Highest Self Podcast 347: 30 Lessons in 30 Years with Sahara Rose

347-30-Lessons-in-30-Years

Every year on my birthday on this podcast I share my number of lessons for that number of years. We’ve done my 27, 28 and 29th birthday lessons on here and now it’s time for my 30th! In this episode, I share my biggest takeaways from 30 laps around the sun and what this year has in store for me energetically.

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TRANSCRIPTION

Episode 347: 30 Lessons in 30 Years
By Sahara Rose

[00:12]
Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose and welcome back to The Highest Self Podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you, Your Soul’s Highest Evolvement.

[00:19]
I am so excited to share with you today’s Episode because this is an annual tradition I do every single year, on my birthday (January 14th) and that is my number of lessons from that numbers’ birthday. So this year it is my 30 lessons that I have learned in my 30 years.

[00:37]
So, my birthday is January 14th and believe it or not this is the fourth of its kind I have done on this Podcast. I started this Podcast when I was 26 years old, so we have had my 27 lessons in 27 years, my 28 lessons in 28 years, my 29 lessons in 29 years and this is my 30th and I hope I have my 90th and a 100th lessons in those number of years.

[01:03]
So now the numbers are getting a little high I wanted to share with you kind of the top major lessons I have learned this year because 30 lessons is a lot to get through. But really, when I was writing them out I was finding the common threads of what were the lessons that kept showing up in many different ways and I wanted to share them with you. So, without further ado, let’s dive into them.

[01:25]
Number 1: Embodiment is the New Mindset.
This is my new motto guys “Embodiment is the New Mindset”. What this means is I’ve really had this realization especially this year, of writing my fourth book and really leading a business for the first time; stepping up as a CEO; as a leader; and just being so in it and realizing that we’re at this point of our evolution, especially with just the quarantine, everything happening, all of the different media and different information out there that it’s not serving us in the highest way that we have become so addicted to more information, more information, more information, but what we really need is embodiment.
You know, I talk about the Five Stages of the Dharmic Journey in “Discover Your Dharma” my new book but one of the things I speak about is how we realize from stage 2 to 3 that “I’m not my mind and body that need to be improved but rather I am a soul that gets to be known”. So what that really means is when we come at it like “Oh, you’ve got to change your mindset, mindset is everything, mindset, mindset, mindset” it’s almost saying that you are your mind and you’re not, your mind is a tool that you have, it’s like this calculator that exists inside of you and what it’s good at is remembering things, gathering information, looking at patterns. We need the mind, it’s very important, but you are not the mind and the mind is not actually what’s going to transform you. If an experience is still in your body, it’s going to continue to show up for you. The body actually holds much more information than the mind. The mind is in a way, it’s very new, it’s so much newer in our evolution especially our lower brain, as I speak about in the book, but it’s really just based off of survival; it’s based off of “How do I look at the things that could potentially get me endangered and obsess over them until I get away from them”. And back in the day it was lions and tigers chasing us but now it’s “Oh my God, someone wrote a bad comment to me on Instagram, so that’s all I’m going to think about” because the mind is acting like that is something that is not safe for you so it’s going to obsess over that, but actually it doesn’t mean anything around your safety, it’s just an angry person projecting their insecurities on you and vomiting it out because they can’t hold it to themselves. That’s actually what it is! So, when we try to just do the ‘mindset, mindset, mindset’ we don’t go deeper that “Where does this live in my body? Where in my body feels unsafe? Where in my body feels like if someone doesn’t like me, I’m not going to be able to survive, I’m going to be violated?” Where is that living in the body?
And cognitively, we’re not even going to be able to move past this because many of these experiences we are not even consciously aware of, they come from our childhood, especially the formative first three years of our lives; they come from our ancestry; Epigenetics entire scientific modality that really goes into how trauma can be passed on with our DNA. For example, if your grandmother experienced a trauma, that’s actually going to show up in your cellular make up now. So, the mind cannot know grandma had a child marriage and this is why I am afraid of a man taking away my freedom. The mind doesn’t know that but the body feels it. The body may feel that every time someone tries to come close to me I suddenly push them away because that’s a body-based experience. So, the body, in a way, carries codes much, much deeper than the mind cannot. I am not saying get rid of the mind, I’m not going that far, the mind is a great tool but it’s a tool. As is the body, the point of it is to move past both, that’s what we really came here, to go back to infinite source consciousness which is what we really are, but we have spent so much time (our entire lifetimes) focusing on the mind, the education system, our career system, our media system. Everything has been about acquiring information which essentially means that you are nothing without getting this information. But, it’s not about the person that acquires the most information is the happiest, it actually comes to – are you embodying that information?
You could read a new book every single day or take one book and really, really embody it and see what you’re going to get further with.

[05:53]
When I wrote “Discover Your Dharma” that’s why I made it like a workbook, because the greatest lessons that you are going to learn about are the ones that are going to come from your soul, the experiences that you have directly, the realizations that come through your channel.
So this is why Embodiment is the New Mindset. How can we move past the mind, the ego mind that says “I’m not enough. I need to get this, I need to be that. I need to go over there. Over there is happiness, it’s not here”, and how can we enter the body into how we feel, into what is our lived experience and to what is the language our body is speaking out to us, what does the tension over here mean that I’m holding? How can I let my body speak more than my words, my tone, the way that I express, the way that I energetically hold space? because that’s really where the communication is coming forth from.
So, I could really go so deep into this, it’s something I’m very passionate about but that is my big, big lesson of this year – Embodiment is the New Mindset.

