Have you ever had the desire to live more fully but you don’t know how? Drop In with Susan Burrell who says, “I have designed this book to give you action steps that may feel hard and some that will seem easy. Done in a consistent manner, they will create a beautiful transformation within you whose final destination is that of living your most empowered life – filled with freedom, happiness and love … Be brave. This journey is not for the squeamish or for one who wants to remain a victim. The journey to empowerment and self-love takes courage and persistence. There will be times when you will hit a wall of resistance. Just breathe and remember your intention, which you will be asked to set at the beginning of the book. So take a deep breath and let’s begin.” Susan breaks it down into key words for what Empower symbolises. She gives us insights & affirmations to make the journey truly personal — & plenty of space to find your own way. If you’ve ever wanted guidance, she is here!
a) I am a feisty scorpio (was even born with red hair to back it up!) who has navigated life by learning how to listen within to the Divine urge that keeps pointing me in the direction of my life’s purpose. Even when I can’t see the road. I am empathic. As a child this made me very uncomfortable because I could feel everyone in the room and not understand why. I now realize that empathic part of me is a gift, and it is what I use when I work with clients to help them to uncover their brilliance and inner love. Who knew?!? Right?? I love being in conversation with people and learning what they think and feel. In fact, I have a thought-provoking podcast called, Empowering Chats with Susan Burrell. You can find my podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or your favorite podcast platform. The idea for this podcast came from my positive talk radio show called, “Living Your Inspired Life” that I hosted and broadcast in Ventura, Santa Barbara & Los Angeles counties from 2010-2016
Leave a comment for radio show guestsWhat’s the story behind the story? We’ll find out on Dropping In. Our guests are today’s original thinkers. Conversations that spark new ways of seeing what’s going on. We bring it all to the table. Diverse perspectives, controversy, loving and singular voices. Magically stories reveal the common threads that link us. Experience the joys, the fist pumps, the detours and the hard-won truths of those who blaze the trail so that we might do the same and now here’s your host Diane Dewey.
Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. We’re still stuck in the pandemic but that doesn’t mean we have to be stuck in ourselves. Susan Burrell author of Live and Empowered Life! A 30-Day Journey Book. She’s a podcaster of Empowering Chats, individual spirit guide, and self-proclaimed light leader. On Facebook her group workshops are there. Susan is here with us to help move around the interior furniture to create a path to what we want. We will throw stuff out, acquire things we never thought we could have, maximize and create flow kind of like a Feng Shui for the soul. She’s an intuitive healer. Whatever mission you’re on whether it’s reducing alcohol intake while we’re off our traditional connections and ways of being with one another. We will find out how we can spark the motivation to not just took off the boxes of career, where to live, who to be with, how to make money, but how to deepen satisfaction in ourselves and our lives. Welcome Susan.
Susan: It’s a pleasure to be here with you today Diane. Thanks for having me.
Diane: We are delighted to have you. You’re a self-proclaimed feisty Scorpio redhead. The bio thing I read on your website is something you don’t choose to really, you didn’t subscribe to the bio thing, the biographical thing but here’s a little menu to choose from. You can choose from Column A and B. The pandemic has related to self-recreation, the inner journey versus the outer. Where do you find yourself now and how do you describe what you’re doing now?
Susan: Oh wow. That’s a good question. Wow so currently in this moment that we’re recording, I find myself personally in a twist. Meaning that all the work that I’ve been doing up until now has gotten me to where I am and there’s good times. There’s times where the work, where the inner work of learning how to love yourself more and feel empowered. You have those really great days. Wow, I’m doing it and it’s awesome. All my intentions are following through. Then there’s the days where something trips you and by you, I mean me. Then all of a sudden there’s this upheaval again and there is this twist, this turning back in within oneself or within me. I’m just going to talk about me Diane. That’s all I can do. I’ve been twisted and having to turn back within myself to be gentle, to be kind, to be loving and to allow whatever this is that is twisting me up literally. It showing up in my body as well and just see what it is and allow it. Allow it to unwind and then reveal itself.
