The formula for spiritual leadership to activate your infinite power

I made a decision to focus on spiritual leadership today because it’s a topic very close to my heart, and it’s something that I wanted to speak about in a lot of different ways. I also had an article published in Sivana East on spiritual leadership, so it seems like an appropriate time to continue that conversation.

There is a great decision in being here that is around my role as a spiritual leader. I made the choice to travel all the way across the world to attend a five-day event that includes the leaders in my field, such as Gregg Braden, Joe Dispenza, Bruce Lipton Lehman, and Lee Carol.

It is a really epic trip, to be in a unity of people for whom spiritual spirituality in science is an exciting thing that they want to be part of. The event itself is not expensive, but the cost of getting here and staying for eight days is part of my commitment to myself as a spiritual leader to never stop learning. I think one of the most dangerous kinds of spiritual leaders or teachers are those who believe they don’t need to keep learning, and I’ll explain more about that as I introduce you to a formula I have for spiritual leadership and spiritual power.

I made the decision that I had to be here at this conference some time ago because my teachers are here and other people like Caroline Myss and Marianne Williamson. And, of course, getting access to them is not as easy as picking up the phone or sending an email. So putting myself in front of them in small groups of 1200 is a really powerful way to get access to the latest research, the things that are happening, and to keep myself nourished. To keep keep filling my own cup.

I have the idea that any great leader, any great spiritual teacher, should be someone that has the humility to continue improving and increasing their understanding of their own knowledge, and more importantly, deepening into their own mystical practices and experiences.

It doesn’t matter if your teacher is in spiritual entrepreneurship, or if they are in spiritual leadership in any other way. To me, a really great teacher is someone who is demonstrating humility, that they do not believe they’ve got it all sorted out, and they keep putting themselves before their great teachers and before God with that attitude of humility.

So I want to introduce you to my formula of spiritual leadership so that you can look at what it is for me to be a spiritual leader. Then I’m going to talk a little bit about the article that was published this week about their challenges and the dark shadow side of spiritual leadership, and how when we know these things we can actually equip and prepare ourselves. Because if you’re in this group, there’s a good chance you’re a spiritual leader.

I spoke about this in the article. We are in a spiritual zeitgeist, as Caroline Myss tells us. The second great mystical age is upon us and and we are waking up at a rapid rate. It’s vital for all of those of us, especially women who can lead, to lead. And we must be unafraid to overcome our doubt and step into our spiritual self-esteem.

We must own our power to serve. Because if we sit back in our self-doubt, those of us who have access to the truth that the infinite is always supporting us, even if we have days where that’s hard to remember, we must be willing to do that on behalf of those people who don’t even know that there is an inherent interconnectedness to life. That there is such a thing as God, or infinite unlimited consciousness. That the life situation they’re in is not fixed. That shitty, abusive marriage that they’re part of is not something they have to stay in.

Women have a duty to be leaders in their community, whether that’s an online community, or whether that’s in their home. Whether that’s in their school, or wherever it is, to lead by demonstration.

When we put down our own lack of self-worth, that is the greatest act of service to the planet that we can possibly embody at this time.

And how do we do that? How do we build this spiritual self-esteem?

Well, first of all, we have to be willing to see ourselves as God. We have to be willing to change our mind about ourselves and the only way to do that is through devotion. The only way is to spend time each day outside of the illusion, through practices like meditation, contemplation, and prayer. Reading sacred texts and reminding ourselves of our own truth, our own true nature.

I can feel that this conversation could go in a lot of different tangents, but I want to keep bringing it back to that spiritual leadership.

If you are called to be on a spiritual path at this time, this particularly extraordinary time in human awakening, then there is a very, very good chance that you are a spiritual leader. And any excuse or reason that you’re hiding from that is going to be related to the ego’s attempts to keep you playing small.

I’ve written a little book called ‘You Were Made To Be Glorious,’ and that really is the truth of it.

Your true nature is glorious, infinite, unlimited, and completely optimised.

There is no need for you to be in suffering. There’s no need for you to be in poverty. And there’s certainly no need for you to be in self-doubt.

These things are not inherent to our nature. These are learnt behaviours, fear-based behaviours, that we’ve embodied over time through our inter-generational and inheritance to a literal DNA. But we do not have to sit and stay in that place.

We have a choice.

We always have a choice, and so to deepening into our devotion is a very profound practice of the spiritual leader.

We are going to learn the formula now and we’re going to go through a little experience of this as we go along of true spiritual power.

The first step is humility.

The first step is, “I can, of my own self, do nothing.”

