Hello and welcome to the Cosmic Nomad.
I'm your host, Bailey Rushlow, and this is a space for the
curious and the heart lead where we explore the human experience
through travel, nature, spirituality, and real life
transformation through beautiful conversations.
As I discover my way of living what I call an inspired life, I
share the practices, stories, and perspectives that have
helped guide me back to myself. In today's episode, we're going
to talk about what it really means to become your own home,
not just in theory, but in practices, exploring the
difference between loneliness and aloneness and the liberation
that comes with no longer waiting to be chosen.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Hi, coming at you live from a very cute little town outside of
London. Until this point, you've been
listening to me record these episodes from my home in Mexico,
my little Cassita. And now we've taken the cosmic
nomad on the road. And I think that is so exciting
because that really is the spirit of the cosmic nomad is
that I, I can be where my feet are, you know, I don't have to
just be in one place. And I love that it is a bright
and sunny day here, absolutely beautiful, perfect weather.
The days are really long, like the sun is finally down and the
sky is finally getting dark around like 10/10/30 and the sun
is up and birds are chirping by like 430.
So really short nights, really long days.
But it is mid June so that's to be expected.
Just had the summer solstice, the longest day of the year last
week. So yeah, it's a it's a
beautiful, beautiful time. Everyone is a little bit happier
here and I'm house sitting this beautiful home and really,
really cute dog. And every time I take him for a
walk into town, he makes everyone that he runs into smile
and it makes me smile because they're smiling and I love it.
Get ready for today's episode, whatever that looks like for
you. Maybe you're driving or you're
walking your dog, making everyone smile in town.
Maybe you're just at home, chilling, relaxing, whatever it
is, let's just align our energies like together by taking
a deep breath. Inhale with me, hold it at the
top of the breath and exhale slowly.
Let's do it. We're going to start today's
episode off with a little bit of a metaphor.
I want you to just visualize this journey with me.
Imagine what it would look like in your own mind.
So imagine that there's a girl trapped in a tower, just like
the fairy tales she's been told since birth, that someday
someone would come and rescue her.
A Prince, saviour, somebody that just would choose her fully.
If she waits, she prays, she dreams, she looks out the window
every day and time goes by. People pass, but nobody stops.
Until 1 stormy evening many years later.
The wind is howling and the lightning strikes and she
stumbles over something hidden beneath the floorboards, a small
rested key. Her heart starts to race.
She turns it over in her hands as her hands begin to tremble,
and she tries it in the door, and it fits, and she realizes
that the door was never locked from the outside.
She had the key all along, but no one ever told her to look
within. This metaphor might feel like
one you've seen before. You know, Rapunzel, a lot of
Disney Princess movies of being programmed to believe that one
day our worth will be confirmed by someone else's arrival.
We see it in our fairy tales. We see it in religion.
Without the Prince coming for you, you will stay in that tower
forever. We're fed this idea that the the
fulfilment that we wish for is not something we can give
ourselves. It's something outside of us.
It's something far away from us. It's something that we have to
wait long enough for and in the meantime be good enough, holy
enough, pretty enough, deserving enough for someone to come along
and finally make us feel whole, right?
But the truth is that the the longer we stay in that castle,
the longer we stay in the tower or in that waiting room, we are
just disconnecting from our own power.
This energy taught us how to chase and not how to choose.
And the cost of that is that we lost our ability to be with
ourselves in a deeply nourishing way.
And also not saying that love from others is not beautiful and
necessary like it is. We.
We are created as relational beings.
We are meant to love and be loved.
But when we live in a constant state of longing, it's like
we've been taught to outsource our wholeness, you know?
And you are the longest relationship you will ever have
in returning to yourself again and again.
It's sacred. And the more that we remember
that, the less that we need someone else to come and save
us. I also find it deeply
fascinating that the Abrahamic religions shape nearly 2/3 of
the world's population. And from a very young age, many
of us are taught to outsource our worth, especially in these
religious systems where we are taught that there is a God
outside of us. I've touched on this before.
