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Have you ever had one of those moments where something finally happens and everybody around you sees the moment? But you know the story started years before. The relationship ends or the business succeeds. You burn out. You finally set a boundary. You become the person people suddenly call successful. And everybody sees the event. But you know there were thousands of tiny moments before that one. There were choices, conversations, there were things you tolerated, things that you released, times you almost quit, times you did quit, times you began again. So today I want to have a conversation about when creation actually happens. Because I don't think it happens when the thing finally becomes visible. And if you've ever looked at your life and wondered, how the hell did I get here? Beautifully or painfully, this conversation is for you. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Aligned Human Project. I'm your host, Don Elgin. If you've ever looked around at your life that appears successful on the outside but feels disconnected on the inside, you are in the right place. If you've ever wondered why you keep repeating the same patterns, carrying the same emotional weight, or chasing goals that never quite bring you the peace you hope they would, you are in the right place. This podcast is about remembering who you were before the world told you who you needed to be. Together we'll explore the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, ancient wisdom, quantum science, and practical spiritualism to understand how awareness shapes our field and how our field shapes our lives, and why lasting change begins from the inside out. We'll talk about leadership, relationships, health, purpose, emotional well-being, and conscious creation. Not as separate parts of life, but as reflections of one thing: our level of alignment. Because most people don't need another strategy, they need a new relationship with themselves. So whether you're leading a business, a family, a team, or simply trying to lead yourself with greater intention, welcome. Take a breath, become the witness, and let's begin. Hello, hello, my fellow humans. By the time you're listening to this, I'm probably in New York or actually on my way home. I've spent part of this week at a mastermind called Women Starting Movements. And yesterday morning, something I've known was coming for months became visible in a rather ridiculous way. My book, Align Your Life, appeared on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square. Now, here's the strange part. I'm actually recording this before that happens. And I've deliberately chosen not to come back afterward and manufacture some profound lesson about what standing underneath the billboard meant. Because right now, I don't know. And maybe I'll cry. Maybe I'll laugh. Maybe it'll feel surreal. Maybe I'll be distracted because somebody bumps into me and spills coffee on my power dress. I reserved the right to be human. But sitting here before the experience actually happens made me think about something perhaps even more interesting. When did that billboard actually begin? Was it when the book was actually published? Was it when I finished the manuscript? Was it when I started writing? Or did it begin much earlier than that? With questions, experiences, with two car accidents, healing? Maybe it began with clients. Or maybe it was conversations. Was it years of studying why humans recreate what hurts us? Ideas that didn't have names yet? Moments that at the time didn't look remotely like they were leading towards Times Square. And then I start to think about our lives. When does a relationship become disconnected? When does someone become a leader? When does a body become exhausted? When does a family culture form? When does a dream become real? We tend to recognize creation when we can finally see the form. But how much of our lives is being created long before anything becomes visible? Because here's where I want to begin. You are already creating. Not someday, not when you've mastered manifestation, not when you're healed enough or aligned enough or spiritually evolved enough. Right now. The question is whether you're conscious of how you're participating. You see, we have this tendency to organize our lives around events. The wedding, the divorce, the promotion, maybe the diagnoses, maybe it's the launch or the breakdown or the burnout. Maybe it's the book or the billboard. Something happens and we say, Oh, there, there, there it is. That's when my life changed. But did it? Think about a relationship ending. Usually the relationship didn't end the day someone packed a suitcase or called it quits. There were conversations before that, and conversations that never happened. There were the tiny resentments, the assumptions, moments of disconnection. Maybe there were attempts at repair and needs that weren't expressed. There were patterns that repeated, maybe years of them. The breakup is the event, but the relationship has been creating conditions all along. A company doesn't suddenly have a culture problem because one employee quits. That resignation may simply make something visible that has been developing for years. We tend to notice a symptom in our body when it becomes impossible to ignore. But our biology has been responding to conditions all along. And this distinction matters because if we believe creation happens only at the event, we spend our lives reacting to events. But if creation also happens through conditions, suddenly we have somewhere to participate. And suddenly every moment becomes profound, becomes important. We see there's a very human reason that we do this. Novel