Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 - Intro Voice: The opening promotional lines introduce the program before the host begins. The transcript does not confirm whether this is Valerie or a prerecorded show intro.

Speaker 2 - Valerie, Host: The speaker identifies herself as Valerie and hosts the full episode, including the main teaching, guided reflection, BBS funding-drive appeal, and closing remarks.

Speaker 1 - Intro Voice: Welcome to Apple Pie Playground, where we serve up slices of healing for the heart. Stay tuned for a journey of transformation back to the divine inner child. Can you come out and play today?

Speaker 2 - Valerie, Host: Welcome, everybody, to Apple Pie Playground, where we let our inner child out to play for a while on Sunday afternoons. I’m your host, Valerie, and shout out to BBS Radio. Thank you for all you do, BBS.

And, folks, I’m not sure if you know, but BBS is having a funding drive right now, so support your favorite shows by supporting BBS in their funding drive.

It might be worth remembering that our inner child represents the authentic self. Deep down inside of us, it is the consciousness that comes into the physical body. That’s what we call our essential selves that connect our spirits to source consciousness. Some folks like to say our higher selves are something of the divine inner child.

So let’s be our inner child for a little while this afternoon as we spend our time together here on the playground. Today, we might want to take a seat somewhere on a swing or find the foot of a slide so we can get real comfortable on the playground this afternoon, comfortable enough to talk about a few pressing ideas that are coming our way, and coming really fast.

Are we prepared for the radical responsibilities that come with our human liberation? I really, really hope there are folks who know what I’m talking about out there. Those responsibilities that come with our physical freedoms and our spiritual enlightenment; I mean, are we really, really prepared?

How many of us realize we are being liberated even as we speak? I mean, literally, we are witnesses to global liberation, friends. It may not look like it yet where you are, but it is happening. We are engaged in a massive energetic shift in consciousness right now, and have been for some time, and will be for some time to come. This is paving the way for a true evolution of humanity.

The thing is, friends, liberation as an idea is a matter for the heart. For heart energy, it is a matter for what is cosmic about us. It is a matter of what is sacred about us. When we declare freedom as a conscious co-creator and child of God, that means something. We are declaring our celestial, energetic sovereignty.

As humans creating a shared reality, it is as much a matter for the material experience we are having as anything else. That means guiding our intentions with right action. We talk about it all the time, that manifesting good things is as much a matter of right action as it is the intentions behind them. Current events are no different.

As one who does not keep up with world events very well, I am not polished on the goings-on in your neighborhood, your state, or your country. I probably do not know too much about the environment you are in right now. But that does not keep us from applying natural law to our good work of unifying together to create change, and creating alongside those who might still be clueless about what is changing all around us.

That is okay. We cannot do the work for them, but we can enliven our own imaginations with what animates our New Earth experience. Many of you are doing that. You are speaking into being a brand-new world. Maybe you do not see it yet, but you are dreaming it and speaking it into reality and nurturing it in your hearts. We are so grateful for you.

So keep watering the flowers in our garden of change, because change is hard for most of us. The brain feels fear when it senses change. We are reprogramming ourselves as we evolve, aren’t we? We are physical bodies with minds and spirits sharing space together. So just keep watering the flowers of our dreams, friends, and we will become acclimated to change as a good thing.

I want to talk today about what it takes, in my mind, to achieve the sovereign experience we are so excited about. Just for an alliance of the brave, the journey has been a hard one, hard fought and hard won. For us, we may see liberation as something that drops into our laps, and we will need to think about that and the gifts that have come with that kind of blessing.

How will we serve such a gift? How will we take up the call to secure the gift of freedom and protect what sovereignty looks like in a high-vibration human experience that we are responsible for creating? It is our upkeep. The self-sufficiency required for this beautiful experiment is all ours, isn’t it? It is up to us.

Can we get there through doubt, discouragement, laziness, mistrust, fear, and apathy? Can we get anywhere as an enlightened state with those things in the forefront of our minds, those habits that keep us from engaging what we know is a better way?

I am asking because I caught myself doing something most debilitating to a celestial spirit. Oh, yes, most caustic to the higher mind. That is self-sabotage. It felt really yucky, and I really want to talk about it.

I had occasion to be in the company of a few folks this week when we heard something profoundly disturbing on a digital broadcast forum. We were sitting there listening and heard something very, very disturbing. It was notably shocking, actually. Before I knew it, I was standing up in the small little crowd I was in, waxing patriotic about what we had just heard.