If we ever get confused about this, we simply have to remember that it is not our will, but thy will that will be done. That we are the very lucky servant of the infinite, that has a vision for our life, or a vision for itself, that it will express through our little life. That if we can be comfortable with that, if we can put down our own agendas, and move into a state of visionary intuition, as Caroline Myss calls it, which is accepting the truth that we are not the ones here making a decision about what it is that happens.

That may sound like you are being very passive. But in fact, it’s the opposite, because mostly what happens is when we receive visionary intuition, we get very clear on our life purpose. Then if our spiritual self-esteem is not intact, our ego gets in there and stops us from taking action. We think that maybe that’s actually self-determination. But no, that’s just unmet subconscious fear.

It’s our job all of the time, as far as possible, to recognize the difference between that limiting subconscious fear belief that’s that sitting there just below the surface, versus what is our intuition. I’ve written about that as well, because that question of what is fear and what is intuition is a very critical one to your role as a spiritual leader. You have to know the difference between a fear-based choice, and a loving choice, and that just simply takes practice, practice, practice. Good practices of devotion is the way that we do this.

So the idea of humility first. “I can, of my own self, do nothing” is the acceptance that you are both nothing, and you are everything.

In fact, as Joe Dispenza tells us, becoming nothing is actually the greatest power we have to create everything. We have to go through the phases and his phases are so beautiful when you go into meditation with Joe, and I encourage you all to do so because he has a very unique style and it’s a very powerful practice.

You begin with the idea that “I’m something, I’ve got this identity. I’m gonna take this identity into the world. This identity is me. I run this, I do this, I want to be this, I want to have that.” And it’s all based on our association with the dream. It’s an ego identified self and that is the beginning point for many of us.

We might think, “I want to become an entrepreneur.” And it’s because I want to have this, and that, and this much money.

There’s nothing wrong with that except for our our belief that those are the things that are going to make us happy. So we come into a state where we are something, and that something is actually a tiny little fragment of what is possible for us. But we’re stuck in that, so we’re stuck in that belief that is the limit of who and what we are. So even if we’re aspirational, we’re still sitting inside a limit, and we we are unable to see beyond that limit.

We’re coming to our devotional practices, and here I’m using the specific example of a meditation with Joe. But all of our practices do this and we move into a state of the void, and we become nothing. We give away that ego identified self to merge back into infinite unlimited consciousness, and we simply feel ourselves expand beyond identity, expand beyond yearning, and expand beyond goals and desires and intentions and aims.

If you’d like to have an experience of that now, why don’t you if you’re safe to do so?

Close your eyes with me. I’m just closing the eyes and deepening the breath, perhaps taking an inhale through the nose for five counts. Holding and then exhaling out through the mouth or the nose, whatever’s comfortable. Extending that exhalation for as long as is comfortable for your own body. Then holding just for a moment now, letting your breath maintain its own natural rhythm with eyes closed and breath deep.

You’ve already signified to your physiology that you’re very safe. You’ve moved out of chaotic high beta brainwave state now, just by taking two fingers to the center of your chest.We’re signifying to our consciousness that we want to be attuned to this heart brain. The little brain in the anatomical heart, rather than the conscious reasoning mind. We’re moving out of that head space into that heart space, and just feeling the breath expanding the electromagnetic field around your heart chakra.

Just this simple act alone of withdrawing our attention from the superficial world moves us into all the beginnings of that state of nothingness. From that state of nothingness, that beautiful expansive state, we let go of agendas with God.

It is here where we begin to truly meet ourselves in that unlimited place where there is nothing to limit us. We are in no time and no place, and from that state we can become anything. And that anything, then, is where we begin to encode consciousness.

This is a term I’ve just come across in Debbie Ford’s book called ‘Your Holiness,‘ and it’s a truly beautiful book. If you don’t know Debbie Ford, she really began the conversation about shadow work in this contemporary age. She died five years ago, but she was posthumously published in this book, which is a really a love letter to the idea of prayer, and prayer as a devotional practice. She talks about encoding consciousness vision, or engineering consciousness.

Regardless of how you think about it, we’re starting to build consciousness according to how we would like it to be, not just from our automatic subconscious program that likes to tell us how little and small and finite we are.

Especially when we start to do amazing spiritual leadership things, we tend to hit an upper limit, to use Gay Hendricks‘ term. Then we bump our head up on that upper limit and we might decide, “Well, that’s fake. I wasn’t meant to go along that path, because here all this shit’s rising up. My partner’s crappy with me, and my kids are getting sick, and obviously I’ve gone off on the wrong tangent. My intuition’s telling me that I should just stay home and not try to do this thing”.

