it as far as being symbolically baptized in that moment? We witnessed Johnny's final exit point in full. Yes, he initially says he doesn't want to die, but when you can barely breathe, can't move, and are in excruciating, relentless pain, all you can do is think, contemplate, consider. Dreams are considered a form of astral communication. So if you're in and out of sleep with all of this consideration, you're sharing it all back and forth between the 3D and the 5D. Like you're giving a presentation to your higher self to review your past, how you got here, and if there's any way to reconcile going forward. For Johnny, he had a horrible home life. He had gotten jumped and suffered from PTSD, living constantly in a state of fear and hypervigilance. He got burned and lost the use of half or all of his body. I don't remember. Either way, he was paralyzed. Sure, maybe with medicine and miracles, he could recover from those physical hangups. But here's the real nitty-gritty of it. He killed someone at 16 years old. Pony Boy writes, Johnny had killed someone. Quiet, soft-spoken little Johnny who wouldn't hurt a living thing on purpose, had taken a human life. Quote. Again, maybe there are ways to heal from all of this, but we struggle to see any real effectiveness of the modalities available today, never mind the time period this story is set in. And here's what Johnny had to contend with. His life held no room for that kind of healing. No family support, a general sense of feeling less than human every day, scared for his life at every corner, and friends who have a ton of their own problems. There was no beautiful home frequency for him to daydream about that would make the fight worth it. If it was really up to him, can you understand why he chose the way he did? In Charlie Holmberg's book, The Half-Harted Queen, we read: Quote, After a minute with red eyes, she croaked, I would rather die. Eden had suffered tragedy upon tragedy and had not been given the time or resources she desperately needed to heal. Unquote. Maybe in those meetings we're looking for a tether, the thread that still exists as a guiding force to get back on track and live again. If Johnny couldn't find his, doesn't he have the right to let go? Would you want to be able to make that choice for yourself? Don't even get me started on where this all takes me with assisted suicide. But if you read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, you've got a good insight to where I'm at. Dally got off at his exit point too. His was suicide, whatever version we're looking at. Book and movie, Suicide by Cop. Musical, standing proudly in front of a train and singing his heart out until the very end while Pony Boy narrates over the scene about what made Dally special. Guess which one I find most profound. Dally is a seemingly complicated guy, aren't we all? But the truth is that he had been in survival mode for so long he lost access to his inner child. Johnny is called the pet of the gang. He's quiet, shy, respectful, kind, and thoughtful. Dally latched onto that light and figured, hey, maybe he was too far gone himself, but he could protect this kid. Everything he's learned can influence this young boy to do better, can save him from a similar fate. That one person who made Dally feel like his story mattered, his only anchor in this world, decided to leave and start over. The one person who gave him hope that things could turn around became the one to put the final nail in the coffin that they couldn't. So he followed. To go back to the bridge, maybe it's true that everybody decided as soon as they jumped that they didn't want to die. So we ask, then why did they? Well, maybe only their ego was on board. Their highest self could not agree that that was the best choice. Those whose souls did agree created an energetic alignment powerful enough to shift timelines in that exact moment and become what we call a miracle. I'll remind you that the point of a spiritual awakening, any form of self-improvement is ego death, reclaiming power from that material-focused part of us that keeps us in a separation mindset. The part of us so hard to overcome, most people never do. They spend their lives pushing and fighting and working to survive, but never to really live, using the time on their deathbeds to list their regrets and try to leave at least that little bit of an example in their wake. What not to do. That's what makes Dally's exit powerful in its own special way. A man who lived fully in his fear-based ego his whole life, trying to avoid pain and death by desperate measures at every turn, surrendered it entirely to the will of his soul by active choice. If you took that perspective when thinking of the one you've lost this way, does it maybe open your eyes to the truth of their strength? And no, I am absolutely not condoning suicide. Just like I don't condone drug use, addiction, and overdosing or drunk driving, but people make choices. I'd personally rather spend my time looking for something that makes it make sense than suffering in the shock, pain, and judgment of it. Everyone asks, why? I actually want to know. Did Jesus not technically choose what his soul wanted of him rather than the fear that was asking God to change his mind? I had recently been thinking about the movie The Revenant, where Leonardo DiCaprio is a man who should die a hundred times but always survives against all odds. I think it's to ultimately root out some form of oppression, but I don't remember most of the movie too well. Just a vague recall of him marching triumphantly and determinedly into a small town at the end where maybe there was a bad sheriff or something, I don't know. Anyway, then I heard the song Stand by Rascal Flats, particularly latching on to the lyrics. Every time you get up and get back in the race, one more small piece of you starts to fall into place. So that got me thinking deeper into this concept. If exit points are the place where your soul decides to keep going because your mission is still on track, it's like every time you survive and take up that path again, another part of your blueprint falls into place. Yes, I used the exact lyrics because they just make so much sense here. I also used them when writing about accessing your blueprint through daydreaming. Each time you make the choice to stand back up, at first subconsciously, until you gain the awareness to make them consciously, you open yourself up to the next step that will lead you to the truth of who you are. This is the perfect example of something entirely esoteric and seemingly insane that just sits in me as true. Does it strike a similar chord in you at all? I'm not saying, hey, hear me and jump straight into believing this. That's way too big a leap, and I understand. But what you should ask yourself regarding all the death you have experienced, does looking at it this way offer any semblance of comfort whatsoever? Would it at all help if you believed that the person you love wasn't taken away from you, but that the highest version of them made the decision to die not to hurt you, but to best help themselves? Does this in any way give you an example of how to choose love over fear? If so, what does it do to get you thinking maybe you don't need to be so scared of death because you have the power in the moment to decide what happens? People are calling our earthly lives a simulation lately. Maybe a better description is a video game of the choose your own adventure type, and maybe passing an exit point is a respawn. The daydreaming provides the answers to your best response when NPCs question you, offer you jobs and missions, drop knowledge, and present threads to consider. If you were to just give this two seconds to sit in you as truth, does it provide any sense of relief? If it does, do you know what it then becomes? Something to think about. And you know where the most productive thinking sessions come from? Asking why. Never stop asking why. Keep watching, reading, listening, and weaving. The answers are waiting for you.