Living From Inner Guidance with Laura Dungan

Laura Dungan [00:00:01]:
You're supported. You already have what you need in you. If you were to do anything to stoke the fire of living consistently in guidance before you fully put your feet out of the bed every morning, ask the question, what do I need today? And then you what, move heaven and earth to do that one thing and it could just be drink more water. Okay, I can do that.

Walker Bird [00:00:40]:
My Inner Knowing empowering you to find your compass for the journey. We are dedicated to supporting you to rediscover and trust your natural ability to navigate life. Each day by sharing insight and experience through the lens of two professional communicators and their guests, we intend to prompt internal inquiry that supports all those willing to explore a unique path.

Theresa Hubbard [00:01:08]:
Well, hello, Laura, how are you?

Laura Dungan [00:01:10]:
Hello, hello, hello.

Theresa Hubbard [00:01:13]:
Yeah, it's good to see you.

Laura Dungan [00:01:14]:
Oh, it's good to be with you.

Theresa Hubbard [00:01:16]:
Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us. Yeah, yeah. So we met you through Kristen Webb, who we met through Kelsey and Kelsey is, Kelsey is the one who is like the, one of the main people behind the scenes that helps us with the podcast and that has been a fantastic experience and so it was nice for them to connect us with you. And so we look forward to hearing some of your story and your journey to learning to trust yourself and your knowing. And so yeah, share with us a little bit about you and where your focus is now in life and some of your journey on how you got here.

Laura Dungan [00:02:08]:
Yeah, well, I'm just a little Kansas girl. I was born in North Dakota, but I moved here when I was one and my family has pretty deep roots in Kansas. So they moved back to small town called Winfield in south almost east Kansas. And I lived there for to the middle of my sixth grade year. And then I moved to Topeka, the state capital and I met my partner spouse. We started dating when we were 16 and then came to college here in Wichita, which is where I live now and haven't left since 1979. And I've been doing. I've been in the field of community organizing in my 3D life.

Laura Dungan [00:03:02]:
How I operate in mostly marginalized communities, mostly communities of color, although low income white communities as well. Working on policy change. I resonated most with what's happening with the human in their power, development, empowerment and then how individuals connect as group and move forward with a common focus to achieve what they determine they want to achieve. So I started out as a street organizer. I was managing or beginning a non profit along with being a street organizer. So I guess I was a director or whatever because I was having to Raise the money, develop the board. I'd never raised money before back in 1991, 1990. And I played just about every position on the field, in that field.

Laura Dungan [00:04:17]:
And now I'm enjoying coaching young organizers and other people too. I got some 80 year olds. I've got. I've been hanging out with some Mennonites. I've been. It. It's been interesting who ends up on the roster.

Theresa Hubbard [00:04:37]:
Yeah, that's fantastic.

Walker Bird [00:04:41]:
Laura. There's. I. And this is my experience, so it may not be everybody's, but there's a lot of people that say they want to get involved. Right. Or, or it. And you know, taking yourself back to that space 30 plus years ago, when you decided, this is, this is what I'm going to do, be a community organizer, and this is what motivates me. And et cetera, how did you tap into that so that it wasn't just, hey, that would be a nice thing to do, which is where a lot of us find ourselves sometimes.

Walker Bird [00:05:14]:
And actually the doing part.

Theresa Hubbard [00:05:18]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:05:19]:
Well, my husband and I, we brought two of our three boys into the world. By the point, we were pretty strongly nudged with a small group of people that were looking around going, there are some things really not okay with the world. And so we moved our family from the Friends University area in Wichita into the inner City in 1990. So we were living at that time predominantly African American. I think it was 98.9% African American community birthed third son in that first year. Children went to the neighborhood school. So it wasn't long. I had had somebody call me like three different times to ask me to apply for this organizer position.

Laura Dungan [00:06:19]:
And I was having kids and I liked the concept. I liked, I liked thinking about personal power. So then I get in the third time they called, I'm like, okay, I'm going to take the plunge. And I went and interviewed and they didn't tell me I had to raise my own salary. So when we started running out of money, I was like, oh, so there was that. But it was probably in three years into it, I realized the motivation behind why the organizing was so attractive to me was I had been through an experience of being sexually assaulted by my music teacher in high school my senior year. And I really had not addressed that. I just kind of stuffed it all down in there and I was kind of an angry person, even though I didn't realize how, how, how much that was.

Laura Dungan [00:07:25]:
That fire was building there. So when the organizing came along and I'm seeing people in neighborhoods and communities basically Getting. Excuse my language over it. I had. It was at year three to five, I made the connection of why am I motivated me so. And why am I so sensitized to other people in their experience and thinking about out of the individual? You know, I did all kinds of talk therapy for God knows how many years. I finally addressed and confronted my perpetrator when I was in my late 40s. This happened when I was 17.