With every word, folks became increasingly animated by what I was saying. They were rocking and shaking their heads and adding their own dismay to the mix. At some tipping point, with all of that chaotic energy, the bottom fell out of the energy in the room, friends. The bottom fell out. We crashed the vibe in that room so hard.

I had stirred unrest to such a degree that we were all experiencing a shared misery in a very low, dense vibration. Friends, it felt so icky. I thought, “What have I done to undermine my message of love and a high-energy lifestyle by what I have just said? How have I compromised my purpose by modeling a different way of behaving that is not consciously aware and vibrationally uplifting?”

It is a true story, and it is so yucky and so ouchy. I was like, “Oh, wow, I have to share this. It is too perfect. It is so horrible that I have to share it.” I cannot think of a worse enemy to a sovereign spirit than self-sabotage.

What is self-sabotage? Let’s talk about it, because I felt it. Self-sabotage is a cycle in the mind. It is a cycle played out in the ego mind. We can also see it as a downward spiral of energy as it decoheres or dissipates in the body, as we drop into low-vibrational thinking. There is a physical aspect to what is going on energetically.

We are spiritual, we are mindful, and we are physical; all three expressions are together in this body that we have. Energy pulls those three things together and assimilates them into a flow or a resonance. We are either cohering an energetic flow, which means harmonizing and synchronizing; maintaining a balance; or we are decohering, dissipating energy or collapsing it, for lack of a better word. Does that make sense?

Energy moves, and we know this. It is always moving in one way or another. That is going to matter here in a minute as we understand more about self-sabotage.

I did not know that self-sabotage is a defense mechanism for the ego as a way to maintain control over feelings of unpredictability. Who knew? I did not know that, but it does make sense. Once the ego feels oppressive unpredictability in a situation, it does not know how to manage the information coming in with the behaviors that need to go out, essentially.

What happens is the ego begins to self-isolate. That means we stop being curious about a situation. We lose our objectivity. We shrink into perception. We take that step backward into habitual behavior, and we undermine our own interests that way. We undermine our own goals. It is easy to do without conscious awareness refereeing the situation. Do we see that? It is all too easy to do.

What we get as a result is a lot of guilt, and a lot of insecurity. The thing is, we stop trusting ourselves and our decisions. That is the worst part. Self-sabotage keeps us in a cycle of mistrust of ourselves. It is a thing, which means the ego does not trust itself to protect itself, and then we are in a mess.

I want to quote something. It is a good quote about the psychology of what is happening with self-sabotage: “Self-sabotage erodes self-trust because your ego interprets repeated self-defeating actions as a failure of its primary job, keeping you safe. When you continuously undermine your own well-being or goals, your subconscious mind loses confidence in its ability to protect you from emotional pain or vulnerability.”

That was a long quote, but a really, really good quote to define self-sabotage and the really horrendous things that happen. That is pretty heavy, friends. It is pretty heavy.

So when do we tend to self-sabotage? Generally, it is right at the moment things become less certain and most unpredictable. It is the moment when we have to choose which way to go in a situation. Do we intervene and try to control a fearful, unpredictable situation? Or do we refuse the fear associated with the unknown and decide to consciously command calmness instead?

It is the three C’s of avoiding self-sabotage: consciously command calmness. We consciously command calmness. That is the three C’s of avoiding self-sabotage. Put it down. It is very, very powerful: consciously commanding calmness.

That is why stopping short before we react in a bad situation, and giving ourselves pause and space to choose a different response, or maybe no response at all, is so critical. That is what I did not do this week. I did not detach from what felt like a highly threatening situation, and I pushed back so defensively that it ended up being true self-sabotage.

I became truly vulnerable in spirit with low-vibrational behavior, and the ego went off in its own direction. The I Am That I Am went right along with it. It sort of said, “See you later, girl. What are you doing?” I sabotaged my peace and my unity with creation consciousness. I did it in a moment when my mouth beat my better judgment to the punch.

It was so perfectly horrible that I had to talk about it. That is okay, and it is not okay; and we can make it okay again. We can course-correct and create a better way forward, ever improving as we move toward our inherent perfection, our true selves. We will get there, remembering who we really are. We will get there, friends. At least that is what I told myself this week.

