How To Relax The Need To Control Everything | Rosa Lewis
Dan Harris and mystic Rosa Lewis discuss how to cultivate wholehearted presence. They explore embracing sadness, reconnecting with natural sensitivity, navigating the 'dark night of the soul,' and the spiritual power of speaking truth and setting boundaries.
Deep Dive Analysis
10 Topic Outline
Introduction to Presence and Mysticism
Rosa Lewis's Journey to Becoming a Mystic
Understanding Shadow Work and Archetypes
Sacred Sadness: Embracing Grief for Connection
Sensitivity: Reconnecting with Innate Ways of Being
The Dark Night of the Soul: Navigating Difficult Spiritual Phases
Life-Death-Rebirth Cycle: Visualizing Death for Release
Falling in Love with Experience: Cultivating Joy and Passion
Potency: Speaking Truth and Setting Boundaries
Summary and Further Resources
9 Key Concepts
Mystic
A mystic is someone who believes there's a deeper, more subtle aspect of reality beyond the logical, linear, material world, and actively communes with these realms, seeing them as the baseline of experience.
Presence
Being present means being awake and alive to your life in the immediate moment, serving as the gateway to deeper levels of reality and mystical experience by paying attention to your direct, embodied experience.
Shadow Work
Based on Jungian depth psychology, shadow work involves uncovering and integrating parts of oneself that have been repressed or deemed unwelcome, often due to childhood experiences, to achieve greater balance and optionality in one's being.
Archetypes
Archetypes are symbolic packets of meaning that help grasp fuzzy, less concrete aspects of being, representing different modes or ways of experiencing the world, such as the Lover (emotions), Warrior, Magician (thinking), and Sovereign (leadership).
Sacred Sadness
This is a state of feeling sad while remaining deeply connected to oneself and the world, recognizing sadness as a force that can open the heart, reveal life's importance, and serve as a prerequisite for mystical openness.
Sensitivity
Sensitivity refers to one's unique, natural way of receiving the world, present since childhood, before it's obscured by intellectual overlays or defenses, and reconnecting with this original stance of receptivity and innocence.
Dark Night of the Soul
This is a normal, intense stage in spiritual practice where one confronts and includes the difficult, overwhelming, and painful aspects of individual and collective experience, building capacity and resilience for a broader range of emotions.
Imaginal
The imaginal realm refers to experiences that are not logical or concrete but are felt and perceived internally, such as one's conceptualization of death, which inherently lacks empirical validation.
Potency (Kali Energy)
Potency, associated with the Hindu goddess Kali, is about letting your truth speak for itself in a direct and fierce way, cutting through politeness or manipulation to express what is wholeheartedly true for you, even if it's disruptive.
10 Questions Answered
Being a mystic means recognizing and communing with deeper, more subtle realms of reality beyond the logical, linear, material world, believing in a connection to something bigger than oneself with intelligence and reason.
Presence is the door through which one accesses deeper reality; by paying attention to immediate, wholehearted experience in the present moment, one can broaden and expand their understanding of what it means to be in the present.
Shadow work, rooted in Jungian psychology, involves unblocking and integrating repressed parts of oneself (archetypes) that were deemed unwelcome, allowing for a more balanced and free flow of emotions and ways of being.
Sacred sadness involves feeling grief with a deep sense of connection and meaning, opening the heart, whereas self-pity is getting lost in stories about the world being terrible, disconnecting from direct, embodied emotion.
To reconnect with natural sensitivity, create a safe internal space, then inquire into the unique ways of seeing or feeling that have been present since childhood, validating and exploring these inherent modes of receptivity.
The 'dark night of the soul' is a recognized, often painful, phase in spiritual development where one confronts and processes intense, difficult aspects of experience, which is a necessary part of building equanimity and resilience.
By contemplating death as a release or return, and using imaginative inquiry to explore its nature, one can build equanimity with this inevitability, which metaphorically helps in letting go of control and processing smaller 'ego deaths' or difficult experiences.
Falling in love with experience, by connecting to joy and beauty, counteracts self-punishing tendencies, making the spiritual path easier and more naturally driven by love and passion rather than discipline alone.
Potency is the act of letting your truth speak for itself in a direct and powerful way, cutting through societal pressures to be polite or manipulative, and expressing what is wholeheartedly true from an embodied, present-moment perspective.