Laura Dungan [00:08:16]:
So I was doing my own. My own work while I continued to organize and look at collective. What does empowerment look like collectively and the psychological community, really. It's not until recently that I've been noticing there's recognition, you know, that racism has an effect. It's a perpetration with people. And so of course they're going to have the same arc of emotion and process and development in tapping into their own power and coming forward with their. Their own being and. And not taking stuff off of people.

Laura Dungan [00:09:06]:
Basically moving out of victim mentality. Yeah.

Walker Bird [00:09:12]:
How do you define personal power?

Laura Dungan [00:09:18]:
Agency. Sovereign, I guess. Agency. The ability to move something in the world. Not get stuck, don't collapse, check out, disassociate. Being able to stay engaged with all kinds of people, the people you even hate or the people you don't like. But to fully live into that, it's got to include. It's got to include everybody.

Laura Dungan [00:10:00]:
I think that's what we're working through right now as a humanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Walker Bird [00:10:09]:
My own experience as a. As a trial lawyer, and I represent who I consider to be the little guy. Right. Plaintiffs in different aspects. This trial that I have coming up as a young man who was defamed by people in a small town alleging that he was a sexual predator. Okay. So there's a lot at stake for him and how the jury rules on this thing. But to get back to the bigger question here, it's just 30 years and you've done it in a different context, but I think that we've got some similarity, which is you are facing power.

Walker Bird [00:10:49]:
Right. And it can become and has for me, become exhausting and daunting to continue to rise and engage in that arena with. And it's not so much the being afraid of juries, it's dealing with ridiculous positions and arguments that I just, to me are, you know, lack a moral foundation, just coming up with whatever explanation or defense is plausible, plausible deniability over and over and over. I'm guessing that your experience is similar. And if it is, I want to know how you get yourself back in the game every day when you wake up to do this stuff.

Laura Dungan [00:11:39]:
Well, I recognized so sort of the arc of my change with that. So I organized just out of my anger for probably a good five years, my passion. But I came to a point where I knew if I continue to do this work the same way I've been doing it, I'm going to burn up the host. Me.

Walker Bird [00:12:05]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:12:08]:
And so I knew I had to make a shift. I didn't know how I was going to make a shift. So then there was a long period of, in terms of my. I've always been an intentional person around my spirituality. But back in, back in the day, that's my work now, is to begin to fuse those things. So many beautiful bridges are happening now. Back then, spirituality and social justice, they didn't go together. There were some.

Laura Dungan [00:12:44]:
A little bit of Catholic teaching would have some overlap. The Quakers, which is where I've hung out in a faith community for almost that full 30 years. The Quakers, probably every strand of religious stream has some kind of little overlap there. But typically the spiritual community is kind of chucked out. So it was tapping into my, my spiritual being that helped me begin to make the shift of organizing out of anger and organizing out of a place where nothing would disturb me. I knew, I knew if I was going to last long haul, I was going to have to not be disturbed by anything. But I had used that previously as my fuel. That's why I organized.

Laura Dungan [00:13:52]:
That's how I organized the. It was the being disturbed. And that's a first step. I mean that's. And even probably multiple steps after that. People have to fully engage with this is not right. This, you know, that, that righteous. I'm like, hey, Jesus figured out, but before he really had a long human life to see how that tested out.

Laura Dungan [00:14:25]:
But I, and St. Teresa of Avila, Avila, I don't know if you're familiar with her at all. She kind of came into my field one day and there's a prayer that she has. And the first line is, let nothing disturb you. And I just had this like resonance with that sentence, with that line. And that was what I needed to keep cultivating. And it didn't mean I felt like I was dying most of the time giving up what I thought was the fuel that motivated me to do what I was doing. I got to a point in my life, more recent history, where I thought I was leaving organizing completely and now I'm being brought back into it again.

Laura Dungan [00:15:19]:
And it's very different right now.

Theresa Hubbard [00:15:22]:
So how is it different, Laura?

Laura Dungan [00:15:32]:
So there's the inner compass, the. The inner compass, the inner guidance, the tapping into orientation and authenticity and feeling well anchored in that. And then about four and a half years ago, I realized I was not by myself in that. I mean, I always had an expanded, that there is something bigger than all of us and that I'm very connected to that. But I had no idea we had helpers. I had no idea.

Theresa Hubbard [00:16:04]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:16:06]:
And Quakers really helped me. Lucretia Mott. I love Lucretia Mott because she was out in the world with her righteous sensibilities about slavery and women's right to vote. And she hung with Quakers clear to the end when they were telling her, please do not come to meeting for worship because we know you're going to stand and say something about these things. And the Quakers were not wanting to hear it. You know, it took 200 years for Quakers to say, you couldn't be a Quaker and own a slave. I mean, process they had to go through. So what I.