and unexpected things, they grab our attention. The strange sound in the middle of the night, the sudden pain, someone's tone changing, the number on the financial statement that suddenly drops. Our brains are exquisitely responsive to change and novelty, but much of life develops through repetition. The brain also uses prior information and experience to help interpret what is happening. Predictive processing research examines exactly this relationship between previous information and the incoming sensory evidence. So what happens repeatedly actually matters because repetition teaches. Our nervous systems learn. Our expectations develop. Relationships establish patterns. Organizations develop norms. Behavior becomes increasingly familiar. Eventually, what has happened again and again can begin to feel less like a condition and more like this is how life is. This is just how marriage is. This is just how life works. This is just how my family is. This is just how I am. And that's where awareness becomes incredibly powerful. Because awareness creates separation between this is reality and this is what has become familiar. Events invite reaction. Patterns invite awareness. And conditions invite participation. And this is where I want to bring in the room. If this is your first conversation with me, the room is a metaphor I use for the inner environment we begin constructing before we really even begin this physical life. Except we didn't consciously choose most of the original furniture. Family put things in there, ancestral. Culture did, experience did, relationship did, environmental. Beliefs about love, worth, safety, belonging, success, and identity all became furniture and decorations. And eventually, we lived around that furniture for so long that we stopped seeing it. We didn't say that's a belief I learned. We instead said, this or that's who I am. Or maybe it's that's just how life works. Awareness turns on the light, and suddenly it's oh, there's the furniture, there's the rules, there's the belief, there's the protection, there's the place I contract every time somebody disagrees with me, because somewhere in this room, disagreement became connected to rejection. Now we have somewhere that we can participate. Not by ripping all the furniture out in one afternoon, even though you might desire that. And not by shaming ourselves for being there in the first place. Some of it protected us. Some of it, well, it helped us feel like we belonged. Some of it made perfect sense when it arrived. But awareness, it lets us ask, does this still belong here? That's where release begins. This is why field and form gives us a very different way of talking about creation. The field isn't a cosmic vending machine. You don't put it in the correct frequency and wait for the universe to dispense a Ferrari. That's never been what I mean. The field is the invisible architecture from which we participate. It includes attention, meaning, belief, emotion, intentions, expectations, relationship. It includes presence. And form is where those conditions meet choice, behavior, biology, circumstance, relationship, and physical world. They are continually informing one another. You are the witness and you shape that field, and the field shapes your life. Notice what that doesn't say. It doesn't say you control your life because you don't, and neither do I. And as a recovering control freak, it was a hard pillow to swallow. Other humans have free will, bodies have biology, systems exist, accidents happen, loss happens, economies change. People make choices we don't want them to make. Life remains life. And conscious creation is not omnipotence, it's participation. And I find that far more empowering because it doesn't require us to pretend reality isn't real. It asks, given what is real, how am I participating? What meaning am I making of this? What am I practicing? What am I reinforcing? What am I bringing into this relationship? What am I releasing? Where am I contracting? What becomes possible when I return to center? That's sovereignty, not control over everything, but responsibility for my participation. Imagine walking through a forest where no trail exists. The first time through, it's very difficult. There's branches and brush, there's uneven ground. You have to pay attention to every single step. And then you walk the same route again tomorrow. And again the next day. And again. And eventually the grass bends. The brush gets pushed aside, the ground becomes visible. Other people might even begin following the same path. And eventually it looks like this is the trail. But it wasn't always the trail. It became the trail because something repeatedly moved that way. I think our lives contain paths exactly like this: ways of responding, ways of protecting, ways of relating, ways of interpreting ourselves. Maybe every time conflict happens, you withdraw. Maybe every time uncertainty appears, you control. Every time you feel insecure, you prove. Every time belonging feels threatened, you appease. Walk that path enough, and eventually it doesn't look like a choice. It feels like this is me. But a familiar path is still a path. And awareness gives us the opportunity to stalk in the forest and ask, do I want to keep walking this way? That's the beginning. Not immediately building a brand new highway, but turning toward another possibility, like a fork in the road. I'll give you a personal example of this. I, as I said, recovering control freak, and part of that has been being hyper-independent. Now, I for a long time thought this is just who I am. Don is a triple A type personality, a control freak, and is hyper-independent. And I really took a lot of pride in that. I was often