When the Going Gets Tough

Rhea: Sometimes hitting rock bottom, hitting the worst you're going to get is the only way to get back up and to actually change, and I feel that over 2020, we had to blow it all up to rebuild it. You know, when something big happens, we all tend to run for cover. We tend to blame others for our problems. We put up our guards on the big scale or on the small scale, whether it's someone looked at us funny to we were cheated on to we didn't get the table reservation we wanted, to there's been an explosion and half our city has been decimated. We talk global. The global experiences of 2020, they were earth shattering in the literal sense is that the world that we knew was shattered. Everything that kept us, as we were saying in the last episode, everything that we thought made us secure but in fact kept us from being free shattered. And so for some, it felt quite heart opening because it was like all of a sudden with no more rules, we can create our own.

Liz: Yeah.

Rhea: But I also noticed and I noticed in a lot of the people around me, that it also had the opposite effect in many ways.

Liz: Completely.

Rhea: With all the things that happened, making people realize how small they had made themselves to be or had kept themselves ...

Liz: Or believed themselves, yeah.

Rhea: Well, that's the thing then, isn't it? They started believing that it was true.

Liz: It was almost like all their worst fears

Rhea: Came true and they felt even smaller.

Liz: It's the self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

Rhea: Exactly. When actually these things are happening to make you see that even without those things, even when all the worst things happen, even when things do seem to have shattered underneath you, you're still standing. And that is the only place that you can start to actually rebuild a reality from, but the trauma of the shattering. And it's something that I bang on about in pretty much every episode, the pain of the shattering will have left many of us fucking traumatized and scarred, and how do you move past that?

Liz: I don't know if I've really said this much in the podcast, but I'm often really careful about saying it's all for the best, especially lately. I think the more I really came to tune into compassion, the more I realized that a lot of people just don't want to hear that shit

Rhea: Also, because it's been said so much in our 3D reality to make us accept the crap.

Liz: Absolutely! Yeah.

Rhea: So it's got such negative connotations.

Liz: There's a silver lining. 2019, 2020 and even now as people are really still just picking up the pieces and just trying to get through things that nobody really wanted to hear. Well, 2020 was all for the best. We needed all of that to happen and you'll be fine, and it's all going to be great. Yes, I mean, we have to cheerlead this on a little bit, because you know, it is important for people to have Hope because Hope allows us to kind of energetically work through things.

Rhea: Yeah, but that's tangible Hope.

Liz: So yeah. We want to say that in many ways, this heart opening that a lot of spiritual people talked about and this end of 3D that was very necessary was all well and good. But we have a shit ton of compassion for a lot of people who are just left devastated by it all.

Rhea: Yeah. Well, that's the thing and I know we're going to talk about this in the next episode, but I will just say this now. It's all for the best and all those things when you talk about. They don't work when you're in it. They don't work even when you're close to have just gotten out of it. You can only say things like it's all for the best, or I can see where that piece fits into the bigger picture once you're far enough away to see the bigger picture.

Liz: And if you're not necessarily far enough away, you're ready to at least begin to accept some kind of responsibility or that you feel ready enough to go, to start again. But when you're sort of in the depths of your despair, when you're shaken by the trauma of it all, nobody wants to hear that.

Rhea: No. No, it doesn't help when you hear that or when you say that. What it does is it almost validates the pain in a way that you ... I know that all the work that I did, every time I heard "it's all for the best" or "there'll be a reason", I just became more fucking resentful.

Liz: You're like, you see this middle finger?

Rhea: It's broken now, and that's how I feel.

Liz: It's broken because I used it so much.

Rhea: Yeah. But literally it just doesn't work because ... and I know that a lot of people say that it's heart opening and we will have a better world, but right now there were so many of us that relied on all those constructs and all those things. That is how we got through our lives because we were fundamentally not happy and this was what disguised our unhappiness. And without it, all we're left with is the unhappiness that we then have to face.

