## Metadata - Author: [[Langston Kahn and Christina Pratt]] - Full Title: Deep Liberation - Category: #books ## Highlights - we can think about power as the ability to move deep into the unconscious parts of our souls and authentically embody them in service to a vision bigger than ourselves. Answering the call of life to do what we have come here to do is often when we feel most powerful. Redefining our relationship to power is the first step in clearing the way for the living of our soul’s purpose. ([Location 1047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1047)) - a wound carries the knowledge of what healing feels like. Otherwise, it wouldn’t know that it was wounded. ([Location 1219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1219)) - presence is compassionate curiosity. Presence is the willingness to be with what we find exactly as it is without trying to change or fix it. Presence is our capacity to withhold judgments of value or attempts at analysis and instead put forward the simple desire to learn more about what is coming into our awareness. Presence invites us to get out of the evaluative, story-tumbling mind, and attempt to see only what’s there, as fully as we can, with precision and compassion. ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1274)) - Everything within us is a part of us, and each part thinks it needs to be there for us to survive. Thus, each thing has a valuable perspective to offer us if we are willing to sense in with compassionate presence and consciously put ourselves in its shoes while we maintain our larger sense of self. This is the true art of the deep mind. ([Location 1479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1479)) - Having free will and a body on the Earth means that you are manifesting and co-creating reality all the time and that you owe a debt to all of life for the vast amount of resources that go into giving someone a body. So, from a shamanic perspective, the only way you can begin to repay that debt and move into right relationship with all of life is to align with the energy of the purpose you chose to embody before you got here and find vehicles for your purpose that are in service to life. ([Location 1750](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1750)) - At its core, grounding is a choice. It’s a choice to stay rooted in the present moment, rooted in the current environment you are inhabiting, rooted in your body, and through your body, rooted into the Earth. Grounding is a choice to stay awake and alert rather than spin out into fears and addictions. Grounding is also where we can liberate a deep sense of belonging, of home, and of our right to be here on this planet and to take up space that is not dependent on any other human being or based on the circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=1784)) - Part of what we are liberating as we each cultivate a healthy energy body is our true nature and our trust of our innate way of being. As children, many of us are taught to disregard our truth and distrust our inner normal in so many ways to make the adults around us more comfortable with the ways they have abandoned their truths. ([Location 2114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2114)) - Our hearts are wild things. The more we carefully control our environment, the harder it becomes to truly access the vast wilderness inside of us. ([Location 2684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2684)) - From a shamanic perspective, triggers don’t come out of nowhere. Rather, they are life as a teacher and our souls conspiring to help us see where we are holding past trauma in our bodies. ([Location 2728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2728)) - There is a type of trauma, however, that almost all human beings experience. At certain moments, often in childhood, we fear we are going to die, and we make a choice to survive in that moment that is not aligned with our true nature or authenticity. To a child, death is not just literal, physical death. For a child, facing death can also be figurative: it might be facing the possibility of not being loved, being abandoned, being isolated, being alone, or being annihilated. This is the reality of childhood: we’re dependent on (often extremely flawed) adults for our survival. As children, we tend to think along the lines of, “If I do something to make my parents not love me, maybe they won’t feed me tomorrow.” When facing the possibility of death, we make a fear-based choice to survive. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these choices. We make them because they are the best we can do in the moment or we would do something different. However, when we make these types of choices that are out of alignment with our understanding of the wholeness and truth of who we are, a part of our selves fragments and gets stuck making that same decision again and again. ([Location 2732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2732)) - From a shamanic perspective, our lives and our souls are always talking; our lives are endlessly trying to help our souls answer the question: “Why am I here?” If we accept that when we are triggered, it’s because our lives and our souls are trying to illuminate a part of us that is still stuck in a traumatic moment, then what matters is not the external story of what triggered us, but finding where we hold that dynamic in our bodies so we can release the trauma and reclaim the energy stuck there. ([Location 2747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2747)) - Imagine that in a vivid dream, you tripped on a stone. When you wake, you might wonder what that stone meant. What was the dream trying to show you about yourself or your life? The process of beginning to uncover these answers is called flipping stones. ([Location 2761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2761)) - This process of withdrawing our triggers and projections and transforming them into a prompt we can use to track them to where they are rooted in our body is what many are describing when they talk about shadow work. In the sense that our shadow is anything that we are unconscious of and shadow work is making that which we are unconscious of conscious, they are correct. And if you are comfortable with that definition of shadow work, then the Deep Liberation Process is, in part, a process for engaging with one aspect of the shadow. ([Location 2847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=2847)) - One of the reasons Healer is the first archetype we begin working with in this process is because in addition to them holding the essential wisdom of what we uniquely need to embody the true blueprint of our health, Healer holds the wisdom of how to live well in our body. In other words, Healer holds the answer to the question: “How do I live as an embodied being physically incarnate on this Earth in a good way?” The most important part of Healer’s answer to that question is “In the moment.” The essence of the Deep Liberation Process involves bringing all of our many disparate selves that are stuck dwelling on the past or worrying about the future into the present moment where we have the most power to create change. ([Location 3096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=3096)) - The body is not designed to be spread out and trapped across time, to dwell on past moments of suffering, or to reach forward, out of fear, into the future. Our bodies are meant to be right here with us, fully in the present moment. When parts of ourselves and our bodies are locked in trauma responses from the past or worries about the future, it creates a gap that illness can move into. ([Location 3102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=3102)) - When you notice strong emotions arising that are not compassionate curiosity or a deep, true longing, generally this means that you have unconsciously identified with a fragmented self. You can step out of this identification by noticing where you feel that self in your body, by acknowledging it, and by beginning to describe it. The ([Location 3228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B082739GDT&location=3228))