by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
Join us in an extraordinary episode of Creative Status as we dive deep into the multifaceted journey of Roseanna Croft, a woman who defies the conventional and embraces life with an unparalleled zeal.
From a masterful goldsmith to a thriving jewelry designer and businesswoman, Roseanna’s path to success is a mesmerizing tale of transformation and unwavering dedication. But her story doesn’t stop there.
In 2021, Roseanna faced a life-altering challenge – a rare form of breast cancer. In the midst of a world grappling with a pandemic, she embarked on a heroic journey towards healing. With her remarkable resilience, she turned the tables on this potentially fatal disease, inspiring many to see her recovery as nothing short of a miracle.
Roseanna shares her profound insights on devotion, acceptance, and the art of making life-altering choices and guides us through the intricate tapestry of her life – seamlessly combines spirituality, science, and a deep passion for living consciously, all while defying the odds and keeping it REAL.
Listen to this episode to find inspiration, hope, and the key to unlocking your own REALNESS.
Available on the player above, on any podcast platform, or on YouTube (see below)!
Thanks a bunch,
Oli
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Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: anchor.fm/creativestatus
Episode Links:
Roseanna’s Website: https://www.roseannacroft.com/
Roseanna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roseanna.croft/
Roseanna’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@roseannacroft
Creative Status Links:
The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
Filling the Void with Devotion (Show Transcript)
Intro
Oli Anderrson: Oh, hi there.
Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using your creativity to tap back into your nature or realness.
I am a creative performance coach, help people to use these principles in their lives and businesses. Every episode of this podcast, Creative Status, I interview somebody who has something to say about being a real human being, about the human experience, normally how it relates to the creative process, but sometimes we do get distracted. And ultimately, by listening to this podcast, it can hopefully help you to understand the journey that you may be on in your own life, the path that you’ve already walked, and how you can navigate things in a more authentic way.
Today’s episode is an interview with Roseanna Croft, who is a Jungian life coach, a YouTuber, an author, and an expert on all of this kind of stuff. This is a really casual, fun conversation about how we can learn to go deeper into life through acceptance, how if we can find something real to devote ourselves to, then that process unfolds a lot more organically and with a lot more ease and fluidity. Roseanna has loads of cool stuff to say about her own experience, about her work as a coach, and blah, blah, blah. I’ll stop talking because I’m sure you don’t want to hear me, you’d rather hear her and me, because it’s an interview. But Roseanna, thank you so much for your time.
Everyone else, hope you get some value. If this does help you in any way, shape, or form, please leave a review wherever you’re listening to it, because that will help other people have this amazing experience as well. But anyway, here’s the interview. Thanks a bunch. Boom.
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Roseanna. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. I’m a huge fan of your YouTube channel, where as a Jungian coach, who doesn’t talk that much about Cal Jung, you had an amazing video that I saw about devotion and how our higher vision is going to require being devoted in the way that you talked about and so on and so forth. So I think we’re going to talk about that today.
Before I start asking you questions, would you like to introduce yourself and tell people how you ended up doing what you’re doing and what it is that you do, and also what you want to get out of this stimulating conversation that we’re about to embark upon?
Roseanna Croft: Oh, hello. Well, thank you for having me, first of all. Great to hear that I have one fan on YouTube. Okay, so who am I?
What do I do? I am a spiritual and Jungian life coach, and I do avoid talking about Cal Jung a lot. But I love his work and his work has massively changed my life, so which is how I came to be a Jungian life coach. I had my experience with a dark night of the soul and realised that the only way through and to actually make some changes in my life was to go really, really deep within myself, because I tried the surface level self-development and the affirmations and the visualisations and trying to just change stuff from the surface. But I realised we have to go deep into the unconscious to actually make any change.
So that’s how I came to this work. And what do I want to get out of the conversation? I’d like to have a nice chat really, and hopefully give your listeners something that they can use in their own life.
Oli Anderson: Okay, well, I think we’re going to have a nice chat.
I can see you going that way. Let’s start with what you just shared about surface level self-development, because this is something that I see a lot, and I think it’s a kind of trap that people fall into where they think that they’re kind of healing themselves or, you know, improving their lives, whatever you want to call it. But ultimately, what they seem to be doing, if they’re just dealing with the surface level stuff, is rearranging the furniture on the Titanic. So let’s crack it open by hearing your thoughts about that, if you don’t mind.
