Sophie's Challenges

...She would either laugh or be mortified, maybe. LOL

Jodie, your statement here captures what I've been experiencing, as well: "I’m finding that I’ve been floundering without Sophie…and yet during the day as I go about things, I constantly have reminders of her teachings and glimpses of the ugliness she pointed out in me"

There must be something to be done to keep the momentum going.

For all of the billions of people on this planet, we were the fortunate ones to study with her. That must be a sign that we are to soldier on. We have already decided to maintain access to her work; however, wouldn't the greatest honor to Sophie and ourselves be in maintaining her work in our lives?

How many people in this forum have gotten at least one thing from Sophie that, without a doubt, has been life altering?

I'm not sure what to say to those who still come to this forum but don't post other than to say sharing what you learned and are doing with it recharges the whole of us. Sophie published an article a day that served as a north star. And, yes, I took it for granted. Now, we have each other unless you who are reading this decide that we don't have each other.

Will the potential and progress- however slow- die in us? Or will we use her mountain of knowledge and training to be the greatest versions of ourselves possible?

If you are out there, you still have a family here.

For instance, Jodie has making herself wrong as her ongoing challenge, so in an effort to support her, I found a quote from one of Sophie's articles:

"When you call something wrong, you are attached to it. When you call it ‘not-wrong’, your attachment to it gets stronger. You don’t allow it to be by saying it’s not wrong… As far as you are concerned it is wrong. And telling the truth: for you it’s wrong, is how you allow it to be.
And when you do that, you can gently step back, and step back, and step back, until the wrong is over there, and you are over here, and the gravity doesn’t hold you hostage. You can do whatever you want to do… away from the wrong.
So it’s wrong FOR ME that it’s hot. It’s wrong for me that the website transfer isn’t working. I don’t have to make them right, I just have to allow them to be wrong.
I just have to allow them to be wrong. And then I am free."

We can do this sort of thing for each other. Just post what Sophie identified as your challenge and allow the family to support you as it supports us. Before I did this post, I felt like I wanted to go jump off a bridge- just lifeless. So, I am proof that we can serve ourselves by serving each other.

Sometimes knowing that there is someone else also going through the challenge of growing and stumbling and everything else we face, makes all the difference in being able to continue on.

So fellow "Sophighters" NO, NO, NO. That's just UGH. LOL. But really, who's carrying the flag with us?

Baheej, I don't know how you did it but this quote is just what I needed:

"When you call something wrong, you are attached to it. When you call it ‘not-wrong’, your attachment to it gets stronger. You don’t allow it to be by saying it’s not wrong… As far as you are concerned it is wrong. And telling the truth: for you it’s wrong, is how you allow it to be.
And when you do that, you can gently step back, and step back, and step back, until the wrong is over there, and you are over here, and the gravity doesn’t hold you hostage. You can do whatever you want to do… away from the wrong.
So it’s wrong FOR ME that it’s hot. It’s wrong for me that the website transfer isn’t working. I don’t have to make them right, I just have to allow them to be wrong.
I just have to allow them to be wrong. And then I am free."

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU - I had fallen into calling it 'not wrong' again, when in my mind it is, creating that resistance and not allowing it at all - I needed that nudge back to center, THANK YOU.

Which brings an absolute example of what you said here:

"We can do this sort of thing for each other. Just post what Sophie identified as your challenge and allow the family to support you as it supports us. Before I did this post, I felt like I wanted to go jump off a bridge- just lifeless. So, I am proof that we can serve ourselves by serving each other."

I thank you for that support, I believe that's exactly what Sophie was saying when she said our most important task is to support and guide each other. The value in others seeing what we don't see is, I think, our very clues to the invisible- Sophie always said that this is why we can't do it alone, why we need people in order to grow. People show us what we weren't seeing in ourselves, our situations, our thinking, our DOING. Thank you for caring, I appreciate it more than I can express.

How are you doing with the muscle testing?

Well, as far as the muscle testing goes, I have been doing it to test various things, but there is still a good bit of uncertainty around it. That's on me to continue with it until I am proficient.

Lately, I find myself lonely. Lonely in the ways that Sophie would have been here for me. Sophie didn't really sign up for my dependence on her, but that didn't stop me from relying on her. There are things about my health that I am very unsure about. There are gaps in my knowledge of different distinctions that I can no longer ask for guidance. But there is no shame. I got what I got. Or as she would say, 'A is A.'

The thing is: if it is to be, it is up to me. A phrase I never truly got, and yet it is probably the only phrase I have to keep me company.

I'm prone to the default phrase: 'It isn't fair." I could find a thousand situations and call them not fair. And guess where that leaves me? The very small, inconsequential little shit that I claim I don't want to be.

A rather accomplished business person said to me earlier that we are all where we want to be. I am still stewing with that statement, but it did wake me up to the fact that there are places where I am not taking responsibility for what is mine to take responsibility for.

What has been most scary for me is now Sophie isn't around to catch when I have gone south; it's entirely my job now as she would have wanted for me.
So what do I now? What do we do now?

