Azrya Bequer
Appearances
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The Palisades fire that took many, many thousands of houses in LA also took our home in Malibu, which was really more than a home. The heat of that fire must have been so incredibly hot. I can't even imagine the speed at which that whole house must have just gone up in smoke. So much went into that place. It's humbling.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And the land is going to come back better than ever, brighter than ever, more full of life than ever. Yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, my house melted. So that happened in an inferno, like truly an inferno. So yeah, the Palisades fire that took down many, many thousands of houses in LA also took our home in Malibu, which was really more than a home. It was really a space for convergence and transformation and community and a space that was being actively used to really unite people in person. And
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
No, it's powerful, right? I think there's this There's so much paradox in the spiritual journey. One of the biggest ones is we remember that we are an extension of the divine and that we are connected to an incredible source of intelligence and source of power, truly like creative power to shape and mold our reality through our thoughts and our beliefs and our feelings and our actions.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it is a recognition that we have this godlike power within us and also at the same time, I think the polarity to that, the paradox within that is that we are tiny, tiny, tiny little specks in the larger cosmic movements of reality, right? So it's the yes and. It's like, yes, we are incredibly powerful beings and also...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
What we create can just be evaporated in two seconds by these forces that are so much larger than us that are also expressions of the divine. And I think the humility that needs to come in parallel with the empowerment is a big part of what the lesson is here in this moment for me personally.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Of course, when something like this happens to you, especially if you're a person who believes you create your reality, one of the first places you go is like, well, how the fuck did I create that, right? Didn't see that one coming. It was a real plot twist. And this sort of like, well, but I'm one of the good guys and I'm using my space to, you know, bring people together and transform lives.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And literally people are healing ancestral trauma on this land, like in this house. Why is it just completely annihilated? And I think unpacking sort of the why, because I do choose to believe that everything has a purpose. And I think that is a choice, ultimately, to believe that or not.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So I choose to believe that life, the universe, whatever you want to call this experience that we're a part of, has a larger plan that a lot of times we can't see with our limited perspective. And so when things happen like this that feel...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
that are beyond logic or reason, there's a deeper listening that I think is being invited of like, okay, well, what we're actually, is it really true that I built this beautiful space, that we created this beautiful vision, and then it was just taken from us and like, that was this horrible thing? Is that true with a capital T? Or is there a deeper truth?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think my husband and I have been unpacking what that is. And we've been really looking at Where what we created was actually, while it was beautiful aesthetically, it was also out of alignment in a lot of ways with who we said we wanted to be. And that showed up in a lot of different ways.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It showed up in the energy from which we even said yes to this remodel, which was very much an energy of pressure and urgency and feeling like we had to make a decision because we had permits that were expiring, like very 3D stuff that kind of ultimately motivated it, even though we never got the full yes inside.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And the funny cosmic joke in all of it is we literally, one of the main things we were talking about when we first started working together was this idea of the full fuck yes, like following the full fuck yes all the way through. And we never had the full fuck yes, actually, to go through this remodel process.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And we kind of just let inertia move us into that, you know, massive project, which was really like, If I were to honestly look at the energetics that birthed a lot of that, it was stress and it was feeling like we don't have the luxury of really slowing down enough to deeply listen to what is actually true. So buying into this busyness and this need to get somewhere.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that was infused into the foundation and it showed up in the dynamic of the whole almost three year construction process. And the materials we chose were not necessarily sustainable or in alignment with like, you know, principles of being really in harmony with nature. And obviously we're not equipped for that location because the house was made out of wood. It's like a tinderbox.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So it's, it's, I think the willingness to look at those things is kind of where then the real value comes, right? Because I can choose to be a victim of the situation or I can see that life is mirroring something to me and giving me an opportunity to come into deeper alignment with who I say I want to be.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
dig deep and anchor in really important energy and frequencies into the LA grid. That's really the true intention of it. So my co-founder and husband Benjamin and I went back a couple weeks ago to just see the damage and really kind of feel like in our own nervous system what's left of this place that we spent almost three years remodeling. and had been done for less than a year before it burned.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, I mean, I think what I shared just now, the lessons harvested, those are all very personal, obviously. Right. I can see where, when I reflect back on because we did build the home essentially, right? We took it down to the studs. So we had the opportunity to choose. It wasn't like we just, we bought a place and then that was what it was.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We had the opportunity to consciously make decisions about how that place was going to be built. And so on a personal level, I can see where I was not in alignment with the values that I was maybe proclaiming in the world, which of course are all about coming into deeper, right relationship with the natural world and You know, a whole slew of other things.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I think if I zoom out from my personal lens and I look at the larger collective happening of this particular situation, as it relates to Los Angeles, I think that a few things. One, I think Los Angeles is the mecca of the storytelling that shapes culture and culture. consciousness, truly, like through the stories that we perpetuate out into the world.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like that's so much of the world looks to LA and has for decades for what is trendy, what is cool, what is, what does the hero archetype look like? What does the villain look like? Right? All of these archetypal imprints come from this place largely. And I think the stories we've been telling have been largely based on a foundation or a dominance, extraction.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think those have been normalized, like completely normalized and proliferated essentially, right? The stories that come out of this one place on the planet impact the lives of billions of people all over the world. And so I think LA specifically going through this experience is kind of like a massive reset button is what I see.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Because I think, again, it's stepping on the spiritual path and understanding these things conceptually is one thing. But embodying them, living them truly, and actually aligning your actions with what you know all the way through, that's really the hard part, right? That's the spiritual rubber meets the road. And it's a lot easier said than done. It's easy to come on a podcast and talk about it.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's another thing to actually make the hard decision and say... Even though I need this space because it's a space that allows us to fulfill our mission and it's a platform for our organization and we want it to be functional as soon as possible for all these very good reasons, we're actually going to slow way down and we're going to stop and listen and we're going to bring in...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
you know, indigenous people. We're going to bring in permaculturists. We're going to bring in people who understand how to build in ways that are sustainable and aligned with the environment. Like that all is tedious and it takes time and it's inconvenient, right? To the high achiever that I am also very much guilty of being.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like I'm a high achiever and I like to bulldoze through stuff and I like to move super fast. And so that whole paradigm of like, the goal is over there like what is here is not it but what's over there is going to be better that whole paradigm I feel like has to be dismantled and none of us are exempt from it and so I get trapped in that just as much as anyone else and I think that um
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
we're given an opportunity personally for like a take two. Like, okay, you did it that way and your house blew up. Now, what would you like to do? You know, I get that vision of like an Etch-A-Sketch from life. Yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Just shook it up and now it's a clean slate. And so... And then for L.A., like, how is this particular community, which is largely quite privileged and affluent as well, right? Like, the areas that burned are neighborhoods where people who have a lot of influence and wealth and power, like, reside.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
