Embracing Your Highest Self: Navigating Personal Growth and Evolutionary Astrology

Amy Hageman discusses the concept of personal growth and self-discovery, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's unique astrological and Enneagram charts. She highlights that each individual's chart, which cannot be repeated for another 4 million years, represents a unique divine curriculum. Amy encourages listeners to focus on their highest self, which is always at peace and connected to the divine, rather than emulating historical figures like Jesus. She suggests practices like inner child work and connecting with future selves to access wisdom and tap into one's divine potential. Amy emphasizes the importance of free will and self-trust in achieving personal growth and fulfilling one's unique life path.

Transcript

This season on the living out love podcast, we are focusing on you, who you are, what motivates you, what you're here to contribute, and how you can expand. We'll be utilizing my leadership skills and spiritual connection diving deep into the Enneagram and astrology listen every week to become intimately aware of yourself. Only then can you heal and grow? Let's get to work Loves.

Hello Loves let's get to work today. Can we, we're gonna, we're gonna do some work. I think a lot about words. I love words. I wish we had more of them. Personally, we I think we could use a lot more words for love, for grief, or there's so many words that we're lacking, but there's also a lot of words that we have that we don't use. And I've been thinking a lot about dehumanization, and I have talked about dehumanization before, and I have talked about language before, but we're doing round two today, folks, because we all need it. We all need it. I know there are many of us that think that we would, that we rise above the fray of culture and stress and collective consciousness, and maybe we do, but we don't live there. So, I want to talk today about dehumanizing and what to do with it. And I mentioned last time that time is not really linear, really, and neither is change. Change is not well. Today I built the first step, and tomorrow I build the second, and then the day after that I build a third. It's it doesn't usually just stair step equate like that. It's much more chaotic. And change is, you know, often outside of our control. And there's a, oh my gosh, complexity change theory, there's complexity change theory, and there's chaos theory, and I'm going to get them confused, but basically, complexity change theory talks about how, instead of this linear idea of change, it's like, we're going, we're going, we're going, we're going, and then, boom, there's this explosion. And this one thing will set off a bunch of other things. And then it will look quiet for a while, and then there's this thing over here, and it sets off a bunch of other things. So, we're not going to be able to predict change, but we are an ever-evolving species, and there's different types of change and evolution being in the diversity background, I want to bring up this metaphor that I've heard Cindy Wigglesworth taught it to me, but she learned it from somebody else. And I forget who she learned it from, but there's somebody in the D and I world said that America, imagine America is a house, and it's built on a broken, toxic Foundation, foundations cracked, let's say it's built on like a nuclear waste energy right? That foundation where is slavery, by the way. So as Americans, or just our culture at large, we can try rebuilding walls and fixing the AC and repairing the roof like we can do all the things to try and make America better, but until we fix the foundation, it, it's a stop gap, and it's not going to last, right? So, in that dynamic of change, we're talking about kind of going back and looking back to heal the past, to rectify something that's the type of growth that is looking at repair and restoration. And not all growth is that some growth is repair and restoration totally valid, and some growth is the leading edge. It is dipping our toes in new waters, going where we have not gone before, and that is where I want to invite you today. I want to invite you to the leading edge, or at least what I view is the leading edge. It is uncomfortable and it's annoying and it's counter