Don’t Stop Believin’

Liz: So, Episode 9, Season 1 - Trust. We broke down trust. There was trust, there's hope, there's knowing and there's faith.

Rhea: So, trust was an aspect of trust?

Liz: Exactly, exactly.

Rhea: Trust is believing that no matter the motivation for an act or an outcome, that it will be in our highest good. Basically, knowing is that instant recognition that you just know something and it almost freaks you out when it turns out to be true.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: Hope is the reflection of our heart's desires, and faith believing that an unknown force or a higher power of some kind will step in or is out there to ensure our highest good. So basically...

Liz: That something will have our backs, right?

Rhea: Yeah. That someone else is ride or die with us.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: Those four things are the tools in our arsenal to get through to the other side.

Liz: Which sounds so simple.

Rhea: I know. Imagine...But the problem is those tools in our arsenal, we already have strange relationships with all of them.

Liz: Strange, dysfunctional, twisted, distorted, difficult, challenging.

Rhea: Painful, and in my case, I never used to trust trust. I didn't want to hope because I believed I'd be disappointed. I felt a deep betrayal by my faith.

Liz: Oh yes.

Rhea: And I couldn't rely on my knowing because my relationship to time was so skewed as we discussed in the last episode.

Liz: Time being the scapegoat.

Rhea: Yeah. But I kept thinking, well, if it hasn't happened yet, and I knew it would, my knowing means nothing at all. So funnily enough, I think what we've been doing a lot in the season 4, because we do need those things in order for us to get through the transition.

Liz: And so much of 2020 was about bringing all of that.

Rhea: Exactly. And actually, as well as healing our karma. So, in other words, as well as facing our fears, transcending our ego and learning to listen to ourselves, we've also had to heal a lot of our relationships with those four things. Because without that, we won't....

Liz: Everything would just be surface healing.

Rhea: Exactly. It really would. I still feel very much sometimes that I can easily get knocked out of any of the four, but that in my opinion is because of my relationship with faith. And I know that we've spoken a lot about it in the past two episodes, but how the trauma of 2020 and all the things that cause us to bring out these lessons, these fears, these places where as you described it, as you said, “where am I sacrificing my freedom for security”? And the lesson is key. It's intrinsic. It's so important, but my faith was still shattered.

Liz: It came at such a price.

Rhea: When something happens that makes you not question your faith, but wonder whether it's there at all, wonder whether it's just misplaced, what happens then? And I think that's what we're really talking about today.

Liz: As we see governing bodies fall apart and shift, as we had mentioned that that's part of all these tentpoles of 3D. The 3D tentpoles have to do with politics and governance, our financial systems, which are very much based in greed, and religion.

Rhea: Which is what we said in Season 2.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: Near the end. It was those three things, right?

Liz: Yes. And so, as we see those systems falter, our faith goes right along with it because our faith really underscored and underpinned all of those to one degree or another.

Rhea: We're watching all the things that we defined ourselves as in one way or another crumble with us.

Liz: Very much.

Rhea: So, whether it's, I define myself as this type of politic, I define myself as this type of wealth, I define myself as this type of religion.

Liz: Yes. And so, as our identities shift or fall apart or crumble, what's left of us?

Rhea: Can I say something because as you said that, I understand that there's a lot of fucking fear when that comes up, but when you were talking about our identities crumbling and shifting, what I really felt - and I just feel it's worth naming - is this relief. Thank fuck I don't have to be that person anymore because that person was really unhappy.

Liz: Yeah. And I think that for such an introspective millennial, I think that makes sense. And I think there'd be a lot of people of your age or younger who could feel that. I think it's much more painful for older generations who really bought into that, who had allowed their lives to be so defined that way. And your generation, you guys came here for this transition so it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense to younger people to be going through this.

Rhea: And then you see it in every single country in some way or another, because I think we all, at some point, we'll have the question: Why? Why are we here? What is this? What is the point? And we know that there is some kind of point. We just aren't quite sure what it is. Religion seems to give us the answer, but then there's also...

Liz: A very convenient answer.

Rhea: A very convenient answer. But then what do you do when all of a sudden everything's crumbling around you? When all the Catholic priests are fiddling? I don't know how else to say that.

Liz: Acting extremely inappropriately.

Rhea: Acting extremely inappropriately. You're seeing how religion is tearing apart countries, how it's been used as an excuse for the most violent acts that we've ever seen. Religion has been the excuse for every single one of them - from a big government to a lone man.