Roseanna Croft: Absolutely. Well, I’ve been rearranging the furniture on the Titanic for the best part of 10 years. And it did lead to my ship sinking quite dramatically. I give you a brief history, because this is how I came into this work really. I had a jewellery company, and I had huge goals, like huge ego, goals and desires to be the best jewellery designer in the world, you know, rival Tiffany and Cartier. Great goals to have, right? I’m one small person. And that is a lot of pressure to put on, like a 25 year old, right?
Who doesn’t, you know, anyway, whatever. So I had all of these goals, and I was going to Tony Robbins seminars, and I was learning about the law of attraction and manifestation, which is, you know, the law of attraction is a simple law of the universe. It is, but it’s not going to, if you just read the secret, you’re not going to be able to change your life.
But this is what I thought. And what I was doing, I was creating bigger and bigger goals. Sometimes I was hitting them, sometimes I wasn’t, but it was having like the opposite effect on my energy. So I was very unhappy. I was very, I was anxious, I was burnt out, chronically stressed. And ultimately, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Now, this was my ship sinking was this was Rosanna, you have to wake up and pay attention to how you’re living your life, because what you’re doing right now isn’t helping. Now I’m not saying that people who have big goals and are stressed and anxious are going to end up with cancer. I do have to kind of pull myself back a little bit like that’s not why I got cancer. But it was a wake up call for me to assess my life.
And where I kind of come to it all personal development has its place. And, you know, it was just for me, it was coming from the wrong place. It was coming from, I just want to look good and prove my worth to other people. And that is, that is not going to get you anywhere. And I had something else really profound say, but it’s gone.
Oli: So it’s okay, it’ll return to you. But basically, what you’re saying is, you were you put yourself on a path to self development to healing and wholeness or whatever you want to call it. But ultimately, because you only looked at the surface of your life, it basically limited how far you were going to be able to go with the healing process or the growth process.
And actually, because you didn’t dig a little deeper before you decided exactly what your goals and intentions were, all of these big goals that you set for yourself with your jewelry company ended up exacerbating the problem and making things worse, because they were ultimately, the goals were ultimately the ego’s way of compensating for the underlying shame and whatever else was going on that led to the ego having its hold over you in the first place. Does that make sense? Am I getting too carried away?
Roseanna: That is exactly no, that’s exactly it. And the really profound thing has come back to me. Because what I what I was using self development for, which is what I think a lot of people do is escapism.
Yes. And escaping the reality and using it to avoid now at the time. Because I sort of had this realization not too long ago that, you know, I used alcohol to numb how I felt about myself. I used shopping to help me feel better about myself. Like, my goals were based around designer handbags. And I talk about this quite a bit in some of my work. And, and I mean, ultimately, God, you, you, you’re going to base your whole your goals and your worth around a designer handbag, what the universe is going to take that away from you. But I also, but then I was using alcohol and shopping and whatever else to kind of ignore where I was.
I was also using self development to do the same. Yes. Yes. And so and that’s what I see with so many people. It’s like passing off responsibility for your life to what you think is going to fix you.
Oli: Yeah, this is amazing. This is what you’re talking about is the biggest problem in the world. And I often call it unicornitis – people chasing people chasing unicorns and a unicorn basically in this context is anything that you put your trust in over reality. Because actually, you know, the whole theme of this podcast is that ultimately, if you want to heal your life, you need to get out of your ego, integrate the shadow and then start building the life that you want awareness, acceptance and action. Ultimately, what that means is that the only thing any of us really need to get where we’re going is a foundation of realness or truth.
That’s it. That involves getting out of your ego because the ego is the opposite of truth. It’s a lie or an illusion that we buy into because we’re not ready for the truth yet. But when we in the early stages of these transformational journeys, and we are filtering everything through the ego, the last thing that we want to trust and put our faith in is the truth.
And so that’s when we end up getting unicornite us and we will put our trust and faith and believe in anything else. It can be self help, money, power, sex, alcohol, shopping bags, not shopping bags, designer bags, sorry. Chanel in particular.