I think episode 4, we did a deep dive into this, but I'm just
bringing it full circle again because it's so important.
We're taught that there's a God outside of us that is watching
us, that is judging us, that's deciding if we are worthy of
love or salvation based on our actions, based on our
performance, based on how we show up.
We're told that if we are good enough, obedient enough,
selfless enough, we might be chosen, we might be saved, we
might be loved. But not now, not as not as we
are, not in this body, not with these desires, not with these
doubts and questions in this belief system, whether we are
raised in it or simply influenced by it and colonized
way more than just land. It colonized the mind and our
nervous system and our sense of self.
And it planted the seed that someone else has the final say
over your life. And the authority lives outside
of you. And autonomy is not real or it's
selfish. And then you're judged for being
selfish. When you choose to be the voice
of authority in your life and you stop outsourcing it, then
you're judged for that. It's like you're judged no
matter what you do, right? And this kind of programming, it
doesn't just affect your spirituality.
It affects your relationships and your sense of purpose and
your ability to trust yourself, your ability to choose yourself,
to believe that joy and pleasure and love and autonomy is not
something that you have to earn. You don't need permission to
come home to yourself. When I speak about religion in
this way, I am also speaking from a personal perspective.
I'm not just coming at this from a uninformed, misinformed,
misguided perspective of, of judgement.
I'm coming at it from a healed perspective of having believed
in this way for over 20 years of my life.
It was the blueprint I was given for life.
It was the the fundamental lens through which I saw the world
well into my 20s. And So what I see from this is
that it has created an epidemic of disconnection.
And it shows up in very curious ways, like people who do not
trust themselves because we are always looking to gurus,
leaders, priests, pastors, partners, systems, etcetera to
tell us what is true. Because we weren't taught how to
trust ourselves. We were given a book with all
the answers. We weren't allowed to be
curious. Curiosity was stamped out of us
at a young age. And even if you weren't
religious, you still experienced this in different ways, maybe
through your school system, maybe through peer pressure,
maybe through society, maybe through movies and media, right?
You, you still experienced not trusting yourself in some
capacity and looking outside of yourself for answers.
And I also see this, this culture of people pleasing and
perfectionism that's so deeply rooted in the fear of being
unworthy or unlovable as we are. I've also noticed this epidemic
of burnout because we have been taught to perform for love and
to just sacrifice ourself in the name of keeping other people
happy and keeping the dysfunction alive in our world
in different capacities. Maybe that's in your job, in
your relationships, in your families, etcetera.
Our relationships are built on dependency, codependency, not
interdependence, and autonomy and sovereignty because we
search for someone to complete us.
Our bodies that do so much from for us.
Our first homes, they've been abandoned because we were told
they were sinful and shameful rather than sacred and
intelligent. And there's this widespread fear
of emotion, desire, intuition, these things that make us human.
We have this innate distrust of them.
The programming trains us to believe that our truth is
dangerous, that our love must be earned, that our sovereignty is
rebellion. And I don't think the antidote
is just looking further and continuing to seek this external
validation or looking for for love or looking for the voice
that's going to tell you the right thing to do outside of
yourself. It is reconnection to the body,
to the truth, to our inner voice, and knowing that we were
never even separate to begin with.
We simply were given a program, just like a computer program.
We were literally given one as children.
And we watch that play out in our lives.
We watch that guide us and we wonder, why do I keep doing the
same thing? Why do I keep ending up these
relationships? Why do I keep ending up in the
same patterns? Why do I keep creating this
destruction for myself? I'm speaking from personal
experience here. And when we can, when we can ask
these questions and look deeper within without judgement, just
curiosity, we begin the descent down the spiral into ourselves,
observing our inner landscape. Have you ever noticed that so
much of our culture in the spiritual world, in the
religious mindset and the new age spirituality, it's obsessed
with the ascension, It's obsessed with well, in the
afterlife, this is what's going to happen.
Or I'm going to get to heaven or I'm going to transcend the body
and I'm going to end up in the 5th dimension, right.