How do we get there? How do we refrain from the self-sabotaging inclinations of the ego mind? It might be the first thing we need to accept. Does it make sense that we have to realize we are the driver of our lives as they unfold? Every single part of it. We are the cause of the effects of our lives. Does that make sense? It is on us if we are handing somebody else the wheel. We play the primary role in the unfolding of our experiences.

Does that mean we have to take a look at any little pull on our egos causing a victim mentality? Are we allowing the unpredictable to catch us unprepared to tackle what comes at us in a way that makes us victims, maybe?

What is victim mindset? It sounds so terrible. Nobody likes to hear that because we do not like hearing things that make us feel judged. The truth is, a victim mindset means we have already judged ourselves incapable of overcoming a difficult mental moment. That is our victim mindset. It is an ego trap.

When you get a chance, look up what is called the Karpman Drama Triangle. It is what the ego does to keep an internal dialogue of control going. Do a little research. It is very fascinating what happens to the mind when we cannot step outside and function as observers of our experiences. We get drawn into the undercurrent of the ego, don’t we, when we cannot function as observers of our experiences? Our mindfulness helps us do that, and every effort helps.

After my particular incident this week, I can say for certain: let’s stay with our practices, friends. In all honesty, a lot of our self-sabotage comes from unconscious or subconscious thoughts that are running our inner dialogue. It is really a matter of catching ourselves in the act of fear, doubt, resistance, or intolerance and taking a closer look.

That way, we are able to translate what is going on. We can observe what is happening and translate a little better what the subconscious mind is showing us, which we may not realize is controlling our behavior or our thinking. Every opportunity to reflect and realign the subconscious with the conscious awareness we might want to learn to obtain at any given moment is a golden practice, friends. Realigning the subconscious with conscious awareness is a golden moment.

What would you say is the central factor or element that actually changes everything about what we think, how we behave, and what we do as we tame the unconscious mind in order to avoid self-sabotage? What is the thing that will ensure we avoid that kind of runaway ego?

When I researched these ideas this week, one word kept coming up over and over in the literature, and the synchronicity was ridiculous, actually. The word came up in classes I took, in conversations I had, and in things I was reading. If we want a fuller, more consistent transition into conscious living, there is a central focal point to everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do.

It is the thing that pulls everything about us together in a conscious way. Do you want to take a guess what it is? The idea is about what that thing might be that coalesces what we think, say, and do with conscious awareness, that brings to life intentions with right action in our lives, and that becomes the central focal point of what we do to activate conscious awareness in real time.

Responsibility. Responsibility. That is the word. We take responsibility. The words that have come up this week everywhere I have looked are “radical responsibility.” Radical responsibility. I have heard that phrase for a couple of weeks now. The universe is showering us with that idea, and it is a timely idea.

I researched this idea of radical responsibility because it is everywhere. I found Jean-Paul Sartre, a supreme existentialist who said humans are condemned to be free. It means radical responsibility is the only way to achieve humanness, to achieve humanity. Anything less than complete dedication to being alive in every single moment, radically responsible, is what Jean-Paul Sartre calls living in bad faith. Living in bad faith.

In his view, human life is a matter of living in good faith. This word faith just stands out, doesn’t it? We live with faith in who we really are. Just like our liberties and freedoms bloom into our conscious awareness, so too does faith create our remembrance of who we really, really are. Does that make sense, friends?

That means we live radically responsible for how we dispatch our lives. We cannot get away from the human requirement to choose responsibility in our thinking, our words, and our deeds.

It is easy to see why, since we are spirits in human bodies, and spirit is true to one key thing before anything else. Spirit is born of a guiding principle that holds the whole cosmos together, or without it, tears it all apart. Something we have forgotten, something stolen from us, something that feels foreign to us much of the time, having a galaxy of alliance brothers and sisters who have worked so hard to return it to us.

What is that thing that spirits are born of? Spirits were born to be free. Spirits were born to be sovereign. Above all else, it is the way of God, friends. It is the means of source consciousness. Our spirits must be free or fade in their spark. Do we see that? Our spirits must be free or fade in their spark.

Therefore, our bodies, which host what must have liberty, must find a way to ensure it, and responsibility is the key. Do we understand that? We are component parts from the ethereal inside a material plane that causes us confusion in many, many ways. We know this, but the confusion is clearing, friends.