Chanel, not like a little or as they’re shopping bags or something. But anyway, the point is people take these objects and they imbue all of their power into the object instead of taking responsibility, like you said, and realizing that the power is them. It’s a way of deflecting, taking responsibility and putting themselves back on that path to realness whilst making it seem like they’re doing something and going through the motions, but really just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic while it sinks.
And it will always sink because what goes up must come down, another natural law of life. And if you spend all your time in this airy, fairy world in the sky, where you’re just treating shopping bags as being the savior of your life and all this kind of thing, you’re going to have a bad time. So what do you think about that? I suppose, does it make sense? I think you think it makes sense.
Roseanna: It does. Yeah, it does make sense. And I think the other important thing is, like we mentioned, self help has its place, but when it’s coming from when you’re seeking the truth, yes, and designer handbags have their place when you’re looking at them from a space of truth, from the truth of abundance rather than this is going to fix me.
Oli: That’s a very important point, actually. That’s something I should have said. So with unicornitis, when we’re idolizing these items or things or intangible ideas like success and self help and everything, a lot of those things that we get unicornitis around are good things, like money is good, sex is good, power is good, if you use it right. But it becomes unicornitis, if you’re using it to escape from reality, instead of just enjoying reality or moving towards a deeper relationship with it, and it’s fine tuning your relationship with it ultimately.
But basically, if you’re not seeing things clearly in the sense of knowing, oh, okay, it’s just a designer handbag or it’s just sex or whatever, then you’re going to run into problems. So I guess the question for you is, what causes us to be devoted to stick to the theme of the conversation? What causes us to be more devoted to a designer handbag than to the truth itself? And how can we learn from that to put our devotion in the right place or in a real place?
Roseanna: Yeah, well, we’re believing in an illusion if we’re putting our, if we’re devoting ourselves. You’re not, okay, yeah. So we’re believing in an illusion if we are devoting our life, everything we do, our energy to earning enough money to spend six grand on a handbag or putting, you know, devotion is huge because devotion is what you’re channeling your energy into every single moment of your life. And it can either, you need to be aware of where you’re sending your devotion, are you unconsciously sending it to something like an illusion based on your ego desires? Or is it in alignment with seeking the truth, understanding the truth and becoming your truth? Wow.
They’re two very, two very different ways to devote your life to something.
Oli: Yeah. Like the reason I was laughing is because it’s, it’s kind of absurd. Like when we frame it in the way that we just did, but it’s actually what’s going on in the world. Like some of us, we, I think we all have a natural need to be devoted to the truth. I think like we all have this inner drive towards wholeness and that devotion towards that truth is what’s going to allow us to move in that direction.
But for whatever reason, the world has just become this kind of chaotic place where people have become detached from that natural drive because of social programming and whatever else is going on, shame and guilt and trauma. And that disconnects them from their true vision and their true purpose. And in order to fill the void that arises because of that, people become devoted to all kinds of absurd things.
And we can’t really judge the things that people are devoted to. But if those, if that devotion is leading them on a kind of wild goose chase and creating all kinds of unnecessary drama and friction and frustration and misery in their lives, it’s just, it’s astounding to me actually that it is, it kind of happens like human desires and real human drives have kind of mutated into this crazy world that we see where people are devoted to, you know, getting social media attention or whatever it is, and they go out and do all these crazy things on TikTok, or they’re devoted to handbags and they think, right, if I get this design a handbag, then this void inside me is going to be filled.
And it’s such a crazy situation that we found ourselves in. But ultimately, what seems to be happening is our natural diversion has just been commanded and sent in the wrong direction for some reason. So I guess the question for you is like, why is this happening? And how can we reclaim our diversion and get on the path to putting it into the real stuff and uncovering more truth in our lives and all that stuff?
Roseanna: Yeah. So I think, well, ultimately, it’s this belief in separation, isn’t it? It’s this belief in which is the ego’s need is to survive and help us kind of feel accepted and loved.
But the only way we’re ever going to feel truly loved is by aligning with, yeah, like you say, the truth and that is that we are all one, we are love in our core and separation is an illusion. So I think that’s kind of where it all started to go wrong for humanity. And then you look at how consumerism has grown, how like, you know, social media has blown up. We have incredible technology. And all of this, like it’s amazing, but it also has had, you know, our egos love it because it does mean that we can seek validation outside of ourselves. And, you know, I catch myself doing it all the time, like, oh, I need, you know, posting whatever on Instagram for, you know, you think, is this gonna, is it will people like me if this video is really good? But that is just our programming.
