[00:00:00] It was such a deep sense of peace that I felt, and I felt wholeness. And in that moment, there was no question that that was what I had always been looking for.
[00:00:16] Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Stephanie Zeller. I'm so happy to have you here with me. If you didn't know, I have another podcast which deals with more of the tangible aspects of the world, like your career and boundaries and all sorts of good things like that. You can find that below in the show notes that podcast is called the magic of transformation with Stephanie Zeller. If you want to learn more about me and what I do in the world, you can check out all of my courses and
[email protected]. dot I'm really excited to be sharing the second episode with you. So without further ado, enjoy.
[00:00:59] Today, I want to talk about my first glimpse, my first glimpse into who I really am, into the reality of our world, into consciousness, into my own, the depths of my own awareness, because this was my anchor point. Like, this was the moment that I finally, that I finally found what I was looking for my entire, my entire life.
[00:01:32] And it's the moment that everything changed for me. Everything changed in like the deepest way possible. So that's what I want to share with you today. So back in like 2016 to 2017, I went really, really deep into my own personal transformation journey. Now, I've been a seeker my whole life. I've been in therapy almost my whole life. I've been on a personal transformation journey forever. I mean, when I was like 14, I had an existential crisis. I was reading Aldous Huxley and I was reading the mystics. So I don't want this to sound like I just started this journey in 2016. 1718. This was a lifelong journey, okay? Like, as far back as I can remember, I've been questioning our existence. I've been questioning why am I here? What is the point? And you moving through the vicissitudes of that pondering. But it wasn't until like 2017 that I really started to go deep into who I was authentically. And I started a different kind of personal transformation journey, a different kind of therapeutic journey that was vastly deeper and wider than I had ever done before. So I had, because I experienced trauma at such a young age, I had been in and out of therapy ever since I was 14 years old. And so it's not like I was a stranger to therapy. And yet in all the therapy I'd done, it was like something was missing and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. It was like I wasn't finding the answers I was looking for. And I had also searched for those answers in religion in one way or another, and I hadn't found the answer. And when I say answer, I mean feeling.
[00:03:20] It's like something was off in my. In my essence. It was like I couldn't stop seeking.
[00:03:27] I couldn't find the thing that would make me feel whole. I couldn't find the thing I was looking for. So in 2017, I went on a much deeper journey. I found a jungian therapist who was also a shaman. And I, we did a whole bunch of trauma processing, and I went just, like, so deep into myself. I started doing a whole lot of research on the polyvagal theory and on nervous system regulation and on mental health. And I found all of these new cutting edge tools that I could use to start rewiring my nervous system and rewiring my neurobiology and my brain and my mindset and my beliefs and all of this stuff. And I went really, really deep into that. And, in fact, that's a lot of what I teach now. If you don't listen to my other podcast titled the Magic of Transformation, you can hear all sorts of things about that journey and what I now do in the world to support others and going through that same journey as well. And yet, as I was on this journey, at the same time, I started opening up my intuitive senses and going deeper into a mystical path, kind of what I might call, like a non dual path, a vedantic path in terms of spirituality. And I had heard of people having certain experiences where they would have these glimpses of oneness, of bliss, where it was like suddenly their sense of self was, in a way, annihilated. And they just felt their own being expand, and they felt nothing but pure bliss and joyous. And I had never felt that. I mean, of course, I had had moments of bliss and joy. I actually had really extreme spiritual experiences, mystical experiences, but none that were quite so profound and pervasive as what I had heard other people describe. And I wondered if that kind of thing is what I was searching for. But I didn't really know.
[00:05:38] So one day I was in Seattle, and so many things at that moment had kind of culminated. I had been doing so much in therapy, I'd been doing so much deep work, and I was on the ferry going from Seattle to Bainbridge island, which is where I lived at the time. And I was journaling, and I had just. I was just at this moment, where I just. There was, for some reason, so much tension built up in me where I felt like I had been working so hard. I mean, at this point, personal healing, personal transformation was my full time job. I had left my previous career, and I was in the middle of careers trying to figure out who I was, what I was doing. And I was literally just doing personal transformation as basically my full time job. And I've been doing thousands of hours of it and, you know, hundreds of, if not thousands of hours of therapy. And I just. It was like that thing was still off. Something was still off. Something was still missing. And it had just gotten to this point where I felt like I was going to explode. And I was on the ferry with my journal, and I was journaling, and I was so upset and almost actually kind of angry, and I was just like, what is wrong? And I felt like I was being suffocated.
[00:07:04] It was like I was trapped in something, and yet I had no idea what I was trapped in. It's like, why do I have this weird feeling of being trapped? I can't, and I can't break free. Like, what is going on? And I was journaling about it, and I was kind of automatic writing with my journaling. So I was just writing without thinking, just stream of consciousness writing, writing, writing about how frustrated I was and how constrained I felt and unfree I felt, and I couldn't shake this feeling, like something was missing and something was off, and I was so trapped, and I was so annoyed, and I was like.
[00:07:39] And then all of a sudden, in my writing, this sentence came through of, do you want to be free, Stephanie?
[00:07:49] And when I looked at it, I, like, wrote it down. And then I looked at it, and I suddenly had this realization that it could be read in two different ways. It could be, do you want to be free comma Stephanie, or do you want to be free Stephanie? Almost like, do you want to be free of Stephanie?
[00:08:12] And I just wrote, yes.
[00:08:17] And then it was like, in that instant, suddenly what it felt like was something from within me, like my being shot out of my body, my sense of self, my essence shot out of my body and started rippling outwards.
[00:08:41] And I'm on the ferry, and I start to look around. I see the other cars, and then I look out over the water, and it feels like I am everything.
[00:08:55] I am the water.