[06:51]
Which takes me into Number 2 – Dance is the greatest healer, unifier and up-lifter.
So, this year when the quarantine first began in March, everyone was really fearful, myself included. We didn’t know what it was going to mean, we didn’t know how long we would be for, we didn’t know if everyone we knew around us would die. My mother and my brother had Covid at the time, I thought that they might die.
So, we were all at this really, really fragile place and we were all – I could speak for myself and many of my friends, spending a lot of time on the news trying to figure out what’s happening, trying to read enough articles, stay up to date on all the things and new news that was contradicting was always coming up and we were all very, very confused and we were glued to our phones.
So, something deeper within me came forth, right that first week of quarantine is “You need to get people to start dancing again!” So I went on Instagram Live every single day, I want to say the first month of this quarantine, and I danced on Instagram Live. I played different songs, from tribal music to hip hop to reggaton to Brazilian Fun to dance hall, all sorts of music. And I wasn’t performing, I wasn’t doing choreography, I was just dancing and bringing other people on the Live and dancing with them, and inviting people to put their phones on their bookshelves, on their tables and get up and get into their bodies and release; release the pain; release the tension; release whatever you’re holding onto; don’t think about it; don’t try to figure it out, let it go. Dance has always been how we have healed as a collective. In Rwanda, I remember, I think I told the story before, after the Rwandan genocide, the US government sent a bunch of top level therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists to work with the people who had went through this very, very traumatic event. After for a few days, and this specific village they were brought to, actually kicked them out. So the government officials were “Wait, we just brought these top level psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists to you guys, why did you kick them out?” and they said “Oh, no, no, no, I think you brought the wrong people because these people wanted to take us away from our community and have us sit in a dark room by ourselves and keep talking about what happened. In Rwanda, that is not how we heal. We go under the sun and we gather in circle and we hold hands and we drum, and we dance and we tell stories. This is how we heal”. And I really want this to sit with you because look at the way that we think that healing is supposed to be – to keep talking about what is wrong, keep going into it – there is a time and place for therapy there’s a time and place for talking things out, for sure. And is that all we have done? Is that our way of dealing with every single problem, to just keep talking and talking and talking about what happened? When’s the last time we danced it out? When’s the last time we sang it out? When is the last time we let the sun just permeate through our skin and heal us from a cellular level and just released it?
And I invite you to look at your own relationships with these different forms of healing, these ancient forms of healing that because of racism and patriarchy are not taught to us anymore, which is something I talk a lot about in Rose Gold Goddesses, my community. But we – long story short, because of colonialism, they saw the different ways the people were healing in Shamanic cultures, in Middle Eastern cultures, Latin American cultures, and said that this is barbaric and this is no longer allowed. So, Shamanic practices, shaking, healing, ecstatic expression, orgasmic birthing, all of these different forms of healing were no longer allowed. They were considered barbaric, you could go to jail for doing them. So, we have actually been stripped of our natural forms of healing that we think that it’s slutty, or shameful, or sinful, or wrong for me to be in my body, for me to dance, for me to scream, for me to shake, for me to twerk, jiggle, shimmy. These are very natural expressions of the body. If you ever watch National Geographic, the zebra is running away from the lion, finally makes it, breathes, shakes, releases it, goes on to eating its grass. So when is the last time you gave yourself a really good shake? When is the last time you let your hips tell you what to do? When is the last time you let your body guide you, not your mind? You surrender to your body’s movement, you lived in the experience rather than thinking about it.
You know, we talk so much about meditation as a society, how to be an observer of the mind – dance, it will instantly take you out of your mind, there is no trying, there is no forcing, there is no pushing, it will just bring you there. And every single human on the planet can dance and actually enjoys dancing. We were built, we were made to dance, it exists in every single culture, even cultures that have never had contact with the outside world have their own forms of dance as well as music and song.
So, what is your relationship with it? Do you think dancing is something that you only do on stage if you have a six-pack? Or, is it your daily form of healing practice? Because that is what this medicine is here to do. And this year, in the quarantine, I felt so called to create my Healing and Embodiment Through Dance Course where I dive deeper into this – why we are so ashamed of dance and our bodies, and our physical vessels and why they carry so much tension, and trauma, and contraction. So, I created this course for you guys right from my home that includes – it’s a 3.5h long course that talks about how your body wants to move; what that says about you; are you more into rigid movements, circular movements, ecstatic movements, flowy movements, what does that say about your energy; and then follow-along dance practices you can do to create circular undulation, shaking movements within your body to bring round different forms of energy. So you can find that on the show notes – rosegoldgoddesses.com/dance and it’s also included in your Rose Gold Goddesses Membership.
So, dance has been something that I have loved to do my entire life but it was something that, you know, I was busy, I had work to do, I had books to write, I didn’t have time. But this year was really the year that dance was my daily spiritual practice, not a day went by that I didn’t do some form of dance. I have been sharing it more than ever online whether it’s through my Instagram reels where I do little fun dance routines or whether it is just through those Lives that I was doing; through my DJ sets that I was doing; the course etc. but I am no longer afraid to show that side of me. And this year has really been about integrating myself, in my fullest expression. My former self had a lot of fear around that; I was afraid that if people saw me dance or twerk or belly dance or something, they wouldn’t like me or they’d think that I’m not real or I’m slutty, or this or that, and I had all of these stories that were told by me and instilled in my mind by the patriarchy, growing up, in that kind of environment. So, I was so afraid of expressing that side of myself and I remember a couple years ago I went to this twerk class with my friend Paul and he shared a video of us at the class and I was mortified. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t want him to share, I didn’t want people to know but then he was getting these comments like “Oh my God, love seeing you guys dancing” and I started to get messages “Oh cool, I love to dance too” and that helped me see that I was safe. The body thinks that “If I show this side of me, I won’t be safe”. What does that come from? Okay, it comes from, back in the times of the village, when we were all in this village together, if there was a person that we did not like, if we ostracized them from the community, that person would no longer have access to food, water, shelter etc. So, we actually have, again, this body-based experience of “If people don’t like me, I might be ostracized and I may lose my access to the things that keep me safe”. That is why we are inherently very concerned about our reputation.
So, when he put up that video and I realized I was safe, that gave me a little bit of courage to “Okay, maybe if I shared on my story” and I would put it on my story and I would delete it after ten seconds. And the next time I would put it up I would delete it again. And then I would put it up and I would keep it on for longer and I would realize I am safe here and if I shared this much I’m still safe here and if I shared this much I’m still safe, I’m still safe. Then I realized that it was all just an illusion. And those very people who might have been triggered by it are actually the ones that are the most inspired by it. You’re not triggered by something that’s not striking a cord somewhere within you, so if you are triggered by my expression, that probably means it is a reflection of your own expression that you have not fully embraced yet. So what a beautiful permission slip that I am giving everyone to show themselves, how to embody their fullest expression, whatever that looks like for them.