In Altadena, for sure, yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it was crazy to see metal beams that we had put in, like melted, like the heat of that fire must have been so incredibly hot. I can't even imagine the speed at which that whole house must have just gone up in smoke, like incredible. Sometimes I have
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. So there's a huge opportunity there to say, okay, well, how is this community, how are the human beings that are affected by this going to potentially do things differently? And how could this also, I'm really seeing the gift in this as an opportunity to share. the rewriting of a narrative, you know?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And sometimes you have to have everything stripped away all the way to nothing before you're willing to actually make a change. So I think while destruction is horribly painful and can be, of course, devastating, there's also a huge opportunity for a new way of operating to emerge from this that can hopefully be shared worldwide.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. I believe that one of the biggest reasons why there's so much dysfunction on our planet, and just in general within the human condition specifically, is because we have separated ourselves from the natural world and also from what some might call the feminine. We like to call it omega, so in opposition to alpha.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
The feminine isn't the sort of, you know, nurturing, compassionate, quaint, polite version of the feminine that we, you know, culturally have adopted. Like the feminine in its full spectrum is also the Kali energy. It's the destructive nature of reality. And it can be quite relentless.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think when we talk about coming into what I believe is, you know, there's these t-shirts that people walk around with that says the future is female. And I don't resonate with that at all. I think the future is integrated from my perspective, meaning when we have been able to create, when we've been able to stretch into both spectrums of the polarities within ourselves, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We live in a highly sort of patriarchal culture, very masculine, very, very alpha and not, not Not that that's all bad, right? There's a lot of beauty there. We need that structure.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But because we've suppressed so much of the other side, the feminine side, even women, right, when they entered the workforce, basically sacrificed their own femininity in order to be able to compete and have the success that men were having. And
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
weird like visuals of of the house just being taken by these flames and there's something oddly beautiful about it as well you know I think that the part of me that could appreciate the destructive aspects of nature and reality and see them see the beauty in those two is almost like enamored by those visuals because it's incredible how much went into the house right like
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so we called that empowerment, but really what it was, was I think a loss of a deeper intuitive connection to this force that is really quite terrifying to the ego because it cannot be controlled. And it includes life, the giving of life, and it also includes the taking of life. It includes death, it includes destruction.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We throw around words like regeneration because they sound great, but the truth is regeneration implies also death and composting of materials that are no longer meant to exist in that form and are meant to be alchemized into something new. And so these themes of inner alchemy and of being willing to kind of
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
push past all of these defense mechanisms that we've accumulated, most of which are very unconscious, that try and keep us safe and the same is my life's work. Like that is why I'm here. And I have this tattoo, which is an ancient Greek symbol for alchemy, actually. And alchemy is all about the transmutation, right? From lead into gold, from fear into love.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think what I've learned on my path of going really deep into some pretty gnarly places within myself in my own journey of transformation is on the other side of death is always truth, right? That's a Kim Kranz quote that I love. But in order to get to the truth, whatever that means, always shape-shifting as well,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
is this annihilation process, like this disassembling process that has to happen. And the disassembling is of our ego construct, our identity, all the attachments that we have to the things that we think make us safe or make us worthy. All of these sort of conditioned imprints that we've taken on and have inherited, one by one, they have to be composted into something new.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that's a really intense process. And I think it's a little bit of my kink is to be like, yeah, let's go there. You know, like, let's go all the way there. Let's not fuck around. Let's actually look at the things that we don't want to look at. Let's look at potentially the scariest parts of our own psyche, because on the other side of facing the fear, we become free.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And then all of a sudden, a whole new dimension of reality opens up to us. But to me, it's about the integration of the feminine. And I think Nature is one of our greatest expressions of the feminine in action, and fire is one of the elemental forces that nature uses to regenerate. And here we are now confronted with this force, and we can be afraid of it, or we can use it.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, I guess what comes on the other side of that is... the true richness of being alive, you know, which to me, because this, the nature of this experience is, is all about these, this rich tapestry of like polarities that we've been given access to. Right.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And the further we stretch into a polarity like trust, for example, which of course is one of the core values, you know, that I'm sure we share. And also as our organization Kavanaugh, it's one of our core values, trust beyond reason. So trust is a beautiful thing. And of course, everyone wants trust.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
What we forget sometimes is that in order to receive more trust, in order to actually genuinely, not just again, intellectually understand, but embody trust at the deepest level, the way to get there is actually to a lot of times be forced into the opposite. So if I say I want to live a more trust-filled life,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Two years of planning, almost three years of construction, thousands of hours, millions of dollars, so many materials, like the amount of effort and energy that humans put into building something. And then in literally what might have been a few minutes. Nature was just like, no, no more. So yeah, it's humbling.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
then I believe the universe responds to that intention highly intelligently, and it essentially orchestrates experiences and opportunities for me to look at all the areas in which I'm not embodying that trust that I say I want to embody. So it's going to create external circumstances that allow me to see that, because the fastest way for me to step into more trust is for that to become so...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
clearly illuminated that I actually make it conscious, right? It goes from being unconscious to becoming conscious. And in that moment, I have the opportunity to choose how I want to relate to that. And so I think the gift on the other side of a lot of these, like truly they're initiations. When we make big declarations to life and we say, I want more of X,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Life will orchestrate initiations for us so that we can actually receive those big intentions. And I think at the end of the day, it's a question of aesthetic. Like, what is the human experience that you want to have? in this one precious life. You know, some people are going to choose predominantly security. That's going to be maybe their core value is like, I want to feel safe and secure.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I want to know how I'm going to start my days and how I'm going to end my days. And I want to feel that consistency. And that's what's true for me. And that's my aesthetic. And so I'm not interested in going and pushing the envelope and like exploring, looking at my deepest, darkest traumas and wounds. Like that's not interesting to me in this lifetime. And that's beautiful.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
There's no right way to be. Like truly, I don't believe there's one right path. I think that we get to choose and we also are existing inside of a larger context. And the larger context that I see from my lens of what's happening on the planet right now in our lifetime is that there's an acceleration of what I believe is an evolutionary process.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
where essentially having spent many, many, many lifetimes in, again, this sort of paradigm of separation or what you could call just like a state of unconsciousness is coming to an end. And we're moving now very quickly into a different age. And what that means more, I guess, tangibly is just that our system, like our actual nervous system,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
The electromagnetic frequency of our being, what we actually are when you look at us past just the flesh and the muscles and the bones and the organs, we are receiving information in the form of light that's coming into our planet that we are able to embody and that can give us a greater sense of freedom and choice and creator consciousness if we choose to go through these initiations.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