It's like so much of this talk is all saying the same thing.
It's it's surpassing, it's bypassing this experience, this
body, this voice, this process, rather than being in it and
descending into it. It's trying to just get to the
other side, get to the end of the journey where there's peace
or there's heaven or there's a saviour waiting for us, and then
we will feel this sense of completion.
If we can just transcend all this, then we'll get to that.
And I find that so, so sad because I spent a lot of my life
like that. And this information can be
packaged and repackaged over and over again in different ways
with different words, with different vocabulary, with
different people saying it. Because I used to believe this
way in Christianity where I was like hardcore into how many
people can I get to believe in God?
How many people can I convert, you know, as one day I will be
in heaven. That was just that was that was
the plan. And then I deconstructed all of
that. And then I found New Age
movement and spirituality, which made so much sense to me because
it touches on so many real things, but it's also just a
repackaged, repurposed version of what I came from already and
took me a long time to see that. It's interesting how these
belief systems wear different costumes, but the core narrative
is the same. You must transcend yourself to
become worthy. And I think what's worse is that
salvation is sold as something that you earn through purity and
performance and perfection. And whether it's sin or shame in
the religious sense, or it's like low vibration or you're not
manifesting right in in the spiritual New Age sense, it is
still just spiritual capitalism dressing up as truth.
And the tragedy of it to me is that literally bypassing our
self, our body, our connection, this reality, this moment, this
experience, this human time that we're alive, this spiritual
bypassing has kept us disconnected from what is real,
like the breath in our lungs and the soil beneath our feet and,
and the cyclical wisdom of our bodies and the sacredness of
being right here, right now. And I think that's the whole
point of what we're doing is to come home to ourselves, to be
able to see through all the different perspectives that the
world tries to give us. The culture and religion and all
these things try to to force us to look through these different
lenses and we're able to take them all off and just be here.
And I think the heaven that we're all searching for in some
way, the connection, it's found in participation with life, in
presence, in pleasure. It's not something you have to
earn or that you have to find your way to.
A big one for me that I am still deconstructing, still comes up
for me, is that I when I'm useful, then I will be loved.
My value so often in life has come from being needed, not
necessarily from being known. I've been the caretaker of my
siblings, of parents, of friends, emotionally, deeply,
being the one who was there for others, who kept the peace.
And you know, I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning
a pattern that love is something you earn.
It's it's something you perform for.
And if you stop performing, it might disappear.
You might be alone. You might be without love, you
might be separated from love, which really makes you look
closely. Why we believe we can be
separated from love. So back to the main point.
For so many of us, especially if we have been raised on those
fairy tales or religion or codependent family systems,
there is a subconscious belief that someone will eventually
come and rescue us from the discomfort, from the void, from
that hard thing, from the decision.
But the truth is, no one is coming to save us.
No one is coming to save you. No, no one was coming to save
me. And weirdly enough, I'm really
grateful for that. Because when we internalize
that, we stop outsourcing. We stop waiting to be chosen and
fixed and healed and validated by somebody or something else.
And I'm not talking about hyper independence.
I'm talking about this sense of inner sovereignty, inner
authority, inner autonomy. And refuse these words a lot the
last 20 minutes. But I I love planting them in
the vocabulary because I want you to take them with you.
You know, there was a moment in my life a few years ago when I
had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life.
A choice that meant walking away from something familiar,
something that had shaped me because I knew that staying
would mean abandoning myself. It was like a quiet revolution
in my soul that said no more denying my truth to keep the
peace of this situation, no more shrinking to make others
comfortable, no more shape shifting to keep the dysfunction
alive. And choosing myself in that
moment changed everything. Literally everything.
And it was not easy. It came with so much grief and
so much uncertainty and deep waves of self doubt, but it also
came with my freedom, because for the first time I was not
waiting for someone else to come save me.
And I realized that I really had been the one I was waiting for
all along. And I realized this a little bit
cryptic, but the details don't really matter right now of the
story. Plus it's not entirely my story
to tell. There were many people involved
and I can only share the truth from my perspective when all of
their perspectives are also important.