I know for me, I’ve been squirming like a worm on a hook, like one of my close friends says just squirming because there’s something that wants to reveal itself from within me. What is occurring is, I’m having these big sob sets. Here I am this person who is supporting others and feeling empowered. It’s not that I don’t feel empowered. It’s that there is something else that wants to be released and I don’t know what it is. Oftentimes I don’t even know that you need to know what it is. It’s just when it shows up when you get find yourself in a twist, when I do, I just have to really release it and it has to be a gentle release. Not an out damn spot, kind of thing. That is where I’m currently at.
Some of this is because, I don’t know if your listeners now but I know you do. Mercury is going into retrograde like any second now. What that means usually it goes on for a couple of few weeks. Everything appears wonky like technology is wonky. Contracts are wonky. Finances get a little wonky but really what it requires is for us to go still. Not wiggle, not squirm, not deny or avoid but really take time for inner reflection and recalibration. Actually, that’s part of what my twist is Diane, I’m getting ready to sit, like just go okay. I’ll just be a little quiet within myself.
Diane: It’s unnatural. It’s an unnatural state. I think I just so appreciate your honesty and your candor with that because I think we can all relate to what you’ve just said Susan. The idea that something, you think you’re going along great, the affirmations are working, all your intentions are good and things are following through and then suddenly there’s a monkey wrench in the works. What we do? You are a person who has shared with us, this just kind of deep emotional well. As I understand it mercury retrograde also means going back over things, thinking maybe we’ve got things ticked off, the boxes are ticked off. We’re satisfied with our work, we’re satisfied with this, that but take a deeper look. Is there more that we can do? Is there other things that we can do? You’ve asked the question in my readings of your work. Have you ever wanted to live more fully but don’t know how? I think who hasn’t experienced this. Maybe you are even receiving a nudge from your own emotional well on that. I wondered…
Susan: Oh absolutely.
Diane: What happens then? Do you put yourself on your own 30-day journey? I mean this answers one of my really big questions for you which was always okay. I know you’ve done all of this work, but is it one and done? Now you’re suggesting maybe, it’s not.
Susan: Oh no. I got chills when you said that. No, it’s never one and done. It’s never over. That’s why we’re human beings on the planet. That’s why I entitled my book a journey because life is a journey and the journey is over when we decide it’s time to make our transition. Exit the planet, not being in physical form. The journey on planet Earth is over. There is an ongoing journey. The soul is on a journey and the soul embodies us and we embody it for the time that we’re alive on planet Earth but then the soul continues on because were infinite beings.
To speak to your other thing about the taking things off and all that. I was hearing like two weeks ago, I kept hearing this word recalibration, recalibration. I’m like I know what that means. Then later when I was saying I was like I don’t know what that means. I looked up recalibration and there really isn’t that kind of a word. I had to look at calibration. Calibration is basically coming up with a plan that is gradient, that builds in gradation. Does that make sense? There’s a stepping up and stepping into. It’s usually like calibrating an engine or calibrating a machine or something like that. I think we’re machines. Going into mercury retrograde, it is a recalibration. It’s reassessing what’s working, what’s not. Reconfiguring our belief systems, but also the actions that we take. I started walking my dog, at least twice a week whereas before I was sitting, in my office way too many hours. Then I noticed well, I stand up and my hips are hurting like oh, I’m not moving.
That is a recalibration. All right, what do I want to do that will make me feel healthier. I’m getting ready to start what I call a fast this coming Monday, because there’s lots of things during the Covid. Well, I can just eat whatever I want idea because I’m cooking for myself or whatever it is. I am recalibrating. What am I going to actually be conscious about putting in my body and what am I going to let go of? That kind of stuff.
Diane: You talk a lot about movement, actually. It’s something in your writings. I read your 30-day journey, Living An Empowered Life and intentions include where do I want to be at the end of this journey? What baggage would I like let go of? What do I want to take with me? I mean I think it’s also fascinating that it is a 30-day journey. It’s also not instantaneous. These calibrations are sort of incremental. They are dawnings like adjustments, fine-tuning that you’re making to things are what you thought they were versus what they are. Like you believe in movement but you’re not moving yourself. This is something I totally relate to as well. Wait a minute. When am I going to get up and stretch and take that walk that’s going to clear my head?