That said, if we choose not to, if we fight the process, this movement that is happening on a more collective level, if we resist it because we're afraid and we want to cling to what was, that's when I see a lot of suffering happening because we're kind of resisting what is. And so Do we need to opt in? You know, is it, how much choice do we really have?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like, these are all really good questions to ask. For me personally, like the only option is to dive in at first. And what I found is the more that I've been willing to go into those uncomfortable places and look at myself in the mirror and really own like my blind spots as well.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And instead of being ashamed of them or pushing them aside or pretending they're not there, but actually like including them and integrating them the more free I become for life to use me as a vessel. So when you say, what's the reward on the other side?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like to me, it's surrender to something that is bigger than me coming through me that shapes and molds the words that come through my mouth without me having to think about them, right? Like that being a steward of the current of life itself to me is the ultimate expression of being alive. And if I can be that, I can be in a state of flow and I can be in a state of presence.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that's where I find the trust. And that's where I find the beauty. And that's where I find the richness. It's not when I fabricate an idea of what my life should look like and then try and force my way into that. It's actually the complete opposite. It's taking my hands off the steering wheel in a big way and allowing.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
There's so much paradox in the spiritual journey. Sometimes you have to have everything stripped away all the way to nothing before you're willing to actually make a change. Trust is a beautiful thing. The way to get there is actually to be forced into the opposite because I do choose to believe that everything has a purpose.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, we had gone through it a couple weeks before because we were, there was a fire actually a few weeks before, which was much, much smaller and contained very quickly. And we were right on the edge of the evacuation zone.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. I mean, I can't remember who said it, but someone once said, all fear is the fear of feeling. So if I can find a way to alchemize the fear of feeling, then I can feel anything, the full spectrum, right, of all of it. And then suddenly what I'm feeling becomes not necessarily a truth, but it becomes a sensation.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And when it becomes a sensation, I can become curious about that sensation, even if that sensation is highly uncomfortable. Even if I'm on my knees and grieving, I can see and feel and experience that this is a gift that I was given in a human body, and I can choose to take it and turn it into something beautiful. And I think...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
What you said earlier about sometimes it can look like a lot of action, like when life is flowing through you, when you really do become more of a receptacle for life's intelligence to use you. And if that's your prayer too, like that is my prayer, you know, for life to use me in the best way that it can and to be in service to the whole.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so life is like, well, I got a lot of work for you to do. Like I have, there's a whole new paradigm to build. Yeah. Like literally, you know, and people ask me, how are you able to create so much?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like I feel paralyzed, especially in a moment like this where everything seems to be falling apart and you're able to make art and write poems and produce podcasts and launch initiatives and, you know, on top of all the other things that you're already doing in Mexico, building a town of the future and X, Y, Z. And I'm like, you know what? I don't feel like I'm doing any of it. I really don't.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So we had kind of gone through the process of like getting the alert and packing our bags and being kind of annoyed because it's like, well, we know we're going to have to unpack all this stuff anyway. And like, this is just this distraction from all the things we have to do. So
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I feel like I'm being moved by something. And I have an incredible access to what sometimes feels like infinite amounts of energy. It's not, actually, because my body will give me the signals when it's like I'm pushing too far. But yeah, the energy that's coming through is potent and activating, and it's available to everyone. I really believe that. We all have access to this energy.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And again, if our intention is to receive it and we're willing to go through the purification process first internally to be able to receive it, because we need to be a vibrational match to it as well, right? If our system is vibrating in a state of...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
extreme limitation or disease, for example, then we may not be able to match the vibration of this very potent life force energy that's coming through that contains all of these instructions. Like the energy isn't just energy. It's like blueprints is how I see it. So the energy comes through and the instructions reveal themselves and then the action flows when we come into alignment.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it needs to align, of course, with our unique design as well and our intention and our purpose. So there's a lot of layers that kind of need to come to coherence.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, this is one of my favorite things to talk about.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Last time we lost power for, you know, a couple of days and we stayed at home and we didn't end up having to evacuate and then everything was OK. So when this time around, when I think it was Tuesday at like 11 in the morning or so, we were sitting at our dining room table having a meeting with our team on Zoom. And I looked up and I saw a huge plume of smoke in the sky.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Here we are. Yeah, I've been really fascinated by this idea of, especially with the dawn of artificial intelligence, it's really invited us into this deeper conversation of, well, what is intelligence really, right? And what is the value of human intelligence? Like empirically, AI is going to be better and faster and more efficient at most anything that requires our analytical mind.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like the part of us that computes information or to your, you know, what you shared with linear time-space reality, like,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah, like how do I get from point A to point, like none of that is relevant anymore. So what's left, right? What are the other intelligence systems that we have available to us that I think most of us are actually not using? I think that we are these like highly sophisticated quantum computers that no one ever gave us the instruction manual on how to use.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So we get to kind of go on this journey of discovery. To me, that's a lot of what the spiritual path is about is it's not even spiritual. It's like actually quite material. It's like, how is this thing designed? What is the intelligence system of my somatic intelligence, right? My physical body, how it stores information, how it stores energy, how it stores trauma. How can I unlock that?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
How can I alchemize that? My intuitive intelligence, the part of me that has access to some source of wisdom that is not coming from a book that I read in high school, right? Like there are these things that we can, I think, all relate to and understand, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I'm working on a framework of sort of categorizing them into these different intelligence systems, essentially, and looking at what's the integration of how do they all come into cohesion so that when we're walking through life, and whether we're at the grocery store checkout line or we're at the DMV or we're on a huge stage talking to millions of people, whatever the circumstance,
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E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
we can be aligned so that all of the intelligence systems are working together in harmony. I think that's when what comes through us becomes potentized and amplified. And so I think AI in a way is a huge gift because it's taking away the thing that we've relied upon so heavily.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it's kind of like, okay, well, now you're going to have to go figure out how else you can find value in yourself and be of value to the world.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So we're seeing this wave of, I mean, if you look at like the health and wellness industry, right, and you look at the trillions and trillions of dollars that that industry is already worth, and it's going to continue to be, we're seeing this mass increase. transformational awakening process that's happening that is measurable. It's not theoretical. It's measurable.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And we're seeing the desire and the longing for people to understand, how do I tap into some of these deeper states of intelligence? How do I feel safe and secure within myself without needing my bank account or my house or my job status to give that to me? How do I find that empowerment within myself? A lot of people are asking this question.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I think it's a beautiful byproduct of a very volatile and chaotic moment on planet Earth, potentized by exponential technology and climate change or crisis or whatever preferred language you have for those changes that are happening. All of these things coming together are kind of forcing us to ask existential questions that we may not have asked otherwise.