Maybe there will be a time and place someday where it can be
shared, but for now, just believe me when I say that I'm
speaking from experience in this and my life has not been the
same since. There's a term called self
sourcing, which essentially means being the place that you
can come home to. Not because you have to do
everything alone, but because you know the difference between
needing support and outsourcing your power.
You know the difference between validating your emotions instead
of shaming them. You know the difference between
asking what do I need right now and actually listening versus
bypassing it and distracting yourself.
You know how to notice a trigger and stay with yourself through
that trigger. That is self sourcing.
And I remember hearing that for the first time and going, whoa,
whoa, whoa. I don't like that because I
don't want to just be lonely. That sounds, that sounds really
lonely. I need, I would like to have at
least some support like some, some people in my corner, you
know, And of course we do, like I said in the beginning, we're
relational beings. We're creative relationship.
We're created to be able to connect and console and be
empathetic with and create beautiful dynamics that bring
life to each other. And that is not that is
different than what we're talking about.
We're talking about being alone is the state of being with
yourself. Loneliness is the ache of
disconnection, not just from yourself, but also from others,
right? And we can be surrounded by
people and still feel lonely. We can also be in solitude and
feel deeply connected and even joyful.
Building belonging from within means that you have made your
body a place that you want to be.
There is no need to distract because you've cultivated
presence and play and self trust and acceptance and you recognize
your inner voice without running from it.
After that big decision and, and everything that happened in my
world that was really, really challenging that I just
referenced, I went to Mexico and I was alone for the first time
in my life. Like alone, alone.
Like I didn't know anyone. I didn't even speak the same
language, right. I had no friends.
I knew no one there. I went to a place where no one
knew me so I could meet myself. And of course I did meet people
and I did go on adventures and I did have fun.
I did actually meet my current partner of of five years this
year that we've been together. We met on that journey of my
solo exploration of, of myself and rediscovering my voice for
what felt like the first time. And I'm so grateful for that
time in my aloneness because I found the rituals that guided me
back to myself, which is a huge part of what this podcast has
been about. It gave me the space to discover
things that were important to me outside of the dysfunctional
world that I had just emerged from.
It gave me the ability to hear my voice, to trust my voice, to
listen to my intuition, to become more connected to my
cyclical nature as a woman, as a person, as a human.
And in this journey of learning how to self source, it doesn't
mean that you never ask for help.
It doesn't mean that you're doing life without connection.
When we source from ourselves, we enter relationships with more
capacity, with more clarity. So yeah, I just extend the
question to you. What parts of you are you still
outsourcing to someone else? Some questions that I have asked
myself are where do I still crave being chosen and by whom?
What part of me feels unworthy, unless someone else mirrors it
back to me? Where am I outsourcing my
creativity? Where am I outsourcing my
intuition? If you feel personally triggered
by any of these questions, please realize that I'm asking
them from my own experience. I literally outsource my
intuition a lot. I outsource my creativity a lot.
I look for validation in all kinds of places.
If this is triggering you, amazing, because it's showing
you something in you that is resonating and that goes maybe
that's true for me too. If it's true for Bailey, maybe
it's true for me, right? In no part of this am I pointing
a finger at you being like you need to fix this about yourself.
I'm sharing how this is for me. There have been so many times
that I have waited for someone else to make it OK for me to be
who I am. Whether that was a a parent or
partner, even my audience. Where in your life are you still
waiting to be saved or affirmed or given permission, and what
would happen and what would shift if you gave it to
yourself? You need to be witnessed and
loved and remembered by the person who knows you best, which
is you. And if you think that's not
really true for me, that's not me, I don't know me best, then
maybe this is an invitation to get to know yourself in a way
that you would like someone else to know you because you are the
one you've been waiting for. You are that person locked in
the tower that's not actually locked in the tower.
You're just there, stumbling across the key, trembling
fingers seeing if it will work in the door.