Laura Dungan [00:16:50]:
It was four and a half years ago. I still had not made the full leap from letting nothing disturb me. And that phrase really didn't come up until after this leap. Now I'm looking back and I'm like, ah, that's what I was working on. But that the inner had an out. Like there is what feels like outside helpers, but it's inward. And I'm still developing language around this. Things just started showing up.

Laura Dungan [00:17:32]:
So what's different now is my guidance. It's big. It's bigger than it used to be. Where I. I used to only be authentic. Be true to yourself, listen and honor your intuition. And I, I took that very seriously. But I didn't realize how lonely I felt until there were things that started coming in as actual helpers, like, ah, I'm not alone, or whatever you call a source, expanded wisdom.

Laura Dungan [00:18:15]:
However you describe that bigger generator of what puts us all here. Yeah. I had no idea. And then I go back and read my Bible. Because I was raised in a Christian upbringing, I'm like, man, this is all over the place. It's all over the place. How come I didn't read that before? Social conditioning. Conditioning.

Theresa Hubbard [00:18:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think as best you're aware that there was something that happened for you that allowed that allowing of others to come in to help you?

Laura Dungan [00:19:09]:
Going deaf?

Theresa Hubbard [00:19:11]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:19:12]:
I've been losing my hearing since the age of 35. So I'm going over 30 years now, and I'm tickling on the edge of profoundly. I mean, I take these hearing aids out and I'm not hearing a lot, so it forced me. And I'm a musician, so making music and singing is my primary instrument. I play six other instruments.

Theresa Hubbard [00:19:45]:
Wow.

Laura Dungan [00:19:47]:
Can't play my violin on the high strings to hear accurate pitch. I mean I'm just having to reinterpret everything how I've gone about doing things and hearing. The hearing has forced the inner listening and it's opened the portals and the space to listen. And with the coaching, listen beyond what I think I'm hearing and be open to what comes in. That is not what my smart little brain or, you know, whatever. I think I can. My machinations, my own machinations. It has just flattened that my own machinations do not work out well.

Walker Bird [00:20:39]:
Fascinating.

Theresa Hubbard [00:20:40]:
Yeah, well, so you thinking about that.

Walker Bird [00:20:45]:
That'S like a tectonic shift in your experience if you're a musician with all of those skills etc, and all of a sudden this piece of you is fading. It. It took me to my space which when, when my life started to change was. I got cancer. And so I think, you know, we sometimes, depending on our predisposition of our personality, etc, the universe has to knock really hard. And then we all of a sudden have to recalibrate all these things. And it's. So I'm, I'm drawing comparisons to the experience and you know, it's profound.

Walker Bird [00:21:27]:
And I'm wondering how you walked that road. There had to be just a lot of challenge associated with, you know, this, this process of oh my gosh, I, I don't have that anymore. I can't hear the high string. And I just. My what's going on? And then turning it into this power. Right. All of a sudden you open doors that weren't open before. So tell us more about that.

Laura Dungan [00:21:51]:
Yeah, it took, it took, it took years because I had enough. In the beginning it started with one hearing aid and then it went to two hearing aids. And then it was just this very slow. So it wasn't like it was wiped out. And then I had had to deal. So the grief process was long. I wouldn't say that I moved out of grief until about maybe a year and a half ago where I really felt like finally the last vestiges had sort of dropped away. It's not that it doesn't come and niggle at me, but I'm like, oh, I know you go over there.

Laura Dungan [00:22:38]:
I'm not going down into the pit of whatever collapse I call it collapse. I just would, would check out. And we watch people as they get older. Not only they're dealing with getting older and then the hearing loss that comes with aging. For some people, they're complete. And the frustration of family members because the isolation is so intense, and people just basically decide to check out. I'm getting old and, you know, and I'm. And I just decided here because I was younger.

Laura Dungan [00:23:13]:
I'm like, I'm not going out like that. I am not going out like that.

Theresa Hubbard [00:23:18]:
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:23:19]:
I had to. I had to work. I knew I had to just embrace and hold and be with the grief as long as it needed to be there because it was just so many layers of my life that were going away. It was dying. It really was a death.

Theresa Hubbard [00:23:40]:
Yeah, yeah. Laura, I know we often say, you know, I had to, I had to, I had to. And I often reframe. You chose to. You chose to. You chose to. Because you could have chosen differently.

Laura Dungan [00:23:55]:
Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Walker Bird [00:23:57]:
Yeah. Or defaulted to no choice, Right?

Theresa Hubbard [00:24:01]:
Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Helplessness, hopelessness, what you're saying.

Laura Dungan [00:24:05]:
Yeah, Yep.

Theresa Hubbard [00:24:07]:
Yeah. So when you think about that, you know, energy that you used the. To make these difficult choices, and you talked earlier about the, you know, the anger energy getting you into this and, you know, using that.

Laura Dungan [00:24:26]:
What.

Theresa Hubbard [00:24:26]:
How would you define the energy now that you use?