For those of us who would like to have just a definition I’m going to read from Susan Burrell. Your empowerment, this is the quote, is not based on external relationships, but on your inner connection to yourself. Empowerment is about becoming stronger and more confident from the inside out. This is the journey you’re currently on to begin to connect with your inner authority, to allow your natural courage, confidence, and creativity to take a leading role in your life. I also love the recognition that all is not perfect all the time, that we have to live with a bunch of stuff that happens and certainly now maybe more than most of the time. I’m just really, I’m very intrigued by the fact that you may be taking another journey yourself. When you do that, do you work with the letters of Empower that you used in your book? If you could talk a little bit about what empowerment means to you.
Susan: It’s interesting because I did work with those letters when I first conceived them. I was like oh, this is what I’m working on. I went oh that means E. Then a little later when I got to the other E which was emancipate and I started thinking and processing emancipating because I really wanted to be free in my second half of life. The emancipate became like the focal point of freeing myself of my belief systems, freeing myself of my old relationship that I felt still attached to or shackled by.
I remember working through moments where I would feel free during that time. This was all formatting during and right after I got divorced. It was a contentious, heart shattering divorce. That’s why I was, I really wanted to feel free. My key words were freedom, happiness and love. Then that’s when the empower, the words that describe empower came up because I really, the bottom line is I wanted to feel empowered within myself. I wanted to learn how to love and respect myself so that’s when I was working those words.
This time around and because this sounds really weird Diane, I know, because I’m a Scorpio, one of the totems, if you will, our spirit guides, if you will, is the Phoenix. In my life, I have built and then been burned away, built and burned away. I think that that’s part of currently for me. What’s going on is this whole experience of 2020 and in fact I really do believe it’s the twenties. It’s the decade that I think a lot of people were hoping and praying that 2021 was going to set us all free. That is not going to happen. I think we’ve got a decade of calibrating, recalibrating who we are individually and then collectively. The Empower standing, first of all recognizing that I didn’t feel empowered is what led me to work these, create these words and work it. Then I found so many women coming to me to do inner work or to just get through a horrible divorce or pick themselves up after they’ve been fired from a job that kind of stuff.
I realized that most of what is occurring is people don’t, these women have never been taught how to love themselves in the first place. That certainly was not what was model for me in my home, how to love yourself. What was modeled is to be the good girl. That was the expectation and then it was also that lets all be appropriate kind of thing. It didn’t give us freedom.
Diane: No, loving yourself was like a conceited, self-centered thing to do. When you talk about this recurrence, this idea of cycling back through things and you find out that at root this lack of self-love probably is fundamental to a lot of the patterns that we set up. Now we’re broadcasting the Voice of America studio is in Phoenix. I just thought that that was such a funny thing but I also wonder about, I mean I love also that you weren’t fixated on what the empowerment meant for you, at one time that you shed that skin and can move on from it even like an evolution like it is for evolution or to me that’s so much more real that you’re in dialogue with yourself rather than saying E is for esteem, movement, purpose, ownership and wonder then emancipation and realize. I mean yes, that all works but sometimes things are recalibrating for times that are different. I think it’s just lovely that your fluid enough to work with what’s going on now. You mentioned about evolving as a spirit being. Do you have I think a theological background, a fairly extensive one? Is that so?
Susan: I wouldn’t call it theological, but I do have a Masters in Consciousness. Who makes up those titles? I don’t know but I did study the world philosophies and ancient wisdoms and religions but I also studied quantum physics and psychology and like I said, philosophy. That kind of my inner foundation as well as my foundation that I teach from because the quantum physics base in essence is about how we’re all connected. It proved that something on one side of it, the butterfly effect, on one side of planet can affect something on the other side of the planet which says to me that we are all connected that we’re all one. In this time of division and borders being shut down because people are afraid the pandemic is going to come and get them on the other side of the planet. All this stuff is not the truth of our being and quantum physics has proved it.
