“I’m stuck in a weird place….like there’s a wall blocking me,” he uttered as he stared blankly at me. His eyes and throat seemed especially devoid of moisture… like the very marrow had been sucked out of his bones.

Even though Lance (a pseudonym) had been very successful as a young award-winning ad executive, he’d been a part of a growing trend of ‘NextGen’ leaders “finding themselves” and greater truths about life by globe-hopping through intentional communities and festivals.

Not that this pattern is terribly distinct from the beatniks of the 1950s, the 60s-70s hippy and women’s lib movement, the punk and grunge movements of the 80s and 90s, or the resurgence of gender and racial equality movements in the early 2000s.

Nor is there any sharp difference when a more mature adult gets fed up with the demoralizing management of poor leadership and savage profiteering within an organizational culture. These ‘Corporate Refugees’ similarly want to create a life of more meaning and impact without losing their stable incomes.

The desire to “find ourselves” is tied organically to a stage when we begin to experience what’s been long-buried within. As we hear our latent internal thoughts and feelings, what’s referred to as metacognition, and respond to it as new awareness to be processed, the world as we knew it doesn’t seem to make much sense anymore.

We want to unearth what’s true for ourselves as a means of making sense of the world.

Yet not only do we see our own internal experiences, but also other people’s internal experiences. And as we see ourselves, and others, we have greater care and concern for each other and all of humanity, leading to empathy (and thus social justice, activism, volunteerism or philanthropy,) an awareness that life is ambiguous (rules no longer make sense) and a desire for equity (distribution of power and resources.)

In other words, when a person reaches this stage, depending on their age or entrenchment in the cultural systems, either all hell breaks loose, or there is a swift loosening of desire to conform any longer.

When the world no longer makes sense in the way we thought, we begin to recognize that most of life is socially constructed with a set of rules that no longer apply.

It’s like we need new operating agreements for how life should be.

And how do you find your way in that?

Lance’s story was typical of clients who find their way to me, seeking a greater awareness of who they really are, different than what they’d been led to believe from their childhood and early sociocultural contexts.

Lance had done enough personal and spiritual development work to know that his childhood narrative didn’t belong to him. Never had. It was fabricated out of the need for his parents to feel they were guiding him in their version of the story.

When Lance found me, after several years of deep exploration, and having read my book, he was beginning to transition into the next stage even, where one drops into a chasm of loss of meaning. Period. Not only do social rules no longer apply, but identity itself is meaningless.

The ambivalence of reality can create deep despair, or a supernatural desire to find a way through it.

“I have a godsize hole in me that I need to fill,” he pleaded. Yearning for a punctuation to his very existence.

And so we began.

Why We Need to Find Ourselves

The gift of uncovering our own unique purpose and identity is that we release the unconscious limitations that bound us to a former (and inauthentic) identity and narrative about ourselves.

We become more true to ourselves.

In this unleashing of who we truly are, we also regain access to Parts that had been long repressed, or fractured. We resolve the shadows of our former self. We regain the unique and special nature of our innate being.

Regaining access to ourselves in this way creates a more true alignment with the very nature of us- our purposeful self.

In finding ourselves, we also begin to care more about others as we let go of the toxins we spewed internally and then projected upon others. True empathy occurs for ourselves and our fellow humans. We forgive the protector Parts that kept us safe in childhood but later separated us from the kind of love and nourishment that creates loving self-acceptance and individuation.

As we uncover who we truly are, Parts and all, and begin to amplify that in life, we begin to experience ourselves as limitless beings.

What Happens When You Seek Inner Mastery

Inner Mastery is about becoming wholly yourself.

Over and over again.

While there is never a finality to achieving Inner Mastery- it happens again and again in each stage of life…

… if you allow yourself to live fully as you are, at each stage, rather than the limited conception of yourself that you imagine, you accept and embrace yourself so fully that anything becomes possible.

At each stage there’s a level of mastery that can alter your life forever by allowing you to navigate the challenges and become more of yourself. Continuously.

So that gaining Inner Mastery is a forever process of learning to know and love who you are, and to be enlivened in every aspect of yourself.

So what happens when you achieve Inner Mastery?

The 3 Key Results of Inner Mastery

Know Yourself

As you take the steps to gain Inner Mastery, you come to know yourself so fully that life becomes simple in its unboundedness.

Gaining an Authentic Awareness of self is crucial in gaining Inner Mastery. It allows you to make sense of your life and create a new story or narrative that aligns with your True Self.

There is no one on Earth, or probably the entire Cosmos, like you.

When you see your soul as THAT unique expression, you can understand why you’d want to identify your deepest passions, values and purpose in life.

This deeper and authentic self-awareness will help you to:

• Grasp the essential forces that drive you,
• Access the capacities and perspectives you hold,
• Uncover the beliefs that propel or limit you,
• Identify gaps in your awareness or skills, and
• Help you further develop your potential.

When you craft a new story that aligns with the REAL version of you, NOT the story you were told as a child or adolescent, or even as an adult…

….you let go of limiting beliefs and resolve the fractured inner child parts, negative self-talk, patterns that limit you, and release the stuck energy in your body.

When you have that level of awareness, you become a more expanded and embodied version of you.

For your life to flow like magic, the process of self-discovery and self-acceptance is essential for gaining Inner Mastery and living a purposeful life.