Laura Dungan [00:24:38]:
Well, I've decided to create a new story. I'm kind of like, you know, I've lived a lifetime at 64 now. You know, it's like an imagination game or. And since I'd written this, this book, when I started to go into it, I was like, this is a fun opportunity to, like, maybe the ending of this book is going to be the way I wished it had turned out, or. I don't know. I just had fun inventing. And so now. And I had a profound experience.

Laura Dungan [00:25:19]:
A year ago this summer, I went to a Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat. I don't know if you're familiar with this world.

Theresa Hubbard [00:25:25]:
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:25:28]:
And so he's all into the. You're going to have to lose the old personality. And I. I was done with doing things the way I used to do them.

Theresa Hubbard [00:25:41]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:25:41]:
So I just. I just started over. I guess some people might call it a rebirth. Even though I thought, I don't know my life, I can find junctures where there's been, like, a new opening, a newness. But this. This felt even more profound. And I was. I was opened to more helpers.

Laura Dungan [00:26:16]:
I'd been having helpers show up since I started going through menopause, and I decided I didn't want to do hormone Therapy replacement. Even though I really didn't understand or know what was going on with me, I did some research to try to figure out how to better work with it. But I went into meditation. There was no Kundalini, and I was very specific. Kundalini, yoga, meditation. There were no classes in Wichita. So I find this dude online and I connect with him and started practicing. Thought I was going crazy most days.

Laura Dungan [00:27:02]:
I continued to organize, but it was very. I was suffering through it, through that change, but it. On the other end of it. And these helpers, helpers started showing up. And then with the Dispenza retreat was right about the time there was ascended beings that were extremely powerful coming in, into my field. I don't know, you know, what, what's. Where's the initiation? I don't know. But we were meeting.

Laura Dungan [00:27:42]:
So there was this vision at the retreat. I had had experiences with up to that point, with Green Tara as the first one to show up. Then it was Mother Mary, then it was Mary Magdalene and it was Isis. So at the retreat, I was. It was with my. My ears is what drove me to the Dispenza work because I have had a sense that they're going to be restored. I don't know how. I don't know when.

Laura Dungan [00:28:16]:
Maybe it's in my next lifetime.

Theresa Hubbard [00:28:18]:
I don't know.

Laura Dungan [00:28:22]:
So my son, my oldest son, who is a beautiful being, and he'd heard about Dispenza's work, so I knew the name. And then it came across my feed on YouTube. And somehow I learned about his backstory of how he'd healed his back in six places because he got hit by a truck and a triathlon.

Theresa Hubbard [00:28:43]:
Right.

Laura Dungan [00:28:44]:
And I was knowing that the ears and restoration was a part. Was something I. I needed to hold open to that possibility. I was like, well, I mean, if he could do that, I think that's somebody I need to hang out with a little bit. And I didn't know what. What he knows. Tap into the pathways. It's going to be my way.

Laura Dungan [00:29:09]:
Not his way, but the pathways to what that would be.

Theresa Hubbard [00:29:15]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:29:16]:
So at the retreat, the. During. I think it was day two. It was very early in the week. In one of the meditations, my ears were taken off my head and they were placed here right above my head on a gurney. And then my body went up to the gurney and was rejoined with my ears. And out from the back door in this room comes my ear doctor. And he's snapping on the left rubber gloves.

Laura Dungan [00:29:50]:
He says, I'm ready to do the surgery because he had, in a real world experience that he had told me a lot about what he thought was happening with my ears, which. It's the stiffening of the middle ear bones and that he does a surgery, like a knee replacement to replace the stapes, the smallest bone in the body.

Theresa Hubbard [00:30:12]:
Wow.

Laura Dungan [00:30:12]:
And he. He thought he could get 30% back of my hearing. And he says, I think you'd be happy with that. He told me real life, and everything in me was like, no, not good enough. And I was. I was surprised. Like, where's that coming from? Because I'm a good patient, you know, not good enough. Okay, so back to this vision.

Laura Dungan [00:30:34]:
Here's Dr. Lasik coming, snapping on the glass. I'm ready to do the surgery. I said, okay, let's do it. And while you're in there, I told him, while you're in there, if there's anything else that looks like it needs fixing, go ahead and fix it. So then at my feet on this gurney, there's this huge electrical panel, and there are, like, two energy beings, but I couldn't see them, but I knew they were. They were there. And they unplugged four huge cables with these things.

Laura Dungan [00:31:10]:
They pulled them out and said, you don't need these anymore. Then they go to the other side of the panel, and they start plugging in. I don't know how many. A whole bunch of new, big, fat cables. And then like in the Frankenstein movie with the big electrical lever, they pull the lever down, and this electricity goes through my body, and then down. Come from up above me, angels, and pick me up off the gurney and take me up. And there is green Tara, Mother Mary. Mary Magdalene, and Isis.