Liz: Oh yeah.

Rhea: And that is not nice.

Liz: I will say this though, the one upside of all of that global and personal upheaval was that we realized that we were not alone in our misery.

Rhea: Yes.

Liz: Because everyone was on the fricking ship at the same time.

Rhea: I have to say, it was the best thing about lockdown when all of a sudden, I was like, I can't go out, but no one else can go out either, so I don't have to worry that fun things are happening and I'm not part of them.

Liz: Yeah. I actually think funny enough is that it also cured a lot of FOMO for people, because it just sort of erased a lot of ideas of what else I could be doing.

Rhea: It was a global experience in a way that nothing ever has been and it really made us realize that we are all one. And I found that really incredible. But what I also found really interesting is that with a shakeup like that, with a movement like that, there's different ways in which people responded. The amount of information that was being thrown at us meant that you could really pick what you wanted to believe.

Liz: And if people chose to not believe what you believed, then the general consensus was well that they were stupid, not you.

Rhea: Yes.

Liz: And that constant judgment that was being flung out was really made a lot of things toxic, which made the lockdown period seem a lot less toxic. I thought that was ironic.

Rhea: Actually, being in our homes meant that we could stay in our energy.

Liz: So, I'm somebody who loves her freedom. And that's probably the one word that I would describe how I choose to live my life with the utmost freedom that I can enable. We don't own much...

Rhea: I remember when you were dancing in dance class the first time I met you, you were literally dancing like there was no one else in the room.

Liz: I live like this.

Rhea: I remember thinking, wow, this lady really likes a pirouette.

Liz: Yes, I do. I choose to define my life as I need to be as free as I can be, that I'm comfortable with and a lot of people feel that way. And I don't think it's just an American thought. I mean, there's plenty of other people out there who ....

Rhea: No. I'm like that.

Liz: Yeah. Please don't tell me what to do or how to live my life. So it was a huge adjustment for me going into lockdown. And I remember my husband sitting me down and sort of saying Liz, okay, I know this is not your natural way of being, but you need to make an effort.

Rhea: I remember in the first week my friend sat me down and just went, Rhea, there's going to be one rule in this. No judgment in Corona. We cannot. Everyone's experience will be different depending on how and where and why they're living, and we cannot judge them. And there were so many times I wanted to, but then I remember that phrase and I just kind of suck it up because I think that's the thing. We are at our core, the same. I mean, you'd call us divine beings and I just call us human, but we are all inherently connected. We are all humans.

Liz: Very much.

Rhea: And we talk about this, you know, there's the Habermas. I know we've spoken about this a lot in the past, but if we had exactly the same life experiences and thoughts and processes as someone else, we would react exactly the same way as they do, and that is compassion in many ways. And so, we are all the same so it makes sense that we can't judge.

Liz: The internal conflict and the conflict ultimately because this association I have with freedom, this association I have with my individuality is such that if I do something that fundamentally does not feel right to me, I am then sacrificing something and we start to lose that sense of self and light

Rhea: From the outside, people would look like assholes or like spoiled children, but actually and to be honest, because there's also this kind of belief that we must sacrifice ourselves for the good of the collective.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: But in fact, and I know that we've spoken about this and we'll continue to talk about this a lot, the collective was worth nothing if the individuals within that collective are not whole and healed beings themselves.

Liz: Completely.

Rhea: In holding onto those aspects of us that makes us individual, the bits that we treasure, in protecting them and in holding them up, actually what we were doing was celebrating our individuality, our freedom, our power, and our light.

Liz: Yes, absolutely.

Rhea: And in doing that, becoming more whole is the only way to really influence and help the collective. The collective, and I read this somewhere that the collective does not need more pain and fear. The collective needs more light.

Liz: It is damaged by pain and fear.