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And there's actually a lot of people, including yourself, who are like, hey, we actually have been doing this for like a while. We've been, you know, exploring all of these things. And we would like to now sort of serve a lot of the potential answers, not the answer, but potential answers to you so that you can accelerate your journey and your path.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Not everyone has to go reinvent the wheel, right? We can learn from each other. And the way information spreads right now is highly conducive to us being able to accelerate this process that's happening.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I was like, oh, that's that doesn't look good. And we actually stayed on the Zoom call for like another 45 minutes because, again, relentless overachievers were like, it'll be fine. We just really need to get this meeting done. But I started looking at the app and tracking kind of what was happening. And I could see that, you know, it looked like it was it was starting to become a problem.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It really does, right? I feel like I'm living what used to be like years in terms of just experience and yeah, like events and living years in weeks, it's just condensing and condensing and condensing and becoming so potentized. I mean, never a dull moment.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Oh, yeah. It's complex. Yeah, for sure. What is my intuition? What is my fear programming? What is my the thing I never processed from when I was five years old that's now like raising its hand, you know? Yeah. Deep listening is the answer, I think. Like, how quiet can we get internally and externally?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I'm sure some of the people listening here know the gene keys and are familiar with that technology and framework. And I recently went back and looked at my chart because I was really reflecting on, okay, you know, empirically, I look back and I can see that decisions were made, as I said earlier, that could have been made probably in a more aligned way.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And now here we are standing in the, you know, the aftermath of those consequences. And so was, was it that I didn't listen to my intuition? Was it that my intuition led me astray? Should I have brought in more of my logical, rational mind that says, Hey, don't build a house out of wood in the middle of a Canyon in Malibu? Like, right. Did I go too far actually into trusting like that?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
This was also a question that, that my husband and I sat with. Um, And so I went back to the gene keys and I looked at my chart and I saw in there something I had forgotten, which is that I have the 43rd gene key twice. I have a double, which means it's amplified. And the shadow is deafness and the key is insight. And the CT, which is the highest expression, is epiphany.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I really understood more of like to answer your question, which is, OK, what does that actually look like? How do I discern between these different all these different voices that are speaking at all times? And what's interesting about the deafness key is, you know, the shadow of it, of course, is like we actually aren't listening to the real wisdom that is available to us.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And there's so much internal or external noise that we can't hear it. And I think that's true for most humans, just based on the nature of how we interface with technology specifically and the amount of information and data coming at us at all times. It's like most of us can't hear our own voice because it's drowned out by all the noise.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And we were starting to see that we were in the evacuation warning zone. So at that point, we kind of like shut things down and went and started packing. And we packed very haphazardly. We were like, we're just going to come back and, you know, like, again, just unpack everything and it'll be fine. And then we got the evacuation warning. It's like, no, you need to go now.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So there's this kind of deafness shadow that we get stuck inside of. But the gift of deafness, which leads to insight, is actually when we learn to very consciously tune out all of the noise. And we consciously become deaf to the noise, meaning we close the door, we sit down on our meditation cushion, we breathe.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And we give ourselves that space to not be distracted by anything external pulling on our attention so that we can come into that deeper state of listening. And that's where insight gets unlocked. And he talks about how insight can't be forced. You can't make it happen, but you can create the conditions and the circumstances for it to happen.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So I think meditation, stillness, sitting in nature, you don't have to meditate, but just contemplation, like being without doing anything. And certainly getting off of your social media for extended periods of time are all very conducive to being able to then really deeply listen and discern. And if that was the biggest takeaway for myself personally, I would say I didn't do enough of that.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I let myself get caught up in the momentum of creation and I didn't spend enough time in deep listening with myself and with the whispers of nature and the way that the intelligence of life communicates beyond logic and reason. Like it's so subtle and we have to get so, so, so quiet to be able to receive it. So yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. Well, I think that there's a, you know, this, and I hesitate to use the word patriarchal because it feels like it's making the masculine wrong. And I don't, I don't like that. So I'll call it more like the high achiever kind of culture that especially in the US is so celebrated. Yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So we we got in the car and we drove down the mountain and it felt everything felt very peaceful still. There was a lot of smoke in the sky, but the neighborhood kind of felt peaceful. And so we ended up actually driving down the mountain and being like, OK, I think we're OK. And then a cop came by and was like, you guys need to go.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And the bigger, better, faster, stronger, you know, all of that, like it's like a magnetic force field of beliefs, of lived examples, of reference points, of a whole definition of what success looks like. And it's very, very powerful. And sometimes I use the analogy of like, imagine you're standing in a river that's fast moving.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And for you to be able to stand upright in the river, like you have to actually really focus and hold your balance and use all of your muscles to be able to fight the current, right? And so sometimes I feel like that's part of this is it's so easy to get swept up in This sort of like, how do I be the best, fastest spiritual person ever too, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like how do I apply that same mindset to all of the spiritual teachings? And how do I drink the most amount of ayahuasca in the shortest period of time? And like, it's all the same thing, right? It's still this idea that there's somewhere else to get. And that somewhere over there is better. And it's so easy to apply that to the spiritual path. Absolutely.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But again, I think it's the recognition that we live inside of larger cosmic and elemental forces that are beyond the control of our will or even our desire. is an uncomfortable thing to reckon with because we want to be God. We want to have 100% control over all things at all times. And to me, it comes back to not having integrated the feminine or the other side of the spectrum.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
which says yes and. It is the paradox of you are infinitely worthy and infinitely powerful and also you don't matter. In the grand scheme of things, you don't matter. And what you want is completely irrelevant. It's both. And so living in the paradox, I think it can feel like an uncomfortable place to be. But to me, it's a sign of spiritual maturity.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And there's that beautiful, I'm sure many of you have heard this on Spotify, but there's this beautiful track where Ellen Watts talks about like, you know, imagine that you could dream anything you want, right? And you dream all of your desires and then you kind of get bored and you're like, okay, I did that.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And then now I want to dream a dream where I actually don't know what's going to happen, you know? And eventually, if you do that long enough, you'll be in the dream that is your life today. So our lives, I believe, is essentially this expression of consciousness experiencing itself through contrast and dancing in this web of polarity and opposites and paradoxes.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And sometimes death is a part of that story, but death is also just another door into another experience. So even though from the human perspective, death is the worst thing ever, from the larger perspective, death is just
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one and I think when we can kind of really come in contact with that the infinite nature of this whole thing then suddenly the stakes change and it becomes more about savoring the beauty of what is moment by moment even if what is is my house burned down you know versus like I need to go over there because over there is better
