Time to Burn All The Rules So You Can Be You

By Juliet Tang

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

Ayahuasca is a South American entheogenic brew traditionally drunk by shamans to connect with the spirit world. In the past decade or so, it has sent waves of seekers to the Amazon jungle looking for healing, and the expansion of consciousness — myself included.

I was 2000 something miles away from the comfort of my home in a dimly lit room smelled heavily of sage. One by one, we took the cup from the shaman, and drank the thick brown liquid.

My intention for the night was one I carefully chose months before the retreat. I wanted nothing more than her input on what I believed to be my calling at the time which was to assist others in their healing. As a healer at the time, I felt honored to be of service to guide others to transform their pain into light through shadow work, and firmly believed that it is through the long dark night of the soul that we come to the dawn of spiritual awakening.

I was well aware that not even the most experienced shaman could predict how an ayahuasca ceremony would unfold, but a tiny part of me secretly wished for an ecstatic cosmic dance with the Divine Mother lovingly sharing with me what my soul chose for this life.

One hour into the experience, it was anything but ecstatic.

It was as if all hell on earth broke loose. I was surrounded by violent purging, crying, and intense suffering. Worse, the suffering was magnified to include every ounce of agony on earth, and felt by every molecule of mine.

Whatever minuscule portion of my mind that was left went berserk, and decided to enter a repetitive chant of “I’m fucked” that replaced my usual “Om.” There was not the slightest hint of my soul calling. If anything, I was reduced to effort to stay alive.

This certainly wasn’t the profound life work I expected!

I desperately asked her what the lesson was. I told her I was willing to do the work and just needed a little guidance.

Nothing came. I was engulfed in a world of trauma.

What seemed like an eternity passed, I realized the only thing that eased the intensity of my torment was to come back to my heart rather than getting stuck in the mind.

With enormous effort, I slowly shifted my focus from the outer world to the inner. From time to time, I was so exhausted that I’d give up, and immediately get sucked into the deep, unconscious suffering.

I realized how absurd it was of me to want to heal the world or silence the cries outside of me when I couldn’t even save myself. The only power I had was to embody and expand the light in my heart with each breath for as long as I was breathing, and hold onto the knowing that even this wasn’t real.

Slowly, I discovered the more I was able to acknowledge, and even laugh at my own silliness for falling for this perceived shadow, the faster the illusion of darkness dissipated.

The noise outside of me gradually lost their power until I suddenly realized the only cries I believed I heard were actually coming from inside of my own head. In fact, the whole world was not suffering. It was my attachment to shadow work that I projected outward and as a result, I created my own shadow on earth.

The moment I completely let go of the attachment, the room, and the whole world transformed. Everyone was in the most perfect and joyous place in their journey, in their life, and in the universe.

Suddenly, Ram Dass’s voice popped into my head,

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”

There was no more pain in or around me, only infinite, indescribable, beautiful, and exceptionally playful divine love.

Playful divine love — the stuff we are all made of.

The world is not broken. No one needs fixing. We are all cosmic travelers enjoying a moment in time co-creating with each other. Where there is death, there is also life. As the slumber of the dark night fades, light breaks. Among the chaos, new universes are birthed.

This is the eternal dance of life. This is the ecstatic breath of creation. And we are here to experience all of it! Everything is but an experience, and we can approach each experience from a place of heaviness burdened with rules we picked up from others, or allow ourselves to embrace it with humor knowing ultimately, this is the game of life we chose to come to earth to play to amuse ourselves, but we are not confined or limited by any of it. After all, we are the formless creative substance that has a million faces and names yet are attached to none, and we have the absolute power to choose how we experience anything!

Suddenly, I received the confirmation: this is what my soul chose to be on this planet, to be evoking the playful divinity in all! And the only way for me to be that is to first embody it myself, something I failed to do from time to time because I took myself too seriously.

During the months following that ceremony, a stream of new understanding about my life’s work surfaced as I integrated my experience. The question “what would I create from the space of playful divine consciousness” led to a profound shift. I realized rather than focusing on others’ pain, shadows and rules, nothing gave me greater joy and fulfillment than to use my existing tools and modalities to empower my clients to remember their godly perfection and soul gifts, claim their conscious leadership and space in this world, and create impactful lives that excite and ignite the fire in them from an effortless, playful, and most soul-aligned place.

Yes, awakening isn’t all about darkness and shadow work. It’s time to release the attachment to all the rules of how things should be, and just be.

What would happen if we allowed ourselves to fearlessly claim our playful divine perfection right here, right now instead of waiting for the completion of a course, the end of a vipassana retreat, or another ayahuasca ceremony? What experiences would we create if we courageously embraced our soul essence and fullest self-expression, and shared it with the world without the need for validation or acceptance? What lives would we lead if we gloriously declared to burn all the rules, and give ourselves permissions to be the mischievous leader, the wild visionary, the unconventional entrepreneur, the playful spiritual teacher, the laughing healer, the entertaining minister, the soulful scientist, the millionaire yoga teacher, etc?

True leadership and true conscious creation stem from you allowing yourself to be you, and receiving, seeing, speaking, being, acting, and living your highest truth. Everything else is noise.

Your only responsibility on earth is to be 100% you, the you that was born to shine with all your glory and all your magic, before you inherited all the noise from the world. You soul has already gifted you with every tool, gift and resource for you to create, lead, and enjoy the most magnificent and beautiful divine expression that only you can deliver.

The world needs your essence. The world needs your voice. And the world needs you to claim your leadership and space.

Burn all the rules and beliefs about who you should be, what your soul-expansion journey should look like, and how you should be living. You don’t need them anymore.

Not so surprisingly, the message from my next ayahuasca ceremony was: “Laugh at your own silliness, you know all this is a game, right?”

The playful light in me winks at the playful light in you.

Love,
Juliet

p.s. Join me for my free 7-Day Mini Video Series on my Facebook page Journeying With Juliet, where I share the 7 essential pillars for you to step into your power and essence so you can live your truth, and create your highest visions in life. See you there!

Recommended articles by Juliet Tang:

• 7 Ways to Access Inner Peace Now – What Life In New York Has Taught Me
• Money and Spirituality – 5 Common Abundance Blocks, and How to Transform Them
• Awakening: 7 Steps to Ease the Labor Pain of Spiritual Rebirth
• Teachings of Ayahuasca – Creation, Death, Rebirth, and 15 Essential Life Lessons
• My Journey of Healing Autoimmune Disease – 5 Things You Can Do to Start Healing Today
• I Woke Up and the World Around Me is Still Asleep… What to Do?
• If Your Boss Is Dolores Umbridge – 4 Spiritual Tools for the Workplace
• How Psilocybin Mushrooms and Plant Medicine Can Heal Humanity and Transform Our World
• The Search for Enlightenment: 5 Crucial Lessons…and Why None of It Actually Matters
• Why You’re Struggling to Leave Your Soul-Sucking Job

About the author:

Juliet Tang is a plant medicine integration mentor and conscious leadership guide. She supports awakened entrepreneurs and soulful individuals who are seeking expert guidance in plant medicine integration as well as soul expansion to embody higher consciousness, and manifest their grandest visions in life. Her unique brilliance is evoking the playful Divinity within. Juliet takes a powerful stand for expanding consciousness, and living your highest truth.

Her 1:1 mentoring program can be found here.

You can also follow her on Facebook and Instagram.