And the words that she says to me, though they're very few, it's usually like "It's okay, Mama. It's all okay." Um the way that she says it, it suggests that Um You guys, I'm crying right now, but it's not not crying from pain. That's the faith. It's that I feel such overwhelming love. But the way she says it, it gives me this idea that there is no time, there's no like that the time is an illusion. That whatever happened before and even the interruptions in our time together, it doesn't matter. You are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 196. Stay tuned. Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated [music] to healing

your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach [music] specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show [music] is my love letter to you. Stay tuned. Well, it looks like me and my door analogy pissed a lot of my favorite parents off last week. I saw the numbers. I saw exactly where a bunch of you clicked off. Maybe you rage quit. Annoyance quit, however you want to say it. You clicked off right at the 20-minute mark. And I do want to say that I completely get it. Honestly, if past me had heard current me talking about our souls choosing our

challenges 6, 8, 10 years ago, I probably would have thrown my phone across the room. Maybe even written some choice words in the comments, you know? It can feel like a massive gut punch when you are in the thick of the pain and also when you're already feeling maybe unsupported by many in your community. I get it. And though we had a part two scheduled for this week, a continuation of last week's episode, I'm choosing to lean in even harder. So, stay with me. Because I'm hoping to, if not change your mind, I'm hoping to open your mind just a little bit. I'm asking if you could offer me the grace to stay with me for just a few. When I ask the question, "What if your soul chose these very

obstacles before you were born?" I am not saying that you deserve this. I am not saying that alienation is okay or that the cruelty of your situation is justified at all. It's not justified. The purpose of the backpack metaphor is truly about your power. Because the only alternative to that theory that I offered is believing that something has gone terribly cosmically wrong with your life. And clinging to that belief is what keeps us paralyzed in the suffering, waiting for the outside world to fix itself before you allow, before we allow ourselves to be okay. The backpack idea means that you're equipped. It means that you are stronger than the obstacle. Okay? And if you stay with me today, I

want to take you past that gut punch, that ego punch maybe even, into a massive spiritual shift. So, when I ask you or pose the idea that your soul chose this backpack, I am not throwing out a random wacky theory. I'm leaning on thousands of years of wisdom. To begin with the newer philosophy, let's start with Carl Jung. Carl Jung proved that what we refuse to face internally manifests on the outside as fate until we wake up. His direct quote is "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." And he also championed the idea of amor fati, which is the love of one's fate, right? Meaning we must say a radical yes to the

hand that we're dealt, recognizing that our inner self is actively co-participating with the universe to create the exact friction we need to achieve wholeness, individuation. Even Plato argued that we choose our life scripts and then we will forget that we chose them once we're born. But the idea is that we select circumstances that will help us grow. Before we're born. So, the idea here is that you're not a victim of some cosmic mistake. You are executing a master plan that your soul was brave enough to sign up for. And so, in a second actually, I'm going to get into the religious contexts. I'll talk just a few about a few of them. If you want to know more

about each of these, please, I encourage you to do your own research on this. In religious contexts, right? Kabbalah calls it tikkun. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, but it's spiritual repair. It's the belief that before birth, your soul looked at the map, a map, and willingly, actively actually, chose or chooses the exact life circumstances, your parents, the hardships, all of it, that would allow your soul to achieve tikkun, spiritual repair. And now for my Christian faith-based listeners, hear Hear out here. When I offer the idea that your your soul chose this backpack, I am talking about what scripture calls God's sovereign, I believe it's called

foreknowledge. Jeremiah 1:5 says he knew you before the womb. Psalm 139 says all your days were written in his book before they ever happened. The point I'm trying to make here is that if your days were already written, then this alienation is not a surprise to God. It's not a cosmic mistake. You were assigned to this mountain because your spirit was and is equipped to carry the tools to climb it. Those parents who are waiting around for God to strike down the other parent, waiting for karma to get to them, I want to challenge you here, too. When you sit in the seat of judgment waiting for punishment, you are locking your own heart closed. If this is you,

you will end up halting your own growth. Matthew 7 if you were still on the topic of Christianity here. So, Matthew 7 warns that the measure we use to judge others is the measure that will be used upon us, okay? Matthew 5 tells us to pray for those who persecute us. Why? Because Jesus knew that harboring bitterness keeps you in a cage. Keeps you in your own personal hell. The other parent in my mind isn't a glitch in God's plan that needs to be erased. If you would allow your focus to be removed from the other parent's punishment or from the other parent at all, really, unless it's necessary, and what the other parent's doing, their motives, their intentions, all of that, if you would