Laura Dungan [00:31:54]:
Everybody's having a party. They're having this party. And Isis turns to me and says, laura, we're so glad you're here. We've been waiting for you. I was like. And my heart. My heart was. It exploded.

Laura Dungan [00:32:12]:
Exploded.

Walker Bird [00:32:15]:
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Theresa Hubbard [00:32:32]:
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Walker Bird [00:32:55]:
Thank you.

Laura Dungan [00:32:57]:
Yeah.

Theresa Hubbard [00:32:58]:
Okay.

Walker Bird [00:32:58]:
I thought that was pretty good.

Theresa Hubbard [00:33:00]:
Okay. Sounds good.

Laura Dungan [00:33:01]:
Okay, check, check. So I had this little party. I get a set of wings. They said I'm going to get a new name. They didn't give it to me right. Then they send me back. But before they sent me back, they said Isis, she was the spokeswoman. Isis was the spokeswoman.

Laura Dungan [00:33:22]:
She said, your ears will be healed, but it will take a little time. And I came back. I was like, what? What was that? What was that? What was that? So those are the kinds of things that are, like, showing up now. And because the feeling of being a co. Creator with the divine is so prominent in. In feeling, I'm like, I don't want to live my life the way I used to live it. Where I. I thought I could figure out the bet.

Laura Dungan [00:34:10]:
You know, in. In organizing, you're strategizing, you're figuring your angles. You're dealing with power structures and with people who don't think they can go up against this thing. So the Mac. The machinations, like. And I learned so much. I have a lot of skills in that way, but the timing of it and how it wore on my body, I'm like, there's surely more to power than what I have experienced up to this point. And we won all kinds of shit.

Laura Dungan [00:34:46]:
We won in state tuition for undocumented youth in Kansas. In coalition with some other groups, we got $4.3 million reimbursed to people who'd been screwed over by a subprime lending company. By organizing. We didn't. We didn't. We weren't. Didn't go to a court of law to figure out how to resolve that. It was just sheer people getting together and doing it.

Theresa Hubbard [00:35:13]:
Wow. Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:35:14]:
But I couldn't. I couldn't sustain. I couldn't sustain. So thank God for helpers.

Theresa Hubbard [00:35:25]:
Yes. Yeah. Is there a particular practice that you do to stay connected or in touch or open, whatever language feels most appropriate for you?

Laura Dungan [00:35:45]:
So something that's been with me since probably high school has been writing journaling. In college, I took a course by a guy named Richard Foster, who's known in Christian circles. What's Celebration of Discipline, I think is his. One of his seminal books. And he taught at Friends. And so to get an A. And I was into getting an A in college. To get the A, you had to journal every day.

Laura Dungan [00:36:21]:
So I got in the habit because I wanted.

Theresa Hubbard [00:36:25]:
Yes.

Laura Dungan [00:36:26]:
And then when the class was over, I didn't. But then I missed it. And So I went back to it, and then Karen Mains, she's out of the south somewhere. She came and was a speaker, and she brought all of her journals and dump them on the stage next to her podium.

Theresa Hubbard [00:36:52]:
Wow.

Laura Dungan [00:36:52]:
I don't know. There was just something about her demonstrating the collection and culmination of the writing and her own. There was something about her that I was very attracted to. And I had already done the journaling, so that kind of brought me back in. And I answered one question that I'd never asked myself before. So I'm probably 20 years old at that point. How am I feeling? I never asked that question of myself. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Laura Dungan [00:37:36]:
Yeah. And then Julia Cameron, I don't know if you're familiar with her. So later, much later, she sort of added new layers to the writing, the journaling. But the thing that. And this was not. Organizers are so suspicious of anything I can imagine in. In attorney land that. That there's the same kind of.

Laura Dungan [00:38:08]:
Because the. The. The brain is working to accomplish, and you got to work with a system that's broken. Like, what. What is. What is a journey gonna. You know, you're twisting and stretching and pulling and finding openings and all of that. Like the going into the heart space to excavate what the move is.

Laura Dungan [00:38:44]:
I mean, that didn't come on until I. I had to. I had to, like, divest myself of the old completely to then come back to. Oh, okay, I can. I can play that game. I sure can. But it feels different in my body. It feels very different in my body.

Laura Dungan [00:39:06]:
And I think the meditation is really what began for me. And there's so many ways to meditate, open things.

Theresa Hubbard [00:39:13]:
Sure.

Laura Dungan [00:39:14]:
But I was so suspicious of meditation when I started back in 2013. Ish. And I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's book on power. You know, go into the bookstore, and there's a book on the shelf that goes, take me.

Theresa Hubbard [00:39:30]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:39:31]:
And I'd heard about this little guy, and I knew he was with Martin Luther King Jr. In the picture when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And. But I was like a monk, you know, that's how goofy I was back then. But I'm reading. And then in.