It’s just the net. It’s like, we’re born into this belief of separation, and we forget who we are as we’re growing up and we’re forming our ego. And I think that that is the calling that we have as humans to come back to remember who we truly are. Wow. And I think that that’s the, I have a question that is, do people ever decide that they need to devote their lives to truth without a huge wake up call?
Yeah. Without the awakening, because I don’t know, because I was sort of spiritual before cancer. And the last two years of my life, but was I dedicating and devoting my life to something higher to seek in the truth to actually learning how to love myself and realize oneness? No. Would I have got there if I didn’t have quote unquote, my entire life taken away from me? My identity taken away from me?
No, probably not. But I think that everybody has an inner yearning to, and I think we’re devoting our lives to ourselves really, like that that’s it ultimately is this understanding who we are in truth. And we get a bit lost and we might do that by trying to find it on TikTok or trying to find it on shopping spree or in a bottle of wine or whatever.
But I’ve tried them all, not doing TikTok one, I’m not really into TikTok. But you know, we get a bit lost. But then, I mean, not everybody it’s not in everybody’s timeline, I think on this human in this human lifetime to have a massive awakening and help them discover the truth of who they are and why they’re here.
But I think that that’s what we’re all seeking. I don’t know if I answered your question.
Oli: You totally did. And you’ve given us another avenue to go down. So I think you’re right. The main problem is the illusion of disconnection. And you know, I’ve said it so many times on the podcast and everywhere I go, especially when I’m in the supermarket collecting my shopping bags. But ultimately, we’re all born whole. And then something happens that causes us to disown parts of ourselves. And it’s always shame or guilt or trauma.
When we get shame, guilt and trauma, that’s when we create the ego, which is an unconscious process that we go through. But we create an ego version of ourselves that ultimately causes us to start following scripts and to live out the idea of separation, which is unreal. When we’re in that state, which is ultimately a kind of shame driven state, we think that because there’s something wrong with us, which is why, you know, why we feel the void inside us and all this kind of thing, we think that we have to do something to align ourselves with the truth or to get the feeling of love that the truth can give us, that you know, the truth and love are the same thing.
That’s what I think, right? And we think that we have to jump through hoops, or that we have to go on some magical quest or do some complex, convoluted, complicated thing in order to get that love that we think we’ve lost. And that’s why people go on these, you know, these absurd missions with their unicorn itus to try and fill the void. So, you know, people spend their whole lives, unless something bad happens, which we’ll get on to, they spend their whole lives just going through the hamster wheel of following whatever script they’ve picked up that makes them think they’re going to get that love.
But actually, the lesson is you don’t need to do anything, because what’s real is always real. It never goes anywhere, because it’s whole. And whole is just whole. So you can’t add to it, you can’t remove from it.
It’s just always there. You literally, you don’t need to do anything to receive that love or to connect to your real nurse or to put yourself back on the path to whole nurse. All you need to do is stop doing all that other shit that is unreal. And the reason that most people don’t realize that is one, because they need it to be more complicated than that, because the ego is just the illusion of complications, basically, which makes us think we’re separate. And, you know, we keep adding all these fragments and convoluted theories and so on and so forth.
We don’t want to believe it, basically. But also, because we have got ourselves into a state of separation, we end up distracting ourselves from the truth. That’s the whole point of the ego to distract us from truth. And so we just spend so much time in busy running around, chasing these shopping bags or designer handbags or whatever else we’ve decided is going to fill the void inside us, getting in relationships that we think are going to give us the love for only the truth. Blah, blah, blah. We’re just so busy distracting ourselves that we don’t pause and just realize, oh, okay, all this stuff that I’m chasing after, it’s already here.
I’ve got it, like right here, right now. And so that gets on to the next point, which is about bad things happening. So I think there’s two ways to wake up or to become aware. One is, you know, something will happen and you put yourself on a spiritual path. And, you know, you have some kind of an epiphany, like a spiritual experience. And, okay, you see what we’re talking about. That’s a hard way to do it.