let go of that focus and start focusing on your own purpose, putting down the gavel, pick pick your backpack again, you know, and let just let God handle the rest, you'll notice the amount of freedom that you have. Speaking of karma, cuz I just mentioned it a second ago, if you're like waiting for karma to bite the other parent in the butt, you know, and that's what I used to do, too. I used I was so hell-bent on wanting to see them pay. And I was really upset about the fact that I probably wouldn't see them pay because I never see them. E- This is before when I was living up in the house with mail. I was like, I really want to see it happen. I want to know with my

own eyes that they got punished, you know? And that kept me in that special kind of hell. Truly kept me miserable because I was always focused on them. You know, I talk about this all the time, but I think when it comes to confronting this idea that how come they can do wrong, but I have to be perfect and I'm looked at I'm swimming around in a fishbowl, and anything I do, if I breathe wrong, I'm going to court, you know, I'm going to end up in a hearing, spending God knows how much money on, you know, attorneys and fees and all the things, right? So, why is it that they can get away with that and I can't? That whole mindfuck, that's what it is, will take you off the path that you're

supposed to be walking. So, anyway, back to karma. In Hinduism and Buddhism, while karma is often misunderstood as punishment, the deeper esoteric view of karma is that the soul generates a specific curriculum that it must experience, okay, in order to burn off illusion and wake up to unconditional love. Okay, in order to burn off illusion and awaken to unconditional love. I need to repeat that. Because anything else that's not love basically is an illusion. So, the idea of karma being some punishment, being some sentence, life sentence for you. It's not so. It's much more than that. And maybe that can help you to reckon with whatever views you might have of

why is this happening with you, to you. That's my objective, really, here today. Is to help you to loosen your grip on the current story that you have. And I'll talk about that in a couple minutes, too. Lastly, indigenous traditions around the world, Navajo, Lakota, teach their own versions of the same concept, okay? Many African traditions, also, the ancestors play a role in guiding the soul to the world, and the soul then agrees to certain responsibilities that they will take on while they're here in the world. All of what I'm saying, the the whole reason I'm leaning into this harder and making this argument, you guys, is to advocate for your agency. For your power. Because when you believe

that your story has been derailed, how do you feel? Like inside of you, what happens when you believe that something has gone wrong? That the other parent is the devil, even. How do you feel on the inside when you think that? That they need to be punished. That none of this was supposed to happen. I know, you guys, when I first adopted this, before I adopted this point of view, it really really hurt me to think that this was already going to happen, that was already written or predetermined or that this was how it was supposed to be for me, because I really loved loved being a mom. Like every day of my life I can remember as clear as it was yesterday, 5 minutes

ago, even, standing in the Lifetime I worked at Lifetime Fitness. I'm standing in the cafe there. This is I did this on so many occasions, but talking with one of the other trainers there and telling them what a joy every new day was with my daughter. How amazing it was every age got better, every day got better. There was always something that was just lighting up my world being a mom, you know? So, the idea of accepting or yeah, on boarding the belief that this was all going to happen anyway made me really angry. Like, what do you mean? I'm an amazing mom and I don't I don't not ready to give up my mom role, my identity. This is craziness. Why would anybody

even suggest this? Something has gone terribly wrong. It's their fault. They're the And I'm not saying that they're not the okay? But I Well, well, I'll get to it in a little bit. But, doing that, it hurt me. And it didn't punish them. You know what I'm saying? It did nothing. I'm talking about the alienating parent and the other alienating parent. Um the stepmom. I It did nothing to them except for maybe play into their game and cause them to be a little bit Who knows? Maybe it was pleasant for them to know that they were getting under my skin the way that they were, that they had that effect on my life. It caused me to go into, you know, I mean, years long

clinical depression and self-sabotage. It was miserable because I was Nothing was ever fruitful, right? They needed to be punished, yet no They never got punished. Rarely. And if it was, it was nothing. It was a you know, a slap on the And nothing It didn't matter. Even if they would have gotten punished, I still don't know that I would feel any better in the long run. Maybe for a hot minute. But the My point is that when I was believing that something had gone terribly wrong and that they're the enemy, they're the devil, and that they should be If all of that, it only caused me to reinvest in their narrative. And I didn't I was so over that. It took a really long time for me to be being

beating my head up against a wall, but finally I was like, this isn't working. I'm hardheaded. It took me years, you know? And that's when I finally started to slowly adopt the idea that maybe this was all supposed to be this way, which when you take that stance, you know, that perspective, things can start to settle down inside of you. Your nervous system can start to regulate, get off the the roller coaster, and you can start to normalize, and reintegrate yourself with life. Because the other narrative, the one that I was just talking about, is going to keep you in an an extended trauma response. And it does nothing for your productivity. Even if you want to

say, "Yeah, but I need them to have justice." That's fine. Then love justice. You deal with your justice-seeking plan, but don't focus on them, and even the justice-seeking plan. This is what I'm offering you. You don't have to do this. I don't know the way that I just kind of worded that said made it sound like that this was the only perspective that there is, and it's not. There's many perspectives. You take the one that works for you. But even when Where was I now? So, if I'm thinking something has terribly gone wrong, and I need to fight them, then I stay in a trauma response, and also I'm not nearly as effective as I could be had I decided that even seeking justice was part of my plan.