Liz: In that podcast episode where we had interviewed my teacher, Ellen Kaufman Dosick and she said that she felt that if it's one thing people have been cultivating and holding onto these past few years, it's been faith. And you and I were like, that's interesting because to us it's been the opposite. That if anything, faith has been greatly lost. However, what we were seeing in place of faith, because I actually don't think that it's real faith to be “spiritual light”, and it's not a judgment at all, but using surrogate tools like astrology and mediumship, etcetera, that's a way to sort of place faith in something that you can just finally maybe grasp or see, because the faith that we talk about as we defined it, the something like the universe, or some kind of force has your back is really hard to believe.

Rhea: Yes, we may have moved from watching religion crumble, but we're almost watching it be transferred in a way to all these things. But what's interesting is how it's been transformed is, oh my God, it was right. I believe in you because you've shown me you're worth believing in, which is how we operate as humans. I don't know you love me unless you prove to me you love me.

Liz: Exactly. I don't know if the universe exists, but because this is happening and the stars are aligning, then it must.

Rhea: Yeah. And I have to say, I'm definitely guilty of that myself in many ways.

Liz: We all are. I mean, because as you had said before, it's because we know there is something to believe in. We're literally wired to believe because we do know that something does exist. We may not see it, or we may not see it in the way that we thought we were supposed to see it. And that's because we're kind of moving from this seeing is believing to the knowing is believing. I know this exists because I just know it. My knowing tells me that there is something more to this world than just all this fear that's just being thrown out there all the time.

Rhea: I can't explain it. It makes no sense, but it's in my very core and I'm just going to fucking listen to it and I'm going to trust it and it's there. Because I think that's the thing. Because all the things we were talking about, like this happened and so now I believe it, but what happens when it doesn't? We are allowing... Again, we're putting something - one of the four key things that we were talking about in the beginning that are meant to help us supersede our shit - we're putting it in someone else's hands.

Liz: Very much.

Rhea: Oh, it didn't work, therefore I should have no faith.

Liz: And we do it naturally because we have been...it's ingrained in us to do it. Give it up to God, surrender it to God, God will handle it. Here we are, a spiritual-ish podcast if you will, because we talk about karma and shit. I'm a spiritual healer. You're a spiritual dabbler who has a very strong connection in knowing and her own self-defined belief system.

Rhea: Totally self, yeah.

Liz: Yeah. Which is what it's supposed to be.

Rhea: Well, you know, I'm still defining it.

Liz: Exactly, because it's lifelong, it's a process and it can take a long time and it's probably continuous. As we evolve, that evolves, but since 2012, we've actually been in the process because we've been evolving as ourselves individually, as spiritual beings, as human beings and coming into Compassion. So must our faith systems and our belief systems. But we're not here to tell people to believe in God.

Rhea: No. At all.

Liz: We barely even talk about God, do we?

Rhea: No. In fact, ...

Liz: It would be awkward if we did.

Rhea: That was quite interesting because Ellen mentions God a lot, and I was thinking, I probably said God once and it was probably in the phrase, Oh my God.

Liz: Interestingly, as much as we're not here to push the idea of God, we're also not here to necessarily push the idea of celestials and angels either.

Rhea: No.

Liz: Or even that stars and planetary alignments mean a damn thing because they don't. And that is because our faith is meant to become rooted in our consciousness.

Rhea: Well, that makes sense. I don't understand that last bit, which we'll talk about in a second, but the rest of it does, because everything that has ever brought me misery in some way or another, it has been from outside of myself. Because at the end of the day, when I think about it, other people were telling me how to feel, how to act, how to think, what I needed to look like, what I needed to be, how I needed to believe in order to be lovable. And because I wasn't able to do all of those things all the time for everyone - because it's impossible, physically impossible to do so - I felt broken and then I would turn to other people, other things. You tell me what's going to happen because I feel so powerless as myself because everyone else was defining for me what love was. They were also defining for me what faith should be. You know, I remember having a great fucking week and then reading the planets and seeing what was going to happen and thinking, Oh, now it's all going to go to shit, and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the end of the day, when you are really in yourself, when you are able to really trust your own actions, and even if they make no fucking sense whatsoever, even to yourself and you still honor them and you give them space and your knowing then starts really increasing because it becomes a muscle where you can really just know what you want and what you believe and what you want to do in the next step. To quote Frozen 2, “Just the next right thing”, then nothing else matters. And I think that's what you mean by consciousness is that this deep understanding that, well, at least maybe in baby steps, this is deep understanding that I must be me, and that is always good enough and I'm not going to be punished because of that.

