Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert, and I’m so excited for this conversation today. This is going to be a yummy one folks. Really get settled in here because we’re talking today about this concept of building from ground zero, and I know so many of you have had those moments, maybe not all the time, you’ve listened to the podcast enough, you’re in a program, something, and you’re not slipping into it all the time.
But there have been moments in this whole upheaval that’s occurred over the last few months where it’s hard not to think like, “Wow, how can it get any worse than this?” And then the words kind of come to your thoughts. You’re like, “I don’t know. We’re not supposed to think that way.” But it can feel like everything kind of exploded in front of your face and you’re left holding the pieces, and trying to figure out what the heck to do. Whether that’s you in the entirety of your existence or in a section of your existence or a fleeting passing moment, or you work with the people who really truly are feeling this way right now.
I think it’s important that we give voice to it, and we demonstrate, how do we talk through this? How do we help people with this? How do we talk to ourselves through this? Your inner voices probably could use a little soothing right now and some guidance.
So, of course, we brought on someone who is absolutely no stranger to this conversation, and probably one of the more well-rounded voices, in my opinion, in this space. It would be impossible to embody him and do justice with any sort of introduction, but Aaron McCormick wrote Unbounded: Journey to Your Within, and the stories that he shares and his experience is great and it’s super impressive. But really, to me, what’s most impressive is the masterful synthesis that he’s overlaid that with and invites people into that higher-level conversation, even while being able to give voice to the awareness that these other things happen and they occur. To me, there’s nothing more important that we can be doing right now, than bridging that space together, and so it’s my honor to invite you onto the show and to welcome Aaron McCormick. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Tonya. Great to be here. I appreciate it.
Well, we are so happy to have you. We’re going to start in with our quintessential question of what are your superpowers?
What are my superpowers? Well, I think we all have these powers that I would say are mine. I just know that we have to hone them a little bit more, be more conscious of and not suppress them. So mine would be empathy as one, and I guess the other one would be just the ability to, I wouldn’t even call it an ability, the natural inclination to follow my inner truth more so than the external stimulus around that exerts that pressure on us.
So whether it’s peer group, or family, or career group, social, racial, national, you name it. I guess we all either have that, all these moments where we’re either going to decide to disappoint ourselves, so to speak, go against that unspoken thing inside of us, or we’re going to disappoint the external stuff around us. I don’t know why or how I’m naturally made up in a way that I end up creating hell for myself a lot actually, that’s not intentional, but it chafes at me more to go against my truth, which I think is a truth that we all share. I’m sure we’ll get into it a little bit later. So that’s it, empathy.
Beautiful. Beautiful. Something came out of my mouth the other day and it was like my philosophy on life is, I don’t like to disappoint God, so I try not to do that. That pretty much sums up my existence. That’s kind of the aiming of It’s a pretty broad range, but I usually get somewhere in there, but you’re speaking to something that really is the thread that I felt as I was reviewing your material, that seems in the same resonance as what I experienced, which is this awareness that in this walk, you really do have to be willing to stare something in the face and deny its existence. To do that, we have to understand what we think we’re seeing, where that comes from, kind of, where do you know the truth in a different way.
There’s a whole lot wrapped up in everything that you’re saying, and it’s important to give voice to the fact that this is a culmination folk, right? Like never on this show will you ever hear me give voice to the fact that it’s just as easy as taking the red pill or steps one, two, and three, and at the same time, the journey is the point, right? When this whole thing started, the initial, the quarantining, and stuff, I remember an inquiry that came through was like, “What is it that we think we’re waiting for?” It was such a brilliant kind of overlay to the angst that people were feeling like, well, when things go back, it’s like, but why was that better? Like, what is it about this, really getting clear with those kinds of thought processes that are happening inside of you.
You can only do that and you can only listen, and you can only follow that guidance and rely on those abilities like Aaron was speaking to when you’ve allowed yourself to relax into the fact that this is definitely a journey. When we’re talking about building from ground zero, how would you help people kind of break some of this down into some consumable chunks that say like, look, all hope isn’t lost? How can they kind of make sense of this right now for themselves?
