Josh Trent discusses how to embody purpose through inner work, using David R. Hawkins' emotional-frequency framework as a metaphorical "ladder" from shame (the lowest frequency) up toward courage (around 250) and love. He argues that experiential learning—being knocked down, struggling with addiction or failed relationships—can create the contrast needed to move through anger to courage and then to purpose. True purpose requires emotional inventory, self-awareness, a connection to a higher power (personalized), and curiosity/humility; purpose may also shift over time rather than being fixed.
Chapters
If you look at David Hawkins work and you understand the frequencies of each emotion, how we embody an emotion, the lowest possible frequency in the entire world is shame. And so as you climb the ladder from shame upwards to love, there's many rungs of the ladder that we have to grip and we have to learn how to climb on. And so it's not until about 250 on a frequency basis that we actually get to courage. And so I think some of us, maybe me and you, Doug, we had to kind of rifle around in these lower frequencies so that we became so uncomfortable that we'd actually get to the frequency of anger. Because anger, to quote Arnold schwarzenegger in Terminator 2, anger is more powerful than despair. So we have to be in despair for a while. We have to be disassociated from self. We have to be addicted to things that aren't loving so that we can feel the deep, dark contrast that then leads us up to anger, that then gets us to courage and then moves us closer to love, closer to purpose. How do you embody purpose? How would you talk about that? I think if you want purpose, you have to have self awareness. And if you don't have self awareness, you might live someone else's purpose and call it your own. So I think in order to really have purpose, you have to know enough about yourself, you had to have gone through enough experience. There's a difference between learning and experiential learning. Experiential learning, you go through life, you get knocked down, you get kind of bloodied. Maybe you're an addict for a while. Maybe you go through broken relationships and blame it on other people and wake up one morning like, hey, the past three didn't work out. Maybe it's me, you know, maybe it's my stuff that I'm. That I'm bringing in. So I think in order to have, like, true purpose, there has to be. There has to be three or four things. There has to be emotional inventory. There has to be self awareness. There has to be a connection with a higher power of some sort. Doesn't have to be mine, just your higher power, whatever you believe. And there has to be the, the curiosity, humility that we've talked about. Like all. All those things have to be. Be present. Because life is so complex. I'm looking at this behind you, you know, this, this bridge. And maybe it's New York. And look at all the complexity of this bridge. I mean, to do anything in life, there's so many things that have to be welcomed in and have to be allowed space for otherwise it goes back to what we're talking about where I'm just white knuckling and you know, my, my drivenness actually hurts me. It actually becomes a disease that I, that I'm unaware of. So I think for us to have purpose there has to be an honoring and a welcoming of all those aspects. And I also believe that that purpose can shift. I think that purpose can change over, over time. Some people are lucky. You know, some people wake up and they know from three years old they're going to be a fireman. You know, I was never one of those people. Some people know that they're going to be a doctor, they're going to be an astronaut, they're going to be whatever. And that's, and that's their, their purpose. Their. Some people call it the God given purpose. But I think that purpose can shift. So the answer depends on a lot of different variables.