And to your surprise and excitement, the door unlocks and
you realize it was me all along. I've been waiting for something
outside of me that most likely would never come because there
was never anything to be waiting for but yourself.
As we return to our home, to our body, to the voice of our soul,
to our inner landscape, with curiosity instead of shame,
instead of fear, we become interested in our health.
Out of love. Not out of desperation of trying
to fix what's wrong, but out of curiosity for the information
our body is giving us about what it's processing, what we're
moving through. We feel our emotions with wonder
when we get triggered by something or jealous of someone,
or some old wound comes up and we react in a certain way.
It is an invitation to us to observe with grace, with
intrigue, with interest. Why did I respond like that?
Why did I react that way? What's going on on a deeper
level instead of with judgement and harassment and punishment?
That we weren't enough, that we didn't act right, That we didn't
respond right, That we didn't feel.
No, we don't do that anymore. We don't have to.
We never had to. But so often we were trained
that our safety is within this construct of how we behave and
how well we act for everyone else's benefit.
How well you can abandoned yourself, how well you can quiet
your own voice and your own intuition to the benefit of
others around you. Whether that's the system,
whether that's your family, whether that's friends,
partners, lovers, kids, etcetera.
There comes a point when enough is just enough.
And when we truly look at ourselves and our heart and our
bodies and we say, I don't want to play the game like this
anymore. I just want to come home.
I'm tired. I'm going to come home to
myself. I'm going to be that person that
I always needed. Not out of performance, not out
of trying to prove something, simply out of being here now.
So I leave you today with this closing statement.
Mantras that you can take with you through your day, through
your days, through your life. I am the one I've been waiting
for. I return to myself again and
again. I am home.
I am not waiting, I am choosing. I am becoming.
Someone told me once that if you need help visualizing the person
that you're becoming, imagine who you would have felt safe
with as a child. Who are they?
How do they act? How is their energy?
Because most likely there's someone grounded, oriented to
peace. They easily communicate things
in a way that makes sense. They have a connection to their
body, to their voice, to their truth, to their stories in a way
that made you as a kid, or would have made you as a kid feel safe
in your own voice, in your own stories and your own
sovereignty. Maybe that sparks a mental image
for you, not of someone you have to go out and now try to become
simply as a return to you. Who are you?
Thanks for joining me in this journey.
I hope some piece of today's talk impacts you.
Something you can take with you, something you can share with
someone else that can maybe impact them.
Let's create a whole ripple effect of just returning people
to themselves, right? Breaking out of the system and
coming home because they would not try so hard at every turn to
disconnect you if there wasn't something really powerful about
you being connected. Really intentional about you
speaking from your soul. Because that's where the real
power is. And it's yours for the taking.
It's yours for the embodying. It's yours for the living.
So enjoy it. There is nowhere else to be but
right here, right now. Thank you for joining me today
from my little room in sunny England.
Wishing you all of the love and the joy in your world today.
I hope you have moments of synchronicities that you could
not have anticipated or expected.
Things that just knock your socks off stuff, money that just
shows up in your account. People that just bless you with
stuff that you could not have anticipated.
Opportunities for you to bless people in a way that feels so
aligned and so natural to your state of being that you get
excited about when you get to do it again.
If you enjoyed this episode and you have been enjoying my
podcast, thank you so much. If you want to go deeper, I
would highly recommend you checking out my Patreon where
I've been recording monthly meditations, behind the scenes,
photos of my life and adventures, stuff that I'm not
sharing on Instagram or anywhere else.
And it's a great opportunity for us to collaborate to make it
possible for me to be able to continue creating and recording
and sharing my thoughts and insights and stories from my
life and this capacity. So if you're interested in that,
the link is down below in the show notes.
I wish you a wonderful day. I send you off with so much love
and empowerment to choose you. Thank you so much for taking the
time to be here with me today, for listening, for sharing this
space. And if today's episode spoke to
something in you, please feel free to share it with a friend
who you think would also resonate and or leave a review.
It helps more than you know. I'll be back next Tuesday with
another episode, and until then, open heart, open mind.
Stay curious.