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so we went back to the house and packed again, which was really good. I'm so grateful we went back the second time. So we packed more thoroughly. And then I just stood. Our house is kind of up on a hill. And I stood and looked over the land, which is like this big canyon land. It's like a big bowl. And the wind was whipping and there was a bunch of smoke in the sky.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. And I think that I don't know if harmony is always the answer. Like sometimes we want to really let the pendulum swing and carve out, you know, on both sides of the spectrum. Like sometimes I want to go into the depths of grief and loss and despair. And I want to hang out there for a while because as an artist, I can source so much from that place. You know, there's so much.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Look at some of the best art in the world comes from that place. And so I think it's, yes, let's find maybe a stabilization point somewhere in the center where we can sort of come home to a place of equanimity. But I don't think that's the point. I don't think hanging out there permanently is the point.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I think the point is like the exploration of how wide, of how willing am I to expand in all directions of this human experience spectrum? And how can I take that as really like, fertile soil or as the ingredients that I use to then create something with it that in turn can inspire and empower and enliven others. I think there's a natural evolution towards service that comes on this path as well.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like how can my life be an offering? How can what I share, my personal experience start to really be medicine for others. Like that's where I think it starts to get really interesting because then when others start to be able to receive the medicine that we are, and there's this energy exchange, like the depth of intimacy also exponentially expands.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think that that's another big thing that we're after. We're not just always after happiness and harmony. We're after like stunning intimacy with the present moment and with the people across from us.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I just placed a prayer of protection on the land. And I said, like, just may the legacy of this land be preserved, because I believe that the space is meant to continue to serve the L.A. community and You know, we had actually just recommitted to the place because we were, the plan was to sell it to be able to fund our Mexico project.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I think, again, sometimes the thing that allows change to happen is contrast. And so I don't watch the news, but when I tune into the energy that is present there and I can feel it so deeply steeped in this idea of fear and separation... It's like, how extreme does that need to get in order to catalyze something else? Because it contains its equal opposite too.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like the breakdown that we're seeing on our screens, every single time we engage with that frequency, it's also an invitation. To enter into the portal to go kind of to the complete opposite side of the spectrum, you know. And I think that's what makes this whole idea of polarity so fun.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's at the end of the day, I believe it's a game, you know, that we're here to that we somehow signed up for to play. And it's a game with very high stakes. It's a life or death game. But it's also so fun.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Eventually we'll be able to just sit here in complete silence and, you know, have a conversation that can be picked up non-verbally by those who are on the same wavelength. We're not quite there yet. We'll use the rudimentary tool that is language in this moment.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I started listening to it, yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's profound, yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Totally. And I guess one more thing I wanted to say about the action-oriented piece, because I think that's really important, especially when we're talking about things that can feel very kind of like conceptual and big picture. One thing that I'm really receiving from this ancient intelligence or, you know, my intuition, my access point into the deeper wisdom is,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
so much of the work isn't in the ceremony or on the meditation cushion or in the retreat anymore. It's really in the full living of life and the practical application of these things into our everyday and into what we're actually building. And I think entrepreneurship is kind of an interesting spiritual path, actually, because it's a path that, what is an entrepreneur?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I can choose to be a victim of the situation where I can see that life is mirroring something to me and giving me an opportunity to come into deeper alignment with who I say I want to be. Being a steward of the current of life itself to me is the ultimate expression of being alive. And that's where I find the trust, and that's where I find the beauty, and that's where I find the richness.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's someone who's taking something from the invisible and makes it visible, ultimately. in a way that hopefully provides value to society. Now, most of the time, that's maybe not the case. But let's just assume that there's purpose built into whatever's being created. It's not just about maximizing profit.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
at the end of the day, it's one of, I think, the most exciting explorations as a human being is how do I create something that has its own kind of consciousness in the sense that it's an entity, it has, like you created Know Thyself, right? That didn't exist before. Now it's a podcast that people can reference and tune into. And you are also an entrepreneur.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And literally like a week before we had been like, you know what, I think we're going to stay. I think we're not going to sell. And so we had just gone through this deep emotional process with this land and the stewardship of this place. And what's interesting is now that I reflect on it, I placed that prayer of protection on the land, not on the house.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
You created an ecosystem of something that is regenerative and sustainable. And so what I'm seeing now at this stage in the game more than anything is what people are looking for and need is more guidance on how to do that while remaining in alignment with their values and their truth.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Because one of the byproducts of going on this path and doing all the things we talked about, right, stripping away all the layers and sort of disassembling the identity constructs and redefining success. One of the shadow sides of all of that is all the rules that used to apply don't apply anymore. And so like, for example, how do I make money?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
You know, how do I survive on this living inside of a culture and a society that was designed on a completely different operating system? Now, here I am in my new operating system. Yay. But I can't pay my rent or I don't know how to take all of these visions and all of this inspiration that's flowing through me and actually do something with it that is valuable to me and to the world.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
The translation process into these very practical realities, I think this is where the spiritual rubber meets the real road in a big way too.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so part of coming back full spectrum or full circle to the fire theme, but I think part of why I believe I was meant to lose our home in the flames, my husband and I are on this journey together, like we're co-founding stewards of this massive ecosystem, really. You know, we have a 30 acre retreat center project we're building in Mexico.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We have a thousand acre town of the future called Musa that we're building with our partners, Tara and Andres, all around the retreat center. We have this three and a half acre property here in Malibu.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And one of the greatest like gifts that we feel that we're meant to give to the world is actually the transformation of our own entrepreneurial journey and how we have fallen into the trap of using these kind of outdated ways. And try to apply them to building something that is supposed to be new, but still being kind of stuck somewhere in the middle, you know?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like when you shave your head and you grow your hair out, which I've done, there's this awkward length stage, you know? Where like no matter what you do with it, it just does not look good. Same with teenagehood, right? Like from being a little kid to being an adult, there's that awkward in-between phase. I feel like we've been in that awkward phase in our entrepreneurial journey because...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We've been receiving visions of something that is very new paradigm, but all the tools and all the lived experience and all the examples and reference points and teachers and books are all steeped in this other paradigm. And so it's like being kind of like right in the middle of it. figure out how do we do this like in a good way? You know, how do we raise money?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
How do we bring in aligned partners? How do we build physical buildings? How do we, you know, take care of the watershed? Like so many practical questions that need to be answered and that require kind of a real, a very real world application, which there's just not a lot of instruction manuals for. So I just wanted to name that because if anyone's listening to this, that's like
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And yeah, we drove down the mountain and we went to Newport in Orange County just to stay with family. And we were just watching on the map, like as the fire just like, I mean, the speed at which it was spreading was unbelievable. And soon our entire neighborhood was completely engulfed in the red, like the worst red that you don't want to see on the map.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