There’s this other idea that’s part of the entanglement series that we can positively with our thoughts and emotions and feelings influence not only our small circle of life but the larger circle of life. When we see these people that are exhibiting anger and hatred and all so much stuff that now we get to see on the internet because we can’t go out anywhere. When we see that it triggers us individually even though we may be ohming about because it triggers us because we’re human. That trigger does another calibration, that gradation of what’s next kind of thing within us. I encourage myself and it is my practice, as much as I humanly can to be like to be loved. I mean light from a high regard, light from the highest source and not just you go turn on your light bulb in your room but light that is within us and to be that and to be the love first. Then we see all these or feel like when you go to the market, you can feel peoples fear and anger. It’s ridiculous and yet, that is where people are. To feel it and then emanate the higher vibration, which is love. Walk from an inner awareness that we are all that. We are all love. We are all light and so that’s what my education, teaching is and was.
Diane: Really what you’re about. We are going to need to pause for a commercial break here in a moment but you mentioned physics and physicists and the theory behind interconnectivity. Today I was looking at Abdus Salam, the Nobel prize-winning Pakistani theoretical physicist, the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his contribution to black holes. Then I found out it was his birthday today January 29th, 1926. He said, which I think that you can relate to this. He said, “The deeper we seek the more is the dazzlement of our gaze.” I think that’s where we’re going and fits and starts with light leaders like you Susan Burrell. We’re going to pause here for a moment but when we come back we’re going to ask Susan about what holds us back and find out more. Don’t go away, we’ll be right back on Dropping In.
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Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Susan Burrell and when you’ve been listening, you might want to know where to find all of these juicy bits including your book Susan. It’s at SusanBurrell.com. S-U-S-A-N-B-U-R-R-E-L-L.com. It’s a place to find out maybe where you want to go out, how you can get there, what’s holding you back? We just talked about self-love. I think the other thing we just touched on Susan which is so interesting is bedazzlement and the word and how it carries a certain kind of energy, words are vibration. We know this from Amanda Gorman reading at the Biden and Harris inauguration.
Susan: I have energy shooting through me as you just mentioned her name. She was spectacular.
Diane: Right and how does this work? Talk to us about how meridians are touched in different parts of the brain are activated through words.
Susan: We are energy systems. Everything on the planet is an energy system. The Animals, plants, rocks, us and when our energy gets blocked that’s where people begin to see disease in their bodies. Dis-ease because the energy isn’t flowing. In Chinese medicine there are something called chi. It’s in every kind of ancient wisdom. This idea that there is an energy that flows in and through us. Some people want to say its spirit, God, Gaia, Allah but it is also something that activates and allows our physical body to function properly, to function in an alignment with that energy that flows through because as human beings because we’re energy we are I believe co-creators with that energy which means we can make our life in a positive way or a negative way in.
This is where the words, the words that we say and the words that we think, the things that we allow in, the words and feelings of others whether it’s watching a movie or watching somebody’s podcast. If it’s a positive thing then your system begins to realign and light up, recalibrate, right? If it’s a negative thing then things get stuck. By negative I mean, anger, fear, blame, shame, guilt. It makes our energy system gunk up and then it becomes hard to co-create, make our lives move forward in loving, kind, positive ways. We’re currently watching, I got to say Diane, we are currently watching recognition in small ways, conscious recognition conscious awakening in our country, in the United States of where this negative anger can lead us and where a kind and loving compassionate tone can lead us. We’re watching this as people like I mentioned at the beginning I’m in a twist. Many people are in a twist. The way that you used to be doesn’t work anymore and clearly were seeing that out picture. It doesn’t work. It creates violence and divisiveness.