cultural, but I think it's where we need to go. And here's I just want to set the stage for why I this is listed this around two or three or four of talking about language and dehumanization. But I was listening to a Brene Brown podcast recently, and Heather Cox Richardson, noted historian was talking about dehumanization, and she gave some examples in the political industry world, and she said, we haven't seen. Language this dehumanizing since the Nazi regime, and I already knew that to be true, but holy heck, did that punch me in the stomach? We've got to do something about this. And it's not about you know, call your leaders, yada yada. It starts with you setting the example and practicing for yourself, and then allowing that to echo out being the demonstration, sharing if you feel so led to. So, we're talking about dehumanization today, and language and setting the example. This is the leading edge. I believe that things come up so that we can heal them. So, the very fact that there's this rise in dehumanization, I think it's coming up so that we can look at that and say, oh, that's not who we are anymore here's so we can look at it, and it's hitting us in the face now, and now we get to decide, how are we going to evolve? How are we going to grow into something new? So, here's a little neuroscience reminder. Our brains always trying to keep us safe, always all the time, and our brains make observations, judgments, decisions in seven one hundredths of a second. Boom. How does it do that? It does that by categorizing what is threat, what is not. Let me put you in a box. That's what. That's our brain's job. And what I want to do is, I want to suggest that we start to rewire our brains. And I'm mostly talking in extremes today in terms of safety, because I think that's a lot of what the rhetoric is. A lot of people are feeling unsafe, whether or not it's about guns or immigrants or Republicans or whatever, people are feeling unsafe, there's this sense of collective unrest and what's going to happen, and then what's going to happen. So those are the examples I'm using, but they're valid, even if it's not a safety thing. So, I'm suggesting that we start to rewire our brains, and here's what I mean from that, it's our brains job to keep us safe, and it's also our body's job to keep us safe. We have a nervous system that is connected to the collective and so I want to give you an example. I'm not really a fan of handguns. My grandfather was a hunter, but my dad didn't hunt. My brothers didn't hunt. So, I've been around rifles. I've shot rifles, but I've not been around handguns. I live in Texas, open carry, permit less carry. It's a thing, and I have had moments when I see somebody open carrying, and my brain jumps to danger, because that's what I see on the news. What I see on the news about guns is how too many people have them, mass shootings, yada yada, violence. So, my brain seeing a handgun is always going to jump to not feeling safe, and it's probably going to jump to judgment about whoever's carrying it, if we're being fully honest. Now, when I check in with my body, when I take a break and I just breathe and I feel in my body, how is my body reacting to that gun? Often, it's not the same. Often it there might be a discomfort, but there's also a knowing, oh, I'm safe, I just don't like that. They're doing it, but I feel safe. I don't need to run. My body's going to have a different reaction than my brain. And listen, that brain getting the first word that seven one hundredths of a second. That is valuable. Let's stick to it. But also, let's add our other wisdom, our body's sense of communication with us. By getting myself out of that freeze response and calming my nervous system, I made it possible to see that person as a person, whereas before, all I saw was a person with an open carry. That's all I saw. I just saw open carry theirs again, and it immediately felt like a threat. And so, person no longer becomes Person. Person is threat, and as soon as my body got clear of okay, this is not a threat that person. I wonder why they want to carry a gun. I wonder where they live. I wonder what they do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, but they become a person, and that's what I want us to work on. Is not accepting our brains first answer