And if people are busy distracting themselves on everything, then it’s quite unlikely that they’ll do it. They might put themselves on an egotistical spiritual path where they, you know, finger in their belly buttons and dancing with crystals and stuff like that. Flower crowns. Yeah, flower crowns. That’s just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.
They feel like the spiritual base, just an ego augmentation device. The other way to wake up is what you were talking about, where you basically hit rock bottom. So in my life, that’s how I learned a lot of this stuff, because I had some health issues as well. Hit rock bottom. Down there on rock bottom, out at rock bottom, I realized that the identity I was holding onto was out of date. It was unreal that I was trying to control everything and to force life to meet my will, which is also unreal. And so when I hit rock bottom, basically, I just found the truth.
And it wasn’t easy. Like I was saying, I’m also always thrown out is the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off and make you miserable. And that’s because the truth shows you the illusions that you’re trying to cling onto because of your unicornitis and your attempt to try and win love through any other method than just facing facts about life and seeing things clearly. And so I think the most common way for people to wake up is to hit rock bottom because it shows you when you get to a place of acceptance at least that you haven’t lost anything because all of the stuff that you have lost, it was unreal anyway. You just thought you lost something that you were, you know, it was a phantom that you were chasing the unicornitis and all the distractions in the business. It’s not real.
So when you hit rock bottom, you just like it’s like the curtain is lifted the veil is lifted and you say, “Oh, okay, this is real.” And then you can start building and devoting yourself to the real stuff.
So does that align with your experience? I think I’ve been talking for like 20 minutes. Sorry, I haven’t given you a chance to speak for a long time.
Roseanna: But that’s okay. It’s your podcast after all.
Oli: Yeah, but I’m supposed to be interviewing people. It’s not all about me. So yeah, so does that align with your experience of rock bottom? Like all you actually found was okay. This is what’s real anyway. And then you could devote yourself to something true.
Roseanna; Yeah. So my rock bottom.
I think that I’ve had a few it goes at rock bottom in the last two years. It’s like what I built up. My identity that I had built up was kind of so fragmented so far from who I am in truth that I had a few lessons to learn in health, wealth and love. And they have been really difficult lessons to learn. And what I am and, you know, when you’re not listening, the universe will force you to listen.
Yeah. And it will take away your distractions. And in having those distractions taken away.
The only thing that you can really do is either maybe turn to an addiction or go inward and try and forget or go inward and going inward is going to take you to the truth. Yeah. And it just means being with what’s true with what’s there with what you have, which is energy, breath, the mind. And when you start to listen to the mind, you will realize what’s true and what isn’t.
Yeah. And when you start to listen to the truth, then we can create a real life, a life aligned with our wholeness and aligned with our true self. And that’s actually when all of these spiritual techniques that people use to try and better their ego lives. That’s when these things actually work because we’ve made, you know, we’ve brought our unconscious kind of chip to light. And we’re not having to kind of, we’re not trying to deal with the stuff that we think is bad about ourselves, our shame, our guilt and our trauma.
We’re not trying to deal with all that. And really, because we understand what the truth is. And so from here, then you’re devoting, devotion takes awareness and being conscious because, well, you’re whatever you’re doing in life, you’re devoting your energy to something. So let’s be conscious about it. A huge people need to start taking responsibility for their lives.
And I think that that’s where we go wrong a lot or humanity goes wrong or whatever in my humble opinion. Take responsibility, which I haven’t wanted to do for so long. And interestingly, somebody said the other day about freedom, like my fingers always been I want to be free. But actually, no, I always wanted to be free from responsibility. So now I’ve been given responsibility. And here you go, you can have your freedom once you take responsibility for your life. And then when you’re aware of where you’re spending your energy, you can then start devoting your life to something bigger than you, which is ultimately you, but it’s the true version of you.
And you get to devote your life to creating magic and beauty and realising love and the truth. And I think that that’s, I mean, it’s, it can be a rocky journey to get there. I don’t know if we can simply decide, but I do we have, you know, we have to deal with the karma along the way. But I think that when when we’ve kind of gone through this process, we then get to choose to what we want to devote our life to where we want to spend our energy.
And I mean, if you, I guess if you get the answer wrong again, and you start devoting your life to something else, the universe is going to bring you back.