As the ethereal inside the material, as spirit inside the body, we have to ensure sovereign spirits are home through a radical sense of responsibility. Do we see that? Are we radically responsible for what we allow ourselves to think, say, and do? Or are we sabotaging ourselves by relinquishing responsibility? It is something to think about.

Responsibility is to choose to flow through uncertainty and to release fear as balanced hearts, detached observers, and higher selves able to select how we will create our reality minute by minute, and not have it created upon us by self-sabotaging and self-victimizing choices that we make. It is our lesson to learn without judgment, blame, or shame, but with high anticipation of what it means for us.

It means we conceive of the idea that existence precedes essence. That is something Henry David Thoreau would say, which Jean-Paul Sartre would agree with. Existence has to precede essence, which is to say, “I Am That I Am,” before energy formed matter.

We choose to live deliberately, remembering who we really are by working it out through the choices we make, choices that enlighten and liberate us. We stop living lives of quiet desperation, to coin a phrase, because we have one thing promised to us as the spark of creation, and that is our sovereignty.

In our case, it is ours to reclaim right here, right now, in the dawning of a new age. It is our responsibility to reclaim it as a humanity, and as the spiritual evolution of humanity. Does that make sense, friends?

We own our lives, don’t we? We own our lives. Nobody else does. We are learning that now. We are remembering what that means. It is what human freedom means. We own our lives, every part of it.

What does that mean? It means the idea of having the radical responsibility of owning 100% of the reality we create. All of it. 100% of our reality. How do we do that? Is it worth contemplating? I hope we do.

Sovereignty is a sum game, friends. One hundred percent of sovereignty is a sum of 100%. Our sovereign boundaries, contemplated together in a unified way, in a unified field, have to fit into the ratio of a unified whole. That is our flow, our cosmic flow. That 100% total of what unifies us, animates us, drives us, and causes us to pause and ask: Is this good and right for our sovereignty? Is this what we should do, even if it is what we can do?

Do we see that? These are questions that have doomed ages past, friends, and we dare not take them for granted. It matters as we move into 250 years of the American dream of a land of milk and honey, a land fixed on one horizon, that place of sovereignty inalienable.

Are we ready to take the reins of our own liberation? It is coming fast, friends. Anything less than 100% effort will not do it. Everybody is the sum of 100% of all of us, the sum of us all, starting again as a new age and ready to be radically responsible for what comes next in these exciting times.

As things are continuously revealed, day after day, we are learning more. More disclosure is coming. Greater liberties are there on that beautiful horizon. Are we ready? Are we ready to be responsible for creating what comes next?

I have been noticing something on a different topic. I have been noticing a peculiar thing lately. It is a trend that has formed over the last year or so, and it speaks to the grooming and guiding of a new social order that is unfolding in the background of our social and economic environments in the world. I wonder if you have noticed the same thing as well.

I have noticed a very strong uptick of teenagers in the workforce. Very young adults are out in full force in the workforce now, and that is a new thing. I can remember for at least a decade, and probably more, that this young age group has been noticeably absent in the job market. Teens just have not been working, and now they are.

This is a real change in the social construction of our reality, along with many, many other changes. It feels like the trend is by design. There are a lot of other trends worth noticing, too. I wonder if you are noticing trends in the social construction of the reality around you.

What is going on behind the scenes? Who are the crafters of a new economy and a new society in the evolved workforce that we are seeing? It is something to note. I know that for at least the last decade, employees in retail and food services especially have been career adults who sort of land at a minimum-wage job and stay there. But things are really changing.

I am mentioning this because, at some point, we are going to want to take the reins of development that steer the human experience. We are going to want to take those reins back for ourselves. Are we prepared to view the world from a higher altitude and a grander scale?

With a fuller expression of our higher desires, as higher selves sharing this physical experience, are we prepared to create society, communities within society, governance, economies, and all these aspects of a New Earth experience? Are we prepared to put these things together in universal goals for the benefit of humanity?

One day, we will be Terrans. Imagine that. All this together on the galactic stage will be a collective of unified peoples sharing the name of a home world that we love. Imagine that. Are we ready to step radically and responsibly into such a reality?

That means all of us are taking on new roles for ourselves and for the reality we want to create. It is very, very exciting if we are ready for that, and if we have the grand anticipation of what that really means as co-creators of a new reality in a beautiful place we like to daydream of as New Earth.