Rhea: The only way we can truly serve the collective is finding the light inside, fostering it, growing it, and then shining it. And we described that in Season 3 as Love, shining our light for others to see. But really what that is is just the world is where we are now. 2020 happened in many ways because the collective was something that was damaged. It was something where we sacrificed our light to keep it going. But that is not what the collective needs in order to... Not even if we're going to talk 5D, 3D or whatever, the world does not need more pain and fear and suffering.

Liz: No.

Rhea: The world needs more harmony, wholeness, and peace, and we can all agree on that. How we get there is a very simple. The more individuals who are harmonious, whole and at peace, the more harmonious, whole and at peace the collective will be.

Liz: Completely.

Rhea: It is as simple as that.

Liz: What we're saying is not in a way to defend people's choices.

Rhea: No.

Liz: We merely have a lot of compassion. At least I can say for myself, and I'm sure you as well, we have a lot of compassion for why people made those choices.

Rhea: I have compassion for why people made every choice. Whether it was the one who stayed at home and did not want to leave the house during lockdown; whether it's the one who couldn't bear the thought of being totally alone at home for whatever reason. I think sometimes we're so quick to judge on what people are doing, we don't ask why they are doing it.

Liz: So quick to judge! No, we just assume that they're stupid.

Rhea: And in general, it's not even a lockdown thing. It's not even a 2020 thing. It's not even a 2021 thing. It's just that instead of asking what they're doing and discussing what they're doing, why don't we start asking why?

Liz: Or just say, you know what? Maybe they have their reasons and we don't necessarily need to know. We can honor that choice regardless.

Rhea: But again, and it's what we're talking about, the individuals and the collective is that once we were able to do that for ourselves, once we're able to give space to ourselves, whatever the choice is, even though it may be totally crazy to someone else, if we give ourselves the space to do that, we're able to give it to other people. So, it further backs up my point that a collective is made up of individuals

Liz: Entirely. And that is really ...well, that's part of the point of this episode. And it's so important for people to come back to that, because what really started to come out of so much of 2020 was this herd mentality. You need to be on board with this, and if you're not, shame on you. If you don't care about what happened on the other side of the world, shame on you. If you're not thinking about all those people suffering and going hungry, shame on you.

Rhea: And everyone has their own battles. Everyone has their own things to do. I agree, and I think and I guess you are the predictive one, but I do hope that in the aftermath of 2020 as we pick up the pieces, we do to some degree, get on board with one another. That whilst I might not understand your choices and how you live your life, I just let you live it without trying to make you conform to mine.

Liz: And what's beautiful is the more space you give people, the more opportunity they have to grow because you're not on them.

Rhea: Interesting. Yeah.

Liz: And the one thing that when I was really thinking about this episode, and I was sort of thinking about when people really do seem recalcitrant or stubborn or self-protective, if you will, and you know this, because you had that tendency earlier on in your personal process,

Rhea: I'm still like that. I'm just stubborn in a different way. I'm just stubborn in protecting myself.

Liz: That's just you. I think that's just more your personality as opposed to a real self-protective thing. Cause when we're talking about self-protection, we're really talking about that wall. Don't tell me what to do. Let me live my life. And people, sometimes they need that. Their level of sensitivity could actually just be that high, as you can relate, that they don't need more voices. They don't need more energy being flung at them, especially negative energy, the sort of judgment and shame energy because they're working on themselves to some degree. And the sooner we can really grasp that, that all the anger and toxicity and judgment being flung around social media or in friend groups, et cetera, to really take a step back and understand that sometimes those walls are there. You know, people are recalcitrant because they need to work something out.

Rhea: You know, at the beginning of my journey, I spoke to everyone and everything because I just wanted permission to do what I wanted to do, and to be honest, I didn't get it. I'd get conflicting opinions, which only mirrored the conflicting opinions in my mind.

Liz: Oh, totally! That's how it works, by the way, for everybody, FYI is that when you really cannot own your decisions and you're checking your card deck, you're checking the planetary alignments and all the stars, you're never going to get the kind of information you need to get when you just look inside.