Oli: Yeah. Yeah. But it is that it’s a constant process of recalibration, basically. And there’s a quote by Mike Tyson, I love it. He says, “Man wasn’t made to be humble, but to be humbled”. And ultimately that is, it sums up the whole process.
When we’re in the ego place, or we come in from a place of ego, we’re not being humble, we’re going against the truth, basically, being humble, I think just means aligning yourself with the truth. Because when you do that, you’re going to realize you’re not omnipotent, you don’t know everything, you can’t control everything, you have to be patient, that your life is in the hands of life itself and all these kind of things. And so, even though we think we’ve done the work, we may find that we can go deeper. And I think we always can. Like, we can always go deeper into realness, because we’re fragmented in these human forms.
And realness is about wholeness. So we can always shave layers off and go deeper and deeper. And so it’s true, like, we might go through this process of raising awareness of some pattern or quirk or belief or whatever it is that we have that’s holding us back. We do the inner work of acceptance, which basically is about integrating shadow, the shadow self and parts of the shadow we’ve been hiding from and all that kind of stuff, or truths about life. Like a lot of the truth about life is hidden in the shadow. So what you’re just saying about responsibility, real life requires that taking responsibility for our relationship with ourselves and what we want to do with our lives. That’s in the shadow of a lot of people, because it seems like a depressing thing.
It seems like it’s going to restrict their freedom. But when you accept it, you’re free and good to go in a more real direction. But you’re right, you might go through those stages, awareness, acceptance, and you choose a new goal for yourself.
And then six months down the line, you’re back in the same place because that goal, even though it was more real than it would have been if you hadn’t done the work, it’s still a form of escapism or it’s just not real in the sense of it’s not aligned with the way things work, if that makes sense. And so we’re going to keep, I always think of it as like spirals. We go through spirals, like we learn a lesson, we become more real. We set off trying to take more action and then we learn another lesson and we become more real. And it’s ultimately that we keep going through the spirals throughout the duration of our lives. And if we have the right attitude, we will become more real in the sense of aligning with the truth.
But I guess we’re all going to have blind spots and stuff like that, but it becomes easier because we become more adept at working with our blind spots. So when something causes the wobble or whatever, because we’ve had a taste of what’s real, we know where we need to return. And that’s why it’s harder at the start when we’re just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic, because we’ve been so detached from ourselves because of the illusion of disconnection for so long, that we don’t know what real life tastes like. And I think that’s why a big part of this journey has been devoted to the things that give you a taste of real life, even if they turn out not to be the most real, if that makes sense as you keep going down the path.
Roseanna: Yeah, I mean, I’ve in the last couple of years, I sort of swapped my self development chasing for spiritual chasing. And, and it does kind of give you that glimpse of and this is why I think that all of this is really helpful on the journey because it does give you a glimpse. And then it helps you come back to that.
Like, I think people, you know, plant medicines, they have their place, but are they a, like, what it’s all the reason behind why you’re doing it if you’re doing it to cut. This is a question that popped up in my mind, like the people people who are specifically seeking something like enlightenment, are they pushing it further away, or are they bringing it to them. Like, it’s, you can have, yes, you’re sort of on the right track, but you still, you’re just still not quite getting it. And I was seeking, I guess, ease or some kind of break in going down the spiritual route.
And I trained as a meditation teacher and meditation has really humbled me because it’s, it has taken me to some dark places, but I thought it was going to be, you know, raise your vibration, change your life type thing. And it’s not at all. No, no.
But, you know, it’s kind of, you know, it is that it is the truth, you can find the truth in meditation, but you can also find, like, not truth.
Oli: Yeah. It goes back to what we were saying about the unicorns. Like, it’s about it. It’s exactly what he said, it comes down to your intention. So the problem is we have unconscious intentions, right. So a lot of the time, people think, right, I am going to become enlightened. And then all of my problems are going to be solved.
Ta da. But then it’s a unicorn, like they’ve idolized the idea of enlightenment and they think it basically just means all their needs are going to be met. They’re going to have no more problems in life. Everyone’s going to love them and kiss their ass and like everything’s just going to be so amazing because they’re enlightened.