This was the part of the big thing. This was what I was supposed to overcome, because maybe I was supposed to I don't know, change history, right? Change the legal system, do blah blah blah, whatever it is. Yeah, this is what my purpose is then, if that was my purpose. It's not, as you guys know, but I know that there's probably some of yours, then do that. Focus on your purpose here. Yeah? Service of that two other parents. That is going to up-level everything, all of your results, your experience, and your frequency. Basically what I'm saying is, no matter what the other parent is or isn't, holding onto that frequency isn't going to be helpful for you. Energetically, you cannot fully

experience the highest frequencies of love and peace while your system is clogged with judgment and hate. You cannot manifest greatness while vibrating in survival mode. So, why not believe that it's all for something. It's all for something. You don't have to know that what that something is yet if you don't want to. Because you know what I've noticed, you guys? Every single parent like us has one major thing in common. They want to be and do good. They have the potential for greatness. You have the potential for greatness. Not just greatness in the way of our physical success, right? I mean, deep, meaningful, travel cross lifetimes kind of greatness. This is exactly why I believe that you

and I are living that the exact chapter required to reveal who we truly are. And the sooner that you stop resisting, the sooner that you step out of your own chrysalis. I'm not trying to rush your process here, but you do have the choice right now. The portal out of the cage, y'all, is available to you right now. But, to walk through it, you have to look at your own areas of resistance, put down the heavy armor of judgments, and infuse those wounds with absolute love. Let me show you what happens when you actually open that bandwidth. I'll tell you about Scarlet, my situation or my experiences lately with my daughter. Lately, I've been having these incredibly vivid, larger-than-life visions

of my daughter, Scarlet. She comes to me in at all different ages, but mostly in her toddler years, with the toddler voice, ages, you know, like three, two, three, four, five, six, something like that, even seven and eight. These visions or these dream-like states that I feel like I'm in, they don't feel like memories. They feel like I don't know how to put it into words, but it feels very vivid, very clear, very emotional. Like, it's going to make me emotional right now to even talk about it, but like, it just happened again the other morning, um which is what spurred this whole topic, really. This and the metrics and the numbers of when you guys dropped off of last week's episode,

right? All of it together, this is my inspiration for this. When she comes to me, they don't It doesn't feel like memories. It feels The best way I can say it is omnipresent. It feels completely fluid. And those Her voice and her face and that's what I see is her face, and then I can actually feel her sometimes put her hand on my um on my thigh or on my hand. And I know this sounds a little woo to some of you, but stay with me, okay? Cuz there's a whole point to all of this in a minute. She kind of appears holographic, if you will. That's the best way I can put it into words. And she feels wise. She sounds, though, with her toddler voice, so grounded and calm, and reassured herself,

knowing, you know, truly knowing in the words that she says to me, though they're very few. It's usually like, "It's okay, Mama. It's all okay." Um, the way that she says it, it suggests that uh You guys, I'm crying right now. But it's not I'm not crying from pain. That's the faith. Is that I feel such overwhelming love. But the way she says it, it gives me this idea that there is no time. There's no Like that the time is an illusion. That [snorts] whatever happened before, and even the interruptions in our time together, it doesn't matter. And those of you who feel like you're being erased, >> [snorts] >> just know what I'm getting from these is that those moments in time of many many

many hundreds, thousands of moments in time that you feel like maybe you got erased or that you're afraid got erased, they're not. And [snorts] that when you open yourself up to love and to letting go of that drama, there's so much more waiting for you. She, when she comes, these visions, or I don't what I could even call them. Um it doesn't happen, it's not like every day, but it's lately it's been happening more often, and maybe up once a week or something. Um and it's as though none of it matters. Like none of the pain matters anymore. You know? None of the strife, the conflicts, the whatever they the other parent has been doing for you, you know? But for me it was like that wasn't even

