The Seduction of Alignment

If you’re waiting to feel aligned before you move, you’re not in alignment: you’re being seduced by comfort.

What feels right in the moment will keep you tethered to your current reality, dressed up as discernment,

when more precisely, the work is

holding contraction without collapsing, cultivating tolerance, and debunking capacity.

Otherwise, you stay aligned alright, but to the life and business you’ve already outgrown. And I won't stand for it!

If you’re ready to break the spell, meet me inside a private 1:1 Intensive. We are aligned to, devoted to, and cultivating expansion and only expansion.

Transcript

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Welcome to Business Priestess Activation, audio drops for mystics and business, where entrepreneurship is ritual, strategy is soulcraft, and expansion is inevitable. I'm Elizabeth Rowan, spiritual mentor, yogi, and business priestess. Here we don't do formulas, we do fire. These transmissions are potent activations to ignite your long-term strategy, self-leadership, energetic mastery and embodiment, and lasting legacy in the world. Because your sacred work isn't just business, it's business and being. Let's begin. Welcome back, Priestess. I am coming in today with a bit of a hot take when it comes to the concept, the keyword, the phenomenon of alignment. And if you're here listening, you're a yogi, a mystic, a spiritual entrepreneur. And you might think that alignment is everything. Like I've built my life into such a state of alignment. My business decisions are made from exclusively alignment. My spiritual practice serves to, in part, continue this state of alignment and so on. And let me offer you this alignment is keeping you stuck. Let that land. Alignment is keeping you stuck because 99% of the time, creating alignment is creating a state of alignment to your current reality, which is very different than the one, I imagine, that you are seeking to create for yourself. Alignment is keeping you stuck often enough that it needs to be said because what is being called alignment. I wish you could see me over here gesturing wildly of the air quotes. What is being called quote unquote alignment right now is very often just comfort with better branding. And now, oh, so quickly, are we in spiritual bypass territory? So let's clarify how it shows up. And this is so common. And when I tell you this used to be how I moved, when I also tell you, when I caught this in that aha moment, my entire business trajectory changed, as did how I make all of my decisions going forward. And that's what I'm excited to invite you into today. Here's how it often shows up. Here comes a decision, a fork in the road, an opportunity, a desire, something. And the immediate thought is I'll just wait until it feels more aligned. I don't want to force anything. I'll move when everything falls into place. And it sounds very wise and it sounds oh so regulated, almost like you've been practicing that. It sounds very self-aware and grounded and intuitive and so on. But in practice, it is often a very stealthy stall that also implies a lack of power and conviction to positively create change in your own life. Because you've inadvertently made feeling good the prerequisite for movement. I'm going to try to say that again because it is very important. This ever quest for, and Eric quotes alignment, inadvertently makes feeling good a prereq to movement, action taking, wielding the swift sword of discernment. And if you've worked with me before, you know that is absolutely in our wheelhouse. Now, this is important because feeling good obviously is rarely the state when we are stretching capacity, when we are going for the thing, when we're in the state of do it scared. Alignment is not the same as ease. And that has gotten real twisted up in the spiritual community that if you are not lounging in a bathtub, eating strawberries and having orgasms all over the place, it's not aligned. Okay, yes, we want that. And also, alignment is not the same as crystal clarity, and it's not the same as readiness, and it's definitely not everything is lined up in perfect order before I move. Because at that point, your action taking is reactionary, right? You're reacting to the circumstances versus holding court and creating reality like the energetic prowess priestess that you are. When it gets to that point that everything lines up in perfect order, and then I'll move, it's not alignment, it actually is now in avoidance. And that we want to get increasingly keen at catching before it starts to compound. That's probably fodder for another drop. So stay tuned. So the piece that I find a lot of people missing and a lot of clients, when you first come to me, we are untangling this. Often, what is aligned for you is not always what's aligned for your business. Meaning your business, your sacred work in the world will often ask, ask until it demands, something that is not quote unquote aligned for you. If you've heard the expression, signs come to you in the form of a feather, a brick, or a semi, as far as signs kind of amplifying in their attempt to get your attention. This is that. What is often aligned for your business, your business needs it. You are at that next level, fork in the road, whatever it may be, is rarely going to feel the sparkles and rainbows, the bathtub picture I painted for you in terms of alignment. Because you can be moving in just profound, powerful alignment for your sacred work while feeling exhausted over it, uncertain, certainly resistant, stretched, burn it down vibes a hundred percent. While uh