Presentation Notes: Wellbriety Conference March 2024

I prepare for meetings and presentations. Sometimes I have an outline or main message I want to convey. These presentation notes are my outline from the March 2024 Wellbriety Conference. Read as you wish. Offered with the intention that words resonate with readers and seekers.   

“Finding Your Path and Enduring Well”

- Allyson Kelley

Teaching #1 Know who you are

Getting caught up in physical and form-based identities can take many away from their true purpose and connection to God’s guidance.

Take a piece of paper and answer the following questions:

1. Who are you?

2. How do you know that you are these things and titles?

   
   

Most people think they know who they are because their minds tell them so. Their thoughts reinforce identities and titles about place and position. A person’s thoughts can make them feel more superior to others and tell them who they are in a very physical and materialistic superficial way. All the identities come from a false sense of self.  One of the problems with these identities is that you get married and stuck in them. You live identities and titles out. Your mind has ways of tricking you into thinking truth about these identities.

A perfect example of this is individuals who have committed crimes, and they may have done horrible things to other people. The crime was one moment of their lives, but people are punished, and they relive that for many days or years, depending on their sentence. People get trapped in an identity of being an offender, being a murderer, being a criminal, being a robber, being a drug dealer whatever the identity and label they are given based on a choice that they made. When you think about the identities that you carry, many of them are really masking your true self and often they keep you from living the life that you are meant to live or enduring well. As you think about your multiple identities I encourage you to reflect on which of those identities are helpful and which of those are not. Find ways to drop the identities that are not helping you endure well and uplift the truest version of yourself to the world. The major issue with all these form-based identities is that they ignore the non-form conscious elevated identities that represent your true self. You are here for just a short while in this physical body on this physical plane. Most people realize at some point that they are more than just their physical body. More than just the egoic identities listed on a piece of paper. For some people they live out their entire lives and they have nothing, but form-based identities and they are examples of this throughout mainstream media and even social media and Facebook. Consider all the movie stars, sports teams, models, rich people, politicians, and pros that you worship. These individuals are often very caught up in form-based identities and they identify solely with form-based structures. What do you know about their interior spiritual life? Their non-egoic, non-form-based identity, the essence of who they are when their body is dropped?

Teaching #2 You are not your thoughts

The average person has over six thousand thoughts a day that run through their minds. More than 95% are not helpful thoughts, they are useless. Thoughts that keep a person ruminating on trauma, fear, shame, guilt, abandonment, jealousy. The list can go on and on. Overthinking takes you away from your divine purpose- what you are created for. Be very intentional about your thoughts and your surroundings and the things that you tell yourselves because you will believe them.

Teachers, gurus, priests, and intentional people recommend going outside in nature. Getting quiet. Praying. Meditating. Anything to slow down the incessant flow of thinking in one’s mind. Try it. Intentionally go outside. Observe your thoughts. How many of your thoughts are helpful?

It is critical that you know that you are not your thoughts. You are not the voice in your head. You are the observer of those thoughts. It is almost as if the thoughts are a separate self. If you are driving along a road or sitting on a fast train, that is not you, you are the essence of that physical form with a spirit-based identity. And if you can understand this and live this, this is the secret to enduring well. And one of my favorite teachers Eckhart Tolle talks about problems and challenges and in the present moment, you don’t have any problems… there are no problems that you have right now. Let’s say, for example, you are worried and stressed out about not having enough money to pay your rent or maybe you are dying and just received a health diagnosis that is terminal. Maybe you’re having relationship issues or maybe your car broke down and you had to get a ride. Those are all memories or thoughts about problems, but they are not actual problems because, in the present moment, there can never be a problem. If you are finishing dinner and see that your oven has caught fire, you have a challenge. I might take a few seconds to figure out how to get the fire out, who to call, and what to do, but you could do it.

As you can see all of our thoughts about things that make us unhappy and stressed out or superior come from the ego, most thoughts are not even real. They are thoughts about false problems that do not exist. Here is an example from my life.

Last weekend I was driving to see my mom and she has a lot of health issues.  In my mind, I’m thinking, “Will this be the last time I see her?”. It’s a challenge that she is not doing as well as I want her to be. But none of these thoughts and ideas are actually true. It is my mind making up stories and thoughts about how horrible life is. How unfair God is that suffering occurs, and losses go deep and wide throughout human existence. If I stop for a second and really analyze why I’m having these thoughts, it goes back to my ego, and within the ego the more that I create these false problems, the more deeply and entrenched in form and egoic-based identities I become. It’s easy to create narratives… oh, I’m so busy… I have so much to do…I have family members that are going to die…. oh my gosh I do not have enough money. Whatever you are thinking, it’s going through your mind that is your ego. That is not you, and so the challenge is to find ways to jump out of your ego and create situations where you can be present and live life on the healing path in a manner that serves your highest good.

