I extracted the personal development work Daniel proposes from a podcast he did with Collin Morris’s Zion 2.0 titled: #36 A Republic, If You Can Keep It, with Daniel Schmachtenberger.
We know we’re in a global transition, we know we’re bound to making the changes necessary that will assist us in becoming responsible agents to a new world, but how exactly do we get there?
In the following Daniel provides a thoughtful and useful process for growing out of a disconnected way of living into a connected way of being in the world that can assist us in resolving some of the major challenges we face within and without together.
If you’re sincerely wishing to transition out of an unhealthy, outdated lifestyle into something that is both soulcentric and connected to the global state of affairs this process will assist you in clarifying your path and purpose.
Note: Henceforth all comments as well as questions are transcripts from the podcast.
Daniel’s Process
1-Which “care” can you not turn off, which creates a sense of obligation, that you can’t not do? (No outside shoulds)
2-What is it that you can’t turn your attention away from? (What you can’t avoid being of service to and actually feel congruent with your own self.)
3-In this sense: What does it take to become more congruent with your own self?
Sovereignty Practices
Increase capacities to develop new skills, new relationships, new knowledge and understanding so that you can be more effective in the world.
Notice where you are holding internal incongruences, work to resolve those, and look at what the basis of those are.
Spent time in deep reflection where the pole of what’s next isn’t overwhelming your ability to go deeper. Ask yourself…
1-What is it that I care about and why do I care about it?
2-What do I care most about?
3-Why do I care most about it?
4-On my death bed what would I most care about, feel most proud of and feel was the right use of my life? And what will I wish that I had engaged in differently?
Even deeper…
1-What is sacred to me that is worthy of the devotion of my life?
2-What is worth more to me than my own life, and why?
Not just think about it but feel it, feel the situations in which one would sacrifice life and or quality of life for something that matters more and where that comes from. What is sacred and what your highest values are.
Next Part – Reflect and write on…
1-What do I understand to be the current situation of the world?
2-What are the main problems in the world?
3-What are some of the biggest and most pressing problems as I understand them?
4-What are the environmental issues, what are the human rights issues, social justice issues, animal welfare, risk of refugee, warfare and AI weapons? Really think about that.
(What the above combined give you: What you care most about, and what is the world you currently live in)
5-Given those two things, what should I be doing in my life, in this world? (Not a world I don’t live in, not the world of 1950, or I hope for world, or a world of delusion because I’m not paying attention to the world I live in, or the world of obligations that isn’t connected to what I don’t care about, etc.)
Daniel Notes: What we should actually be obligated to is an important question.
6-If this is really what I value and this is the world I’m in, how should I be living, to be in right relationship to the actual world I’m in, aligned with my own values? (Nobody else’s shoulds, you’re own congruencies with yourself. What would my life look like?)
Then look to the best projects out there…are they adequate, can I join something already existing?
Once you can see what your life can be if it were to be congruent with your own values, in the world that is. Then look at your current life and look at what is the gap, what is the delta between the way you’re living and the way you would be living to be in maximum congruency with your own self.
7-Ask: Why is that gap there?
8-What is it that is driving my current behaviour, other than my values?
Is it that I don’t take enough time to be clear on the world that I’m in? Is it that I feel disempowered? I turn away, I shut off a whole chuck of my emotions, because I feel overwhelmed by the state of the world? I let myself be too bound to loyalties and obligations and duties that aren’t actually mine? That I’m afraid, a wounded ego that is still trying to prove that I am enough by acquiring more money or more status, to narcissistically self-serve, to prove that I am lovable? (Or something like that. There will be more than one.)
The personal development that is most important is clearing those things.
This is addressing what you need to address that is driving the gap between what your own life of maximum congruency would be and the way you’re currently living.
If that means that there are unresolved insecurities that have you still compensating, doing some type of performance compensation, address those insecurities. It means, do the healing work towards all of those first.
If you feel overwhelmed and you don’t feel like you have the agency, then start a kind of development work that increases your sense of agency and your ability to stay present in the presence of fear, sadness, anger and large emotions. Your ability to feel them without shutting down or getting controlled or taken over by the emotion.
I would say that the personal development that is most important is the personal development that comes from assessing what is in the way of me living my own dharma the most clearly.
Start with the assessment of what your own dharma is.
9-What is in the way of me living out my own dharma the most clearly?
Dharma is the alignment between what you value in the world that you’re in, to be what is yours to do.
I think that that approach to personal development is different in kind than the approach that is focused on what will make me happier. In a way that not only cultivates better, happier humans but it’s also more effective.