Shore Slocum was the final speaker at TEDxBerkeley last weekend. Most known for training, coaching and speaking on personal and professional development, he has worked with some of the world’s top thought leaders, such as Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and others. His real gift, however, is his ability to put storytelling, heart and soul into everything he does in a way that not only inspires but transforms people on his path.
Imagine a social network the size of Facebook, but one that is focused on the soul?
That is what Shore and his partners are building with a site called SoulNeeds, that will not only be the most relevant content from the world’s top wisdom providers, but an online community and conscious social networking platform that will help people connect, share and grow in their spiritual and personal development.
It was from this place combined with his 20+ years of experience that he spoke of meaning, consciousness and purpose. Shore walked the audience through four stages of spiritual awakening and consciousness:
To Me: This is the first stage and often the ‘victim stage,’ where you feel that life is happening to you and you cast blame for your current situation on others….and often yourself too. In other words, the world and everything and everyone wrong with it is happening to me.
By Me is the next stage which is where the majority of the personal development world lives. Here, people learn that they change something specific or think about an aspect of their lives differently and get a brand new result, something which brings their life experiences to a more positive place. This is empowering for most but often not sustainable which is one of the reasons why so many people who are in this stage remain here. The ‘fixing of problems and issues repeats itself, yielding short term results and rewards.
This is also the phase where ‘learning happens and where you can easily get addicted to results by making a change. When you’re living your life ‘by me,’ there’s still a lot of effort happening since it centers around achievement and as most of us Type A results-oriented people know, its easy to get burned out in this place.
Through Me is an transformative phase. It’s almost as if you become the conduit and you’re plugged into another realm. When you find yourself plugged in, you somehow seem to get the message you’re supposed to get and all the things in your life suddenly show up.
When you’re not planning or willing it to happen, the people you need show up, the things you need show up, the money you need shows up, the talent you need shows up. In this phase, you merely need to trust the ‘signal’ you receive and step through it and once you do, your life is transformed and not quite ever the same again.
When you get to a point where you think: “this is too good to be true and you stop trusting it,” you cut off the flow. Many of us have experienced this at various stages in our lives – there’s a voice and a nudge that says Step Through Me is scary which is a scary ‘message’ because you often don’t know what is on the other side.
If you follow that path…..the ‘through me’ path, you will not end up where you set your goals, or where you envisioned your life to be, but you will end up far better than you ever imagined because you’re being led in the direction of your higher purpose, your most awake state. So, when that door opens, step through.
As Me is a magical place to live your life. Living your life ‘through me,’ still has some ego. When you move into as me, you feel no separation, and suddenly there is no difference between your brother, your sister and everything around you. Everything and everyone is one. We are all connected.
Moving Through the Stages to Get to Higher Levels of Consciousness:
In order to move from To Me to By Me, you clearly need to give up blame.
In order to move from By Me to Through Me, you clearly need to give up control.
So, if you have to give up blame and control to move through the first couple of phases, what do you need to give up to move from Through Me to As Me? Says Shore, “any sense of separation from anyone or anything.” In other words, a belief and acceptance that we are all one.
Can you imagine what we can accomplish as a society if we all left our ego states at home behind a closed locked door? Can you imagine what we can do for the world if we all lived into an As Me place, where there was no separation and we were all one. Imagine in a quiet reflective room where thought and doubt have no way to get in?
Shore ended with his favorite line, one from Gandhi:
Become the Change You Wish to See in the World.
I’ll end this post with my favorite line of all time:
The World Surrenders to a Silent Mind.