Theresa Hubbard [00:39:53]:
In.

Laura Dungan [00:39:53]:
In the book, he says, right now, just take a breath. And I did. I was like, so nice. Have I been holding my breath my whole life?

Theresa Hubbard [00:40:08]:
Possibly. Possibly.

Laura Dungan [00:40:10]:
So that's how I started moving along. Meditation. But I kept very cautiously. I think it was back when Ferguson blew up. Are you familiar with the app Time Time? What's the name of it. Not Time Waver. Anyway, it's a meditation app.

Theresa Hubbard [00:40:34]:
Oh, Insight Timer.

Laura Dungan [00:40:36]:
Insight Timer?

Theresa Hubbard [00:40:37]:
Yeah. I'm a teacher on Insight Timer. Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:40:40]:
And okay. Yes. Well, it was really new when I, when I started in it and then of course the affinity groups, Right. And that's when Thich Nhat Hanh had his stroke or his thing, Right. So I'm like, I'm gonna go hang out in the Buddhist group and see. And Ferguson had happened. So I had, I joined up with the Buddhist to find out about Thich Nhat Hanh's condition, how he was recovering. Ferguson blows up and I'm like, what are the Buddhists rapping about, people? What are they saying about this? It was crickets.

Laura Dungan [00:41:18]:
They were saying nothing. And I was like, see, you go sit on that cushion too long and you're gonna disconnect from what's going on in the world. And then not even care. So but then I just kept going. I kept going and the layers kept opening up and my hard heartedness, my narrow thinking, my judgmentalism, my all of that, it's like, just go for what is healing you, Laura, and don't worry about the rest. So that's when I got much deeper and Dispenza's work has taken me taking me right where I feel I need to be, particularly in the co creation category. And that's what I'm interested in doing. I have divine assignment.

Laura Dungan [00:42:17]:
I've been given a job description. I'm to live to 120 and I, I gotta figure out how to navigate this body to do that and accomplish the job description.

Theresa Hubbard [00:42:40]:
Well, you've done a lot. No doubt you're going to do a ton More in 60 more years, Laura.

Laura Dungan [00:42:46]:
Oh, I know. Right, right. It was on, it was on my 60th birthday I woke up and it was, this is midlife. I was like, what?

Theresa Hubbard [00:42:59]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:43:00]:
And I was like, okay, 60 plus 60s, 120. So like everybody's doing the happy birthday thing on Facebook. So I pop in at the end of the day thanking everybody and men put in there and say, and, and I was joking. I said, I'm going to live to be 120 years old. And I had one of my friends pop in and say, I'm going to DM you. I have a book for you. So she gets my address and sent and the book shows up. She didn't tell me what it was.

Laura Dungan [00:43:34]:
Yeah, I decided to live to 120 by Ichiui. I was like, you are joking me. So I like, okay. So then I took it seriously.

Theresa Hubbard [00:43:50]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:43:50]:
Then it was like, well, it's with. When. When the divine assignment got laid out, I'm like, it's going to take me that long.

Theresa Hubbard [00:43:57]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:43:58]:
Even with divine assistance to do this. Yeah, yeah.

Theresa Hubbard [00:44:08]:
So for people that don't know, Ilchi Lee was the founder of Sedona Mago, and that is Walker and I have been on retreat there many times over the years and so we're very familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic place. Yes.

Laura Dungan [00:44:24]:
And. And is he still in Sedona or is he in like Finland? He's trying to create a community, right?

Theresa Hubbard [00:44:30]:
Yeah, he is. He is. I don't think he's in Sedona often. I think he is working on creating the other community, but.

Walker Bird [00:44:37]:
Well, yes. Centers all over the world now. I think so. But I think it's just the latest is my understanding. But I, you know, I don't know what Ilchili is up to other than I, I know he travels worldwide. He's in different locations. So. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Walker Bird [00:44:52]:
They do great. They do a really nice job at Sedona Mago. I mean, it's just. It's a great program.

Laura Dungan [00:44:59]:
Yeah.

Walker Bird [00:45:01]:
So they have a whole. There's a meditational stairway he's made to living to 120. And so you go up and there's your ages as you walk up the stairs. And it's just. It's a tremendous meditation walk to walk through your life that way. And then you walk beyond the age that you are today, making choice. And it's powerful, powerful stuff.

Theresa Hubbard [00:45:27]:
There's little like, I don't know what you would prompts along the way, you know, that they have. As you're walking up different staircase. Yeah, yeah. So Laura's like, maybe I'm going to Sedona, mother.

Walker Bird [00:45:47]:
I bought like 10 of his books because he's a prolific writer too.

Laura Dungan [00:45:51]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Walker Bird [00:45:52]:
Anyway, yeah.

Theresa Hubbard [00:45:52]:
We actually were hoping that we can have a retreat out there ourselves. Facilitate in 2027. Yeah. Or 2028. So.