[16:07]
So, I think a lot of us right now have this fear around “If I show this part of myself that I am shameful of, I will be cancelled”. This was the year, the cancel culture, which I am so against. It doesn’t allow people room to grow and it doesn’t allow for conversation. I don’t want to give this conversation to that but really, what it comes forth is “I don’t want my peers or strangers on the internet to dislike me”. And you’ve got to be okay with some people not liking you; you’ve got to be okay with triggering people; you’ve got to be okay! The people who’ve made the biggest changes in the world were the most hated at the same time, so whatever it is that you’re feeling called to share about yourself, to express – in “Discover Your Dharma” I have this practice of your Five Uncomfortable Truths and sharing the things that you’re the most ashamed about and how those are the most integral parts of your Dharma. So, own those things! And for me, I’ve further stepped into it, more and more, and it has let my people find me, and that’s really what we’re all here to do – we’re here to embody our fullest expression; just expand our beautiful peacock wings and let our people find us.

[17:15]
So, the third lesson of this year was Stick To Your Vision.
So, in writing a book, it is quite an interesting experience because you have your idea of what should be in the book, what should the cover be, what should this part be and that part be, especially when you have (like me) I have been blogging for 11 years. So I’ve always been the person making the decisions, choosing, I didn’t have anyone else to run it by, it was just me. So, writing a book, especially in this experience, it was so different because there are all these other people who have their editors and people who choose covers and this and that. So it really has taught me to really stand up for what my vision is – if I want to express something in a certain way and I feel very called to that, to not succumb, which might be the easier option to just be okay with it and move on, but to actually be like “No! I want this to be in the book!” or “I want the cover to look like this!” or “No, I’m not going to water it down for mainstream media” or “I’m not going to get rid of the sacred essence of this transmission and to make it more mass-appealing!” So it has been a lot for me around sticking to my vision of what I want to express and how my channel wants to come through. And I am fine with not being for the average American, that is totally cool with me, that is not my Dharma. So, it took me, definitely amping up my warrior side, and that brings us into Lesson 4. That sometimes you do need to step into your warrior mode.

[18:51]
So, for me, this year, of the Nine Dharma Archetypes that I write about in “Discover Your Dharma” – Warrior is my last one. It’s not one that comes naturally to me; it’s not one I like to be in. My father was very angry growing up and would have really bad bouts of anger, and I think for me, as a child, every time that there was anger in the house I felt very unsafe, I felt very fearful and I felt responsible to be the person to calm him down. So, I don’t like that type of energy, it makes me feel very unsettled, I don’t feel comfortable in it. So, my life, I have been able to kind of navigate past it or be in the spiritual world where there isn’t so much intense warrior, combative Wall Street energy. But this year I definitely, really had to make friends with my inner warrior. I had to step into it, put out many fires especially around website things and hiring, and hiring the wrong people, and I just majorly had to boss up, figure things out, create solutions and just be in my MF boss mode. And, I also had to realize that I was stepping into it way too often because I didn’t have the right team in place. So, I didn’t have the right support that could put out these things, who could handle it, who could finish things, it was just like people trying and not being able to finish it and then me having to step in. So, it really helped me realize how important team is.

[20:21]
Which brings me to Number 5 – Finding aligned team.
I remember hearing about a podcast out-team before I had a team and I was like “Agh, I wish I even have that problem!” So, I know what you mean but I do want to share because I think it’s good to know because team has been such a huge lesson for me. I think, before I had any type of team, team meaning contractors and place etc. I always felt like “Oh, I just had a team, my life would be so much better and so much easier and all my problems would be solved and I would have people to do all these things that I’m doing, and the website, the back-end, the tech, the emails, the customer service” I was doing it all for 10 years. So, for me, team has been a really interesting challenge because it’s not like you just hire people and it’s all gone. Then your next set of challenges comes which is finding the right people and managing them, and putting systems in place and keeping moral up and people leaving and then having to replace them, and having better communication and things not being done and you figuring it out and all of these things that I’m like “Wow” Okay, this is what it’s like!” – So, finding the right people, speaking your truth, speaking your needs and also investing your best.
I think for a lot of us, for myself, and have money and then have money to hire a team, I would, if I just could, I would hire just the cheapest VA (being honest, because I didn’t have any income) and then I would start to hire a little bit, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more that now, I actually brought my first full-time employee in, which feels incredible, and someone who is amazing at what they do and very experienced, that I can really pay well. And that has been such an amazing upgrade, to be able to have people living their Dharma around you who aren’t doing it out of desperation or out of they’re not sure what to do so they’re just doing the sad thing for you, but people whose true Dharmas are to work in a supportive role with what you’re doing, whether it’s the managing or the customer service, or whatever else it is. But that has been so major for me, it definitely was a lesson I learned a lot later than I should have. But this year, for me, businesswise, it has been the year of figuring all of that out and being first time CEO. So, I am so grateful now that I have learned a lot of these lessons along the way. And for a more grounded 2021 where I can be more focused on my personal Dharma and not putting out all the fires that it takes when you’re running a business.

