EOY Wrap Up

Ladies, gentlepeople of all genders, and gentlemen…this is the year-end wrap-up.

If you’ve been here for years, you know I send a “year-end” reflection about where I’ve been and where we’re going in the year ahead.

Please join me in some good old reflection and growth…

As a party wrapped up in the Hollywood Hills mid-summer this year…

I was standing outside with a cute friend, Andre, that I also like to flirt with.

The air was misty and there was a blue neon sign hanging over the pool that said:

“We’re already in Heaven.”

The lights of Los Angeles were hazily twinkling in the background.

(You know the LA haze that kinda implies a low-key passionate sexual encounter and ALSO that there is extra car pollution in your lungs…)

Andre and I were chatting about our breakups from long-term partners.

He was about six months ahead in his breakup process than I currently was.

He said something to me that rang so true…

“Look, you’re gonna go through the breakup and then you’ll have this very weird period where you’ll process all the things that went unaddressed in the relationship…

But then, if you keep choosing to fall more in love with yourself and do the work and healing…

There will come a moment where you’ll just seize your own worthiness and you’ll know how fucking fantastic you are…

And the whole world will open up and dating will feel so amazing.”

Now – nobody has a clockwork life or uncoupling process…

But Andre’s prediction was certainly how my process felt.

I’d spent my entire life serving my own unworthiness.

Then I started trying to serve my worthiness…

And you can’t serve two directions.

You only get one true North Star, otherwise, you just end up confused and lost and zig-zagging around in the dark.

But when you serve one North Star, and you stay on the path… you find your way.

Meaning…

You get to serve your inner critic.

Or you get to serve your beauty.

You get to serve your erotic repression.

Or you can serve your sexual magnificence.

You get to serve your defense mechanisms.

Or you can serve your heart.

You can serve what everyone else in the world wants.

Or you can serve your own true desires.

This doesn’t mean you’ll never hear from your unworthiness or inner critic or your defense mechanisms or hear everyone else’s opinion again…

It just means you stop serving the absolute best parts of your life and soul up to them.

You keep the best parts for your true North Stars.

Your worthiness, your beauty, your heart, and your desires.

This was the year I really made the choice to stop sitting on the fence and trying to serve everyone else…

And to decide that before I die, I would know my own worthiness and beauty and erotic magnificence.

Why is that so hard?

No, really.

I’ve been at this for 20 years.

I’m a quick study.

Why is it so damn hard sometimes to just seize your own magnificence?

Mostly because it’s been so unsafe to be what we are.

For all of us – it’s been unsafe to be intimate and loving and magnetic and erotic and wild and spiritually free.

So, we started serving our defense mechanisms to survive.

And survival instincts are not a joke.

If you feel like you need to serve them to live another day, you sure will.

You sure will tear down your own beauty and worth and eroticism and joy to serve your own need for safety.

So, to feel safe once again, and to be our truest, most epic selves…

Well, that’s the key to realigning with our North Stars of love.

And since the rest of the world is mired in their own defense mechanisms because they don’t feel safe to be themselves…

They’ve basically created a toxic culture that says in order to be beautiful, worthy, and erotic – you have to look like XXX and be XXX age and make XXX money and have XXX abs or thighs or whatever.

Their own survival strategies connect with our inner defensive survival strategies and we have the worst mind-sex ever that leaves everyone kind of hating themselves.

UGH.

That’s not even to get into the global oppression of spiritual and erotic sovereignty.

But you know what I’ve been thinking a lot about?

If you oppress a woman’s sexual and spiritual expression…

You basically have to oppress all the men as well.

And people of ALL gender expressions.

Because the moment anyone remembers, we want everyone else to remember, too,

At the very least, we want someone to have sex with that wants to breathe and live and scream the magnificence of god and of life with us.

It’s not like a man can be erotically awakened and not sort of accidentally (or intentionally) wake up his sexual partner as well.

It’s not like a High Priestess sex witch can make love to you and you won’t start to remember the truth of your own body and soul.

We forget together and we will remember together…

That’s just how it works.

So, for me, 2022 was the year of seizing, choosing, and owning.

Even though it’s a struggle sometimes, a straight uphill climb in the blazing hot mid-day sun with no water…

I no longer lose sight of what a blessing it is to find myself worthy.

To feel my erotic magnificence.

To know my own beauty.

Because humans first violently oppressed…

And then just straight up forgot…

The erotic magnificence and beauty of themselves…

And of each other.

To date from a place of erotic magnificence and beauty?

To make love from that place?

To build a family from that place?

Wowza.

It’s like a whole damn new world.

(Jasmine thought Aladdin was the key to the whole new world BUT IT WAS INSIDE OF HER ALL ALONG 🥹🧞‍♀️🥹)

Because once you stop serving the North Stars that will get you super lost…

And start serving the North Stars that guide you to love…

The whole Universe unlocks with a kind of indescribably epic delight.

2022 was full of 10/10 sexual and romantic experiences.

And also, 10/10 disasters.

But hey, at least we’re out here living, you know?

The toll I had to pay was my own grief.

Grief at having played the game of my own defense mechanisms and unworthiness for far too long.

Grief at what could have been.

Grief at losing precious years of my own self due to trauma and self-hatred and toxic beliefs.

And while that can feel like a steep toll in the moments that the tears are cascading down my face…

It’s a small price to exchange in return for the truth.

And if you’re thinking, “But Layla, I’ve followed your teachings and posts for years and you’ve always seemed so confident and worthy and self-loving?”

The truth is, compared to the rest of the planet, and everything is relative…

I have been quite confident and worthy and self-loving.

That’s how damn bad it can be and what we’ve collectively gotten used to.

The bar was so low by society’s standards that I was easily clearing it.

But, look, there is a WHOLE different level.

A WHOLE new level.

And I want us to go there if you’re up for it.

Because life is short and precious.

The gift of all of this is so precious.

I want us to seize the moment and refuse to settle for anything less than our full magnificence.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but the North Star can be chosen and the radical choice can be made….

To follow the path that leads us to worthiness and our own beauty and our erotic and spiritual freedom.