a problem. That all of it still exists. Like that yesterday, today, and tomorrow fully exists now. I don't know how else to put words to that. It just feels very fluid and open and overwhelming. I get an overwhelming sense of love. And it made me these experiences have I guess just expanded my view of all of everything that's going on. The smallness, like what I used to see as finite isn't so finite, and what I used to see as fleeting is what is finite, or what is lasting. You know? It made me question, or it's caused me to question what I've known for the last 50 years of my life. How I thought that life worked, that energy works. Um I used to look at my situation of alienation, or

alienation as a whole, through a strict 3D lens. The physical world where there is silence, there's distance, there's pain, there's suffering. And it felt like a prison. You know? But my recent experiences inspired me to study the mechanics of dimensions. The physics of fourth dimension proves that time is a fixed map. It means that the years of deep mothering and love that I shared with her are physically anchored into the universe forever. They cannot be erased. This is Einstein's theory of relativity, right? So, in the theory, the second part of that So, there's general relativity and then there's special relativity. I had to go do a brush up on this. Uh

what since I've been studying this the last few weeks, okay? So, space and time in his theory of special relativity, space and time are not separate, right? They're fused into one single four-dimensional fabric called space-time. Okay? Einstein, he proved that the flow of time is relative, meaning there's no universal now, yesterday, or tomorrow. So, time is relative. It passes at different rates depending on your speed and gravity. Two events at the same time for you might be at different times for somebody else. So, then there's the idea of the block universe, which is because now is highly dependent upon the observer. Physicists treat the past, the present, and the

future as equally real. And then there's the idea of the illusion of flow. Einstein famously talked about that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. It's all an illusion. Time is an illusion. So, when we're taking that in the context of for me, my daughter, these experiences that I'm having with her, her four-year-old point is a specific coordinate of her world line on her world line, right? And her 18-year-old, 19-year-old point is a linear coordinate on that exact same world line on her world line. And the complete view as a 4D observer sees like if I was looking at her line and if I was in the actually seeing

everything in 4D, four dimension, what we would see the entire line containing all ages at once. You got me? Anything that you experienced ever in your past has a matching coordinate as if on a huge map, right? And at any time in time, if you were to be able to if you have those coordinates, you could go back to that spot and it's fully alive and well and still occurring to this day. Does that make sense? Like it doesn't get erased. And I'm probably not explaining it as well as I really I know I'm not explaining it as well as it could be explained. If you're interested in this, go check out some videos on YouTube, okay? And I can direct you to a couple of them and you can do your own

research. So, I just explained 4D. The visions that I'm talking about are taking me even higher than that into 5D consciousness. That's what I think. You know, in 5D, time and space totally collapse into pure unconditional love. In that space, my daughter's soul is fully aware of her whole existence. Everybody's soul is fully aware of their whole existence. But specifically about our children or about my child, when she comes to me fluidly the way that she does, it's because her eternal soul is communicating directly with mine, completely bypassing the 3D silos of the physical world. Okay? The fact that we're not speaking right now. Bypassing that completely because this is just a drop

of time in the whole existence though the of all eternity. You know what I'm saying? So, I'm telling you this because I want you to know that your child is not gone. You're you are not erased forever from them. The 3D world can create physical distance, but when you heal your nervous system and clear out the survival mode that you might still be in, you open up the bandwidth to experience the real 5D truth, the lasting 5D truth. Your bond with your children is unbroken. Your history with them is safe. And the love is eternal. Think of it if you the skeptics out there. Think of it as a ladder of awareness, right? 1D is a single picture piece of paper, right? There's a

great video on this that I recently watched that this past week. About this from a teenager from like a high school kid. This was one like early early YouTube video, right? 16 years ago I think is when that when it was done. So, I'll I'll put it at the a link for it in the in the show notes, okay? But a 1D one dimension is a single straight line on a page, right? That's all it is. It's just a single straight line. 2D is a flat drawing on that that same page, right? It can see left and right, but it can't look up off the page. It can't see anything else but just left and right on that line. 3D is us, you and me, whoever are sitting over the page. We can pick the paper up, but we

are trapped in a single rigid moment of time, right? Like we are here. There is only now. That's what Eckhart Tolle talks about all the time, right? The The power of now is that his book? Now I forget. Yes. Um that there's only now. There's only this moment in time. That's all we have. The past doesn't exist and the future is not yet created. We have right now. So, the more present you can be, the more expansive that you can become. The higher your frequency raises because you're not muddying up all the waters. That is here, our earthly experience, right? Don't Stay with me. That's here on this planet, our human condition, right? On Earth or while we're here on this Earth