What does work is coming back to self, coming back to center, coming back to recognizing the light and love that we are individually and then we can recognize it in others when we go out. Even if somebody has a mask on and they’re looking at you, you can feel, if you’ve done your inner work, you can begin to see the love or the life that they are radiating. It’s important that we radiate that because not only because our words do have impact because our thoughts have impacts because our thoughts are also fueled by emotion often. Not all the time, but often. Like, if you’re judging somebody and then I’m raising my hand. I do that still. I try. I work really hard not to.
Diane: This is Susan keeping it real.
Susan: When you are judging somebody you are sending out negative vibrations to that person. Oh I don’t like what she put on today or that person is really just a horrible person. You don’t know the truth about that individual but what you’re doing is sending a negative vibrational, this goes back to quantum physics, impact on to that person, that you don’t even know their story. You don’t know their story. That just continues to amplify like we talked about that one thing can affect something on the other side of the planet. It amplifies the negative vibration to keep us as humanity stuck.
To choose to walk out of your home after you’ve done your inner work in the morning, connecting with the love and the life that you are and then choosing consciously to radiate that with your actions and your thoughts and your words, begins to amplify and multiply the love and the light. When we focus on the darkness let’s say and we want to change it, attack it, make it go away. We are giving it energy that amplifies it. That’s part of my twist again after everything that occurred in January this year is to recalibrate my love. This internal love and this higher vibrational left because I get, I know, I seen it happen in my life that when I am in that activity and vibration of love from a higher perspective, it just, I become a healing presence just by walking through a room. Everybody can do this. Everybody can do this. Everybody can be light and love. It’s not just oh well, I have to have a Masters in Consciousness. Everybody can do that by having an open compassionate heart.
Diane: I think it is within all of us and that is how these matrix connect to one another. This is how we are inter relational even in pandemic times, sometimes even more poignantly, as you say, you can still sense it when you’re looking at someone while wearing a mask. One of the things you just said and several of them that were so poignant. You talked about the words and the words that we speak and also the vibrational pole of intention. I’m also thinking about the narratives and the things we tell ourselves. I mean sometimes you wouldn’t want yourself as your own best friend because you’re so negative and critical of some of the things you do. I mean it’s like oh my God. Am I going to reach for potato chips again? Yes and we’re still going to have self-love but I think that this self-narrative that’s also part of these beautiful words, these bedazzlement. Think what we could do with ourselves if we really talked to ourselves in a way that was encouraging and amplifying as you say the love and light that’s within us. I think this is what you’re here to tell us, isn’t it? Do you feel like this is your purpose in life?
Susan: Oh, Diane. Have I mentioned how much I adore you? You’re awesome and your intuitive, just goes right into where it is I am in the most. I think for me when I was feeling called to become a spiritual teacher and leader and counselor I recognized that I could not teach unless I walked my talk, unless I had done the work myself. Consequently, when I do teach or went to counseling somebody, I have to do the work as well. In fact, I had a client the other day and we were talking about the story in our heads and the dark side that she was seeing that she didn’t want to look at and things like that. It came out of my mouth while we should both probably keep a journal of all the bad things we think about ourselves. I was like oh crap, so writing down those negative thoughts so that they don’t get in my brain and circulate.
Diane: That’s a good idea.
Susan: That’s become my practice. Three in the morning, why did I have a handful of cashews before I went to bed? Why did I not get up and walk? all the judgy things that I can only talk about me but I have that self-critical voice and it calmed down quite a bit when I am in alignment with myself and I’m doing the kind loving thing. Boy, it becomes a raging lunatic you know what, when I’m not in alignment with what I know I need to do for my body and my mind and my health. The stories that we tell keep us stuck in the behaviors that we don’t realize are unhealthy.
Diane: No one’s coming to help me. No one’s here to support me. Weeping, moaning, sort of victim talk or I’m all alone. I’m in this on my own. I mean, it does cause look, we have a shadow side the love and the light that’s real but you are a healthy skeptic. I know you are also not shying away from the shadow side. We commit transgressions all the time that are part of being human and it’s worse than potato chips and cashews sometimes. Sometimes it’s very real hurt that we inadvertently create. I think I’m very fascinated and when you spoke at this idea of awakening consciousness, we might be more aware of it now as time goes on because there are people who are sharing their wisdom as you are but this conscious awakening and talking about it throughout a decade. I’m so interested in the fact that you as a realist are also showing your skepticism about what we’re going to be about, not just right now in this moment but for the foreseeable future, as we evolve. You have some thoughts on this next decade and they are not all just pretty are they?