God mode activated. Yeah, yeah, like, all they’re really doing is projecting their, you know, their feelings of a lack of worth and insecurity or whatever it is, they’re projecting all that stuff out into this future where they’re going to become enlightened. And that’s when they start, you know, sticking crystals in their belly button and all that kind of stuff, because they think those rituals are going to give them the freedom that they can only get from the truth. But like you said, the only way you can find the truth in this real way is by being uncomfortable because you have to be uncomfortable to bring your shadow to the surface.
That’s it. And if you’re doing anything, thinking that, you know, you’re going to be like skipping around in utopia for the rest of your life. Then you try and you’re avoiding the truth about life and the human situation, basically. And, okay, like I’m making it sound like, you know, been real is an awful experience. But eventually, your attitude will change so that even though bad things are happening, bad in scale quotes, your experience. This is always a weird thing when I say this, but your experience of your experiences sounds very pretentious, like your experience of your experiences will always kind of be all right. Yeah, because you’re not resisting.
It’s the resistance that causes the friction and the problems. Yeah. And there’s some lesson there about devotion, I think.
Roseanna: Yeah, there is because I can just relate it back to my life and even so just some stuff that I’m facing at the moment. And again, it’s health related. And I basically, I’ve been faced with like severe exhaustion fatigue and I’m a doer. I’m constantly on the go. And so for me to have to go and sleep for an hour or so in the afternoon is really uncomfortable.
Really don’t want to do it. And I asked myself the other day, can you just accept that this is where you are right now and that you need to go and sleep? And can you just be okay with that?
And, you know, that’s that there’s the acceptance learning to accept. And then I got a piece, I was given a gift, I was given a piece of gold from my unconscious mind. And it said, yeah, but you have no value if you’re not doing anything.
And I was like, holy shit, where did that come from? Because I sort of knew that intellectually that this is why I do so much because of this belief of lack of worth. And then, but then I was given, then I was able to accept that. And okay, so this is where I am.
This is what I’m being given. And I was able to then sit in my, I mean, I had no energy, I couldn’t do anything. So all I could do was go in and and sit and say, okay, so what am I going to do with this? And I, yeah, I actually became really apparent to me that, ah, okay, so this is this is what it really means by devotion to life to seeking something more because on paper, like I’m going through a tough time. But I know that it’s going to be okay because I’ve been given a gift in that I’m learning something about my unconscious self.
And I know that actually I’m going to be okay and that everything is going to be okay. And so somebody said, I was watching a video on YouTube, believe it or not, the other day about spirituality and and how on a path of spirituality and truth seeking, it has to be your number one priority. And and you have to devote yourself to it. And, and I kind of had a realization of, oh, okay, so I hadn’t actually been accepting really that I’d been devoting my life to my spiritual growth, which is why I’ve been facing a lot of resistance on on this path and maybe some of this health stuff that’s come out of that as well. But in a kind of seeing this any kind of issue as a challenge as a new level of growth as a new in fact, the first time we spoke I was sick wasn’t I? I’m not a good track record here but we but it’s like seeing it as growth and as a space to kind of really look and question and this this realization that you are devoting your life to something bigger when you’re on this journey is there’s a lot of the safety that we seek in money or in in a relationship actually can then be found within yourself because you’re devoting your life basically to yourself. And that’s where everything that the ego is searching for. That’s when you start to find it in you, because it and that natural confidence that everything’s going to be okay because really, you’re devoting your life to you and then when you’re devoting your life to you that’s when you really start to fall in love with yourself.
And not like fluffy self love bubble bath champagne in the bath type self love, which I built a brand around a few years ago believe it or not. And not that type of self love but the love, the wholeness that we forget we have within us as we’re growing up and we’re shamed and and all of you know we we form our egos and our personas and and that when you can really truly start to devote your life to yourself to the truth. You start to kind of, I guess, like we’re saying remember who you are, and it takes the, the shit and the wake up calls.
Oli: Yeah. Like ultimately, you get to this place where you take responsibility for your life like you said, you put yourself on this path and you can get to a point where you trust like it always comes down to this right you trust deeply and you’re devoted to trusting because you you have become more aware of who you are. And your power and all that kind of stuff. But you also know that is, it’s not all up to you.
Actually, like it’s a relationship between you and life or you and God or you in the universe or whatever word people want to use. And so you can trust for two reasons. One, you know that if shit does hit the fan again and go wrong, you’ll be able to handle it.