But actually, that’s just your fear, your upper limit. You’re smacking your head up against it and you stay inside of that upper limit. But if you’re able to recognise it, and this once again comes from your practices of devotion, we can create enough space around us that we’re no longer sitting inside the dream believing it’s evidence is real, we can actually move outside of that dreamlike state and become attuned to the truth of what we are, which is five dimensional pure consciousness.

Here is where we begin to create. And we create from love rather than fear. We’re not creating from our reactive subconscious program. We’re beginning to see as that ‘anything is possible’ state of being. And here we may become quite comfortable with taking action that does not have necessarily illogical evidence to it.

So we get inspired to take a particular action and this is once again leadership where we’re asked to go beyond our comfort zone. We’re asked to go beyond the known, and we’re asked to move outside of a state of being, or the state of affairs of our life that is familiar. This is where we may notice that we’re rocking the boat in our own families. We may make other people uncomfortable. And the spiritual leader must be very comfortable with being not approved of by everybody. You really have to decide where you place your value.

Is it an internal thing or an external thing?
Is someone’s opinion of you going to be enough to derail your spiritual leadership?

If you are still in the state where your partner doesn’t agree with you, or a friend says “What do you think you’re doing?” or any of those things causes you to fall over even before you begin, you need to internalise your sense of self-worth. Or, at least initially, use the language of handing it over to God and let only God be your guide. If you don’t like the word God or you don’t use it, please substitute whatever works for you. All I mean by the word God is infinite, unlimited, consciousness.

If you’re willing to place your spiritual self esteem inside of your relationship with God, you will not be so easily rocked.

When we are willing to break habits of behaviour, that’s actually where we’re going places. That is good evidence that we’re changing things. That we’re not doing it to be destructive, but we may have to destroy something – a certain pattern of behaviour, a passive-aggressive relationship, a need to be approved of externally – in order to be willing to meet ourselves. As what Joe Dispenza then describes as “everything.”

So we move from ‘something’ to ‘nothing’ to ‘anything’ to ‘everything.’ And this is where humility comes in.

I am everything and I am nothing.

The idea is that we are everything; we are unlimited consciousness, we are God. We are not a small, tiny fragment of God – we are God. And what we are here to learn in this ‘life on earth school’ is to remember ourselves as that.

So why do we begin with with humility? Surely God is all-powerful, so surely we begin with power. Well, no. Because our power, which will come later, is the power that has been invested in us by our God-consciousness, not by our human force. So first we become unafraid of humility.

What will happen is that the ego will say “That’s humiliation. Humility is humiliation.” This is where we’ll often see people who start out on their spiritual path, or are even quite far along their spiritual path, do things like eradicate their teachers from their history.

If you are unwilling to recognise your spiritual lineage of who has taught you, who your teachers are, who are those people who’ve related to the place where you stand now, that is because your ego is telling you that it is humiliation. “If I need a teacher then I am NOT all-powerful and therefore people will think that I’m not perfect and they won’t buy my thing”, whatever that is.

You’ll notice that pretty much everything I say is a reference back to where I heard it, understood it, or who I think is doing at best. Because it is vital to me that we are not omitting from our story where we have learned. In fact, me being here for example I want to shout that from the rooftops that I’m investing in my spiritual awakening because that makes me a better leader for my students. That knowledge transfer and that experience transfer is far more powerful when we are willing to acknowledge who our inspirations are, either formally or informally.

Acknowledging our teachers is one of the most powerful acts of humility that we can invest in, not humiliation, which is what the ego will say.

If we make peace with the idea that there are no original ideas, that there is nothing new, that everything is one, everything has been and always will be in the mind of God, that we are simply being inspired to speak about a certain thing in a certain way by that God-consciousness, then we’ll find we can begin to access true power.

So when your ego is afraid of humiliation, look at what you’re defending, what are you afraid to lose?
Is it that need to be right?
Is it the need to be the original, first-ever person to talk about this thing?
Is it this idea that you have to make it look like this has all come out of thin air?

All of these are acts of the ego trying to keep you in a state of avoiding humiliation. Instead, go in the other direction and shout from the rooftops what we have done for our own professional development. Be unafraid to have an empty cup.

I am willing to learn more, go further, and this is really what I teach in my program. The Third Level is for women who know that they’re amazing at what they do as spiritual leaders, but they want to be better. And if you ever stop wanting to be better, then that’s where you know your ego has really stepped in and is trying to tell your story for you.

Be unafraid of owning the fact that wherever you are, there’s always further to go.

I am here to learn more, to know more, to experience more, to deepen into my mystic. Becoming unafraid of humility is a really big step – it’s not something you’re going to resolve in one day. This is every moment of your life. The hallmarks of being afraid of humility are things like jealousy, possessiveness, trying to to be right in all situations, the lack of asking questions and investigating more. These are all signs of the fear of humiliation and the fear of humility.