Saying 'no' is a spiritual practice because it establishes clear boundaries, reflecting a deep clarity about what truly aligns with one's authentic self, and serves the truth of one's experience rather than succumbing to societal pressures to overextend.
8 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Sadness for Deeper Connection
Allow yourself to fully feel sadness and grief, as this can be a deep connective force that opens your heart and helps you realize what’s important in life, serving as a prerequisite for mystical experiences.
2. Use Art to Process Difficult Emotions
Listen to sad music or watch a sad film to create a safer space for opening to grief and sadness, allowing you to feel the beauty within the heartbreak and ease into deeper emotional processing.
3. Fully Experience Sadness, Avoid Wallowing
When sad, allow yourself to cry deeply and fully, letting the emotion flow through you completely, but stay present with direct sensations and emotions in the body to avoid getting lost in self-pity or negative stories.
4. Reconnect with Childhood Sensitivity
Practice getting in touch with your unique, innate way of receiving the world, which has been present since childhood, by creating a safe space and asking what specific aspects of experience you naturally sense or focus on.
5. Visualize Death to Gain Perspective
Spend time contemplating death not just as scary, but as a release or returning home, using imaginative inquiry to explore its ‘vibe’ and then imagine difficult experiences being absorbed by this concept of death to release stuck energy and gain equanimity.
6. Fall in Love with Your Experience
Recall moments when you felt truly alive, where everything felt harmonious, and intentionally intensify those sensations by turning them up ‘10 times stronger’ to foster open-heartedness, passion, and joy, making your spiritual path more natural and less self-punishing.
7. Speak Your Truth with Potency
Practice letting your embodied truth speak for itself, even if it’s difficult or disruptive, by connecting to what is wholeheartedly true for you and expressing it directly, rather than being overly polite or manipulative.
8. Say ‘No’ as a Spiritual Practice
Set clear boundaries and say ’no’ to things that are not truly aligned with your deepest self, as this acts as a potent expression of clarity and serves the truth of your experience from a deep level.
7 Key Quotes
The only way to get to that state is by being awake and aware right now.
Rosa Lewis
The aim is to have a nice kind of conference meeting of the aspects and the sovereign can listen to all of the aspects and choose a way forward from there so that they're all present and all available.
Rosa Lewis
Opening the heart requires an equal measure of beauty and heartbreak.
Rosa Lewis
If you don't talk about it and people hit that territory, then it can make it worse because people feel on top of the struggle. People then put a layer on, which is I'm doing something wrong.
Rosa Lewis
In light of death, the shit I'm worried about isn't that deep.
Dan Harris
The process and the feeling of falling in love is the purpose rather than that sort of, I'm falling in love and then therefore I want this and this to happen.
Rosa Lewis
The truth I'm talking about is not necessarily like a rational, logical, or this is the objective, ultimate truth. It's like as much the kind of like felt embodied elements of experience truth and kind of like letting your truth be present and part of what's here.
Rosa Lewis
3 Protocols
Trusting Experience Meditation (for Sensitivity)
Rosa Lewis- Affirm safety: Say to yourself, 'Your experience is welcome as it is. It's safe for you to see the truth. Shadows and dissonance are welcome. There's a deeper layer of meaningfulness.'
- Create space: Leave space for sensations, emotions, or images to arise, observing them without getting carried away.
- Inquire: Ask, 'What is a way of seeing or feeling that has been there since you were a child? What is something you're highly sensitive to?'
Life-Death-Rebirth Cycle Visualization
Rosa Lewis- Relate to death: Spend time feeling into possibilities of death as a returning home or release, not just fear.
- Connect to the imaginal: Ask questions like, 'What do you imagine is there on the other side of death? What's the vibe of it?' to feel its presence in your system imaginally.
- Absorb difficult experiences: Once death feels more alive, imagine bits of experience you want to change getting absorbed by that death, observing if it shifts your relationship to them.
Falling in Love with Experience Practice
Rosa Lewis- Recall: Remember a moment when you felt truly alive, where everything in experience felt harmonious (a person, place, or mystical experience).
- Intensify: Say to yourself, 'Let the felt sense of being in love live through you.' If holding back, turn the sensations up 10 times stronger.
- Inquire: Ask, 'Who are you when you're connected to this love? What would it mean to live from this heart-connected place?'