Laura Dungan [00:46:01]:
Okay.

Theresa Hubbard [00:46:03]:
Yeah. Lovely place.

Walker Bird [00:46:05]:
Let me ask you this, Laura. If you go back to that space where you were like, you know, I wanted to see what the chatter was about. Ferguson and all the Buddhists were just quiet. And that's what happens when you sit on the cushion, you know, you detach. Where are you today in that assessment?

Laura Dungan [00:46:25]:
Well, the spiritual in a broad category, the spiritual community, it's like any other community. They got part of it.

Theresa Hubbard [00:46:36]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:46:36]:
And so my charge is to bring the experiences I've had in My life, which has been varied, and the kinds of people that I hang out with, which a lot of undocumented immigrants, a lot of inner city African American culture. It's almost like now it's like, where's a group of people I don't know well to go and be a part of. Because everybody. It's kind of like, what is that elephant thing? Everybody's got a hold of the elephant. This is the elephant. But they're hanging onto the trunk or the leg. Oh, right. And I think that image was brought to me when I in church circles to explain different denominations, different faith traditions, that kind of thing, that no one path has the truth, but I take that much, much broader than that.

Laura Dungan [00:47:48]:
So, yeah, for me to stay into guidance, what I am to be doing, but that's what's gonna pull me through. So the spiritual, the Buddha sitting on a cushion, they got something. And. And I hope that any place that I can be, I can resonate and bring the frequency, the vibration from these communities into those spaces so that they can broaden their own understanding, practice. Because something very clear in my description is to dismantle the whack a mole game that we're playing.

Theresa Hubbard [00:48:42]:
Yeah.

Walker Bird [00:48:44]:
Tell us more.

Laura Dungan [00:48:47]:
About the whack a mole game. Yeah, you know that, don't you? Oh, there's that thing I hate over there. So you go over and beat the crap out of it. Go away. And then it pops up somewhere else.

Walker Bird [00:49:05]:
Right.

Laura Dungan [00:49:06]:
So I've had this image of going in underneath, you know, where you see all the plumbing, the elect, wiring of electricity, what all is down in there that's creating what we're seeing here now play out in our news and government and any group of people. I mean, it's just crazy how people get so hunkered in on. They think they. They've got the thing.

Walker Bird [00:49:34]:
Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:49:37]:
So I'm working there, and a lot of it is unseen work. My United Methodist upbringing, where spiritual expression had more ritual around it before I found Quakers and then be completely in silence. I'm going back to ritual spaces and then the coaching and staying connected with organizing here in. In this space. That's where I get to sort of ride where are people are. Where are they right now? In readiness. Not everybody is ready. Everybody's in a different place as individuals and then collectively as community.

Laura Dungan [00:50:35]:
2027 is a humongous year. Victimization is going as a people, as a collective is going to have a big shift because we're so into victim consciousness right now.

Theresa Hubbard [00:50:52]:
Yes, we are.

Walker Bird [00:50:55]:
What is it about 2027.

Laura Dungan [00:50:59]:
Well, now you're making me sort of go back in threads. Okay, have. Have you had exposure to Human Design and gene Keys?

Theresa Hubbard [00:51:14]:
Some Human design, yeah. Some. Some for me.

Laura Dungan [00:51:17]:
Okay. Gene Keys is Richard Red, and he studied with the founder of human design. There's 64. It's based off the I Ching. When I hooked up with the Kundalini guy online, he was using the gene key book, as I was doing for the first time. Intentional. I'd done all this therapy, all this talk therapy. Never done anything with Inner child anything.

Laura Dungan [00:51:48]:
That was my first dip in to that. And he was using gene keys to accompany the things he was teaching and then weaving into meditation stuff. So it's based off of astrology. Your birth date, your birth time and time zone. So you have a chart and jinky55 in the 64 gene keys is in my chart. And I'm not an external looking to something externally to tell me what I need to be doing. I found it to be so affirming and almost like a blueprint. And I think that's where 2027 popped in, was when I was working with the 55 gene key.

Laura Dungan [00:52:45]:
And the. Each gene key has three aspects. One is the shadow, one is the gift, and one is the city. So each. The city is like this expanded consciousness of the shadow gift. The gift is more what is demonstrated that you see in the world operating. And the shadow. Of course, if you live at that frequency in the shadow, it's not going to be easy, but there's a gift in the shadow.

Laura Dungan [00:53:23]:
So 2027, we're supposed to have some breakthrough. The struggling that we're seeing right now should be beginning to have a shift and a different feeling for us as humans moving out of victim consciousness. The gift level of the 55 is freedom, and the city is freedom. Actually, it's the only gene key that has the gift and city the same. The same thing. So. And then what's been interesting. Unconsciously, I've been arranging my life and what I need to be paying attention to and how I order it.