[22:56]
So, Number 6 – Don’t Worry About The Future.
I went down the rabbit hole this year guys, I did. Did any of you? When I’m talking about a rabbit hole, I mean when you are seven You Tube videos deep into some shit that you don’t even know is real; when your body is fearful and you’re like “Oh my God, has my entire life been a lie?” Those! I have never been a huge conspiracy person, I think sometimes we label things conspiracy that are things mainstream media doesn’t want us to believe in so I never even resonated with that word. I think that sometimes we can put other genuine theories down by calling them conspiracy, but there are also some conspiracy theories, there are also things that are just completely made up; that are very obviously used to manipulate people; to put them in a fear-based space and then give them the solution which is “This person is now the savior of all of it” and anything bad that’s ever happened it’s this group of people; anything good that has ever happened, it’s this one great person! Y’all know what I mean? And this one great person, by the way, is really, really rude to everyone, racist, doesn’t pay his workers in Bangladesh and literally has human slaves (watch the Vice episode on that).
So, I think this year really taught us a lot about boundaries with social media, to not believe everything, and it was interesting because I think my biggest scare actually came right in March, that was when everything was hitting from all different directions. But I had some friends that were really down the rabbit hole and they were sending me all these things like “Oh my God, the power’s going to go out for 10 days, make sure you have propane and all the stuff” I’m like “I live in an apartment, I don’t know how I’m going to make a fire in here, I don’t know what to do” or like “The American currency is going to be gone” or “We’re not going to be able to leave our houses ever again” and just all of these worst case scenarios. And when you’re in a very fragile, vulnerable state like we were in, especially in March, April, it is a lot easier to believe in these things and it can put you in a very, very fear-based panic attack state.
So, I definitely learned my lesson of not giving into that; not giving into these false agendas; not giving them my power because the more and more we give them our power, the more and more we’re actually co-creating it to be a reality. As we know, whatever we put our energy towards, manifests. So, if we don’t want that, don’t give it so much attention. All of these people “My purpose is to be the truth teller and bring down the agenda, fuck the agenda!” All you’re doing is raising all of this awareness and all you’re talking about is this agenda, agenda – what’s your solution here? And going back, your Dharma is your solution; you creating the type of world that you want to be in; you committing to something; you creating sustainable change. Reposting some shit on your story is not making a fucking difference. Let’s be real y’all, it’s not making a difference! What’s making a difference is you committing your Dharma; you creating the world that you want to be a part of; you finding joy in doing it so you can keep doing it even when things get tough and you can actually create an experience, a school, a product, a community, a something that can actually make the world a better place. The most courageous thing you can do, and truthfully the only way we can change the world, is by committing to do our Dharmas.

[26:15]
For example, I created my community Rose Gold Goddesses, 2000 spiritual soul sisters, they’re, every single day having really incredible conversations, supporting each other, helping each other really blossom into their fullest expressions and elevate as their highest selves. And this is how we make a change! This is how I have been called. Someone else may be called through a certain supplement; someone else may be called through a certain school or through a coaching practice; or through a product; or whatever else it is, but it’s not about “Oh, I’m going to give up my power to whatever this You Tube video that, by the way was created by a person who probably has some sort of agenda, wants me to do but rather you committing to something, giving your life to it, giving your energy to it, it being aligned with your purpose – that’s how we’re going to make a change.
So, I think most of the world is just not at that state, even quite yet, to realize that it’s not about consuming the most amount of news, that’s not going to make you change the world, it’s actually about holding your vibration, seeing clearly enough to focus that energy now on your Dharma.
So, that has been what I have been doing and it feels so good to have reclaimed my full sovereignty, my full power and to be completely out of any of those rabbit holes, any of those stickiness, agenda-ey things that they also have no solution for and if it’s so bad and everyone and the government is going to do this thing, well then, what are you going to do? None of the things they said that were going to happen have happened, so why should we keep trusting these sources? I am not saying blindly follow mainstream media either, I was just saying commit to your fucking Dharma!