Susan: Yes. It’s interesting as an empath and because you’re very intuitive I know you get this. As an empath I can feel like we said earlier, I can feel stuff that’s happening but I can’t, I’m not a psychic and go on March of 2021 I can’t do that but I definitely had clients going I can’t wait for 2021. I want this to be over. I want to go back to normal. All those things that are not happening. As soon as we crossed into 2021 and I was meditating I was like oh, because we’re not going back. We’re going forward. In going forward, you’ve got to clean up your garbage. You’ve got to be self-aware. We’re watching the people that are not self-aware creating havoc and that’s a kind word but because there’s chaos and havoc a lot of people get scared. Okay, let’s talk about the shadow, the dark.
What I’ve been realizing and the information I’ve been receiving is that the dark isn’t here to negate things. The dark may be here to clear things out in terms of chaos and upheaval and I don’t know, possibly revolutions. I have no idea but it’s here to kind of clear things out. Those of us that are light leaders have got to also be, it’s not a battle. That’s the old paradigm. That’s the masculine paradigm. You and I talked about this a long time ago. The Masculine Paradigm of a hierarchy that tells everybody what to do. We have moved into the feminine Paradigm. I think that’s what the twenties in 2000 are going to be about. How do we lead from a feminine paradigm dynamic? Because the feminine, the divine feminine isn’t about eradicating the divine masculine which a lot of men want to say, that’s what it is.
It is about how do we work together? How do we call everybody on to a circle where we can face each other and listen, and collaborate and cooperate to come to a consensus that is best for everyone? That’s how the divine feminine work. In the process of creating that new modality if you will and new leadership because we’ve not seen it in many places before. Things have to change. Things have to get shaken up and institutions if you will, corporations, long-standing ideology has to be broken up and taken to the dump because in Italy the Romans built roads. The Romans built these amazing aqueducts and cities. Then centuries go on and the Italians built on top on top on top. I went to Assisi years ago. Have you ever been to Assisi Diane?
Diane: Yes, it’s magical.
Susan: Oh my God, I had no idea, but I remember walking in to this restaurant and the floor was Plexiglas. You can see the ancient Roman home that was down below because they had built two centuries above it. There was one more house on top. I was fascinated. The building we were in already look to me as an American way old but I’m looking down at this Roman city that was below Assisi. The Romans were good at doing that but then there was the fall of Rome. Do you see what I’m saying? We are going to be building on top of our old paradigms but I am feeling that this divine feminine energy that’s been pummeling the planet for the oh, I’d say the last five, ten years really wants a fresh start.
Dealing with the darkness is not about eradicating it. I think a lot of people that are consciousness leaders and light leaders and certainly the transformational leadership years ago, there was the idea of kind of eradicating the ego. The ego in our human mind, there’s less people to say oh, the ego is bad. I don’t want to be ego person but we can never be egoless because that little piece of the ego is the thing that has helped us form our personality. It helped us to discern certain things that we need to decide on. Lots of people are associating ego eagle with darkness. That’s the dark side. That’s my dark side. I don’t want to look at it but it’s important that we do because what I just, the information I’ve been receiving the last couple weeks is the darkness is necessary to amplify the light. It’s not that as light leaders, we are fighting the darkness.
It used to be when I came into my metaphysical practice at the ripe old age of 20 something because I knew everything at twenty-something. I saw myself as a spiritual warrior. Indeed that’s what I had been in past lives a spiritual warrior leading the war against darkness but this time around, this lifetime, I really got that that is part of the old paradigm. That’s part of the masculine. That’s part of the idea that war is necessary in order for other people to survive. You hear the divisiveness in that. Then we are completely divided as a humanity. You’re black. I’m white. You live in Israel and I live in America. You’re Mexican and I’m Canadian. Those labels are meaningless because we are all human beings. To fight against the darkness continues to grow the darkness. To see the light and allow the darkness to unfold itself while we hold it with compassion is more the higher good.