Laura Dungan [00:54:26]:
2027 has just been without me thinking, oh, yeah, I think I first heard about 2027 as a big year for some things to resolve that we're going through right now. Like, I'm starting book two, and I'm going to be busy writing 2026 because I know I need to publish in 2027. The Dragonfly is a huge image. The metamorphosis of a dragonfly. So when it's in its nymph stage, under the water for up to two years. It's a mean son of a. It's predator. It is a predator.

Laura Dungan [00:55:18]:
It eats everything. Then something in its system says it's time. So it climbs the stalk and to get the wings to pop out, it has to cycle the old water it lived in for two years through its body. And if you can get a video on YouTube of it, you can actually see the water cycling through the thorax of this dragonfly and it pops the wings out.

Theresa Hubbard [00:55:48]:
Wow.

Walker Bird [00:55:49]:
Wow. Yeah.

Laura Dungan [00:55:52]:
But it takes the old water. It takes the water that's. And that's really the process we're in right now. And so, yeah, the dragonfly is a big thing. I have a huge dragonfly tattoo that goes shoulder to shoulder and all the way down to my bottom of my tailbone on my. On my back with. They're talking about how our bodies are actually changing our DNA. There are strands that are coming online now that have been, you know, have you heard of junk DNA?

Theresa Hubbard [00:56:30]:
I have, but I don't think I know anything about it specifically.

Laura Dungan [00:56:33]:
Our DNA has latent things in it that are not operating. And so science has labeled it junk DNA. And you know, we think of junk DNA, well, it means it doesn't have pioneer use or needed, you know, cut the appendix out or. Yeah, but in fact, it is. We're. It's awakening in. There are strands, strands awakening in our DNA. So it's the helix.

Laura Dungan [00:57:06]:
Now there's a third strand and probably a fourth strand coming online in our physical bodies. So if anybody's having issues with. I mean, I'm a. I did the deep dives and taking care of your body and what's going to facilitate good health? Because, you know, I'm living to 120, so I'm deep diving into all of that. But then I'm like, you know, there's something else going on here, too. So to be thoughtful and stay open to the fact the things one might be dealing with in the body is because the body moves to health. It moves to health. It moves to health.

Laura Dungan [00:57:48]:
It moves to health. So if you've got something that's been chronic or it's new, like this just appeared, it could be your body working to recalibrate, rebalance itself with something happening in it. I mean, you do due diligence of research. And if you have a doctor that you like and have a good conversation with, remember you're in charge. You're not a patient. We really are becoming new creatures.

Theresa Hubbard [00:58:26]:
Yeah. Oh, Laura, when you think about. I've Already written down a ton of resources, so I don't, I don't need any more of that. I think I've maybe written 12 or 13 things down that you said I will include. And so I know we're, we're at time. And so I'm curious for you if you were going to, I don't know, not asking you to hold an intention for all of our listeners, but offer an intention for our listeners, what might that be?

Laura Dungan [00:59:26]:
I think I'd like to speak directly to anyone who has been playing peekaboo with trusting their inner guidance. Like it's kind of here and then it's not here and then it disappears. You're supported. You already have what you need in you. If you were to do anything to stoke the fire of living consistently in guidance before you fully put your feet out of the bed every morning, ask the question, what do I need today? And then you move heaven and earth to do that one thing. And it could just be. Drink more water. Okay, I can do that one thing.

Laura Dungan [01:00:30]:
that stoking. Wow. We started our conversation before we got in here about fire. Like to stoke that. What is it in ayurvedic? Is it ojas within the inner fire? That's how we digest things, have a level of chutzpah in our system. And when it comes to inner guidance, that man for me, and I don't know if it's a woman, my upbringing, all the things that make up Laura Dungan, but I would tend toward collapse when things got really hard. And then I'd have to force, and I would force, force myself through it to get through it. I would learn something.

Laura Dungan [01:01:25]:
I could be victorious and feel good about it for a little bit. But then there was something that wore on the system in a way that just didn't long term work for me. But the seed of expanding capacity is that obedience, honoring, trusting, that one word which is the inner voice that comes before you've activated your 3D life. Getting out of bed and then everything starts. It's on. The race is on.

Theresa Hubbard [01:02:04]:
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. There was. You're talking about it again just now and earlier in our conversation as well. And what comes to mind for me, Laura, is that we are. We're not taught to self inquiry. No, we're really taught to other inquiry. And so for me, there is so much.

Theresa Hubbard [01:02:29]:
I mean, I talk to my clients a lot about what do I need today? What. What is most important to you right now? What do you really want? Are questions that we talk about often. Yeah. So very resonant. So thank you for that.

Laura Dungan [01:02:49]:
Yeah, thank you. It's been wonderful.

Theresa Hubbard [01:02:54]:
Thank you for joining us today. We are excited to explore life with you. We encourage curiosity, self growth and we strive to be more compassionate every day.