on what the world is and who people are, our brain has to keep. Safe, That's its job. Thank you very much. But a lot of times we are safe, and because our brain is so quick to categorize, we don't we miss that. And again, it's not just about safety, it's also about judgment. Our brain categorizes. And maybe if we really got into our body, we would feel it differently than our brain has placed so where, what's the leading edge here? The leading edge is that we have to stop labeling people or none. We just have to stop doing it and it is a big ass. And the more examples I wrote, the more I thought, oh, this is such a big ass. But notice how differently I'm going to read some examples to you. Notice how differently your body feels between a labeling statement and a humanizing statement. So, I could say the mechanic called, or I could say Chris, the guy who fixes my car, he called,

Speaker 1  11:01 

same thing. He called, but Chris, it's a guy with a name. He fixes my car. That's what he does. He called he's a person who is doing this role. He is not the role

Amy Hageman  11:16 

the housekeeper, but also be the woman that helps me keep my house in order. And now in these first two examples, you'll notice that baked in, there's some gratitude, like, I'm positively assuming that Chris is going to be able to fix my car, right, and that He's not calling me, you know, saying, oh, your car is broken. I've positively assumed that he's fixing my car the housekeeper. By saying it's a woman that helps me keep my house in order, I'm giving gratitude. She's helping me, right? So, there's the inherent gratitude. Now I recommend doing this, but that's totally optional. There are going to be times when we want to describe a person, think about a person, vote label a person and not have gratitude and not have positive assumption. That's okay, too. So, let's take the statement. Let's say you're a Republican, and what you would normally say is, she's a Democrat. Instead, you could say, I think she always votes democratic, or I think she always votes democratic, even that it takes it out of the land of absolute fact she's a Democrat and puts it into the land of possibility. I think she always votes democratic. That's even, even though it has a negative tone to it, it's still possible. I think she always votes. It's admitting that you don't know. Always you don't know. And again, it can still be judgmental if you don't like Democrats. This, the sentence is not signifying that it's positive, but it is signifying that there's a humanity there, and that there's space for you to be wrong. It puts it puts some blur around the category, like it's not absolute fact, right? Another one might be the waiter. You could say the guy serving us. I don't know his name. Like I'm unhappy with the guy serving us, I don't know his name, but I wish we'd gotten our drinks sooner. Again, that's not inherently positive, but by saying the guy serving us, a, it's a human doing a role, not the role itself, right? And B, because you're saying I don't know his name, you are admitting to yourself out loud, I'm not able to fully humanize him yet. All I have associated with is waiting on us, serving us. I don't even know his name yet, right? So, to me, adding that this dude serving us. I don't even know his name, even if you're frustrated, even if you're saying it with judgment and negativity, you're still planting that seed for yourself and others at the table, that there's an aspect of his humanity that you haven't yet found. Now the waiter is two words, the guy serving us, I don't know his name. What's that nine words? So, yeah, it's easier and quicker for us to just give a thing, a person, a label, right? It's easier. And categories are, are helpful there. There's a lot of purpose to our brains categorizing. So, but it's time to outgrow that. We've got to push ourselves to humanize people and it it's not just about the. Uh, people that make you uncomfortable, people that you disagree with. It's about everybody I even think about. I'll be in I'll be in conversation, and I'll say, oh yeah, you know my kid. And then there are times when I say my kid's name. Amma, my kid, my youngest. Amma, my kid, having that emphasis on their individual name and then calling them my kid, even in my own mind, it brings me back to they are more than just my kid. Are they, my kid? Absolutely? Am I responsible for them absolutely? But they are also their own selves, and it humanizes them. And that was just adding one word. And I can, I can totally, I can hear and feel some people pushing back on that one because its Suzanne, my friend comma. Why not just say my friend? It humanizes them, like, who are you talking to? I'm talking to my mom, and I say, Suzanne, my friend that does astrology. It's not my friend that does astrology, and there's this vague veil of a person. It's Suzanne comma, my friend that does astrology. And whether or not my mom knows Suzanne, she can at least humanize the astrologer into this person that Amy is friends with that does astrology. That one word really is important using people's name is important when you have the name, okay? And since we're talking about language, this is a different angle of looking at dehumanization. It's less about calling somebody by their role, and it's just look. It's looking at some words that we use in the common vernacular, and just different places here and there. I've heard some conversations lately about this is all every by the way, we're about to get into the land of diversity. If you're uncomfortable here, take a deep breath. You're going to be fine. But there's been a lot of conversation that I've heard lately. Again, it keeps coming up about do we call black people black people, or is it African American? First of all, you call people what they want to be called. And the vast majority of people that I know that are black are just fine being called Black. I've never, personally, I've never met a person that doesn't want to be called Black. I've heard of people, and they were mostly of the much older generation. I've never actually met somebody that was upset with that label. So, if you need to reference somebody Black is perfectly acceptable, and one of the reasons why that's perfectly acceptable is because we have a melting pot here in America, and there are lots of black people, people of color here in the states that are not African American. Maybe they're from Trinidad, but they're not African American. So not only is it inaccurate, but it's wildly assumptive, and it's just sort of out of step with the times our country has grown and included so many people that there are people of color here that are not descended from Americans, not American slaves, excuse Me, African people that were brought over and then enslaved. There are people of color that are not those descendants. So, if you are unsure about the way somebody wants to be referenced, just ask. Just say, Hey, man, I'm uncomfortable. I don't know. Can I Can I call you black, or should I call you African American? Like when I'm referencing you to my family or to my boss, like, how do you how do you want to be referenced? And this is an It's a little confusing, because I just came off this whole rant about not using labels, and here I am using labels, but there's a difference in a categorization for the point of efficiency and a categorization for the point of seeing someone and in our society, black People, Latinx people, LGBTQ people, those people have very different experiences than the white, heteronormative, cis gendered people. So, if you're not labeling them, then you're not really honoring their experience.