Diane: It’s not just higher it’s probably going to be much more effective. As you say, we’ve been trying these movements, just because an administration changes doesn’t mean that these movements don’t keep gaining traction and energy and the fight. Yes, the thing that you’re saying to me also and what a great intuitive summer you’ve just given us is that non-binary solutions, non-binary thinking is the way forward to connect, to not have either, to embrace so that we can come up with creative solutions. Luckily for us Susan Burrell just shared one of her favorite I think when one of the most high caliber terms that you use excavation. We won’t necessarily go back to the Romans right now but we are going to try to figure out how to excavate trash and how to eliminate things that are no longer necessary.
That’s something we can do, even in a pandemic. Don’t go away. We’re going to take a commercial break now but will we will be right back. Easy for me to say on Dropping In where we’re going to continue to study movement with Susan Burrell.
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Diane: Welcome back, everyone. We’re here with Susan Burrell and we’re talking about light leaders. Susan, you have upcoming workshops. I see that one is even coming up. Are you a light leader? February 15th to 19th and then there’s one in March. Talk to us a little bit about light leader workshops and the platform where they take place.
Susan: Thank you for allowing this. Last year when the pandemic, when the lockdown happened I developed a Facebook group as so many called Live Your Empowered Life. In the group, we started teaching workshops. One day I was asking what’s mine to do in meditation which I invite everybody listening. It’s a really good practice. You can do it daily just asking spirit what mine to do and then listen. Your linear mind isn’t figuring out what you have to do. Your inner guidance system will share with you what it is for you to do or not to.
I heard very, very, very loudly what was mine to do with activate the light. Further investigation was activate light leaders. I developed this five-day workshop. It happens, this one’s going to be over Zoom so we can include more people but it’s an hour every day during those five days from February 15th to the 19th. It’s about, I just guide everybody through a process of the story in their head and getting rid of it enough so they can hear what their real purpose is. By the end of the week, with some homework, not a lot of homework but I always have homework. I really want people to do the work and get some sort of transformation out of the experience. By the end of the week. People hopefully will have a better perception of how to access the light and love within them, how to activate that but also what is there’s to do.
We did a couple of these workshops in the group last year and people that did them felt that they really receive some good transformation that they could actually sustain not just a one off. Well I did that and then five days later it’s done, with sustainable transformation. We’re going to do that in February and then there’s another one in March. People can go to my website SusanBurrell.com. We are opening registration for the Light Leader One Workshop on February 3rd, which is next week. They can register and then and then we’ll send everybody because were going to do it on Zoom the link so people can get ready.
Diane: I think that in terms of differentiating yourself Susan, from other say spiritual guides, coaches who are out there I mean clearly your substantial sort of comprehension of the big picture is one thing. Your deep, intuitive resonance is another and your sense of reality and keeping it real I think it’s the real captivator here because you’re not shying away. I think that in your affirmations, reading through your book as well I think the light leader workshops which some of us may feel how can I be a light leader? I’m just a person but I think with somebody like you, you’re going to be really able to understand and access those aspects of ourselves.
Some of the things that keep us stuck I would say, one of the ones that came out for me in reading your book is shame. Shame at our vast imperfection and keeps us from loving ourselves. What to do with our shadow side, the shame, blame, judgment side that you mentioned before. Here’s one of the affirmations from Living the Empowered Life that came from you Susan. “I release any shame that may be keeping me stuck, any past mistakes or misconduct that has the gooey stickiness of shame is dissolved as I face it and watch it move back into the no-thingness. I am free to live and love my life.” This is pretty good stuff. I think it’s really interesting how it builds on kind of the idea of forgiveness which is in the Judeo-Christian tradition forgiveness for others but forgiveness for ourselves not just in the past but as we move forward to be more accepting of ourselves, more forgiving of ourselves and maybe not even expect quite so much of ourselves so that this love and light actually does come through. What do you have to say about, I mean I know you are just capable of revealing so much but comment if you would please on the subject of shame and how it hold this to still.
