I grew up, as I’ve shared with many of you, as a first-generation Filipino immigrant in Hawaii. On some level, the culture here can be summed up by the famous Japanese proverb: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” That was the mantra of my childhood and young adulthood. I was the obedient kid who checked all the boxes, even when it made me miserable. I reasoned that as long as I stayed “below the radar,” I’d have enough space to be myself in between all my obligations. Except that space never came.
College. Check. Prestigious firm. Check. Grad school. Check. Professor. Check. On paper, it sounds good—but it made me absolutely miserable. I convinced myself that as long as I pushed all the paper I needed to, my family wouldn’t bully me.
As I mentioned, the time and space to truly be myself never came. With ADHD and dyslexia, everything took longer, and the sacrifices required to achieve these milestones drained me completely. When the universe finally stripped it all away through a prolonged nervous breakdown, you might think I’d be grateful—but I wasn’t. I kept trying to go back to the life I knew: a life I hated, but one I had mastered nonetheless. Deep fragmentations are funny that way. Looking back, I can see the folly in all of my efforting—but in the moment, I did not want to let go of a suboptimal life, because it was one I had mastered beautifully and one that brought me deep validation. And validation, as many of you know, is a very powerful addiction that masks deep woundedness.
This is why I love channeling. Once I began to accept that everything happening to me was for my highest good, I could finally see that I was holding on to a life that made me miserable—and I could finally let go. From the outside, I know it might sound ridiculous—or even frustrating in a crazy making way—when someone refuses to release what doesn’t serve them. But this is precisely why channeling is so important to me.
When you channel, you can feel what you can’t see. Channeling inevitably pulls you to your soul center. What you can’t see logically, you will feel. And if you choose to follow those soul-centered feelings, it will inevitably lead you to your highest healing.
Seraphim, my angelic guides, have a message for us about radical authenticity. In keeping with the convention of our blog, the text in italics below is the directly channeled message as I hear it in my head, verbatim.
Seraphim: As our guidee has extrapolated through her story, channeling, inevitably, is about radical authenticity. Those of you who are trying to find your calling as if it is a thing that is found at the bottom of your carseat on a random Tuesday will benefit from believing you can channel. Do you understand this? Your calling is not something you’ll find in a university or anywhere else for that matter, it is something you find within yourself. Channeling isn’t something that is taught, though we will try our best to guide you, it is something that is experienced. Do you understand this? Your calling is not something that is taught, it is something that is experienced when you are in joy. Ultimately, you are not your calling as the culture on your plane sometimes teaches you to confuse your identity with your vocation. You experience the flow of your calling when you decide you are going to be who you truly are, which is a being in deep joy. In other words, when you begin to exhibit radical authenticity, as the channel has extrapolated in her story, you will begin to meet your calling.
Why do we say, “meet your calling”? You meet your calling when you get to a space of radical authenticity. It is not different to a meet cute that is written in romance novels. To have a meet cute, you must be in the right place at the right time. To meet your calling, you must be exhibiting right action and right timing. Do you understand this? When you are exhibiting right action and right timing, that is radical authenticity.
We hope you will join us for our class. All we ask of you to join is for you to believe in yourself. If you can promise to believe in yourself, us and the channel will assist you with the rest. And, so it is.
