Good Life Project - A Good Life Is More About Liberation Than Transformation.
Episode Date: August 20, 2015What if you didn't have to change?What if everything you wanted, everything you needed, everything you aspired to become, you already had and were.What if living a good life was more about liberating ...and revealing than changing and becoming?The words transformation and evolution have become buzz-words across the landscape of personal development.The implication is that you, on the deepest level, are not who you need to be. That you need to become or step into something different and better before you can live your best life.But, what if that was a lie?What if deep down, you already were your best self and the work was really just about revealing it, removing the illusion, then living it?That's what today's short and sweet Good Life Project Riff is all about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This week's episode is brought to you by Camp GLP, which is short for Good Life Project.
We have got an incredible group, more than 300 people coming from all around the world,
from the US, Asia, Australia, Europe, South Africa.
Really just a gorgeous collection, gathering of humanity to learn, to grow, to laugh, to play, have fun,
amazing workshops, events, activities. And most importantly, we've got this incredible tribe where
you can literally show up and nobody cares who you are, what you've done, how much you're making,
what your title is. It's not about posturing and positioning. It's about just being you,
being human and interacting around a shared set of
fantastic values. So if that sounds amazing to you, if you'd love to be there, we do have a
small number of spots left. This all goes down August 27th to August 30th, just about 90 minutes
outside of New York City. You can check out all the details at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just take a look at the show notes in whatever app you're listening to, and you'll see that you can just click right through to get all the information there in the show notes.
Thanks so much, and I hope to see you at camp.
Today's Good Life Project riff is entitled, Don't Just Create, Liberate.
And it's a short and sweet one.
So some of you know this and some of you don't.
But in a not too long ago life, I actually owned a yoga center in Hell's Kitchen, New York City.
And it was this beautiful community where everybody came together.
And I didn't just own it.
I actually taught yoga.
I taught very likely tens of thousands of people from around the world. And we trained hundreds of
teachers from around the world too, which was just a stunning gift for me to be able to be
in that position for that window, that season in my life. And I remember sort of early on in my
journey hearing this term. And what's interesting is that a lot of the language in yoga comes from a language called Sanskrit,
which, depending on who you ask, is the oldest known language.
And there's a term which translates roughly to jivanmukti or jivanmukti.
And that translates roughly also to liberated being. And that always caught me because there's a lot of
use of the word transformation in yoga, in personal growth, in self-help. But the language
here is not transformation, it's liberation. Liberated being. So not transformed, but liberated. And I always liked what that implies,
that the process of coming alive isn't about becoming as much as it is about uncovering,
revealing, owning, and then fueling that essential self that's always been there.
It works on the assumption that who you're meant to be has always
been inside, that the work lies in reclaiming the ability to see it and chipping away all that stuff
that gets caked on as you go through life. The wounds, the limitations born of the desire to
be accepted at any cost, the heartbreak fueled shrinking away, the psychic grit that comes to form a barrier so
opaque as to obscure not only your ability to see, but to be, to live into that person who you know
yourself to be. The work then, it's not about transforming. It's not even so much about becoming.
It's about allowing and revealing.
So that one glorious day with fortune, with practice, with work for the rest of your life,
you can know what it's like to walk through each day that follows with a sense of congruence, to be loved, to be accepted, embraced, and if desired or even appropriate,
paid to walk the earth and offer your gifts, radiant in your own skin. Sometimes you have to
play a long time to be able to play like yourself. Miles Davis once said, I can't agree more. The expectation is sometimes that, you know,
we can try and accelerate the path to actually peel away all the stuff that allows us to stand
in our true reality, to allow our essence to just become the truth of who we are in existence,
in the world, seen and expressed fully in the presence of ourselves and others. But just like Miles said,
sometimes it doesn't happen immediately. You have to practice. You have to do the work.
Just like he said, sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
Nothing you can buy will get you there. Trust me, I've tried and so have like a zillion other people. And I'm
still very much in this work myself. I would never, you know, like put myself out to be okay.
I've found myself. I've become fully liberated, fully expressed. I'm still out there with you
guys tripping and stumbling and chipping away and revealing. I'm in the practice too.
And my invitation to you in this week's riff is really simple. Instead of looking outside
for your answers, instead of saying, how can I get them as quickly as possible? Instead of thinking,
what can I do outside of myself? What can I buy or try? My invitation is to look inward for your
answers and to seek less transformation and more revelation.
Don't try to buy the work.
Do it.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this week's Good Life Project riff.
I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Thank you.