maybe thinks that we have it all figured out. We don't. Like, we're really, truly figuring this out in real time. And, uh,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Maybe we lost our house in the flames because us going on the journey of figuring it out now from scratch again and having this kind of like second chance to do it differently is meant to be documented and shared and open sourced so that it can become hopefully valuable to others who are going through a similar process, whether starting something from scratch or trying to innovate the way that you're already building something.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
You know, it doesn't have to be a physical thing, but... you know, a business, a venture, a community, a movement, whatever you might be creating, like very likely you're having some of the same challenges that we're having of how to do this in a way that feels right and feels aligned.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Money is a big part of this conversation.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, I think what I've learned is that we can conceptually understand that money is energy. And I think that energy can feel sometimes very kind of like Well, like holding space, right? Like this term, we use this term, I'm holding space for you or you're holding space for me. What are we holding? We're holding space? Like we're holding empty space? You know, what does that mean?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's when we start to recognize that what, you know, what looks like empty space between you and me is not, right? We are part of this sort of living energy field at all times. And so we can think of money as energy, but in order for money to actually become something that is... collapsed into form, into particle.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But even that's not real. Those are also just like digits on a screen. But for it to become, let's say, in our case, right, we're building physical spaces. We're building physical spaces for people to gather and converge and live. So for it to become a space, a physical space... What it requires is actually the structure.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It requires the container that can hold the energy and then distribute the energy in a way that ultimately comes into coherence with the vision, right? And so I think one thing I've learned is that it can be very tempting, and I fell into this in a big way, to get so enamored with the non-physical realms on the spiritual path
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
that we don't want to engage anymore with the very logistical side of reality, like the very practical sort of spreadsheet, you know, task management software side of reality. And I had a lot of resistance to that when I first met my husband, Benjamin. My husband is like, that is one of his greatest gifts is his ability to hold containers and structures.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And he's been a very successful entrepreneur for many, many decades. And so when I sort of understood like the workload, literally the workload of what it was going to take to actually make this vision a reality, there was a lot of resistance that came up. And what's happened over the years is I have this notes tab in my phone called Sacred Logistics.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And really what's happened is I can't get around it. I can't escape the fact that if I want to build something, I'm going to need to break the tasks down into smaller tasks. And I'm going to need to have a calendar and I'm going to have Zoom calls. I'm going to have a team and I'm going to have bank accounts. I'm going to need to actually like engage with the practical side of reality.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But there was no way to know what was burned and what wasn't. And the winds were so out of control that there was no, you know, nothing was flying. So there was no coverage from any of the news channels. So the uncertainty was really like the biggest thing. It was just sitting in the uncertainty of not knowing. And all of our friends getting evacuated in Topanga.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Me just sitting in a cave and visualizing it being done is part of it, right? But it's not the whole story.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So alchemizing the resistance is probably the biggest thing that I've been doing, and I think quite successfully over the last five, six years. And the tool, the key that has really helped me do that has been seeing the sacredness in all of it. So sacred logistics, like, okay, even though I have to do these things that maybe I would prefer not to do.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
How can I see that those are also expressions of the divine in form? And how can I change my relationship to those things? And how can I actually make them beautiful and ceremonial? Because I personally love a space that feels ceremonial. I love the intention. I love the song. I love the prayer. I love the candles. I love the incense smoke.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
You know, I love all the things that make something feel ceremonial. So how can I infuse those same practices into these very, you know, quote unquote, tedious or mundane tasks? And I kind of like to call myself the ceremonial CEO. I'm not really the CEO. I'm like the chief energetics officer. My husband's more of the proper CEO.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But yeah, how do I infuse this playfulness and this celebratory energy and this feeling of like reverence? How do I make it reverent? every single step along the way. And I'm starting to share this more with the world through my online offerings and in person as well. And I'm seeing there's such a hunger for that. There's such a desire for people to make the entrepreneurial path more sacred.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So yeah, that's what I would say to answer that question.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it was incredibly intense, like emotionally. And also, I had this very interesting experience where The second night after we had evacuated, in the middle of the night, I woke up and I don't know for a fact, but it's very possible that our house was burning at that exact moment. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I was bathed in this bubble of bliss. I can't even explain it.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Well, I think what I'm most interested in is who's leading the leader, right? Or what is leading the leader? You know, like if I am a leader, which I am, What is leading me? You know, this kind of comes back to this idea of like, am I the space? Am I the vessel for this current of life's intelligence to move through me?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And if I'm truly listening to that and I'm aligned with that and I'm coherent with that and I'm looking at my own stuff so that whatever might get in the way of that or might distort that is not, then... It's kind of like this trust-led leadership, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I'm like, I'm trusting that these forces that are greater than me are actually, one, they have my best interest at heart and the best interest at heart of what I'm creating and the teams I'm leading or the people or the vision.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so if I know for me, the leaders I'm most inspired by are the people I want to learn from, are the ones who I feel like are the most in service to that, are the most out of their own way, and then are also able to translate that into something that is tangible. and real, and fits into the current structures and systems that exist all around us in a way that is, again, quite practical.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So I think leadership is asking us to be leaders in the new paradigm, is asking us to get probably like 10 levels more honest with ourselves, like way more honest with ourselves about really where we are at in our personal journey and really own like our stuff and what that can look like more tangibly is...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
actually getting feedback from people, like actually having mirrors, people who can reflect back to us the parts of ourselves that we can't see. You know, when my husband and I first started on this path, we made so many assumptions. Like that was one of our biggest blind spots was we made assumptions. We assumed people knew what we were doing. We assumed our team knew what we were doing.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We assumed all sorts of things. And those assumptions led to complexities and complications and potentially even conflict. And so we brought in people that could reflect these blind spots back to us and have the difficult conversations and be like, hey, you're doing it again. Do you want to keep doing this or do you want to do it differently? And those are not fun moments.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Those are not exciting moments. It's exciting to build something and have a vision. It's not exciting to sit down with your team and be told that you're... you're actually leading in a way that's creating confusion or making people feel unseen, right? And these are kind of the ripples that come from a leadership that is maybe so goal-oriented that it puts blinders on to everything else.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that is the model of leadership that we have. It's essentially when we look at the people who are kind of running the show on planet Earth, like they're operating in that way.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. Yeah. What does it look like to actually keep the vision? Of course, like it's our job, right? Leaders are storytellers. The best leaders are the best storytellers. And we must be able to embody the vision, the reality of the vision made manifest with such conviction that everyone else organizes around that vision. That's what leadership actually is.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So you have to have a little bit of like a batshit crazy commitment to your vision, right? But the shadow side is you can fall into the shadow of deafness, right? You can become deaf to the people around you that are actually helping you make it happen.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And if you're not slowing down enough to stop and listen to them and receive feedback from them and receive reflections that might be kind of hurtful to your ego from them, then, you know, you're probably missing the point.