The fact that I am asking these questions is why I believe strongly that supporting each other is more important than ever. For whomever is reading this, wouldn't you rather have a group of people who know what is to be in the middle of a battle for your life? A group of people who can find the best of what Sophie taught to speak to what you may be dealing with at the moment?

It is up to each of us to do what it takes to create a life we love, but wouldn't it be so much better if we supported each other in doing so?

I'll end with this: I realize that I may not write in the manner that inspires (the language of possibility) but I have seen what is happening to me from slacking off, and if you are also noticing the same, chime in and share so we can start to do the best with what we have- Sophie's teachings and each other.

I am finding the same thing. I'm working on trying to add back in the structure I had, the accountability I had when Sophie was here... I don't think one day went by where I wasn't in contact with her since June. I can feel the lack of connection, I guess probably the 'fog' that comes with a lower vibration.

What I'm working on is trying to add back in some structure and hold myself accountable. There is the TruBack that I can be doing daily to increase the flexibility that she said was so critical, the Infinite Mind exercises that she said could over time help us increase our mind's ability to hold more than one thing and to read differently, the 67 steps to do again, the practicing connecting, so many things we can still work on daily...and still creating my attitude for the day.

I stumbled on an article today from Oct. 2022... it was so relevant to where I feel like I am right now. It starts with:

"Humans see the world through words...and then get trapped in single words that cause the world to be a dark dank place...No one wants to call home.

What would have to happen so that on this dark Monday morning you suddenly get how this human condition works, below the visible?
And if you got it: What would you do? What would you do if you got that you live your life through words and more words? Not any words, mind you, but powerful words said with power...?

Wouldn't you flock to the schools, the teacher, to the gurus who can help you learn wordcraft?

Wouldn't you suddenly want to read? Stories of people who got it, stories of people who live it?

Like I did."

It goes on about how she turned to stories, and from stories she learned how to be, how not to be, how it feels doing something, and why she would want to do it. Not because the stories told her, but because she SAW it... because we have no ability to see on the movie screens of our minds scenarios playing out that tell us what to do, how to do it, how to feel while we're doing it.... or, we are always in survival mode.

Here's where it really started to hit home for me.... she wrote that in survival mode we flail, splashing around, desperately to stay afloat and stop the sinking. We can't tell how far the bottom is, so we try to avoid it, and we barely live. We never have a moment of respite to just sit around and look what is what and what it is that we could do, and are able to do, and would enjoy to do, to get back to the top.

Whereas, when we hit bottom, we suddenly have solid ground under our feet. We know where is up, and where is down. We can kick off from the ground, and shoot up to the stars. I see that as the 'jet engine' that she used to talk about. She talks in this article about students who never come out of the fog, who refuse to hit bottom frequently, so that they always know which direction to move, where is up and where is down.

She advises to pick a 'bottom' that is most energizing to us, something that is unsuitable. For her it was the idea of a life of aimlessness, directionlessness, a life wasted in flailing, trying, and complaining about is...that would send her to conjure up the bottom. And she choses to be a human, and never resign. She writes that the most important benefit, the most important gift of declaring hitting bottom is that you can look, and choose what to do. Look to see, to choose a direction, and look carefully to choose a set of action, so we can continually go up.

There's SOO much in this article. Maybe the most helpful part for me was this:

"One of the most important capacities for you to master to be able to hit bottom is to keep on breathing and keep your eyes open, inside and out, when the proverbial sh!t hits the fan...i.e. when you realize that you may need to hit bottom.

It feels like an invalidation, something you can't be with.

It feels like if you allow it to be true, then you'll die.

But like so many emotions, this one is saying the opposite of what is true: you are much more likely to die from not doing anything."

I found some comfort in this actually, that it's okay that "A is A", and that hitting bottom can be a good thing. I hope nobody minds me paraphrasing all of this here, I hope it brings comfort and some help to anyone else who might also feel like they're 'floundering'. I think it's for me to find that place where I say, as she used to say... "F**k no, I'm not staying here!"

Anyhoo, this is what I'm working on right now, I would love to hear what others are finding to practice, as we try to navigate a world without Sophie in it.

I just realized I missed an important part of that article, as I'm re-reading it:

"Entropy, the tendency of reality towards more chaos, falling apart is a natural law… and only regular re-organization, restarting compensates for it. In essence growing.

The moment you stop growing you start falling apart.

Interestingly, growing your vocabulary, having and using more words to speak of things, circumstances, people, yourself, trouble, issue, solution, activity… whatever, the higher on the vibrational scale climb."

I found this encouraging, like the light bulb video....falling apart is a natural law, and regularly re-organizing is part of growing. So maybe we really are making this more complicated than it is, as Baheej said at one point....maybe this 'falling apart' is our temporary kickoff point to growth.

Kawa wrote this to me, and it's such a great point:
"if you took a closer look at Sophie you could see that.. She wasn't dependent on anyone or anything. She was the cause of her life. And she wanted that for her students too."

I guess I'm not entitled to have Sophie's guidance forever, 'nature doesn't care about that', as she put it once.
Onwards and (hopefully) upwards, to be the cause of what comes next.