Breaking the Mold

A brief look at what molds are, how they limit us in our lives, how to discover them and how to break them and replace them with something that serves us better.

This episode also includes information about the class of the same name, Breaking the Mold, that begins on Tuesday, May 6, and runs from 4 to 5:30 PM Pacific time via Zoom.  Registration and more information can be found here

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Reverend Karen with another podcast episode of Fearlessly Feral Living, coming to you from the Woogie Ranch in rural northern Nevada, where I'm about a half an hour away from the nearest gas station and the nearest grocery store. And I just want to mention something to you. I got called out on the inaccuracy of that statement because there is a gas station close by where I live. It's at nearby Topaz Lake, which is like maybe a seven-minute drive. But it's a tourist gas station, which means the gas prices there are really, really, really high. So I tend not to use that gas station unless it's an emergency. There's also a couple little markets here close by where I can get food on an emergency basis, but no grocery stores. So I just wanted to clarify that and say, yes, I'm a half an hour away from damn near everything. There can I can get stuff close by, but it's better to be able to travel and go into town and get the gas at a reasonable price and the groceries. Well, groceries were priced reasonable right now, but that's another topic for another day. Today, what I want to talk to you about is breaking the mold. And I want to start by saying that a week from today, and today is Tuesday, April 29th, so one week from today, on May the 6th, I'm offering a class. I've designed this class myself, and I'm fairly proud of it. In fact, I'm really proud of it. And it's a six-week class. It goes on every Tuesday via Zoom so you can attend from wherever you're at from 4 in the afternoon Pacific time to 5 30 Pacific Time. Registration is on my website, KarenLinsley.com. Now there's no D in my last name. Okay? Get it straight, guys. It's Karen Lindsley no D, L-I-N-S-L-E-E-Y, Karen Lindsley.com. Click on the store link, and there you will find the class called Breaking the Mold. And so I want to suggest to you that your job in life is to break molds. Period. Now, what does that mean really? So here's the deal: a mold is a hollow form that gives shape to something. It's hollow, it's a form, it gives shape to whatever you put into it. Molds also have a precursor because they're based on the past. So let's say you have a jello mold, you pour jello into that. Well, that mold has existed since it was made. It's never changed, it's never done anything different. And I have to laugh because lately Zoom has been popping up this uh this uh uh little message board to me asking me if I'm still speaking English. Yes, I'm still speaking English. I don't understand that, but I find it very humorous. Anyway, but when we live within those molds, there's no movement there, there's no wiggle room, there's no movement, there's no opportunity for growth. When we live within the confines of a mold, we have to understand that that mold was created by the perceptions that we had at the time it was created, and that usually our molds were created when we were very young. So we were thinking like little children, we had perceptions of little children, we were immature, we were selfish, and we were self-centered, and that's the time during which our molds got formed. And they served us well at the time because we knew no other way to be, no other way to show up in the world. But we grow up, we mature, we become more interested in the people around us. We come we come to realize that the world is about more than just us. We come to realize that part of the beauty of life is contributing to the good of others. And all of a sudden, those molds that we formed when we were little kids don't work so well anymore. They're limiting us. And so we want to break the mold. So this class that I'll be teaching in one week will teach us first how to recognize when we're living in a mold, and then how to become willing to break the mold and create something new, and then the steps to go about doing that, including the real beautiful creative process of visioning something new. And the first part of that is we have to realize that where we are living right now is not bound by what happened in the past. And Ernest Holmes had a really good way of putting this. He said, principle is not bound by precedent. And what he meant by this is that we limit ourselves to a mold when we base our current thoughts, words, and deeds on things that happened in the past. Now, here's a good example of that. Let's say you get involved in a relationship with Mr. or Mrs. Wright, and they are the one, and you were absolutely, totally, completely, and passionately in love, and you were going to stay that way with them for the rest of your life. That happened to me, by the way. And then the relationship didn't work out. They dumped your ass. That happened to me too. They dumped you. It didn't work out. Now, most people, when that happens, they say, Well, I'm never gonna do that again. I am never going to give of myself to that extent. And I'll admit it's very tempting to do that. Or they might say, you know, sometimes they say, I'm never gonna get involved in a relationship again. Or they might say, I'll get involved, but I'm never gonna give of myself like I did that one. And so they hold themselves back. So they're basing what's happening now, currently in their life, on something that happened in the past. They they've got a mold and they formed it and they furnished it and they live within it and they limit themselves from it. And what Ernest Holmes is saying, where he says principle is not bound by precedent, we don't have to do that. We can break the mold. And yeah, those things happened. It really did happen. It happened to me. Yes, I was devastated. Yes, I was traumatized, yes, I collapsed to my knees in the middle of the road watching his car drive away that last time when he moved out of the house. It was horrible. Yeah, all that happened. And yeah, I had to go with retreat for a little while. I had to process it, I had to do my work, I had to do that, and yes, it was very traumatic, but I don't live there today. Today I live in a new mold. Today I