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It was just like being wrapped in the arms of the divine. That's what it felt like. And I just remember waking up and feeling it and being like, I wonder if our house is burning right now. And then the next morning we woke up and we got confirmation that our whole neighborhood had been, I think, 80% loss of homes.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I would say that's, to me, more of an integrated model than a masculine or feminine model. It's like really when those two are coming together and working kind of like the DNA helix, you know, like they're really flowing together. But of course, we need the structure. We need the container. We need the masculine drumbeat.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And then I think the empathy, the ability to listen to the field, because every organization, if you're building a company or an organization, has its own field.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And one of our greatest teachers on this path has been Astrid Brink, who is really the head of our institute and also facilitating a lot of the programs inside of our organization and has been such a bringer really of like a steward of the culture. And she's like, culture is not what you write in your mission, vision, value statement. That's not your culture. That's just words.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Your culture is actually the energy of the field, the emanation of the field. So when a perfect stranger walks in off the street into one of your meetings, what are they picking up on? What are they feeling? Are people expanded? Are people present? Are people excited? Are people feeling the ability to raise their hand and say something difficult in the space? That's your culture.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think the next level of leadership that's required is Again, like having all these pieces come together and we need guidance like around that. There are not a lot of instruction manuals for it that exist. So we've been working on putting together programs that allow people to go through that kind of training and really understand how to apply that to their own lives.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And it has to be this blend, I think, of leadership training and also personal transformation because the two go hand in hand. You can't really have a new paradigm leader that's not also doing the personal work.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah, there's a lot to share. Yeah, I guess what I'm really seeing is this longing. I'm seeing this desire in people to understand how to lead in a different way because we do need leaders right now. And I think that really expanding the definition of what it means to be a leader, recognizing that no matter how big or small the thing is that we're here to do and size is irrelevant,
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
but the ability to impact other human beings and then have a ripple of impact in our communities that could be at a local level, you know, can be at an international level. We're all designed differently, but I think one of the things that really excites me is kind of like activating and catalyzing this new generation of leaders. And
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
One of the other really interesting things that's happening right now on the planet that isn't talked about a lot, and this kind of goes back to like money and that whole piece, is that we are in the next 10, 15 years, we're looking at the largest wealth transfer that's ever happened in the history of like in human history. So...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so it was this really interesting experience of being in some of the most extreme states of bliss and then also being taken down by these like total avalanches of grief. And just like so much went into that place. And so much beauty and so much love and so much connection. And like, there's this unfathomable kind of energy of like, how is this even possible? Right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars are going to be transferred from one generation to the next. And the values of the new generation versus the old generation are very different today. And the context is very different, right? Because we now know that the way we've been doing things is not going to work in the same way.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Like we have to change the way that we live and create and make money on this planet.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So as this sort of extractive model that has allowed us to dominate nature and extract from nature and has led us to this climate crisis moment, as that all becomes illuminated and is no longer justifiable, the new generation has this huge challenge and opportunity, which is like, how do I deploy all of this capital, all this life force energy in the form of money into something that is actually not just sustainable, but regenerative?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that is one of the greatest questions that I think we can collectively try and solve right now is like, well, what does that actually look like? And how does that actually make sense from a fiscal perspective, from an environmental perspective? So in the deep inquiry and kind of the continual prayer for us, my husband and I personally, like, how can we be of greatest service?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
What keeps coming through is serve the leaders and serve the stewards of wealth to come together and basically figure out what the answers to these questions are going to be. And I think a big answer is in the form of regenerative businesses and, you know, models of entrepreneurship that allow us to create value. That's in a way that's a win, win, win all around, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And yeah, it's a really exciting moment to kind of be in the exploration of that because there's a wave of energy that can fertilize a new reality. And so I think for us to be able to hold the containers and the spaces for people to come into those explorations and to go through a process that is facilitated that allows them to answer those questions for themselves.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We've had to go through it ourselves, right? We've had to basically pioneer it. So the last decade plus has been essentially a giant initiation into what that means. And so the way it's tangibly manifested itself for us has been, like I mentioned, this Mexico project, which is really like, what does it mean to build a town of the future where we live differently together?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And the transformational component is held by Kavanaugh and then the community component is held by Musa. One of the things that's come out of this fire and the loss of our house is also, again, a recognition that what we need is not the polished guru model of like the person that has it all figured out.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
But what we need is actually inspiring stories that don't just stay at inspiration, but actually lead to integration. So real stories of real humans, real leaders, real people who are choosing to do things differently in the trenches of trying to figure it out. And then one of the things that we can bring that's unique is the storytelling component of that.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So actually telling that story, documenting it in real time, and then essentially extracting the wisdom from the story to turn it into a replicable blueprint that can serve others. So that's kind of some of the ways that we have been meeting this moment, really. And this initiative, one of the key components, I think, of a new paradigm way of creating anything is
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
is like I said earlier, we need those mirrors, right? We need the people who are going to hold us accountable. And I think the true, one of the greatest sources of prosperity that we have available to us is the relationships, the human relationships that we have.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so forming this alliance to be able to support this process of regeneration here in LA locally specifically, but in a way that can be relevant for the rest of the world, has been kind of the immediate thing that has come out of this.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And we've assembled some really powerful people, including Zach Bush, who's putting together a team right now to reimagine what the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and Altadena could look like on the other side of this. because he's been studying, you know, what he calls agri-hoods, like agriculture neighborhoods, where people are actually living inside of food forests.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And like, there's a whole new way of doing this, you know, we don't just have to build houses next to each other and pour a bunch of cement on the earth and then go to grocery stores and pay $27 for a smoothie at Erewhon. Like, We can do this differently. But how? Like that needs to be modeled and it needs to be shown.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think there's something really exciting about the messy real time exploration of that. That for me as a documentary filmmaker and storyteller is really exciting. So this initiative that we launched is called In Life We Trust. And it's kind of a philanthropic arm inside of Kavanaugh.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah, it feels like a really beautiful opportunity to really reorient some of the really the resources that we have available to us. You know, we have a team that is versed in holding safe spaces for people to process deep emotions and also grief.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And there's a whole mental, emotional and spiritual healing component that will come on the other side of the physical stuff needing to be taken care of, right? It's easy to get focused so much on how do people get back into their homes and all of that, but all of the other repercussions need to be looked at as well.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's like hard to even compute. And then not having been back there and seeing it with my own eyes and only seeing blurry videos from like firefighters that happened to make it up there that were able to be like, yep, confirmed your house is completely gone. Just such a completely surreal experience. And so I