[27:53]
So, Number 7 – Focus on Your Present-Day Reality, not what the media is dictating your reality as.
So, piggy-backing off of the last point, it can be so easy for us to continue to find more things that are wrong with the world. There are an endless amount of things wrong with the world, and by the way, that didn’t start this year, that started – since the beginning of time. There has always been that, you just haven’t been aware of it. Maybe you weren’t watching the news enough but the news has always featured bad news. I remember when I was a kid “Oh my God, what’s going to happen with Elian Gonzales? Elian Gonzales; Elian Gonzales. Okay, now princess Diana, what’s going to happen? Now this Bonnet girl is missing; now this”. There’s always been something bad in the news. I’ve never just – maybe sometimes there was a segment of ‘Golden retriever finds his owner after he comes back from the military’ and they’re having an amazing hug, that is the rare little clip they throw in there sometimes, but 99% of it is fear-based because you’re going to get hooked. When you’re afraid, psychologically you are hooked. You can’t focus on anything else, you’re blind, spiraled, visioned; all you can see is this thing. So that’s why they actually use it as their tool.
So, focus on your present-day reality, focus on what is my day-to-day life, how can I make that better, how can I make it more aligned, more authentic? You know, I always finding myself “Oh my God, what’s happening over here? In India, look at what’s happening in India! Oh my God, but the restaurants, but the this, but the that” – yes, that’s all happening, it’s very real, very real! And if you’re not going to go out there and make a difference in that specific thing and commit your Dharma to it, then you stressing out about it is not helping those people; you crying about the people dying of starvation is not what’s going to feed them, it’s you feeding them, that is! So let’s get to action! Yes, it’s natural to have a human response, yes I would consider myself an empath as well, but I don’t use that term to hold me down. I’ve done an episode on this – I think so many of us “But I’m an empath; I’m an empath; I feel things too much” – no, you need more boundaries; you need more energetic sovereignty because we can always have an excuse of “But someone else is having that experience”. So, you’ve mastered your own experience but because someone else is having their own experience, it’s not your fault, it’s that person’s fault for having a bad experience that’s making you feel this way. We’ve got to take ownership! No! It’s not them who’s having the bad experience that’s making you feel bad, it’s your leaky boundaries; it’s your inability to harness into your own body and grounded into your experience that you are letting all these other people’s experience dictate your own. That’s a personal issue. Again, I’ve had it. I had it this year. We all have it sometimes but I’m calling it what it is.
So let’s give up blaming the world, blaming the outside, blaming the external, because everyone had a very, very different 2020, and that was according to how you perceived things. So we get to choose. What’s this year going to be – the best year or our lives or the worst? You get to choose! And by the way, the same circumstances can happen to two different people and their experience of it can be very different. So, it’s not just your circumstances.
My husband lost his company this year. He works in the music business and it was still one of the best years of his life because he was able to go further into his own truth, his own Dharma, we were able to move. So, you never know what’s awaiting you on the other side! You know, something I read about in the book – “Sometimes the worst thing that could ever happen to you is actually the best thing that can ever happen to you”. For me, being disowned by my family – it ended up being the best thing that could ever happen to me because I learned how to believe in myself. I was able to create a life that was authentic to me, not someone else.
So let’s give up the waiting for our circumstances to be perfect for us to be happy. And reclaim that sovereignty that fucking hurts because it requires us to be responsible. But I’m saying this as a sister who loves you, who wants the best for you, who wishes someone said this to me earlier, that you truly create your own experience based off of your perception and that requires you getting into the energetic states to allow you to see clearly, to feel clearly and to act clearly. Wooh! A-ho!

[32:10]
So, the next one – Your Healing Work with Your Family is Never Done and Some of the Most Important Work You Can Do.
So, like I mentioned, my mother and my brother had Covid back in March and I was really afraid, mostly because my dad, who is 69 years old, soon to be 70, lives with them. And my dad has health issues and I was really worried that I would never be able to see him and he would die. So, first of all, that’s listening to the news because the news made us feel like every single person is going to die and it also prompted me to do a lot of healing work. So like I said, sometimes the worst thing that could ever happen is the best thing that could ever happen. I really looked into, I’ve been looking into most of my adult life, but further into my relationship with my father who I have spoken about, who I was not close with, who had anger issues, who has narcissism, and the gifts that he has given me; the lessons that I’ve learned; all of the lessons that I wish I could’ve said to him; all of the things I wished he could’ve said to me. And I went deeper into this healing work; I did something called The Sacred Letter Practice which I teach in Rose Gold Goddesses of writing messages and channeling them back and forth to us, and I cried a lot, sobbed cried, I’ve never cried so hard in my life around the stuff that was coming up for me, around the anger and the sadness and the guilt and the nostalgia, and all of it. And I’m so grateful for this work that I did because it was some of the clearing that I really needed to step into the next iteration of my Dharma and my expression. And my dad did not end up even getting Covid symptoms and is still fine today, and alive, and I’m so grateful that that experience, though I wasn’t sure if I would see him again, I have ended up being able to see him again and we had a really deep, intense conversation, and it’s going to continue to be like that and it’s never perfect, it’s never going to be in anyone’s lifetime, but sometimes these scary experiences can prompt us to look deeper into our life, and our choices, and our background and our histories than ever before.
I also did family constellation work which is kind of healing that is based off of looking at your relationship with your parents and their relationship with their parents, and looking at the patterns that may have come from their upbringing with your upbringing. And then, that was extremely healing and profound for me to finding just more reconciliation around the whole thing. And I’ll do an episode with a family constellation healer on here for sure, very soon, but it’s not about “Oh, everything was perfect” it’s about “I realized this happened and I let it go”, and just to live your life too. So, that was very helpful and then I could have never imagined that just two months ago (I want to say) that my family agreed to do their own family constellation work too. So they each, individually, did their own family constellations healings, to do work with their parents relationship and seeing how their grandparents reflected on their parents and that, and so, full forward lineages of healing work that was done this year, that would not have happened, again, had it not been for that Covid scare. So, again, sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is the best thing that can happen to you and I’m so grateful for that experience to just create more congruence for my family life and less of the stickiness or less oh the “Ugh, I don’t want them to visit”, more just genuine love and appreciation. They don’t have to be a certain way for you to love them, you can love them as they are.

[35:46]
So, the next one lesson, and I’ll maybe do two more, is that you can live anywhere and you don’t have to wait to move.
So, we moved to Miami this year. It was something that I always fantasized about but I didn’t even know it would ever happen. My husband’s business was in LA, he works in music and moving out of LA seemed like maybe a 10-year plan, but not anytime soon. So this year, when his office shut down and everything was closed out, this gave us the opportunity to move and I am so grateful that now I’m recording this while looking at the expansive turquoise ocean, from Miami Florida, which would not have happened had it not been for all of these changes. So, I really believe that we were setting the grid in all of the different places because we were being called as sun-beings to share out lights there.
So, so many of us are moving to the woods, or the forest, or the mountains, or the beaches, or different countries, or wherever it is that you’re being called to really plant, you’re setting that grid exactly there, you are being that lighthouse that’s activating and awakening everyone around you, not just physically but also energetically.
So, I am so grateful to have been called here, to have my own office for the first time, which is so cool, and to be able to set the grid here and continue the light work and continue the embodiment of the sun.

