By "born leaders" I don't mean people who spring from the womb with mini bayonets, ready to command armies like bossy lil Napoleon Bonapartes.

I mean people who come into this world with:

a deep (sometimes heartbreaking) sensitivity to their surroundings
remarkable talents
and a gut-level sense of responsibility for making things much better for others

Since born leaders have an inner vision of how beautiful life can be even while they're confronted with painful external circumstances ... they develop a fascination with the arts of transformation and influence.

Born leaders, though, even with all their natural gifts, tender hearts, and big vision, face severe temptations to betray themselves and their purpose.

Without further ado, let's explore what these temptations entail and what to do about them.

1) The temptation to despair

Suffering abounds on this planet.

Governmental, corporate, and financial systems that don't prioritize making a happy and flourishing world for everyone have entrenched control.

Furthermore, all of us live in highly vulnerable, mortal bodies. It seems we're subject to the whims of external forces, oppressed and limited by other people's fears and desires, by pathogens, by our own persistent bad habits.

It seems that there's plenty to get down about.

Yes. If you look at the world and yourself from the commonplace materialist view (and by "materialist" I don't mean "consumerist" I mean "the naïve philosophical view that the physical world is real, solid, and all that actually exists")...

... then there's no reason not to despair.

I mean, even if you're fine right now, you definitely won't be at some point.

No matter what you do, your body will age and decay, people you love will die, more people all over the globe will suffer terribly --- guaranteed.

It's called Samsara. It's the Wheel of a dream of material reality that spins round and round, filled with both beauty and horror.

The key to living in Samsara without giving into despair...

... consists of knowing that it's a dream created from consciousness, and as you alter and evolve your consciousness, you alter and evolve the dream.

"The eye altering alters all" as William Blake said.

Indeed, you can become fully lucid within this waking dream just like you can within your nighttime dreams. The more lucid you get, the easier it is to create within the dream.

That's the whole art of magic, that's the alchemy of psyche, that's tantra and Hermeticism.

How to get lucid in this dream of Samsara?

Here's a simple alchemical framework, briefly explained (we go into much more depth with the alchemy of the psyche in my WEALTH community):

Seek out the fire of your always-already-present, kinky, wild, underlying electric bodily enjoyment of everything.

Another term for this is: forgive everything (you might as well, since divinity does anyway, God always forgives Godself!) and feel the heat, union, and fulfillment of that eternal divine YES! to all unfoldings, both terrible and wonderful.

Focus on this fire, raise it from your genitals to your heart, amplify it, dwell with it, and use it to melt stuck places of guilt and resentment inside yourself, along with the apparent ice-like solidity of material form.

Do this in meditation until apparent reality seems as permeable and changeable as steam to you.

Allow your reality to re-coagulate, shaped by the vibration of total hot electric enjoyment.

Continue loving, celebrating, and embracing everything like the divine does until you're able to walk through walls, raise the dead, and turn water into wine.

And psssst even if you never get to "raise the dead" level Mahasiddha skillz with your alchemy, you can still positively transform your whole life and uplift everyone who encounters you by practicing this.

Sounds strange of course, but it's been done many times in history, and you can do it, too.

Everything you perceive is within consciousness, isn't it? Have you ever perceived anything outside of some form of consciousness?

No, because it's impossible. Consciousness is God. Everything you see is made of Godstuff -- including "the evildoers," the pollution, and the people you just don't like.

Stop despairing, stop judging and handwringing, and get busy with knowing the truth of ever-present divinity, in a deep, embodied, electric way.

2) The temptation to take themselves too seriously

The notion that "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right," has a paralyzing toxin injected into it - the question of what's the "right" way to go about making a project happen.

I've seen brilliant, loving people stuck in tragic limbo for years while making their website, their manuscript, their coaching offering "just right."

A commitment to excellence can be wonderful - it can also serve as a prison cell when we use that commitment to try to shield ourselves from the inevitable humiliation and awkwardness of growth.

I propose a more generative motto: "If something is worth doing, it's worth making a giant fool of myself over and over while doing it."

Before we learn how to do things excellently, we usually do them messily and embarrassingly.

The willingness to put something out into the world that's highly imperfect leads to learning, opportunity, and momentum that can't happen if you're always sitting alone in a room, polishing your precccccciiiiiiiious.

The antidote to this temptation is to just decide to get cozy with messing up in public, again and again.

Practice welcoming, celebrating, and letting yourself be turned on by the intense sensations of embarrassment. They're just sensations, they can't kill you. They mean that you're growing, not that you suck.

My first three websites? Ugly as sin. Still got some readers with those, though.

My first self-published manuscript? Uh, not so hot. But I kept going, relentlessly putting my writing on the interwebs, and now I get solicited by my favorite publishers.

My first coaching offerings? They needed a lot of tweaking. Yet I kept developing them until they worked well for both me and my clients.

And now I have a 7-figure business while equally talented old pals of mine who didn't want to mess up publicly .... well, don't.

So: put up an ugly website. Self-publish a flawed manuscript. Offer something that you're not sure is "the perfect" thing -- rinse, evolve, repeat.

A year from now, you'll be light years ahead of the folks who took themselves so seriously they refused to get off on embarrassment and stayed in hiding instead.

Stay tuned for my next messages where we dive into the 5 other temptations that born leaders face and how to handle them.

best,

Carolyn Elliott

author of Existential Kink: unmask your shadow and embrace your power

P.S. If you'd like fabulous community support and expert mentorship in getting lucid in the dream of life, it's available.

Application and registration for the WEALTH community where leaders come into their full power opens again on May 18th.

Here's what people are already saying about their experience in WEALTH:

“So glad to have found a group of people that I feel on the same wavelength as.” - Linda Brady

“Heart pounding, tears welling. I’m so excited that you created this. THANK YOU.” - Caryn

“This is blowing my mind.” - Francesca

“This is probably the most interesting BUSINESS class in the world! :)” - Charlie

“This was so perfect to help my confidence, exactly what I needed help with thank you!” - Rose

“Carolyn, this was sooooo delicious.” - Natalies

“Took 4 pages of notes in this first Mentorship session alone. can't wait to dig even deeper. THANK YOU, CAROLYN!” - Kelsey Chiga

the 7 temptations of a born leader, part one