Rhea: Never. No, no, you're right. And if you go to a million people asking them, what should I do? What should I text? You're going to get 17 different texts and it's just not, you know, but that's what I definitely did. When I started being able to tune inside, I realized how, because it'd been such a habit for so long to be sharing my life with other people, literally sharing it, telling them what was going on and letting them have an input in how I lived the next step of it, that I really had to stop and not share anything so that I could give myself the space to make the decisions by myself for a bit. And I remember coming to you and going, what's wrong with me? I feel like I'm being secretive. And I remember you saying to me, no, you're not being secretive. It's just because it's precious. And it was very much like I was a little ... like my truth as it were, or my insights were very much like a newborn, which they needed to be protected, and I needed to get used to making my own decisions before I could then be strong enough to hear other people's opinions and not let them influence me. And to be honest, and I know this is just maybe my ethos on life, but if someone's going to crash and burn as a result of their own decisions, let them. Let them crash and burn. Let them face the discomfort because they needed to get to that place. As we said at the beginning of the episode, they needed to shatter their earth in order to build it back up.

Liz: Yeah. But what we wanted to most hold onto and what we wanted everyone to be able to hold onto to some degree or another really was their light, and fear, if it doesn't kill it, greatly diminishes light. And in order for that light to not be extinguished, some people really needed to hold onto what they could. They needed to hold on to their sense of self and what they wanted and who they were. And even if it didn't seem to be the party line, that's okay. And it is truly important that people begin to grasp all of that in order to heal whatever isn't yet healed from 2020, because everyone will get to 2024 more or less on board with one another. Now I'm not going to say what's to come between now and 2024, but understand that we have this chunk of time so that people really can play catch up or do whatever it is they need to do.

But I think one thing that we really saw in 2020, especially in the second half of 2020 was all the blame and anger that got flung around. A lot of people also weren't grasping ‘cause it was just so much and there was probably just a lot of overwhelming shit going on at one time was that as 3D was crumbling, it was leaving a void, and not a lot of people like void. I'm not talking about the void; I'm just kind of talking about void.

Rhea: Emptiness.

Liz: Yes. That emptiness. And so, you know, as most people, abhor a vacuum, it was the let's fill it. Let's make sense of this, and let's put people in place who can deal with this because we can't, and let's blame all the other people and let's expect this person to resign because they did a shitty job, et cetera. You know what? That's just not helpful. That wasn't going to help anyone anyway,

Rhea: In whatever way, we are all trying our best, and you can't make someone agree or believe or come into a greater consciousness, and you definitely can't make them come into your consciousness.

Liz: Ever.

Rhea: Until they have done their own, they've gone on their own path. But ultimately at every stage of our own evolution from birth to now, we have been always doing our best, and that is what everyone is still doing and we need to remember that. Compassion is really the key here. And it's not just, if I was you, I'd react the same as you, but I may not understand you. I may not know why; I may not know how; I may be frustrated or even angry or massively triggered by you, but you are doing your best.

Liz: And if that is too much of a challenge for a person, because you think about some people you might know, where even that thinking might be a stretch. The one thing I would say is then just try not to judge. Just don't think about it. Do your best. Because by the way, all that judgment that you're projecting...

Rhea: You're just judging yourself.

Liz: You're just judging yourself. It just goes to show that you hold yourself to a particular standard that honestly you don't meet all the time.

Rhea: Well, that's the thing about judgment, isn't it? You can't really judge someone else if you no longer judge yourself, and that's the key to a happy life. Judgment and shame do not belong in it. Judgment and shame do not belong in a happy life. They do not belong in a blissful life. They don't belong there.

Liz: And there's no space for any of that in 2021, for sure.

Rhea: The world isn't going to be the same. It just isn't so we're all going to react to it differently and that's okay because at the end, hopefully what we'll build is something lighter, brighter, and better.