If we change our thoughts, we can heal ourselves.

Teaching #3 Find people on the path

Enduring well and being on the healing path requires you to find other people who are on the healing path and join them.  Spiritual discernment can tell us who is safe and who is good and who is not. All humans are fundamentally good, but they are not necessarily good for us. As you become more aware and conscious of your journey here on this path of the earth school, then you start to find other people who are on a similar path, and they reinforce your beliefs and your hopes about what life is and your purpose on earth. A lot of times people do this through religion or sports teams or meditation or yoga or professional organizations. There’s lots of different ways that you can find the path, but you have to open your eyes and look inward. Listen for the gifts of spiritual discernment. Become conscious so that you can see consciousness, and see God everywhere, in everything and in other people.

All of us here, right now have been given spiritual helpers. Some call them guardian angels; others call them unseen helpers or spirit guides. These helpers can be seen and experienced in the physical realm, or completely unseen but deeply felt. I believe spiritual helpers walk with us on the path of making the right decisions and enduring well. Remember that what you do follows from who you are. And who you are is a deeply beloved (Romans 8:18) and cherished spiritual being, here on this earth to live out your purpose, the highest calling for your life.

Teaching #4- Prepare for the exit

As you get older, you begin to realize that time in this physical costume is getting shorter and shorter. You have a time when you will pass on and drop our physical bodies. Some have described this as being on a mass train and not being able to get off. With age, the train goes faster and faster and you are leading up to a major crash.  That crash is our life physical life on here ending.

You can also envision your life as a candle, or a flame.  Your flame is burning and burning, and as time goes on, the wick gets shorter and shorter, and the wax is less and less. Pretty soon it is extinguished. You are no longer here in this physical space. And so, you think about form-based identities and these different costumes that you’ve put on to support the ego identity of who you want the world to think you are.  You must embrace the knowledge that you will be dropping all these identities soon. And then, who will you be, where will you be, and what has it meant to live a life here on earth?

The challenge today and the challenge for lives is to really live in a way that reflects not just a form-based identity, something physical, but a spiritual identity.

Spiritual identity is your interior life.

Your spiritual identity connects with a greater universal consciousness of becoming aware of your purpose here on earth, living out that purpose, and realizing that you are more than just your thoughts or physical bodies. And there is a lot more you could learn about identities, but from my time in the recovery and healing world, I know it is so critical that people change their narratives about identity and their names and titles, and their experiences. A good friend of mine and mentor Dr. Dewey Ertz, encouraged me to use this life graph exercise to reflect on the stories we tell ourselves and the values assigned to certain experiences.

Take a piece of paper:

1. Draw a line on a sheet of paper and after you create that line, label the line in these areas, so you have spirit, world infancy, childhood adulthood, elderhood, spirit world. This line represents your life now.

2. Write or mark on that line, one point in time that was a significant challenge for you. You can do that by writing across or a heart or some sort of symbol that you know represents what it is.

3. Recall two significant positive memories in your life.  For example, a heart or a flower could represent a positive experience.

4. 
   

Depending on what you choose to remember, all of these events on your lines are very significant in some way. But if you create this life graph, and you only remember the adverse challenging experiences that you’ve had, then those experiences are what become your internal narrative, what you focus on, and what your ego tells you that you are. You might even feel depressed and anxious and sad about your life, and what happened to you. To find your path and endure well, you must focus on the positive things that have happened in your lives and the memories that you take with you.

Teaching #5 Living your life with intention

Be intentional about how you live your life. I have not met very many people who have become authors or priests, or star athletes without having an intention about how they want to live. Intentions are just really enthusiastic thoughts about how you want to live and be in the future.  You must be very deliberate about intentions in the present. There’s a saying I tell my daughter, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”  When you’re ready and hungry for the knowledge of the spirit, it will be given to you.

When the spirit does come to you, when the path is made clear, it is up to you to determine your intentions, and what you will do with this one wild and beautiful life you get to live. Becoming present and mindful requires us to stop thinking and just appreciate and become aware of a presence larger than any human or physical thing. In these quiet moments I believe Jesus comes to us and lives in us.

“It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me."(Galatians 2:20)