So you can take more risks you can move towards your vision. You’re not afraid because you know, like, okay, I’m taking responsibility when shit does go down. So I’ll be fine. Basically, and if I’m not fine, I’ll be dead. So no worries. Or I can just accept what needs to be accepted and then I’ll wait and be patient until the solution comes along.
Something like that. So you can trust yourself. But also you trust life. And if you have those two things, trust of yourself and trust of life, you are literally basically unstoppable. And the reason is, you will be grounded in the truth in the sense that we’re talking about. And that circumvents all of this bullshit that we were talking about the distractions, the different like unicorns and idols that people put their trust in instead of themselves and life itself. And the activity that emerges from that lack of trust. So I was like, you know, five years ago, let’s say I was exactly the way you just described yourself as sometimes being I was always doing things doing doing doing doing.
But actually, that was motivated by a lack of trust because I was like, okay, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to get where I need to go or want to go. So I’m going to do this. I’m going to try this new strategy for my business. I’m going to do blah, blah, blah, always doing something. And then one day I woke up and I’m like, hang on. I’m only really doing this stuff because I’m trying to force life to meet my will, which is ego is a lack of acceptance. And so now the old me, if I had some downtime, I’d be like, oh my God, I better do something to show, you know, so I’m committed and I can control life and be secure in the future, this imaginary future and get where I need to be and be successful and blah, blah, blah.
So I’d be doing things just for the sake of it basically. Now, I’ve realized actually, in moments like that, it’s better to do nothing than to try and force life and to just do things for the sake of it. Because if you do nothing, that is actually trusting life. If you’re doing nothing intentionally, you trusting life. Assuming you’ve done everything that you can do within your power, you’re trusting life to present the solution when it’s time to present it or the next step.
And it always happens. And so now by making that shift from letting go of forcing things and trying to, you know, fill everything through my ego basically to waiting for the inspired action to arise. That is, my life is better than ever. And it’s because I’m not forcing it. I am open to this interdependent relationship between me and life to prompt me basically and those prompts are coming from a place of wholeness instead of fragmentation.
That’s basically what I was down to. And so trust is always the final lesson and you can only get that from acceptance. And you can only accept if you do all this work that you’re talking about, because anything other than doing that work is a lot. The lack of acceptance is resistance. And the only thing you can accept is the truth or reality.
And that’s why these ideas are all interconnected. If you’re not accepting life and trusting life, and you’re just a super busy person who’s trying to force life to your will, then you don’t accept life is that simple. And that means you don’t accept the truth.
And then you’re going to be miserable and have a horrible time.
Roseanna; Let’s think about it because you can’t control the universe. We can’t. It’s only the ego that thinks it can control. We can’t control when the leaves fall off the trees. We can’t control when the flowers bloom.
So why do we think that we can control like our own seasons?
Oli Yeah, it’s crazy.
Roseanna; It’s crazy. It’s crazy.
Oli: Yes, literally, it’s a form of insanity. So this has been a very rambling, but amazing conversation. How would you sum all of this up? Like what have we actually learned here today if we’ve learned anything? And can you also tell people where they can find your YouTube channel and your website and anything else that you want to share?
Roseanna: Yeah, of course. So I think that I think what we’ve spoken about is being careful where and how you’re spending your energy and are you aligned with ego or truth.
And I think some kind of when you are aligned with truth, you are able to live the life that you really desire, not and actually feel fulfillment and actually experience love and experience the true nature of the universe, which is abundance. And when we can let go of control, we can co-create beautifully with the universe or God, love, life, whatever we want to call it. And that takes a level of devotion to understanding who you are in truth and what life has for you.
Learn the lessons and face it and like we keep on saying, acceptance, which can be the hardest thing. But I think that’s, do you think that’s a summary of what we’ve said?
Oli: Yeah, I’m a bit jealous because I was going to try and summarize afterwards anyway.
Roseanna: Well, you can just copy what I said.
Oli: Yeah, there’s no point. That was good.
Roseanna: And then you can find me on YouTube at Rosanna Croft Instagram at Rosanna Croft. It’s all at Rosanna Croft really. It’s all about me.
Oli: Well, I will share all of that in the show notes. But Roseanna, thank you for this. It’s been a lot of fun. And I appreciate your time and ETC. Thank you very much.
Roseanna: Thank you.
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