Yes. Well, ground zero is an interesting term because, in our linear thinking intellectual minds, that implicates a negative, it’s like zero, I want to be progressive. So one is better than zero, 10 is better than one. The only way that we know how to be when we originally began being at least in the physical form, as babies are in a ground zero mindset. What I would refer to as ground zero is where you do not have all of the learned fears, all of the expected ideals, preferred outcomes. So there’s everything from fear and survival, supposed survival, to preferences, learned preferences, that it has morphed everything that we have really come here to, to ultimately experience. In an odd sense, it didn’t really morph it because of this whole polarity or the whole extremity that we’re going through, and that we’ve all experienced personally.
So whether it is from broken hearts and romance to job or financial setbacks, to familial issues, to physical issues, health issues, all those things are things that we chose to experience. I only go there Tonya, when I think about all the evidence that we’ve all had, that tells us that we’re more than this physical journey. Of course, the linear ego mind is always battling. In fact, those are the two figurative things that are always at war in the mind and the heart. The two most powerful organs in the body and figuratively the most powerful forces that animate our action, either it’s mind driven, which is usually fear, survival drove, along with all the other preferences that we’ve learned, or heart-driven, spirit-driven, which is the more unseen unmolded, if you will, that original ground zero, as you refer to in a different connotation.
But that ground zero is actually all of our answers. So when external events knock you to ground zero, it actually is your true North, if you will, or it’s an opportunity to find the norm. It’s like we’re, we’re in this virtual reality that is shaped by everything that we want to shape us. Just like when you go to the gym and you get under a certain amount of weight, and in some sense, you hate it. It’s like some sense you’re like, “Oh, why am I on this third set? Why am I doing this?” It’s ripping the muscles, actually damaging your body in a sense, and while doing so, it’s building the body. So as we get knocked to zero in various circumstances in life, and now I believe we’re in a collective knocked back to ground zero or a collective dark night of the soul, if you will, where there’s nothing else there, but you having to come to terms with the real truth and truths, plural that have been nagging at you, but you’ve had enough distractions and things to kind of suppress them.
So I’m actually positive, despite the things that trouble me physically, right? So I’m, I’m a human, right, but I’m not esoterically in the cloud somewhere. Because if you were there, then you wouldn’t be here and you’d miss all the benefits of choosing to even be on this human journey. There are things that cause me to cry, things on a daily basis that trouble me, and such. At the same time, I am so optimistic and I don’t mean like coaching myself optimism. I mean, I genuinely at the core know where we’re headed and I know that there’s a golden age on the horizon if you will because this is serving us, just like the gym serves the muscle. There’s a lot deeper ways we can talk about, Tonya, how that’s the case. I just know that this is doing us a lot more good than we all realize.
Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. It took me all of like two seconds at basic training to understand why it’s such a phenomenal way of breaking everybody down and building them back up. It’s a true testament to when we can look at it in that pure slate format, it basically, it’s a stripping away of pretense. Anything that’s not filled with that life-giving energy, that divine love, whatever you want to call it, or whatever isn’t infused with that literally cannot stay as we shift. It can’t happen inside of what we perceive as our bodies. It can’t happen with what we perceive as the planet. It’s all up for that rerouting and that kind of being flipped inside out concept and it’s quite a ride folks. When we come back from the break, we’ll talk about why you want to be doing this. Like, yes, this is happening, and Aaron so eloquently just pointed out, this is an opportunity in a very clear invitation. So we’re going to talk about that when we come back. Before we go, Aaron, where can people go to find out more about you?
On my website, you can go to unboundedbook.com or aaronmccormick.com, either one.
Brilliant. Awesome. Well, we’re talking today about building from ground zero, talking to Aaron McCormick, and staying with us folks. When we come back for the break, we’re going to follow up on this amazing conversation, stick to it and stay to it and stay tuned, and we will be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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