co-creating, cultivating, bringing forth the very thing that stands to change the entire future of your business and as such, your present reality, right? This is what disconnect is often cited as, oh, it's not aligned, which is a really convenient and feel-good stance to hide behind because it seems aligned, right? Like feeling like shit isn't aligned. However, alignment is not exclusively so that you feel good first. In fact, the feel-good may never come. That's beside the point. If you're here listening, you are at the very least aspiring, guiding yourself beyond this stark black and white duality. Alignment asks this of you as well. So this is where it gets even more subtle. Stay with me. This can also show up as contraction disguised as capacity. Contraction disguised as capacity. I don't have the capacity. I need more time. I just need to integrate. I'm full right now, whatever it is. And sometimes that's true, and often it's contraction, holding on for dear life, so that your system doesn't do what would feel like going rogue on your behalf in pursuit of expansion. Because expansion, like relationship, requires friction, it requires movement, it requires decisions before absolute total clarity. And your system in saying this, I don't have the capacity, is really negotiating and working hard to keep you right where you're at. So there are many invitations in this drop, more to come, but this one invites a real keen eye at the misperception that your capacity is as finite as your ego might claim to be. When actually your capacity is mind-blowingly vast. Now, that's not to say we don't get to get in there and do our shadow work and nervous system stretch and so on and so forth, so that you can hold said new expanded capacity. But I really want to underscore that your capacity is not as limited as your system, this is nervous system stuff, would have you believe. All right. Here's a reframe because if true alignment is not this feels good right now, or I actually don't have the capacity, true alignment is I am willing to be uncomfortable. If you're a yogi, you do this every day. This is the entirety of the practice, asana or not. It is I am willing to hold temporary discomfort in service of what I'm building. So we can think therein of alignment as more so directional, not emotional. And if it's not emotional, then the emotional kind of scanning, lighthouse scanning for alignment is an unreliable narrator. And like I mentioned, for the yogis here, which you are, if you're listening, you absolutely already know this from your practice. When you want to be still, for example, you move. When you have all of this energy, the practice is actually stillness, right? Not to override yourself, but to continuously meet the edge. I want that to be our collective memoir title: Continuously Meeting the Edge. Same principle here. Same principle here. This also invites a big zoom out perspective from micro to macro. Because if you only move when it feels aligned in the moment, it again is very reactionary, and you are staying aligned with one and one thing only, and that is your current reality. I mentioned that at the top. You reinforce it, you essentially re-sign, renew the contract. Thank you more, please, of this exact same thing. This flatline, this repeat experience or repeat opportunity or lack of, or this repeat client situation, or this repeat month or year or freaking decade of flatline revenue or whatever it may be, versus when you move for the bigger picture, you create macro alignment. This is the compound effect, the butterfly effect. Now, macro alignment is pretty much always, we can count on this. You can even get excited for it if you're into this, like I am. Macro alignment often includes micro discomfort, micro contraction, micro resistance, micro ego upheaval as our system tries to abort whatever macro mission she's on to this time that's on the way. This is what my clients understand. We do not collapse at the edge, at the fork of the road. We do not wait for perfect conditions. What is that? I will never know. Rather, we move in deep service and devotion to the bigger zoom out picture of what we are building. And we hold each other, I hold my clients through the distortion that says this isn't aligned. Because rarely is that true. Often, rather, that is exactly where the expansion is. Please go back and listen to this drop again. All of this to say, alignment is not the green light thing that you wait for before taking inspired action, trustfalling on your own behalf. Rather, it is the bigger picture North Star that an accumulation of all of the micro inconveniences stretches this again level stuff are snowballing you toward. Now, all of that said, to stop looping in micro alignment and then being just pseudo-surprised that shit is the exact same, and start rather making decisions for the larger trajectory of your body of work. This is the level that we refine inside a private one-on-one intensive. We do not override or blow out your nervous system. Rather, we hone your discernment. This is that swift sword of discernment viveka for my yogis, so that you know the difference between contraction and truth. Book your intensive via the link in the show notes here. You can also DM me on Instagram if you would like to chat about that at all. Absolutely go back, listen to this, let it land, and then scan your current decision making for alignment, not missteps, rather invitations to redirect. And if this is lighting you up, this epic aha moment, absolutely let me know in the DMs. I would love to hear and celebrate with you. All right, Priestess, where this came from.