For Lance, and many others like him, it looked like:

• A keen awareness of who he was and ideas about what he wanted to create as a ‘next step’ and business,
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• A new story about who he’d been, and who he was becoming,
• An inner peace that let him dive into his new work, knowing it would all emerge as needed,
• A recognition that he wasn’t limited by anyone else’s ideas of who or what he should be, but only by his belief in what was possible, and
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• A willingness to step out of his shell and create new life and business from his dreams even if it wasn’t clear how he would do that, because he knew those alternate realities were available to him.
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Love Who You Are

As you come to know yourself, and begin to wake up to what’s possible for your life, you also sense a great authority living within you.

Awakening your Inner Authority is foundational for achieving Inner Mastery. In this phase, you truly wake up to who you are, not the limited version of yourself created by your childhood or other contexts.

By waking up to True Self and what matters to you, you can renegotiate and loosen formerly rigid identities and old stories about who you were, remove limiting beliefs, and create new alternate identities and narratives for your life.

In this reawakening process, you will gain a cognitive liberation of your natural Self. This process of inner transformation requires courage, self-reflection, and a willingness to let go of old patterns, habits, beliefs, fractured sub-psychic parts, lifetime and ancestral trauma and even karma that no longer serve you.

As you wend your way into this journey of liberation, your life force will become rejuvenated and you will experience an enlivened and amplified expression of your True Self.

You’ll organically begin to flow into the natural expressions of who you truly are.

This awakening to your inner authority will allow you to:

• Tap into your innate wisdom and intuition,
• Orient to being self-directed and focused,
• Question the externally-imposed beliefs and values
• Create new stories about your life,
• Gain self-reliance to your internal compass,
• Create clear boundaries that make life decisions easier,
• Rejuvenate and enliven your life force, and
• Develop your authentic voice and perspective.

By liberating your Awakened Authority, you’ll gain the courage, confidence and commitment to express your unique talents, passions and purpose in life, and create a more fulfilling and meaningful existence.

The rewards of gaining Inner Mastery and living from a place of inner authority are immeasurable, as they promote deep purposeful alignment with your true self and a life of fulfillment and impact.

In working with Lance as he awakened to his own inner authority, he experienced:

• A deepened love for himself and for others, as he recognized his own one-of-a-kind nature so distinct from anyone else,
• A welcoming home of Parts of him that were missing and could now be integrated,
• Becoming himself, wholly, as the integrated aspects of him were allowed to flourish in the new stories, new creative expression and new life he was creating,
• A recognition of his sacred nature, with all his genius and flaws, and
• A willingness to be both connected to the whole, and distinct as his unique flavor that propelled him forward in his work and life.
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Be Enlivened

Amplifying your Alignment with who you truly are and your purposeful expression is like getting a jet pack to your Inner Mastery. As you ‘lift off’ and become bolder in your true expression, you’ll find it harder and harder to return to the life you knew before.

From this new orbit, you’ll also launch into your future self and become the new identity that you desire, learning to “live as if” you are already that being.

When you align with your purpose, you live in a way that is authentic to who you are and what matters most. You are able to let go of what is not true to you and not serving you, allowing you to live into parallel realities to become whom you deeply desire.

It also means that you commit at such a deep level that the quarks (the energy that makes up atoms) begin to align and point all your life force in the same direction.

You become extraordinary, consequential, BECAUSE you have surrendered to this path of being whom you deeply desire and committing to something beyond yourself.

By “living as if” you are already your future self, you are able to tap into the power of your imagination and visualize the life that you want to create. This helps you to become more focused and intentional in your actions, and to make choices that are aligned with your purpose.

As you continue to align with your purpose, you will begin to develop a new identity that is congruent with who you truly are, and you will become more confident and empowered in your ability to create the life that you desire.

This amplification of your aligned self allows you to:

• Live As If you are already your future self, in the here and now, coming into an energetic alignment,
• Learn to Be and Feel as your new identity in every part of your work and life,
• Letting go of what is NOT you, including old belief systems and the habits and distractions that accompany them,
• Continuing to welcome in Parts of you that can now serve you fully,
• Working with resistance that may still be living in you, so that you can relinquish whatever roadblocks exist that may prevent your deepest desires,
• Identifying that life is a mirror for whatever you are experiencing internally, and choosing to create a different reality, and
• Creating new realities for yourself based upon who you choose to be.

By creating opportunities to Amplify your Alignment, you’ll gain the inherent power of living in the enlivened and bold imagination to be who you’re meant to be.

The incentives for gaining Inner Mastery and living from a place of enlivened alignment are endless, as they provide the focus, intention, imagination, power and commitment required to live fully as your true self, having more meaning, fulfillment and impact.

As Lance gained capacity to magnify and expand his aligned True Self, he gained:

• Courage and commitment to live boldly and unabashedly as himself, creating new ventures, products, business, relationships and partnerships from there,
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• Increased vitality, as his life force energy became freer and flowed from the sourced expression of himself, rather than an incomplete or fractured version of himself, and
• Faith and trust derived from the bold awareness of himself that was in surrendered partnership with his True Self.
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What Happens After You Gain Inner Mastery?

Lance’s personal success story would seem to be a miracle, or at least an anomaly, were it not so similar to so many others I work with who undergo this profound journey toward Inner Mastery, becoming more and more of who they are and releasing all that they are not.

The next steps on the journey to becoming your most enlivened, empowered, inspired and sourced self, traveling into the wildly inconceivable future beyond your imagination, include:

• Gaining Outer Mastery: stepping into your fullest expression from this sense of Inner Mastery (and not reverting to old habits or cultural norms), and
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• Becoming a Co-Creator with the Universe: as a being with Inner Mastery, you are the space in which the stars reside and all that you do and are is a sacred service to humanity and your own life.