Susan: Brene Brown and all the amazing work she’s done has said that when you face your shame you don’t hide from it or your guilt. When you face it, it diminishes because shame needs you to ignore it in order for it to continue to control you. I was struck by that when I read it because I did not realize I had shame until I was going through divorce. Then it showed up clearly one day. It was sticky and it was gooey. I immediately sat down and did a meditation where I cleared it out of my, I found myself in a room and I just cleared the room, washed the walls, the corners and it took me like 10 minutes to release it. I didn’t need to know what the shame was attached to.
I mean sometimes people think they need to know that. I don’t really think you do as long as you recognize this is what it is. Then you can erase it if you will but I think we all carry some form of shame because we are. I haven’t met a single person who is not dysfunctional. Have you Diane?
Diane: No. in fact I think that’s what makes it interesting.
Susan: We all carry pockets of shame or doubt or fear or guilt. Part of what I know I needed to do was get rid of that. I remember going through my divorce and I was pulling off all this doubt, all this self-loathing and I saw myself. It’s like taking off multiple raincoats like they would wear in the Pink Panther, the movie The Pink Panther. Inside the coat there was various pockets of other doubt and guilt. I just remember one day, I felt like I was just pulling this stuff off of my physical body and my mental and emotional body so that I could be free. I think that a lot of us carry around that whether you think it’s in a suitcase or a backpack or Marley’s trunk and change. We all have it.
Part of asking yourself, am I a light leader isn’t so you can go stand on a big grand and stage and pontificate. It is so that you can activate that light and be that in your family of origin or your workplace or just going to the market like we were talking about earlier because we all need to be that. As we all radiate that from an awakened awareness, our consciousness up levels. That goes back to the calibration thing of planning and moving things up in a gradation, graduation into kind of thing. If we can all calibrate ourselves up into a higher consciousness that grounded as a human being, walking through the muck of life because there is still mucky muck in life but grounded and then open at the top if you will. Open to being more of that light and love.
I don’t want people to feel scared that oh my God now she’s going to make us do stuff we don’t want to do. No, it’s awakening within the individual so the individual can be exactly who they were meant to be. That may mean being a mother or a CEO. Who knows?
Diane: Right, who knows? I think it’s so fascinating. We could go on about this forever but we’ve only got a couple of minutes till closing. I think this idea, we used to think that somehow this shame, this guilt, the self-loathing, all of this anxiety was somehow necessary. We needed it. Unless you were doing that you weren’t really humble enough or you weren’t really thinking clearly about yourself. I think the fact that receiving love is harder than giving it for some of us is the takeaway here. That you are helping people tap into universal love that’s available there for the asking.
I also look at, here we are at with two minutes to go so how do you summarize this but you say at the end of your podcast and so it is. Namaste. This is your sign off. In a sort of one word or less in so it is. Is our state of mind creating our realities Susan Burrell?
Susan: Absolutely.
Diane: Okay.
Susan: How’s that? So it is also like a tagline to prayer. Everything we think is actually a prayer. Everything we feel is actually a prayer and so it is. We’re claiming it. We’re owning it.
Diane: Again, the impact of words. You say it. You believe it. You intend it. And so it is. I love that opening, that sense of possibility that you give us. I can’t thank you enough for being with us today Susan. Go to SusanBurrell.com and to Facebook to find Susan and these incredible workshops to realize and radiate. This is just so delightful to have had you with us today. Don’t forget the deeper we seek, the more is the dazzlement of our gazed Abdus Salam. The one that we resonated with. Thank you, Susan. Thank you to Matt Weidner and Aaron Keller, our engineers, to Robert Giolino, our executive producer, and most of all to you our listeners. Remember to stay safe, be well, and challenge yourself to be seekers. Till next week thank you for dropping in.
Thank you so much for dropping in. Please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.