Liz: And so what you're talking about is that knowing yourself from the inside out. Essentially what you were describing is the process to come into knowing yourself and the moment you really connect to that joy and that you discover the permanence of bliss and you move into that place of peace, that is when you can come into absolute faith in yourself. And only when you have faith in yourself, can you really touch upon the fact that yes, there is something to all of this, and then you can really perceive that there is some kind of force and that's the force that connects us all. And that's the force that really has our backs, but we cannot conceive of that. We cannot come from that place of evolved consciousness and faith if we don't begin with ourselves first.

Rhea: And it's the second you start doubting your own movements is the second that it all turns to kind of ... start crumbling a little bit. You've got to fucking trust yourself.

Liz: Now let's be fair for a moment.

Rhea: By the way, I was just going to add as well, is that I get really pissed off when I listen to podcasts and they're like, 'and you just get to bliss and peace and we don't talk about how'. But I will say this. We have been talking about how for Seasons 1, 2 and 3 so these aren't concepts and so far, all of 4. This is episode 18. So, these aren't things where we're not making leaps here.

Liz: No, no, no, no.

Rhea: We have literally broken it down step-by-step because I did it step-by-step, so this isn't something that we can say, you know, we're not just throwing out words like bliss and peace and hope and love and expecting people to understand what they mean. We are literally saying to people we have done this in one way or another, and we have faced every fear and we have spoken about it and we have written about it. If you want to know how we did it, you can listen to that. But if you want to do it your own way, more power to you.

Liz: And religion has served its purpose. It has kept a collective together. It has united people. It has bridged gaps. It has helped many. We're not saying that it's all dark and it needs to go, but what we're acknowledging is that one of the aspects of 3D since 3D is going, religion is going along with it. And so, it's going to undergo a massive transformation, and in order for that transformation to occur, a big hole is pretty much opening up and sucking out, as much as it can, as much as all those elements that don't serve anymore. So, if your faith continues to reside in a particular religion or tradition, it might either be challenged or it might be strengthened because you are tied to that light and that's beautiful. But it might be for many people that it just does not serve anymore and that's really what we're pointing at and that it's okay, because ultimately even if the structure or some of the rituals or the traditions are lost, we really have them in ourselves because that's the point.

Rhea: I mean, on a very simple level, I'm not necessarily very religious, but I did rely on astrology, superstition and a lot of people telling me what was going to happen to me. That was my own religion. None of that serves me anymore.

Liz: No.

Rhea: None of it. None of it does. And in my own way, I am losing my own religion too. I really do understand it. I'm losing the religion of the big religion, which is I can't be me and still be loved, which was effectively religion.

Liz: Well, and that was - sorry to say - that's the basis of many religions, which is give up yourself.

Rhea: Yeah. Sacrifice.

Liz: You cannot be you.

Rhea: And then I'm also losing the religions of all my coping mechanisms. I need to believe that there's something bigger than me because I do believe it.

Liz: Yeah.

Rhea: I know it.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: I don't quite understand how or why, and when I doubt it is when I'm actually at my most miserable, but even then, it's still a flicker of some kind. I can't explain it. Honestly, for all I know my knowing could be telling me that that's science. I've got no idea. You know what I mean?

Liz: It could be that cause we certainly won't deny that.

Rhea: No, I've got no idea. And I find it fascinating when I meet people who have the same belief system as me, but it's all based in science so I've got no fucking idea, but all of a sudden, all these things that I was relying on in some way or using as my own religion in some way, I knew that all along they were hurting me. They were actually hurting me and I had to stop.

Liz: Because the more evolved we become, the less we are able to support codependent relationships.

Rhea: Whatever they are.

Liz: Whatever they are, even if we're the ones really depending and feeding off of them. It comes at a price. And the more sensitive and tuned in you become to yourself, the less comfortable those spaces of codependency become.

Rhea: That's what's so interesting is that then I was left with well now what? Well, I've chosen this because I know that this is hurting me so I'm going to build on that knowing and just start choosing other things that feel good to me. I've created my own.

Liz: We all devote ourselves to something, whether it's to finding the one or to our careers, or to the god of money or power. We've all worshiped something. We've all given ourselves over to the idea and ideal of something generally for affirmation, mostly for validation and always to be saved because that's where we come from. That's what's wired in us. But when you strip all of that away, as they become stripped away by the fall of 3D, we are still left with the desire to believe. And we can do that the moment we can begin to believe in ourselves. When we make ourselves a religion, if you will, when we show ourselves devotion is when we can really discover our light. It's not a narcissistic thing to propose. It's actually a very generous thing because then when we really know and see all our light is when we can really share it because it's abundant, there's no limits. We don't exist in a state of lack anymore. And I think that's when our faith can be 100%.

Rhea: Because it's faith in ourselves?

Liz: Exactly.

Rhea: Is that the only faith there is?

Liz: No, but it must begin there first