When we move into that state and start to practice being humble, we move into grace. This is where it gets really good, because once you start to experience the state of grace, you begin to understand why humility is required and and why it’s worth working for and fighting for.

Grace, in my understanding, is what God feels like. To be able to feel that state of grace in your ordinary life, usually through devotion (not just walking on the street, although we may have moments like that where suddenly we’re filled with grace for no reason at all) that sense of inner peace, joy and union, you are invested with so much love that you are embodying God-consciousness without any separation.

Usually those moments are fleeting, but with devotion we can cultivate that experience of grace. Experiencing grace encourages humility, so experiencing grace allows us to become more humble.

That feeling doesn’t exist in the world. It doesn’t happen as a result of human stuff. It happens as a result of going inwards to the world within the world, and meeting yourself as what you truly are, which is God.

Grace is typified by those feelings that do not need external evidence. They’re not because you got something, or someone was nice to you. You can experience grace when the whole world is telling you you’re wrong. I know that firsthand because the spiritual leader will not always be approved of.

One of the things I wrote about recently is that you will be made a false idol. Initially, a spiritual leader might be put up on a pedestal by someone, and then they get knocked off that pedestal when the other person goes on their own awakening. When they need to judge or blame someone because they’re scared of how their life is changing. They go into fear and their ego gets all up in their face and says ,‘That person is the one who made you look at your subconscious. Now your life is shit and you think you have to leave your husband. You’re suddenly feeling like you need to leave your job and she must be wrong.’ We naturally look for the messenger because that’s the easiest thing, rather than taking responsibility. If we let ourselves be put up on a pedestal, it’s going to be a very, very bumpy fall down back down to earth.

Once again humility is the antidote.

You can still be in a state of grace because grace is not an externally evidenced emotion. We’re not looking for something outside of us. In fact, the opposite is true. We are going within to meet ourselves in that state of grace, and that’s why we have to commit to our devotional practices, even if it’s for five minutes each day. Five minutes to withdraw our attention from the dream and come to meet God because God is not in the dream, so you cannot meet yourself in true devotion in the busy-ness of your life.

Ultimately, Caroline Myss tells us that the mystic develops a spiritual sight that allows us to privilege spiritual sight first. So we see the world through symbolic sight before we see it through physical sight. We can actually cultivate the state of being where we can see both as the mystic and the human in the same moment, which is quite a remarkable gift. And it’s something worth working towards.

So the steps to spiritual leadership so far, are:

1. Humility, which allows us to attain grace.
2. Grace allows us to deepen into humility, which leads us to something glorious, and that is power.

Power is a big word and it may trigger some people to think about that word power, because so many of us are so separate from that power.

What is the power I am speaking of?

The only power I have is the power to know I have no power except for God’s power.

And that takes us back to humility. I can of my own self do nothing.

It is not my power, but the power I have is to see how much of myself I can overcome. How much of my ego I can put down in order to be the fullest expression of God’s power in the world. This is visionary intuition as Caroline Myss tells us. This is where we have put down our personal agendas with God, and we have said, “Use me. Let my life be what you want to birth into the world. I will trust you and I will trust myself, which are one and the same. Enough to be willing to take action when I am called to take action.“

This is the hallmark of the spiritual leader. She is in the world. She is doing. She is making it happen. She’s not out there on a cloud in a fluffy, fluffy, fluffy cloud in a temple avoiding reality. She is here in the world. She is making the babies, and making the food, and keeping the house, and working. She’s also tending to the souls of her community. She is the bridge between heaven and earth.

The Priestess is an embodied spirituality and embodied divinity.

Women, as spiritual leaders, are those who are in the world saying it is possible to be human and divine at the same time. It is possible to serve whilst are also taking care of a home and a life and making things happen at that level. We never use our domestic sphere as a reason not to show up.

In fact, my domestic sphere is an anchor for my life. I get to go off and have these incredible spiritual pilgrimages but it’s my domestic anchor that allows me to feel that I can take off and fly, so it’s very, very important that we don’t use our life as an excuse not to step into our spiritual leadership. If you look for excuses, you’ll find them. But if you look for reasons to show up to God, you’ll
find them, and they’re much more powerful.

My power is my power to serve, and my power to serve will call me to be more and more powerful in the world. The act of embodying God’s power is not to give everything away. My abundance has increased a billion times since stepping onto this path of service. When you say no to God, you shut down the flow of abundance towards you.

To to finish up, humility to grace to power, and power to be unafraid of our power is spiritual self-esteem. This is the greatest act of service in the world to allow God to move you and to serve in that way.

Ricci-Jane xo

I hope today is mind-blowingly glorious and it’s my privilege to serve you!