have been able to get to a place, not only of forgiveness of that person and compassion and love and kindness for him, but also to a beautiful place where I open up into something even greater than I had back then. If we allow ourselves to feel all the feels and to do the grieving process and get angry and be sad and do our forgiveness work, then we get to move into that absolutely beautiful and glorious place of creativity. And that's where we break the mold. That's where we stop limiting ourselves, that's where the beauty of life begins to happen. So, yeah, what can you tell? I'm all excited about this class. So, we're in a perfect time to break the mold because stuff is going on in the world. Stuff is going on out there in the world, it's going on in our nation, and it may be, may, might be going on in your own personal life. Stuff is happening, stuff that is not pleasant, and we may have found ourselves living inside a mold that we created ourselves, fight or flight, basically, which is really limiting, and it's not very much fun, and it's not very pleasant. And if we're not careful, that mold will gel and stick, and pretty soon we'll be living in flight or fight for the rest of our life, and we won't even realize we're doing it. We won't even realize we're living in that mold. I realized it pretty early on. I went into fight or flight at the beginning of this year, and I was so unhappy and so miserable, and depression came back, and I was like, How am I gonna deal with all this stuff that's going on? And every single day something new would come up in the news, and I'd be like, What? And I'd be shaking my head in disbelief and going, I don't understand any of this. And I'd be sad and I'd be angry all over again. Soon I came to my senses and I got some extra help and added a couple of spiritual practices to my repertoire and became much, much, much more disciplined in doing the spiritual practices that I was already doing. And I was able to move out of that. And today I'm much happier, I'm at peace, I'm feeling much more effective in the world. I have my power back, I'm not in flight or fight. And during this time, I attended a meeting and I heard a quote, and the quote really hit home for me. It really hit home. It said, the more I'm willing to act differently, the more exciting my life is. And I thought, isn't that a wonderful thing to consider? Isn't that a wonderful thing to contemplate? And then I got to thinking, well, okay, so how do I act differently in my life? Really, can't just willy-nilly decide to act differently because I don't know about you, but my belief system is that all action is born in thought. Thought comes first, then action comes. Now, some of you might be thinking differently, and I've talked to some of you about this. You think all thought is born in action. So we take the action first and then we think about it. I disagree. I think all thought is born first, and then thought creates the action. So I'm happy to talk to that, talk about that with anybody of you at any time. But in the meantime, I'm gonna run on that premise here as I continue on. So let's say we want to act differently, we want to break out of that mold that we've got. Life might be a little stagnant, might might not be a fact a matter of life is really tough right now, and I'm miserable, and I'm sad, and I'm upset, and I'm angry, and I'm puzzled, and I'm uncertain, and I don't know where to go, and I don't know what to do when I get there. It might just be that we're a little bored. It could be either or. The fact is, we're in a mold, and that's very limiting. And as much as we might want to act differently, unless we have the thoughts first, it might be impossible to do so. So we do this thing, we do this thing, we go through this process, and the first thing in the process, if we have to we have to consider, you know, if we're gonna break out of a mold, well, we have to consider how we feel about change. Well, I got news for you guys. Change happens, it just happens, that's the way it is. Now, we can either have a say in how those that change happens, or we can just let it come to us and be victims of the change. I prefer the first scenario, honestly. And I know people don't like change, they don't feel safe around it. And I think that the reason people don't like change is because they are basing their feelings of safety and security on what is known, on the way things being the way they've always been. But if we're gonna break the mold, if we're gonna go outside of that, we have to be willing to create something new in our life, we have to be willing to embrace change, and that's a great big, huge, fat, hairy deal for some of it. So what if we based our safe sense of safety and security and all of the feelings that go along with that on things that are permanent? Because right now, the reason we don't like change is because we're basing our sense of safety and security on things that are outer our home, our job, our career, our relationships, all that outer stuff. That's all the stuff that changes, that's all the stuff that goes away. Now, if we base our sense of safety and security on something inside of ourselves, that's permanent. The stuff that's inside of ourself never changes, it never goes away. Unless you lose your faith, in which place, in which case I'd like to suggest that perhaps your faith has been misplaced. But that's again, I'm getting so off track here. I'm not on my script at all, by the way, guys. I'm like almost totally out of living it here. I'm kind of using little bits and pieces here, but I'm not following it. So I hope you enjoy the podcast. Onward we go. So the nature of spirit itself never changes, and we can call it whatever we want. When I'm feeling playful, like I am today, I call it the force. Yeah, as in Star Wars. Other people call it the universe, some people call it nature, whatever it is. I don't care what you call it, it is always present and it is always good. And when I connect with that presence that is always inside of me and always there, when I consciously connect with that, guess what? I feel safe and I feel secure no matter what. No matter what. You know, I'm remembering Victor Frankl in the book he wrote about his experiences in the um concentration camp during World War II, and how he realized that his sense of peace came from within himself. That's what I'm speaking to here. That's