congratulated for that. And of course I was, because it means I took less effort for other people. And in terms of business, it also made me quite successful. In relationships, it meant that I didn't require much from other people. But it also meant that I didn't give opportunity to other people. But when I stopped and it started to become a problem, and I started to look at this behavior type, I realized within my own work, I'm like, oh, this is a survival pattern. So when I started to learn about the patterns of survival, people pleasing, hyperindependence, you know, all these other ones that we have, I started to look back and be like, where did this begin from? When did I start to learn that asking for help or for anything was dangerous? And I kind of worked my way back. I'm like, I looked back and I'm like, where was that affirmed? Right. You start in the current relationship, you go previous relationships, your current friendships, previous friendships, current work, previous work, go through your childhood, and you start going into your childhood. And I realized I learned it really, really young. It's very, very small when I learned that asking for things was dangerous, that wanting things could be dangerous. Things unless it was something I could give myself. So hyperindependence actually ended up leading to work a work being a workaholic. It learned worked its way into being supported by being a bit of a control freak. And, you know, when we look at it backwards from psychology, the doctors and that are like, oh, it's complex PTSD. And this is how this begins. This is why, for myself, for many years until this last, probably about three, four years ago, I started to work through opening up my childhood memories. Before the age of 15, I had very few. And so those started to unlock and then really unlocked about just about two years ago now, where I started to work through these memories that our brain uh locks down in a way to protect us. And my doctors had warned me. They said, you're gonna want to unlock these quickly, because that's the way I go. I want to just control it. I want them to go away. I want to, you know, nothing to block me. And it's fairly typical for a what element. I'm a very protective energy. So not only am I really protective about the people that I love and that I'm loyal to, I also became very protective of that little girl. I became very protective of my own feminine energy. And I suppressed a lot of that feminine energy and really expressed and brought forward a lot of my masculine energy. Masculine energy is not bad, but our job is to balance those energies. And I don't mean balance like 50-50 to feminine and masculine. I mean my job is to balance my feminine energy. It's to balance my masculine energy and then to harmonize those two energies within me. And so what happened was all of a sudden, here I was, even 10 years ago. I go back and go, okay, 11 years ago, I was a survivor, again, very protective. And then I go back and I go, okay, it was about eight years ago, started learning about the first seven principles of co-creation. And that kind of would build into what would become the 12 laws of co-creation as I teach. And I start to realize I'm, I have always thought this is who Dawn is. Somebody says, Who is Dawn? These are the answers I will give you. You know, I am assertive. I have strong energetic boundaries. Um, yes, those are natural ways of being for me. But the other side, the shadow side, was all very protective behaviors that I had learned and become my conditioning. To get angry first, defensive, um, you know, anger, irritation, frustration, very defensive emotions for the uh wood element. And then to come underneath that and find the benevolence, the kindness in the face of anything, to find the patience. Those would be the virtues of the wood element, to find that within myself. And every time that I pause on that defensive, um, you know, I love the term or the quote that justifications and excuses are just well-thought-out lies by your ego. And so once I started to recognize that and understand that anger is a very defensive or protective energy, I could start going underneath it and go, what are you protecting? And then comes up, you know, fear or embarrassment or um unworthiness. And so as I started to explore myself, the more awareness I brought into myself, the more I was willing to go into the storms of these emotions, the more I started to create new pathways. So, whereas before I would have habitually taken that left path, all of a sudden, with each awareness, I began building more paths. And suddenly I have options. And Dawn, well, she begins to become someone new. And now this doesn't mean that they don't come up. I most definitely still feel anger, irritation, and frustration. I just understand that. I understand that all of a sudden that tension in my body. So think of it this way every time that we are in a survival instinct, there's a contraction in our body. And for each of us, it might feel different. You might feel it in the grinding of your gut and getting a stomachache. You might feel it in the fluttering in your Heart. You might feel the tension in your neck and shoulders or your jaw. You might feel eye strain. You might feel a constriction in your throat. You might feel your hips and your pelvic floor tense up. There's all sorts of ways. And our job is to become aware of where do I feel that contraction? Where do I feel that protection come in? I often joke with my practitioners that I feel like a wood bug. In other words, I feel like I armor up and I protect those pieces of myself. And it's a pattern that not only on a physical level with my practitioners do I work to undo those