We have not worked with a Dixit card lately. Maybe today’s topic lends itself to a little delving into the subconscious suitcases that are stowed away in our minds. What do you say we do a Dixit card here as we finish our time together and see what we get into?

For those who have not worked with Dixit cards before, we like to use the provocative kinds of images on a Dixit card that allow the subconscious mind to talk with us about what we are imagining. We are creating something of a free association with the images we are working with. They prompt us to experience our creative natures for a little while and allow what might be subconscious ideas to flow into our awareness.

We can even extend the exercise by allowing the associations to continue to manifest throughout our week. If we catch ourselves thinking about the Dixit card we work with and making connections about things that might pop into our mind, the subconscious continues to work that way.

If you have not tried a Dixit card before with us, maybe give it a try today. It is super fun, and it can be super revealing, especially at times. Dixit cards were designed for the Dixit board game. The Dixit board game was created by French child psychiatrist Jean-Louis Roubira. It is described as a game of imagination and free association, with a lot of imagery that allows creative free association.

Many of us like to use our notebooks to record our activities and make any notes we like about our experience, but anything to write on and anything to write with will do. If we are not at a table, we can always use the exercise as a meditation of sorts. I will let you decide how to approach your participation in that way.

As we begin, let’s sit back and relax. I will share the images on one Dixit card that I have chosen for today. As I describe the images, just allow yourself to experience them without trying to control anything. We do not have to try to control what comes up into the conscious mind. We are just going to allow ourselves to become the observer of our thoughts and our imaginings. We are allowing what arises to arise.

We can make notes of things that come up. There is no judgment. There is no holding back. We are only observers. If you are ready, here is our Dixit card for today.

Are we ready? We are going to sit back and relax. We can close our eyes if we want, and we are going to imagine this card into our minds as a full image as I describe it. All right, here is our card for today.

Imagine that the backdrop for this card is a starry sky, a deep, dark, star-filled sky. That is the backdrop of what we are imagining today. The card is filled with stars in the background of this picture.

In the forefront is a crystal ball, a large crystal ball sitting in the center of a small round table. Nothing else is on the table. The crystal ball is filled with white clouds. White clouds are rolling around inside the crystal ball, forming and reforming as clouds do.

There is something inside the clouds. What is that? What is inside the crystal ball? What do you see? Swimming at the bottom of the crystal ball is a little goldfish, a very golden goldfish. This goldfish is happily swimming around in the clouds of the crystal ball. Do we see that?

There is a chair behind the crystal ball. It is a chair at the table. Do you notice the chair? In the chair is a cat. The cat’s attention is fixed on the crystal ball. The cat is hunched over with its paws high above its head as it stands over the crystal ball. The cat’s eyes are large with surprise and intense concentration. See the cat’s eyes?

Record what impressions you get from the scene. What thoughts are coming in? What emotions are you feeling? How is the mind translating what you are imagining? Take a minute and fully experience the scene. When you have, we can decide to remember the scene in our mind’s eye so that we can return to it any time we want this week. Now we can decide to leave the image, come back to the room we are in, and open our eyes.

Were there things that came up unexpectedly for you? I am wondering if you recognize the cat in the scene as a cat you might know. What attachments might there be for the cat? Cats are often considered spiritual animals, and historically they are often seen as magical creatures. I am wondering if that came through in some way.

I am wondering if the starry night created some kind of emotional pull. I am wondering if the fish and the cat belonged in your starry night, or maybe something else belonged better.

I sure am glad you decided to join in that exercise together. Let it work through this weekend. Maybe be open to what else might arise from that exercise. I want to thank you for playing along, friends.

It is always a good activity to invite our subconscious to move up into our awareness. We always learn things that maybe we did not realize were down there in the suitcases we keep hidden too often. It is always a good opportunity to reach in, pull out some of the subconscious that is down there, bring it into the light, examine it, and take a look at what might be there.

I am so glad you participated with me today. But now it is time for me to head home off the playground. Off we go, friends. I want to thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you to BBS for being here with us. We love you so much, BBS.

Everybody, let’s remember to give generously in the BBS funding drive this week. Great gratitude goes out to those of you who can. We are all grateful to have a platform like BBS to serve us, to let us meet together, and to let us enjoy our Sunday afternoons.

I cannot wait for the next time we are together on the playground. Until next time, I am going to head home, friends. Thanks for being a part of today’s journey. We will see you back on the playground next Sunday at 1 p.m. Central time on bbsradio.com.

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