So, it's just. Hang in there with me. I know it's kind of counterintuitive, because I was just saying don't label but I'm saying don't label the role. Don't label the mechanic, the waiter. If somebody is a different race than you and that needs to be acknowledged, then acknowledge it. So Black better term than African American, in case you were curious. Now, let's go to LGBTQ again. Take a deep breath. Love. You're gonna be okay, um. There are a lot of people that have a lot of discomfort around pronouns and the new expectation that we share pronouns um, but more specifically, the emergence of pronouns as they them. I there's a lot of people with some discomfort around that, and to the point of leading-edge growth, I would invite you just get over it, not to be so blunt and direct, but I think that's the growth here. You know, think about the early 50s, divorce was taboo and was shamed, and we with something that was absolutely never supposed to happen, right? And now it's not a thing. There will be a day, not that long from now, in which they them and the pronouncing of the pronouns, that's going to be so normal. It's going to be so normal. So, I invite you to just work through your resistance and get on board, because that's where we're headed, whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, that is where we're headed. And you know, most of us grew up with the golden rule, treat others how you would want to be treated. That, to me, was a good start, but the divine rule would be, treat people how they want to be treated, or don't hang out with them. That's an option. Most of you listening to this are not forced to hang out with people you don't like people. Quit your job, go somewhere else. That's an option. If you're not going to quit your job, if you're going to choose to stay and work there, then get over it and use their pronouns. That's my advice for you. You don't like it. You think it's messed up. Fine, send them compassion. When we are having judgment, it's a sign that we're uncomfortable. That's not the only thing judgment is. But inherent in judgment is our discomfort. For sure, all the time, judgment is also a sign that you're not in a place of compassion. You can have concern and discernment for other people and still have respect and compassion when you're just in judgment. That's not a thing, right? It's you can't, can't hold judgment and compassion really at the same time. You can have concern and discernment and compassion. Yes, so if this is a hang up for you, you need to have a lot of compassion for yourself. Number one, this cultural change is hard. It is it's hard, and you didn't choose it. So have compassion for yourself and have compassion that our excuse me, our brains are patterned and re patterning them. Takes time. It just does. It takes repetition. So have compassion for yourself. Have compassion for everybody else, the people that are behaving in ways and requiring things that you don't agree with that make you uncomfortable. Have compassion for the people that love those people. Have compassion for the people that judge those people. Change is hard, or everybody, even the people that are loving it, that want the change. It's not easy. So, this is a time of compassion all this LGBTQ pronoun trans stuff, if, if you're not good with it, if you either you have judgment or discomfort cool, you're exactly where you're supposed to be, take a breath and send yourself compassion and send everybody else in the world some compassion around a pretty big cultural change. And then the next step would be gotten curious, if you are a person, that you have your ideas made up, that there's boys and there's girls and that's it. Okay. Well, a whole generation is saying otherwise. I wonder why they're saying that. I wonder why it must make sense to them, find out why. And again, you know, leading edge somewhere we haven't been its uncomfortable until it isn't so. In particular, I hear a lot of people that are that. Are upset with the pronouns they them, because it's uncomfortable, because historically, we have used they them to reference a multiple, a plural of people, or to reference an unknown. So, oh, someone left their phone in the park. I wonder if they will come back for it, right? That's not a plural. That's an unknown, and we haven't used it historically. We haven't used they them to reference a singular person that we do know, but that's, that's where our language has gone. The F word used to be rarely used, and it used to be used specifically to emphasize sex. Well, now the F word is used all the time, and it isn't just specific to sex, it's just an exclamation. It includes sex, but it also does other things. So, our vernacular changes, and this is part of that change, we use they them. Now we can ask people what their pronouns are. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying I'm good at it. I'm saying it's the loving thing to do to treat people how they want to be treated, and I'm going to try my best to be a loving person. Okay, so we talked about black we talked about LGBTQ. I also want to talk about Jews, because a lot of people think that some calling someone a Jew is a slur. It's not a slur. If they're Jewish, then they are a Jew, and they would call themselves a Jew. We feel like it's a slur because there has been such a history of antisemitism and that that just is what it is. There's been a long, dark, violent history of antisemitism, and not just overseas, and that history has kind of made a lot of people feel like, Oh, if I say that, then I'm slurring them not because I think they're any less than but because other people do right, or maybe you do think they're less than I don't know, hopefully not, but either way, it's a label with heated associations. So just like we might say I'm a Christian. They might say I'm a Jew. It's not a negative label. But we could say, oh yeah, my friend Michael is Jewish, or my friend Michael practices Judaism. We could, actually, we could say that and again, by owning, oh, my friend, or I think that my neighbor, by adding those words that emphasize the human and how you know them. Your connection to them. You're still saying the statement, oh, I think my neighbor is Jewish. The statements the same, I think, right? But you're adding your connection. I'm connected to this person because they're my neighbor. I Okay, so just some food for thought around how we are going to re humanize people. We're gonna have to say more words. We're just gonna have to Yes. Is it easy and quick and effective to use labels? Absolutely? Who cares. I'm not interested in what's easy anymore. I'm interested in what's loving. And what's loving is to honor the whole person and to honor your connection with that person. So that's what I'm inviting you to do. It's time to get uncomfortable, whether that is using new pronouns, whether that is highlighting the diversity that is in your life, or whether that is taking the time and the effort, the attention, the intention to change the way you talk about people. We as a species, we have so much room for growth and how we see one another. And the words that we use, the thoughts that we think that is something that you can control. You cannot control what other people say, what gets played on the news and what doesn't you cannot control what I'm going to say on this podcast, but you can control what you say out loud. So, I would encourage you to highlight humanity. Use people's names, highlight how they are connected to you. If they're in a role, then highlight that they are in that role, rather than calling them the role itself. It's not the mechanic, it's Chris, the guy who's working on my car right now, right or, you know, the mechanic. I don't, I don't even know his name yet, but he called me blah blah, blah, and just by admitting to yourself,

