Is It Burnout Or The Energetic Expense Of A Breakthrough?

For the Worldbuilders Ep. 067

Mary L. Proctor’s Freedom of Expression (1998) Materials: Costume jewelry, buttons, cowrie shells, paint, on wood door. Dimensions: 80 x 30.5 inches. Image Source

Dear Worldbuilder,

I'm writing this to you from snow-coated Washington, DC. With everything closed we are slowing down to nature's winter pace and it feels like the perfect day to reflect on how our desires align (or misalign) with our new year intentions. 💌

In the first Seeda School newsletter of the year, I want to invite you inside this question with me: “Is It Burnout Or The Energetic Expense Of A Spiritual Breakthrough?” Now let’s be clear, sometimes it really is burn-out. Sometimes, no…a lot of the times, capitalism, the patriarchal refusal to compensate care work and the lack of a state-sanctioned social safety net can really bring us to our knees and leave us feeling burned out. I want to acknowledge that, but what I also want to be emphatically clear about acknowledging is sometimes it is spiritual severance, self-denial and self-negation that is at the core of our exhaustion. What creative invitations have you been resisting? Let’s take a look at that and try to answer these questions together.

Tune into the 67th episode “Is It Burnout Or The Energetic Expense Of A Breakthrough?” on the podcast For the Worldbuilders via Spotify or Apple Podcast.

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within. In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness.

— Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power”

🕯️ Inside this episode I invite us to reflect on 4 questions at the top of the new year:

1. What changes or spiritual invitations did you feel yourself resisting last year?

2. Do these ancestral invitations have the power to drop you into a greater sense of love, trust, interdependent safety and belonging?

3. Paradoxically could these deep, wild and worthy desires be at the root of your fear or resistance?

4. What’s the first step you can take or first change you can make to begin surrendering to the creative invitation of your desire?

I’d love to navigate this season of deep surrender and change with you inside the winter cycle of Seeda School’s 9-week retreat. I’ll be using the container to write a collection of poetry while supporting you through whatever creative offer is waiting on your permission to release. We’ll do this alongside a cohort of fellow worldbuilders who have also decided to say “yes” to their desires every week. Together we’ll release resistance and access even deeper registers of trust and faith in our creative practices to usher us into ways of being beyond survival.

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📰 Seeda School News

🌐 Winter 2025 Worldbuilding Workshop Series

Registration for the Winter 2025 Worldbuilding Workshop Series is now open! Join us for this free, 4-PART Worldbuilding Workshop series where you'll learn more about the Treehouse and resourcing your interdisciplinary practice through an income generating creative offer aligned with your values and desires.

• PART 1: Seed A World Rooted in the Truth of Your Desire

• PART 2: Discover Your Creative Dispatch

• PART 3: Discover Your Creative Offer

• PART 4: Resource A World Rooted in the Truth of Your Needs

🫂 Community Ask:

I really wanted to accept winter’s invitation to slow down so I haven’t be able to promote this 4-part workshop with as much energy as it deserves. It would mean the world if you could help me spread the word in these final days of registration. Know a fellow worldbuilder who might find this workshop series to be right on time? Feel free to forward this email or share the flyer above and invite them to join you. 🙏🏾 You also get your own copy of the Winter 2025 Syllabus in your registration confirmation email. 👇🏾 Thank you, thank you, thank you.

❄️ Winter 2025 Worldbuilding Syllabus

It’s that time of the year where the doors of the Treehouse open once more! Curious about what we have planned this winter? Outlined in the syllabus are the next 3 months of Treehouse programming detailing the asynchronous support and live programming with dates for the months of January, February and March. Download and/or print out this syllabus for a peek at all the support you can expect for releasing creative dispatches and an income generating offer this season.

If you have any questions about what’s outlined in the Treehouse syllabus or calendar, join us in next week’s workshop and we will be sure to answer them there!

So be it, see to it, breathe through it,

Ayana