what I'm speaking to here. I'm reminded of what the Buddhists say about attachment, that our suffering is caused by our attachment to things, not by the things going away, but by our attachment to them. So if we attach to that inner strength, that inner power, that inner God, that that inner oomph, that inner thing, that's never gonna go away. That's always there. That's always there. So we get to do that, we get to be that, we get to be in that place where we have that inner source of strength and power. And that's one of the things we'll talk about in this class is do you have that? Because let's face it, you're not gonna be willing or able to break your mold unless you have something inside of yourself that's gonna provide you with the strength and the comfort and the power to do so. So we're gonna go through this class and recognize that we're in a limiting place, recognize that we're in a place that might be unpleasant or might be a little boring. If it's necessary, because when I teach, I go with the flow. If we've got folks who are grieving, we'll do some grief work. We'll go through it, we'll have some processing here. I'm here to tell you that when you are grieving, if you allow yourself to cry, yes, you will be able to stop. When my husband died, I thought that if I allowed myself to cry, I'd never be able to stop. And so I didn't allow myself to cry for a more a while. Until it finally got so bad that I, you know, it it was I was gonna cry no matter what. And I started crying and I cried for quite a while, and then I stopped. And when I stopped, I felt better. So we might be doing some of that work depending on what the people in the class are going through. I can tell you that the crew I have already signed up for this class is pretty incredible. So you'll be joining a really awesome group of people. So, yeah, set aside every Tuesday for six weeks, starting a week from today on May the 6th for 4 to 5:30 Pacific time. So here's what we're gonna go through more specifically in this class. We're going to take a look at molds and what they are and how to break them. And we're gonna do these specific steps. So the class is six weeks. I got six steps here. I like to staff steps and I like to number them. So the first week we're gonna talk about what we are feeling that isn't working for us anymore. Doesn't the reasons why don't matter so much. What matters is it's not working for me. I want more out of life. I'm a little bored or I'm really upset, whatever it is. We're gonna look at that. We're gonna look at um how thought creates our actions, and we're gonna look at how our beliefs create our thoughts, and we're gonna look at what some of our beliefs might be that might be contributing to this mold we find ourselves in. And the next week we're gonna look at what it would take for us to be willing to change that, to willy-nilly decide to change our beliefs. You know, I had a woman the other day say she wanted to change a belief about herself and she had been resisting it. And I said, Well, yeah, and tell me something I don't know because I've been working with her for quite a while. She said, Well, I don't know how. And I'm like, Okay, fine. Here's some steps for you to take. That's what we're gonna talk about in this second week. In the third week, we're gonna talk about how to discover and learn about and connect with that piece within you that provides you with peace and joy and strength and power. In the fourth week, we're gonna process a bit more about stuff and start to envision and vision and visualize what it could look like if we broke out of that mold and created something new in our life. In the fifth week, we'll continue that work, including doing any forgiveness work that's necessary. Week six, we're going to have created in week six, and we will do this, we will go through the process of creating a new mold. And each student in the class will create an affirmation for themselves that will contain their new mold for themselves that they can bring with them and take with them. So that's the class in a nutshell. That's it, guys. That's it. Six weeks starting one way as you are today, and then in six weeks, emerging as a different person, emerging as something new, someone new, incorporating newness in your life, a new vision, a new excited enthusiasm for life, new love, new compassion, new wonderful stuff, a better way of handling the stuff that life likes to throw at us, a better way of responding to all that stuff. So, once again, here's the deal on the class. It starts May the 6th. That's a Tuesday. It's a week from today. Today is April the 29th, as I'm recording this. Actually, it's 3 p.m. I'm finishing this up. By the time you get this, it'll be about the time that the class starts next week. Just saying. I timed this on purpose this way. Actually, I didn't. It's purely by accident, but I'm going to pretend like it's on purpose. May the 6th, 4 through 10, 4 through 5.30, 6 weeks via Zoom, so you can attend from wherever. Cost is $150. That works out to $25 a class. And registration is on my Karen Lindsley.com website, not my fearlessly fairlow website. Sorry, I don't have a storefront there. KarenLinsley.com. Once again, no D in Lindsley. Karen Lindsley, L-I-N-S-L-E-Y, Karen Lindsley.com, no-d. And I thank you for listening. And I thank you for your support. And even if you don't sign up for the class, I hope you've got something out of this podcast episode. And I want to let you know that Fearlessly Feral Living is a focused ministry of Centers for Spiritual Living. And your support and your tuition for the class, by the way, is all tax deductible. And you can also support us by supporting the podcast at BuzzSprout. You can donate to our PayPal page. And my website, fearlesslyferal.org, has all that information on it. And all that information will also be in the show notes. So once again, I thank you very much. Karen at Karen, I'm sorry, the website is KarenLinsley.com. No D in Lindsley. And I'm looking at my my uh transcribe here, and they keep putting a D in my last name. It's cracking me up. No D in Lindsley, guys. No D. So KarenLinsley.com. The storefront is the link you want. Click on the store. You'll find the registration for the class. And all the other information is at fearlesslyferal.org. Once again, thank you very much for listening. And I am knowing Fearlessly Feral for you and for me. Thank you.