alive, you know? The name of the game is suffering, many of us, right? Until we learn how to evolve. And that is another reason why I think it's so important to You don't have to adopt mine, but adopt some belief that works for you regarding your situation of alienation that doesn't keep you locked up in what they're doing anymore. That advocates for your best the best outcome, the most growth, your evolution. Anyway, back to where I was on our 3D experience, right? We're trapped into a single rigid moment of time. But, when you step into 4D, you see the whole timeline at once. And then at 5D, you realize the paper, the timeline, the entire universe are made of one fluid interconnective

ocean of love. There's infinite possibility, right? Um and this is where I go out of my area of expertise and then I will refer you to the experts on YouTube. Um and I'll put those recommendations, those video recommendations, in the show notes. But, one of them I watched, well, there's two. I You know I love Mayim Bialik's podcast. They're so interesting and they're really deep dives into a lot of lot of different subjects, but lately she's been on a kick, maybe always, but I've noticed in the last few months she's been on a kick of uh existential like what happens after life, what the meaning of life is, um then she also did recently, the reason that that she just it just

reminded me of her, she just recently had a guy on um who was talking about quantum quantum computers and how crazy mind-blowingly fast these computers are going to be and what they can predict and all the things. That was rad to listen to. But then also she's had some she has a guy had a guy I'm sure you guys have heard of him Robert Edward Grant. He is a plethora of knowledge in the cryptography world and actually in everything because he's considered a polymath. He considers himself a polymath. I mean this guy has achieved talk about when I was earlier talking about not when you're made for greatness and not just the outside kind of greatness. This guy

achieved the outer greatness earlier on in life in like his 30s and then at 40 I think or right around there he did a TED Talk and then from there on and I don't know the whole story exactly how it went down chronologically, but then um now he's since been knighted twice and anyway crazy amount of stuff, but this guy has so much knowledge when it comes to much of what I'm talking about today. So it might be another thing for you to go watch, um but I'll I'll link the things below. My ultimate goal is to help you guys to reckon with this idea that maybe it's not so bad that somebody it was predetermined by somebody, whether that was your soul. if you don't want to believe that because of your

religious beliefs that God, whoever, this was already predetermined. Not because you were supposed to be punished, but because you were meant for so much more. And the sooner that you allow that to be okay and stop wrestling, like resisting reality, um the sooner that you can start getting on the path that you were meant to be here for. Okay? Because it's not just that you were supposed to overcome alienation. This is the way I think. This is what I'm offering you guys. It's not just that you were supposed to suffer in this life. That's not the goal. That wasn't just the the end of it. Oh, yep, you're just This is a life of suffering for you. Boom. No. And it's not about

excusing what they've done, as I've already said. I just want to bring that home. It's that you, me, we, in my the way I see it and many other people, thousands of years of wisdom, also believe that not only are you supposed to overcome it, not only are you equipped to overcome it, right now, how you say it, you're equipped, but after that, what you're supposed to do with it. That's for you to figure out, but that is your the purpose portion of your existence here. I guess what I'm saying is is I'm not saying that you're destined to a life of misery and suffering. You are here, this is a blank. And from here, with the visions that I've been having of my daughter, the idea that I keep

getting, the recurring theme, is that it doesn't It's okay because in the big scheme of things, you're not erased. Right now may seem long, but in the big scheme of things, it's nothing. It's a drop. You know, whatever little amounts of pain that I still and I'm human but obviously so I'm sure that other stuff is going to come up for me. I'll release that more from my system as my system is ready for that but for right now whatever this has been a journey, you know, but whatever pain and suffering like that twinge of suffering that many of you still get when you see a photo of them or when you think about them memory or you know, that you don't have access to them that sting that twinge

that you feel now when you allow for that to be there process that through what I'm seeing is is on the other side that pain will be replaced with unconditional all knowing all big all present not penetrable or interruptible unconditional love. That's what I'm saying. The pain it's replaced with something so much better so much more fulfilling so much more knowing a certainty that I never knew was possible is what I'm saying. So I think that's all I have for you. I wanted to lean back in hard on this topic with you guys because so many of you I think only 20% of you guys finished that the episode last week. And with some things I probably wouldn't care but with this concept I do

because I care about you and I care about your experience and your I don't want to see you suffer any longer than you already have. You know, and by the way, I didn't I maybe could have said it this in the in the beginning. If you are new to this podcast and if alienation like your situation has just started this is still raw this is not something that you need to adopt today. It I definitely didn't. But I just want you to know, all of you, that it's available to you at some point when you're ready. Okay? I love you guys all so much. >> And um >> I'll see you next week. And we'll pick up planning for the second half of what last week's episode was about, okay?

Now it's a three-episode series as opposed to two. All right, you guys. Talk to you next week.