Welcome to The Daily Ascent. I'm Molly Carmel, and this is the podcast I always wish existed, a bite-sized, on-the-ground, spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive, and ascending. So I want to talk about something that I witnessed recently with a friend of mine and this reframe that I think really changed a lot for her, and maybe it will do the same for you. So I have this friend who has been doing some really hard, beautiful, good work on herself lately, like the real deal growth work, that vulnerable, uncomfortable kind of work where you start seeing some things about yourself and you decide you want to do something about it.
And so she had this epiphany recently about needing to be more vulnerable, about wanting to let people see the actual her instead of this very well-put-together show that was really keeping her at a safe distance from what she wants out of life. So, like, that's some good real stuff, am I right? So she was telling me about it. And as she was talking, she just kept on circling back to the same place, like, I know I have to do this impossibly hard work.
I know how painful it's going to be. I know it's going to be, like, really treacherous and terrible. I mean, this breakthrough was wrapped in dread like I ain't never seen. And so I was listening, and I, you know, I felt this little nudge, like, you know, hold on a second, because what she was describing and what I was actually watching didn't match.
Like, she was framing this like it was a prison sentence, right? She was framing this like something she was going to have to endure. And I wanted to offer her a different way to hold it. You know, so I said, as I say to many of my friends, like, can I offer you a perspective shift or can I offer you a reframe?
You know, I asked like a little salesperson. And she said, yes. Always ask for permission, friends. And so here's what I told her.
And I want to tell you, because if you are an ascender, it is likely that you are being called to do big work. Very few people are ever offered this. Very few people are ever offered the chance to grow and the chance to grow this way, the chance to, dare I say, ascend. You know, very few of us are really given a clear offer to do soul level work that actually changes who we are constitutionally.
Most people never receive this invitation. They move through their whole lives with the same patterns and the same walls and the same story on repeat, and they never even know that there's a door that can go somewhere else. And of the people who actually get this invitation that I'm speaking of, very few people actually accept it because it's kind of terrifying. OK, she was right there.
But it's also, like, very exciting as someone who has walked through many of these doors. It's uncomfortable and it's alive. It requires you to be willing to be seen in ways that you've spent years and probably decades protecting yourself against. And that is totally scary.
I get it. But it's also, hear this word, it's also extraordinary. And of the people who I know that accept it, even fewer will do it with the kind of precision and integrity and courage that I know my friend is going to bring to it. So when I hear someone describing this rare, extraordinary work as impossibly hard and terrible, my whole heart can't help but say, what if we tried that on a different way?
Right. What if this is a privilege? And she really loved that. And I hope that you do, too.
So that brings me to our pocket stage today. We've had him on the show before. I love him. Henry Newen.
And this is from The Inner Voice of Love, which is a book he wrote as a private journal during one of the most painful and transformative parts of his life. And he never really intended it for publication. And I think that's why probably it's so honest and raw and deeply true, just like the theme of this podcast today. So let me get to it.
You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become precious to you, influence, success, yes, even affection and praise. Trust is so hard since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential.
The new country is where you are called to go. And the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable. Let me read that again for those of you in the back. You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country.
That requires the death of what has become precious to you, influence, success, yes, even affection and praise. Trust is so hard since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go.
And the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable. Yeesh. Naked and vulnerable. Let's go.
And so our word of the day today is invitation. An invitation isn't a summons, right? It's not calling you for jury duty. It's not a demand.
It's not a life sentence. An invitation is something extended towards you, a door that is held open spiritually, a hand that's reaching out maybe here on the earth, a voice inside of you saying, this way, if you want it. You know what I mean? It's like a whisper.
And here's the thing about healing work. Most of us start off that work feeling like it's happening to us. Pain is always going to be the touchstone of all spiritual growth. We're going to probably feel in the beginning of a big expansion like we got ambushed by our own life.
That's always been the case for me. And honestly, sometimes it's true. Let me be very clear. Sometimes something breaks open and you did not ask for it.
Usually that's the way it goes. You didn't see it coming. You didn't want it. But even in that, even in that hard thing that you never signed up for, there's usually this quiet, easy to miss moment where you get to choose what you do with it.
Which means you can fight it. You can resent it. You can complain about it. You can get your heels deep in the ground and not do anything about it.
You can try to get back to the way that things were. I'm sure we all relate to that. Or you can say, hands on your heart. Okay, what's this trying to show me?
And that pivot, that reframe, that tiny turn towards it instead of away from it. That's the invitation. And taking that is one of the bravest things that a person can do. It's an interesting way to frame it, right?
Your healing work is an invitation. And I really hope you can let yourself feel that because there are wonders to come. And honestly, this is what I've come to believe and what I kind of want to teach you today. The way that we frame our life matters.
And the way that we frame our healing matters. And when we tell ourselves that things are going to be impossibly hard and terrible. I mean, we're not lying. Parts of it are going to be hard and terrible, but we're also preloading the experience with dread before it even begins.
Right? We show up already defeated, already bracing, already in a crouch. You know, you can't do open-hearted, open-palmed, vulnerable, soul level work from a defensive crouch. That protective posture and the posture of growth, they're just not the same.
And I also want to say, because I really feel like I have to say this anytime topics like this come up on our show, is that this reframe that I offered my friend is not toxic positivity and it's not spiritually bypassing. You know, I'm not, I'm never saying that I want you to pretend like things don't hurt. Right? Or that growth doesn't cost anything or that, you know, spiritual work is easy.
What I'm saying is that pain and privilege are not mutually exclusive. Something can be very hard and also be an extraordinary gift. Something can ask a great deal of you and be the most meaningful thing that you've ever done with your life. And you know, lots of people understand this, right?
Athletes understand this. Artists understand this. Anyone who has ever committed fully to parents understand this. Really.
I mean, if you've committed fully to something that you love, you know that the difficulty is not separate from the meaning. The difficulty is often the meaning. People who do hard things well are like ones who know how to endure. Right?
And they're people who have found a way to want it. And that always comes with reframing something, with changing the way you choose to see something. You know, and new and calls this the new country, right? This place of vulnerability, of growth, of becoming, you know, and he's dead honest about it.
That's my love language. Getting there requires giving up things that feel precious, right? The protections, the mirrors, the versions of yourself that kept everyone at a comfortable distance. Like for my friend, right?
And that's a cost. And he doesn't pretend it isn't. And I don't want to pretend that it isn't. But I really know, and I want you to hear this.
Once you started doing this work with real intention, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. And if you're an ascender, I mean, you're a seeker. So welcome to the family. You know, once you start doing this work, you see yourself too clearly.
And so the old ways of doing things stops feeling like safety and starts feeling like a cage. And that is a great thing, even when it's