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so we feel like we have a really beautiful opportunity to make services available and show up for those impacted by the fires.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I have a Telegram channel where I just kind of share my musings as they come through in real time because there's so much coming through. And the last one I recorded was Reclaiming Wealth and Power on the Spiritual Path.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I really just, this is almost more kind of like me just getting on my soapbox for a moment and saying to anyone listening, like one of the greatest gifts I think we can give the world on our spiritual path is to reclaim wealth and power as something that we get to steward. Because without wealth and power, we are not going to create the new paradigm. Like we are not going to build things.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We are not going to change the fabric of society in the way that it needs to change in order for future generations to even have a chance at this thing called life. So how can we include these things that we have historically judged as not spiritual or not pure? And how can we include them and alchemize them and turn them into something that is truly an expression of the divine?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
So I'm really passionate, personally passionate about that and very much actively supporting people who are in that process. And we'll continue to just create as many spaces for the people who want to learn how to do that in a good way as possible.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I was sharing my journey on social media and I was speaking largely from this place of trust and seeing the bigger picture and sort of understanding that there's a reason even if I don't understand what it is. And I wrote, the greatest loss I stand to lose is actually trust in the benevolence of life itself. That's actually the biggest loss that could potentially happen here. It's not the house.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I mean, it's just a necessity. It's like, you know, if you want to play poker, you need a chip. Like, it's just that. Like, it doesn't need to mean anything. And I think that the people who want it the least, because they're the most unattached to the material stuff, like making them feel worthy, are the ones who should have it.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Because then the stewardship of it will actually be possible versus the hoarding of it or the needing for it to just constantly grow and grow and grow and amplify for the 0.01%. That's not working. So yeah, it's just something, especially women. I see so many women who are so afraid of power and money.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And so it's just like, how do we reclaim that and allow that to be a beautiful and divine part of our path? Yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, like I said earlier, Richard Rudd talks about how you can't make insight happen. You can't force it, but you can create the circumstances for it to happen. I think stewardship is about recognizing that whatever this thing is, whether it's my child or my business. I can't make it happen.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
I can't make it the thing I want it to be, but I can create the environment for it to flourish. I can create the circumstances. So I'm kind of stewarding the experience of this thing in a way that I believe will allow it to unfold its highest expression. But I also remain humble enough to know that I may not know exactly what the highest expression is of that thing, right?
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And I think we can get trapped when we think we know what it should be, right? When we project onto the child that it should be a PhD, when really it just wants to be, you know, a graffiti artist. Like, that is one example. Or even in our case, like, we...
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
We've had such a strong desire to have a plan and a strategy and like a timeline of when we're going to open our retreat center in Mexico and how that's all going to work. And we're going to self fund and we're going to be in control of this whole thing. And then life was like your cute kids, you know, none of those things are happening right now.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Life circumstances have placed us in a situation where now the option to self-fund is no longer there. So now we get to invite others to participate in this vision. There was resistance to that. There was fear around that because there was the part that wanted to be the owner. But true stewardship is like this vision is bigger than us. It's not just about us and what we think it should be.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It's about welcoming other people to be a part of it and bring it to life and share the responsibility of the creation of this in a way that forces us into collaboration. And even though it's scary, it's also really exciting. So those are some examples, I think, of the difference. To me, I think it's more about holding it with an open palm versus like with a clenched fist. Yeah.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Yeah, and we keep coming back to listening. That's been a theme throughout this whole conversation.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And And then I realized that I needed to share the other side of my experience too. I needed to share the human side. And I threw my back out and I was in a lot of physical pain and kind of bedridden for several days. And I went to some really dark places and I tried to share that side of it as well, because I don't want to create the impression that I'm some sort of evolved spiritual person that
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Beautiful. Thank you for having me here.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
always is in the state of like total surrender with life. You know, it's not true. Like there was moments where I was, I got in the car to drive to the chiropractor to get adjusted for like the fifth time. My back was so completely screwed. And I processed like rage and grief and screamed at the top of my lungs and just like let it rip for 10 minutes. And then I was okay.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
You know, like I think that's the thing about emotion is like it's energy in motion. It comes and we let it come and we let it have its way with us and then we move through it. And on the other side, we come back to some form of like, all right, and so it is. And now what? So just a lot of oscillations. Yeah. Yeah, but really powerful.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And then so many downloads and so much inspiration and so much clarity around like this is the moment to assemble the allies and to launch this initiative and to really let LA be a beacon for the world.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Our sanctuary canyon land appeared in 2019, soon after we put out the call. It took three years to build and only a few minutes to fall. I can see it even now, being devoured by that fiery red ball. What a plot twist. Is this inferno the apocalypse? It makes me dizzy to see how fast the narrative flips.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Horror, shock, and awe as the fire rips while accusations stream from so many lips. This is the city where I hustled for tips, condensed my acting career into a series of clips. Now dreams sail away like Columbus's ships, and all the while the wind relentlessly whips. But no. Deep down, I know This isn't just a horror show.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
No, this unspeakable disaster that rudely ate all of our hand-spackled plaster, it has a purpose. It wants me to go faster toward being of service. There's Jedi skills it wants me to master. It wants me to walk the talk. To stand in the light when life gets real dark. To believe we can turn smoldering houses into a livable park. To ignite inspiration and become spirit's own spark.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
This is the moment. Do we dare and own it? It was Rumi who said, The wound is where the light enters you. So in this darkest hour, let us blossom from the rubble like a flower. Even though the tarot card we pulled turned out to be the tower, we can choose to lead instead of cower. To lead with all of our love and all of our grief. Give permission to feel and provide relief.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Thank you for having me.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
Breathe deep together and unclench our teeth. Start to heal. Return the blade of sorrow to its sheath. We got this, family. This is not the time for anarchy or blame-inflamed soliloquy. No, this is the time to hone our frequency. A teacher once said, I don't know what the truth is, but I know what love feels like. You, me, we know what love feels like.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
It was. I was just closing my eyes to listen to how you were introducing me. I was curious to hear you mirror back to me what I do, who I am in the world.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
And that feeling is our God-given birthright. So even if all you want to do is scream and cry and fight, the love that you are will never burn less bright because this kind of love transcends wrong and right. So that is the invitation. Be the change you wish to see. It's okay if there's heart palpitations. Life will always be a mix of loss and celebration.
Know Thyself
E133 - Azrya Bequer: Transform Pain into Purpose & Grief into Gold
That's the nature of this ever-evolving meditation. So let's give ourselves some space. Let's practice turning grief into grace. Let's slow way down and also pick up the pace. Time isn't real, yet there's no time to waste. They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. We lost our home in the flames, and we choose to stand tall.