[37:08]
So, the number 11 is – whatever you love about travel, bring it to your home.
So, this year, we could not travel, of course and I really looked at what were the things I love about Bali. Bali for me is my happy place, my soul’s home, I love it there so much, and I still can’t go. So what are the things I love about it? Okay, I love just the way, the earthy tones; the textures and the sacredness; and the plants. So I created my home to have that Bali and Tulum experience. Think about what are the things that you love. Maybe you love Paris, you love a Parisian café, can you redecorate your kitchen to look like that? You could find so many things, thrift, used, so many places right now that have incredible things. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money doing this. It could just be revamping things you already have, setting it up in a way that you love but I think this year was the year of the home. Starting with your root chakra, starting with where are you sleeping and waking each night; where are you spending your days, and really paying attention to how important it is. I think in our former lives we were very on-the-go, the home was just the place where you slept and you got up and you were at the office all day and then you were at dinner and this and that, but now we are really in the home so it’s looking at how can I create this to be the most supportive environment for my growth? So, what are the elements I love? For me, it is the earth element and the water element; those are the elements that I’m calling into: more grounding and just more fluidity. So, being by the beach, having those elements within me, and that brings me to the next one which is also doing the things that you love to do, especially loved to do as a child or love to do when you’re traveling.
So, when Covid really hit, for me, I think that first two weeks we all found some random passion project that we really wanted to do and didn’t have time to do. For me it was acrylic pouring. So, acrylic pouring is when you have that cup of all those different swirly paints and they all glide with each other and you splash it onto the canvas and they’re all swirling and creating all of these different colors and then you pick up the canvas and you tilt it in different directions and it forms into these beautiful kaleidoscope-like sways and swirls. Maybe you’ve seen these videos on You Tube but it’s something I got really into this quarantine. So, I really kept looking at “Okay, what did I love to do as a kid?” I loved to have a new art project – that to me was my happy place of just having a new art project I could make my own soap; I could make my own stained glass; I could make my own necklace, and how exciting that experience was to make something with my hands. So I have been doing a lot more of that – I have been weaving macramé, I have been making dreamcatchers, making things with my hands again. The macramé is quite a longer process than I would’ve thought. If you want to sit and zone out, just weave some macramé.
And then also, I loved to do funny skits as a kid. I loved to dress up and play karaoke and pretend to be this character and that character and make up scenarios. And then in high school I did improv, I’ve always loved just that – very spontaneous side of myself. I could never memorize a line and be in a movie but I could probably do Saturday Night Live.
So, I have been loving TikTok and I want to just say I’m very, very grateful for TikTok this year because it has given me so many laughs. It has made me feel like I have been a part of this community, which is kind of weird to say because it’s online, but I feel like with everyone just quarantined and in their homes, and on top of that moving to a new place – what I love about TikTok is these trends that everyone’s doing at the same time. You see different people doing it and adding their own spin to it; learning about different cultures – and sometimes it’s this interesting African dance trend that’s going on or it’s this Chinese fashion on, or it’s this certain funny thing. Yeah, finding out nuances of different cultures and sub-groups that I wasn’t aware of. And making these TikToks and putting on different outfits and coming up with a different scenario and using a song and dancing along to it, it really put me into that child-like state and it’s something that I’ve genuinely love to do and has brought so much joy into my life. So, I want to say thank you to TikTok! And I have been putting a lot of those TikToks on my Instagram reels too, so some of you guys have been seeing them and it’s been very therapeutic to be honest, very grateful for that this year. Thirty-year-old on TikTok, I would’ve never thought if you told me that last year, but here we are.

[41:42]
So, the next one – just a little bit of a heavy one to end on, so maybe I’ll do one more after. It is making friends with death.
So, this year my grandmother died around the beginning of April, so I could not see her, we could not have a funeral for her. And I was quite close with her, I’ve spoken about her on the Podcast (she was the one in the child marriage) and she, pretty quickly – she was older, she was 93 years old (I want to say) so she was definitely older, but just quickly transitioned and within a month died. So she died; my grandfather, right now, is in the transitionary time out of his body. And it was actually quite tough because he was really reaching low points right before my book came out and I was really fearful of what if he dies on the day of my book launch; and then my family getting Covid.
So, death was on the forefront of my mind a lot this year, and I’ve actually really had to go into it. What happens after death? Why are we so afraid of it? Accepting that one day I will dies, my husband will die, my dog will die – going into that, not avoiding it. And, you know, I think death is one of those things that you just kind of don’t think about, you just kind of know “Yeah, we’re all going to die one day” we say that all the time, but do we really think about that? Do we really think that all these things, working so hard on and stressing about, holding onto such an attachment are all going to be gone. This is just a glimpse, it’s a blink and I’m going to wake up and be in another lifetime.
So, I have been really going into death and it has given me much more joy of life and the things that maybe would have bothered me before just don’t bother me because I know this is just a temporary illusion and one day we’re all going to die. So, it really is true that the deeper that you can make friends with death, you can make friends with life. And all of these different experiences I have now been in with my grandmother and now almost my grandfather dying, it has helped me see that you’re really left with how you made people feel – that’s it. You don’t take any of your money, your accomplishments, your success, your resume, none of that goes with you when you die. All people will remember is how you made them feel, the impact you have made on their lives and it’s just further recommitted me to that passing along the torch, to the empowering others to live their Dharmas. You know, what’s to come this year for me is something the world really has never seen before – to empower others to not only live their Dharmas but to help others find their Dharmas too. I’ll leave it there! But, the reason why, is because I’m thinking far beyond my lifetime; I‘m thinking legacy; I’m thinking not just legacy in terms of my ego but in terms of what do I want to leave the world behind with because I hope I am my grandparents’ age when I die (or older) – I hope, I don’t know. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week! So, to not let that run your life but to have that on the back of your mind of “Do I really want to waste this one precious lifetime stressing about this thing that someone said to me that just didn’t sit with me right. Do I really want to spend my time doing this? Or do I want to focus with what I want to leave the world with after this very, very short lifetime?”

