THE 5 PILLARS
This is not a program you complete.
We’ve found that the key to success on this journey is the dedicated practice of these Five Pillars, which form a living cycle. You begin wherever you are. Each pass deepens. The destination is being fully alive in the present moment while contributing what only you can contribute.
01 | Consciousness First
Adopt an empowered creator mindset.
You take full responsibility for your experience. You trust that life is happening for you, not to you. Especially when it is hardest to believe.
The Practice of Pillar 1 Includes:
Intentional presence. Above all else, focus on how you want to feel and be. Get fully present in the now moment. Everything else stems from that.
Try on the perspective that your state of consciousness precedes and creates your material reality, not the other way around.
Focus more on how you are relating to what’s happening (context) than the specific details of what’s happening (content).
Choose radical responsibility, curiosity, and trust. Let go of blame, shame, righteousness, and threat.
Experience life as an ally conspiring to support you in learning, growing, and waking up.
Become the empowered creator of your life.
02 | Plumb The Depths
Turn toward what you are running from.
Whatever you are avoiding is running you. The only way through is through. Stop letting discomfort steer, and realize the gold that is hiding underneath.
The Practice of Pillar 2 Includes:
Recognize that as a human with an ego, there are elements of your inner experience that you (consciously or unconsciously) avoid. It’s natural and normal.
See this pattern as one of the central ways that your ego perpetuates a distorted and limited idea of the truth of who you really are.
Open with love and wonder to whatever your ego resists. Feel the feelings. Face the darkness. Receive it as fertile soil. Integrate the wounded parts. Discover their gold.
Embrace intensity. Hold yourself with compassion. The work is not to eliminate discomfort but to stop letting it steer. Stay curious and breathe.
Make peace with uncertainty. Love the resistance.
“Awareness with acceptance is the healing.” — Daniel McQueen
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." — Carl Jung
03 | Remember Who You Really Are
Wake up to wholeness.
You are not broken. You never were. This is about recovering who you have always been underneath the performance and the guilt.
The Practice of Pillar 3 Includes:
Open to the possibility that the truest version of you is far more expansive, mysterious, and magnificent than you have learned to believe.
Dedicate yourself to the lifelong practice of remembering who you are and why you are here.
Return to your essential nature: creative, resourceful, whole, present, and loving. Realize that the person you want to be is already inside. Practice living as if that were true.
Embody the version of yourself who knows they belong and are worthy of love. Examples: speaking authentically, owning your wants, holding healthy boundaries, and following your enjoyment.
Recognize that wholeness is about relationship. Tend to the quality of your relationships — with yourself, your people, the more-than-human world, and the sacred.
Explore peak transformational experiences that resonate for you to experience wholeness directly. Don’t take my word for it. Go find it within yourself.
04 | Discover, Cultivate, and Give Your Gift
Live and lead from your unique ecological niche.
There is something only you can do. A way of being in the world that feeds life itself. This pillar is about apprenticing to that mystery and then giving it away.
The Practice of Pillar 4 Includes:
Learn to listen to your heart’s true longing. Let it guide you into deeper and deeper layers of your gift.
Identify and inhabit your unique zone of genius. Follow your aliveness. Sing your song. Play.
Allow your soul's unique expression to organically flow through you. Fall in love with your mysterious depths and the mystery of life itself.
Shift your center of being from ego to soul. Explore your mythopoetic identity. Let yourself be guided.
Grow soulful roots in relationship with place and people who get it. Prioritize grounding and support. The deeper the roots, the taller the tree.
Be patient. Less is more. Your greatest gift may be the simple quality of your presence.
Manifest your dreams. Do what lights you up, scares you, and serves a life-enhancing future all at the same time.
Make your soulful impact. Lead.
05 | The Ever-Expanding Spiral
Repeat.
There is no arrival. There is only the next layer. Let the present moment be your teacher.
The Practice of Pillar 5 Includes:
Let go of finish lines. This work is never done. Learn not only to accept that, but to appreciate it. Life is more fun this way.
Practice humility. Where we trip up is where the learning occurs. You’re not sliding backwards. You’re meeting the next layer of your unfolding.
Trust your process as you spiral into both higher heights and darker depths. The more advanced your practice, the more challenging the material that surfaces to be integrated. Feel the wisdom in this. Find equanimity.
Give and receive unconditional freedom, joy, and love. Expand your upper limit. Be obliterated by pleasure. It’s OK for life to be this good.
Develop, over time, your own unique flavor of practice. Find what works for you. Tweak and iterate. Make this work your own.
Cultivate the dynamic balance between agency and surrender.
Whenever you feel stuck, go back to the basics — especially Pillars 1 and 2. This opens the door for a new cycle. The depth of your practice with any single pillar will enable (or limit) your practice with all of them.
WATCH THE DEEPER DIVE
And feel the Pillars come to life
Curious to learn more? Read the 5-part series covering each step in detail.
We work with the Five Pillars in three ways.