I don't know his name; I've still got him in a box. Then at least you've called. It out, at least you're aware of it,

Speaker 1  30:03 

and yeah, is your connection with this person? Maybe entirely about your vehicle? Sure, but that doesn't mean that you can't try to fully embody that person, humanity, that you can't try to recognize it.

Amy Hageman  30:24 

So yeah, we're gonna have to use more words. We're gonna have to be more specific, specific, excuse me, and we're gonna have to find ways to honor humanity and connection and to try and see a person as a person rather than a role, rather than a demographic, and is not easy, and it's not comfortable. But do you want to be a being of love? Yes or no. Are people worth it to you? Is your own brain worth it to you? Do you want to evolve your brain in the way that it sees people on this planet? Then let's get to work. Loves. Does it all right? I hope that was helpful. Maybe that's my Maybe that's my last episode about language and dehumanization. This season, we will see happy weekend, loves. I hope you're well. Let me know if you have questions or concerns of any kind regarding anything that I talked about today or ever, and we'll see you soon. Bye, loves. Thank you for listening to the living out love podcast. If this episode was helpful for you. There are three ways that you can share the love. Can send this episode to family, friend, neighbor, leave me a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform, or comment and ask questions on YouTube. This season is meant to be interactive. Thanks again for your presence. I appreciate you being here. Talk to you next week Loves.