[44:51]
So, number 14 is that ritual is so important.
So, this year, having rituals was such a sense of peace, clarity, purpose and joy in my life. Just having different, even just small rituals by myself – if it’s a New Moon I’m going to put out my crystals or flowers or do this ancestral ritual for Samhain. You know, I really, really committed to practicing every ritual possible this year. And that was the beauty of having more time. Before maybe “Oh, I can’t, I can’t really do anything on the New Moon or Full Moon, I have this to do, I have that to do” but now we have that beautiful luxury of time and space and ease, what a gift! So, giving yourself that time to set your intentions, to set your alter space, to bless your Goddesses or your cards, or whatever it is that you’re working with and to make life a ritual. So, I loved doing so many different rituals and practices – I did womb rituals, ancestor rituals, manifestation rituals, Mary Magdalene rituals, Isis rituals, Yemaya rituals. Every single month in Rose Gold Goddesses I’m doing a ritual with the community and diving deep into that Goddess’ ritual. So it has been so incredible to really be in that ritualistic state and reclaiming this lifetime for me as a ceremonialist. I am here to create ceremony and to guide people through transformative rituals to connect them and embody them deeper into their own truth. So to be able to sit in ritual and offer it to the 2000 members in Rose Gold Goddesses every single month and then commit to my own ritual practices through my home, through people that I’m connected to and us to gather, not to just talk but actually to sit in prayer and meditation and honoring for the collective, that has been very, very powerful.

[46:42]
So, number 15 is – I’ve really realized, more than ever, who your real friends are. I think that in our former world we were just kind of going around “Oh, you have that friend you see at an event or you have that person there” that’s all fine but I feel like, at least for me, I have a form in my human design so I’m very community focused so I was just like, there’s always like “Oh, I need to text that person back”, “Oh, I haven’t seen that person in a long time” there’s always this thing I needed to do in terms of “Oh, I need to reach out to that person”, there’s always this to-do list of social interactions. I don’t know if anyone has felt like this before but I’m like “Oh, we haven’t talked in four months, I need to do a meet up or something; a coffee date with this person” it was almost stressful. I actually, am naturally, more of an introvert I would say, I’m kind of 50:50, it depends on the scenario but I definitely recharge by being alone. And the first thing, when these cancelations happened, I was like “Oh, God, okay, it gives me a little breathing room right now” and then I really showed you who’s going to actually put in the time to meet up with you on a Zoom call, to send each other voice notes, to fill in each other with what’s happening in their life; who are the people who you’re actually going to spend time doing that with and you want to hear theirs too?
So, I kind of just have a handful of really close friends that I’m in this conversation with almost all the time, that we’re very much keeping each other up-to-date with what’s happening with our lives and sharing and connecting and supporting. I kind of have different groups with that, but of course that number of real friends and to honor the ebbs and flows of other friendships. Some friendships that I really didn’t see or that other person didn’t really put the time to commit to and that’s okay too, people come in and out of your life. So, I think this year really showed us who are our quarantine friends, who are the people who, when times are tough and sometimes you’re freaked the fuck out; and who are the people you can send a 7-minute long voice to about everything happening in your life and is going to listen and hold that space for you? So, I am so grateful for those friends I actually have – two of them visiting me right now for my birthday which I’m just so grateful for. And yeah, I definitely do miss the socializing and meeting new people etc. but at the end of the day it’s your closest friends that when you die those are the ones that you’re really going to remember. So, it’s to continue to cultivate and deepen those friendships and not be afraid about doing that work. And if you don’t have those friends, I totally get you, I didn’t have them for the first couple years, they lived in LA and that’s again, why I created Rose Gold Goddesses. We have groups in basically every city, globally at this point, so you can actually find other spiritual sisters in your town, in your city or even in other cities based off of topics, based off of interests. We have our new Dharma Support Circles going on so you’ll actually be able to connect with your Dharma Support Circle. So you can put together a group of four women who will be able to do a Zoom call every two weeks where you talk about what’s going on with your Dharmas, you support each other, you give each other guidance and you can actually find these women in Rose Gold Goddesses. So if you want to learn more about that, head over to rosegoldgoddesses.com, the link is in the show notes and join us there.