patterns and create new patterns, but also become more and more aware, like, oh, I'm contracting. What is that? What is the feeling that's linked with that? What were you just thinking about? What were you just feeling? And so when our pattern gets activated, we'll contract. In other words, we start to guard our armor up. But once I started to recognize the pattern, I no longer identified as that pattern, no longer identified as a control fake or as a workaholic or as these other things. But instead, I was like, oh, now I can witness that pattern, that reaction, that behavior, and no longer identify with it. And the less I identify, the more I'm able to release. And the more I'm able to release, the more I'm able to soften. And the more I'm able to cultivate connection, not only with myself, but with those around me. And each time that I become triggered, I have to remind myself I reserve the right to be human. I still walk those old paths sometimes. And the difference is simply that I recognize them far, far sooner. So maybe freedom isn't never finding yourself on an old path again. Maybe freedom is realizing I'm the one walking the path. I'm not the path itself. So what I want to introduce here is release, rewire, expand, and then embody. See, that's where the work moves. Awareness lets me see the path. Release means I stop gripping the protection as though my survival depends on continuing to walk it. Rewiring means I practice something else. Maybe I stay for the conversation instead of withdrawing. Maybe I say no instead of appeasing. Maybe I rest instead of proving or performing. Maybe I tell the truth instead of managing somebody else's response. And then expansion becomes possible. And I want to be careful with that word too. Expansion doesn't mean you're walking around blissed out and spiritually glowing all day. It can get there, but expansion is uh increased capacity, more room, more possibility, more of you available because less of you is consumed by protection. And embodiment is when the new choice begins moving from something you understand to something you actually live. So awareness, then we get release, rewire, expand, embody, and then repeat. Because you're human. This is one of the reasons the five elements matter so deeply to me. Taoist philosophy gives us movement. It gives us relationship, cycles. Water carries potential and depth. Wood gives potential, direction, and movement. Fire expresses and connects. Earth receives, nourishes, and sustains. And then metal discerns, refines, and releases. And then we're back to water again. Nothing exists alone. Sometimes creation asks us to move, and sometimes it asks us to wait. Sometimes it becomes visible. And sometimes to nurture something quietly. Sometimes creation requires letting something die. This is also where divine feminine and divine masculine come into that conversation. There is a movement that receives, listens, allows. It intuits, it surrenders, which does not mean giving up. And a movement that chooses. So the structures, the acts, the protects, the bringing it into form. And we need both. The feminine without movement forward, form can be remained just potential. And the masculine without receptivity can become force. Conscious creation is relationship, field and form, listening and acting, being and doing, which means creation isn't only what do I want? It's also what is this moment asking of me? And this is where creation stops being merely personal. You are part of other people's conditions. Your partner experiences you. Your children experience you. Your employees experience you. Your colleagues experience you. How you respond when someone makes a mistake teaches something. How you listen when someone tells you something uncomfortable teaches something. Whether people have to manage your emotional state before they can tell you the truth teaches something. Research on psychological safety makes this very practical. Environments where people believe they can speak up with questions, concerns, mistakes without humiliation or punishment support learning and candid conversation. So culture isn't merely the values on the wall. Culture is what repeated experience teaches people about what they can expect. And this is where architecture of trust meets architecture of creation. Trust makes more truth possible. More truth gives us better information. Better information gives us more conscious choice. Different choices change conditions. So leadership is creation. Parenting is creation. Relationships are creation. Your field doesn't stop at your skin. It becomes part of the environment other humans experience. Here's what I want you to do this week. Choose one form in your life, something beautiful or something difficult. It could be a relationship, your work, it could be your health, um, maybe it's a pattern, a success, maybe it's a conflict that you're working through, something that's real right now. Instead of immediately asking how to change it, follow the thread backward. Ask what conditions preceded this? What was repeated? What became normal? What did I believe? What did I practice? What did I tolerate? What did other people contribute? What circumstances mattered? Where did I have choice? Where didn't I? And please notice that last question. This is not an exercise in blaming yourself for everything that has ever happened. We're discerning participation. Then ask, what am I participating in now that may be shaping tomorrow's conditions? And what is one place where I could participate differently? Not because you can predict the future, but because you can become conscious of the present moment. If the room resonated with you today and you haven't heard the full teaching, go