[00:08:58] I am the cars, I am the ferry. I am everything that I'm seeing. It's like everything is me.
[00:09:08] And when I say me, it's deeper than Stephanie, because what actually happened in that moment was the perception of me just as Stephanie, as the character of Stephanie, was suddenly lifted.
[00:09:27] And the truth of who I am, my energy, my essence, was revealed, which was that I am nothing, just Stephanie. I am not just the character of Stephanie.
[00:09:39] I am everything.
[00:09:42] Now, I'm explaining this in this moment. But in that moment, there was actually no thinking.
[00:09:50] I just felt my energy, my essence, as everything.
[00:09:54] But with that expansion came some very specific sensations, one of which was, I no longer felt trapped. I no longer felt constrained. Ram Dass has this amazing quote where he said, death is like taking off a tight shoe. Meaning when we transition out of these bodies, when we die, we are no longer confined by the body itself, and we are able to feel our energy. Our essence is everything. We are able to feel it expanded. So death is like taking off a tight shoe. But that moment was exactly like that. It was like I was suddenly liberated from this tight, constrained, really uncomfortable shoe that I was wearing. And that really uncomfortable shoe was my identity. It was this perception of Stephanie. It was that I am the character alone, the character in the movie of life alone, because that's not all that I am, and that's not all that you are either. So there was this immense relief. And on top of that, on top of the feeling of just like, ugh. Like, oh, my God, I could finally breathe. And the expansion and the relief, there was just a deep, pervasive joy and peace. And I remember immediately when it happened, I just took this big sigh, and then tears just started rolling down my face, and I was just like, oh.
[00:11:28] And then it was almost like a laughter, just this light laughter of, oh, my God.
[00:11:36] Like, it was here all along. It was here all along. And actually, I have no sense of time for how long I felt that.
[00:11:48] All I know is that it was so deeply peaceful and freeing that after some period of time, I actually fell asleep. And then I was awakened by the fairy docking on Bainbridge island. And then shortly thereafter, I kind of lost track of that sensation.
[00:12:13] Of course, I've been able to now find it many times over, which I'll go into at some juncture, but the entire experience probably lasted, I don't know, at most 30 minutes.
[00:12:24] But it was timeless. It felt timeless. It was such a deep sense of peace that I felt, and I felt wholeness. And in that moment, there was no question that that was what I had always been looking for.
[00:12:44] No question.
[00:12:46] And it was immense relief, because by that point, I had been searching for decades for something that I didn't even really know what it was I was searching for. And then in that moment, I. In that moment, I found it.
[00:13:01] And it changed everything for me. Because once I had felt that, once I had had that first glimpse, it became my anchor and I no longer wondered what it was I was looking for.
[00:13:18] I knew then that's what it was. And so all my entire journey became about, from that moment forward was about finding that again and re anchoring into that and making that more of my moment to moment state of being rather than living in the tight shoe, living in this perceived kind of restriction in prison that we're in, of thinking that we're all separate characters in a movie, when in fact we are all connected. We are all essentially consciousness experiencing itself through the many characters in the movie. And in that moment, what happened was I remembered.
[00:14:05] I remembered, I remembered who I was. I remembered the truth of my essential nature.
[00:14:16] Just before recording this episode, I was reading Byron Katy, who is one of my favorite spiritual teachers. And I read this quote.
[00:14:25] Once you understand yourself, you are the pleasure you were seeking, you are what you always wanted. Once you understand yourself, you are the pleasure you are seeking. You are what you always wanted. I think that this kind of sentiment is toted a lot in the self help world.
[00:14:49] I mean, I say it all the time and I work in self help and it's true on so many levels. And that's the beautiful thing about this concept, is that it's really true in kind of like a 3d, worldly way of, wow, I'm feeling lonely, I can comfort myself, I can be with myself, I'm feeling sad, I can cheer myself up, I can do things to make myself feel more joy. But it's also a more profoundly and more truly and more deeply real in a non dual way. In that when we are feeling any difficult emotion or we are seeking outside of ourselves for something that we think that we are missing, it is only because we are cut off in some way from who we essentially are, we have forgotten we are in that tight shoe looking for a way out, looking for a way to feel better, looking for a way to feel more comfortable, when the whole time what we're actually searching for is to remember our essential nature. Because when I had my first glimpse and I experienced myself as this boundless, vast ocean of everything, it was more than me just feeling myself as everything. It was a tremendous peace there and I felt it so acutely because it was in such deep contrast to the moment before when I wasn't feeling that peace, when I was feeling so desperately constrained and frustrated. To be sort of shot from one extreme to the next was so deeply moving and something I have since never forgotten.
[00:16:41] I've read so many people's accounts of these brief glimpses. And whether for some people those glimpses are 20 seconds, 5 seconds, to some lasting weeks or months or, I don't know, maybe even years, one thing connects them all, which is that there was a profound shift in that person once they experienced that glimpse. Once we have glimpsed our original nature, our true self, there's no going back, in a way, because it's what your heart then always longs for. And so my journey, ever since that moment, has been finding my way back home.
[00:17:19] And as I've said in this episode, in my last episode, and I'll say many times again, it's always just right there.
[00:17:27] It's a remembering.
[00:17:29] We don't actually have to travel anywhere to find it. And yet, if you never seek it, you won't find it either.
[00:17:39] So all of my seeking was so fruitful because I eventually did find what I was looking for. It was just in the opposite direction I was looking.
[00:17:52] Once you understand yourself, you are the pleasure you are seeking. You are what you always wanted so much more to come in future episodes. If this episode has resonated with you, then please pass it along to somebody else you feel like it would resonate with. And if you have enjoyed the episode, I would deeply appreciate if you would give me a five stars. Wherever you are listening, don't forget to subscribe and follow the show so that you don't miss future episodes. Until next time.