[49:57]
So, there are other lessons from me, I’ll just end with this last little tippet on that because it’s sort of the direction I’m going in this year.
This year for me has been a major year of womb awakening. Entering into the wisdom of the womb; the womb being our house of intuition for the feminine being; our body-basednosis, that means our internal knowing, going back to the first point, away from information into embodiment, into trust, into the beingness and letting our bodies, our womb spaces, our sacral and root chakras guide the way.
So, I have been curious about womb work, definitely in the past, but this year, it has been like a front center, like how I felt with Ayurveda when I first started to learn about it, how I felt with Dharma, how I felt with many spirituality concepts, past lives, that is how I’m feeling about womb wisdom right now; and anchoring deeper into this body-based knowing, whether it is womb meditations, the ways that the patriarchy has taken womb-based wisdom away from us and many different societies. The book “Womb Awakening” is a wonderful place to start on all of that. So, this year I am deeply studying womb magic, womb wisdom, wombnosis and it will definitely be at the next iteration of my Dharma (along with the dance). Dance as a form of healing, as a form of prayer, as a form of meditation; dance really guiding us forward into this new paradigm where we feel and express rather than think. And again, no shame on the thinking, I definitely think a lot too, but what we’re being called to do right now is to move past the logical mind and into this knowing. Our womb created all life, every single one of us had come here from and through a womb, there is not a being on this soil that is not from the womb. The womb is the holograph of life force, it literally is the portal between the two worlds, it takes the unseen into the seen and manifests it into physical form. Each and every one of us created the very cells of our being through a womb and also each of us have existed in our grandmother’s womb.
So, when we tap into our womb space, we heal whatever has been sitting in this cauldron. Collective traumas, pains, stories, past life work or lineage trauma, all sorts of things that has been sitting in out womb collectively from generation after generation after generation of not doing this work and right now we are being called to look into this cauldron and clear it out and take what serves us, take the gifts and the medicine from our ancestry and release, menstruate out what is not serving us, so we can create more of that holy nectar, the amrita, the majesty, the creation of life and let ourselves usher this next iteration of what is to come through the sacred vessel of the womb, which by the way, even if you don’t have a physical womb, we all, male, female, non-binary, have an energetic womb.
So, this is where I am heading this year – more of the dance, more of the sacred feminine, more of the embodiment, more of the Shakti. My word for this year is embodying my full Shakti.
So, Shakti is for me, it carries a different frequency than divine feminine. When I think of divine feminine, I think of very light, pure, I actually think very white to be honest, yin, soft, which are beautiful qualities. I mean, not that white is better than any other color, I’m not white, but it has this very pure energy to it, which again, great. But that’s not the energy I’m trying to call forth. The Shakti is the full throttle, amrita, the woman in her orgasm, in her creation, in her glory, in her heart space, in her womb, just like opening her legs up to the cosmos and letting it drip through her entire being – that is what I think of Shakti. I think of the Goddess with her tongue out and she is just so full-forced, going towards her Dharma and not letting anything stop her, but she is doing it with her hips and her curves and her movement and her feet are dancing through this cosmic web of life. That is what I think of Shakti! And this is why it’s my word of the year! It is moving into the vibrant heart space, the womb space, into the fullest expression of what our feminine beings can become, not limiting them to be the soft, and sweet, and light and sensual role but she can be a fucking bad ass and she can be wild and she can be expressive and loud and courageous and all of it, letting all of the spectrums of the feminine into the picture and letting it be juicy, and exquisite, and bold, and brave, and delicious at the same time. So this to me is what Shakti energy is all about and this is my word of the year. I have been practicing a lot of tribal fusion belly dance which is one of my favorite forms of dance which is a collection of different forms of dance from Odissi – Indian dance, to Balinese temple dance, to pop and lock with different forms of belly dance; Egyptian cabaret style; North African style; Lebanese style; Persian dance as well. So, I have always – I started belly dancing when I was very young (because of my family) but I actually first started performing when I was 15 years old and I performed at my 16th birthday and it’s just always been such a part of my life, it’s how my body naturally wants to move; it’s very serpentine and the shimmies and the layers and the undulations and yeah, letting that be my daily practice; letting that be front stage; letting that be how Spirit channels and moves through me, and heals, and refines, and restores, and recalibrates, and renourishes my system; and letting my body be my poetry,

[56:11]
So, these are some of my 30 lessons in my 30 years! I am soul grateful for you! If you are someone that has been listening to this Podcast for the past three and a half (almost four) years, please shoot me a DM because I want to thank you. And if you are new to this Podcast, what a beautiful place to start, love you, thank you for being here. And we are going to have a beautiful year, this is going to be truly the year that we step into our Dharmas more than we ever have before. And we do it with ease, we do it with flow, we do it with love, we do it with vibrancy. Let’s not hustle our way to the top and sacrifice ourselves and hurt ourselves just to get there and get the accolade and then what? Let it be juicy, let it be fluid, let it just ooze out of you like an orgasm, let yourself orgasm your creations, because this is how life was meant to be lived.

[57:10]
So, if you have not yet, check out my new book “Discover Your Dharma: A Vedic Guide to Finding You Purpose”. If you have not gotten it yet or if you have gotten it yet, be sure to submit you receipt over on my website iamsahararose.com/dharma you can submit you receipt there, I have all the links for Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Book-A-Million, wherever you get your books, internationally, and I will email you over three epic bonuses which include my Dharma Embodiment Practice to dance your way to your Dharma and bring yourself to be an energetic alignment for it; my Dharma Tapping Practice which will actually help you tap and remove energetic stagnation that’s holding you back from your Dharma, as well as my Discover Your Dharma Meditation. So, these are all available for you when you submit your receipt on my website iamsahararose.com/dharma the link is in the show notes and I am so excited to share this book. This book is literally my life’s work, it is my soul, it is my story for the first time, my story with my family, the obstacles that I have faced, the lessons I have learned, all of it. If you loved this Episode, you’ve got to get the book, you’re going to love it, it’s also available on audible, so you can submit the receipt there as well and I’m so excited to just share this message with you at this timely moment in human history where we are collectively, for the first time, in modern history, we’re really asking ourselves what is our purpose and how can we find our highest form of joy with our highest form of service. And this is what living our Dharmas is all about. So, check out the new book “Discover Your Dharma” the link is in the show notes and I’m so excited to share it with you.

Love you guys! Let’s rock this year!

Episode 347: 30 Lessons in 30 Years
By Sahara Rose

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