back to my episode on the room. I'll link it in the show notes and below and the video version of this podcast. And if you recognize contraction while you're doing this exercise, especially if your mind immediately starts beating you up about everything you've apparently done wrong, I've linked my heart coherence meditation as well. Come back to center first. We're not using awareness as another weapon against ourselves. And then take this conversation somewhere. Send this episode to someone you'd genuinely enjoy exploring it with. Ask each other, what have we been calling just who I am that might actually be a path you've practiced for a really long time? That's a conversation that's worth having. And if you want to go a little deeper, align your life is the architecture underneath so much of what we're exploring this quarter. That includes field and form, the 12 laws of co-creation, the movement from unconscious patterning towards conscious participation. You can learn more about the book and access the book portal through my website, practical spiritualismco.com. And you'll find Align Your Life through Amazon and other retailers. And please support your local bookstore where it's available. And if you already have the book, use the companion library. This work is meant to be practiced. There's something interesting about releasing this episode today, because by the time you're hearing my voice, I will have already stood in Times Square and watched that billboard appear. But the Dawn sitting here recording this hasn't. She doesn't know what that moment feels like yet. And I love that. Because this version of me can only participate with what is here. She can write the book, she can get on the plane, she can go to the mastermind. She can put on the seat, the dress, the outfit. She can show up. She can make aligned choices without knowing exactly what those choices will become. And isn't that life? We recognize creation backward. We see something that exists today and trace the thread until we discover all these moments that once seemed ordinary. A conversation, a decision, a no or a yes, a question, a breakdown, an overwhelm, a book or a podcast, a room, a choice. And from the future, the path can look almost inevitable, but it wasn't. It was lived forward. That's the part we forget. Your life isn't asking you to know exactly where everything leads. You can't know. It's asking you to participate in the moment you're actually in. And perhaps that's why alignment matters so much, because when we cannot know the outcome, we need another way to choose. Not will this guarantee the future I want. But instead, is this aligned with who I am practicing becoming? That's a question we can answer today. Next week, we're going underneath outcomes and into one of the most foundational ideas of Field and Form. Conditions create outcomes. We're going to explore why changing the invisible form without becoming curious about the conditions underneath it so often sends us straight back into the same pattern. So make sure you're subscribed. And if today's conversation made you think of somebody, please share it. Don't just send them the link. Ask them the question. That's how this becomes more than content. That's how we begin changing the conversations we're having with one another. And they start to deepen, a let us a little less surface, a little more depth. Look around at your life, not to judge it, not to decide you manifested every painful thing that's ever happened to you. And certainly not to pretend that you control anything. Just look. Because everywhere you look, there are conditions. Some you inherited, some other people created, some life handed you, and some you participate in every single day. Awareness lets us see them. Release helps us loosen what no longer needs to lead. Rewiring gives us another path. And expansion gives us greater capacity. Embodiment turns the new possibility into lived form. And through all of it, you get to reserve the right to be human. You don't have to become the calm after the storm. The deeper practice is becoming the eye of it, returning to center while life keeps moving all around you. So maybe the question isn't, what do I want life to give me next? Maybe the wiser question is, what am I practicing today that is quietly becoming my tomorrow? Just sit with that one. Remember, you are the witness. You shape your field, and your field shapes your life. Until next time. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Aligned Human Project. I'm your host, Don Elgin. If you've ever looked around at your life that appears successful on the outside but feels disconnected on the inside, you are in the right place. If you've ever wondered why you keep repeating the same patterns, carrying the same emotional weight, or chasing goals that never quite bring you the peace you hoped they would, you are in the right place. This podcast is about remembering who you were before the world told you who you needed to be. Together we'll explore the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, ancient wisdom, quantum science, and practical spiritualism to understand how awareness shapes our field and how our field shapes our lives, and why lasting change begins from the inside out. We'll talk about leadership, relationships, health, purpose, emotional well-being, and conscious creation. Not as separate parts of life, but as reflections of one thing: our level of alignment. Because most people don't need another strategy. They need a new relationship with themselves. So whether you're leading a business, a family, a team, or simply trying to lead yourself with greater intention, welcome. Take a breath, become the witness, and let's begin.