Josh Trent: Solocast | Healing The Father Wound, 100+ Hours Fasting, Vision Questing + Being Alone With Mother Nature's Wisdom

Jul 12, 2022

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Wellness + Wisdom Podcast Host and Wellness Force Media CEO, Josh Trent, shares the second Vision Quest he has done in two years with Guide, Tim Corcoran, of Purpose Mountain.

In this solocast, you will learn:

The power of forgiving ourselves and others
Why chaos is always seeking order
Letting go: the process of death and rebirth
How Josh has healed his father wound
Lessons Josh received from God and Mother Nature
What ceremony actually is and how to honor it
Exploring the epigenetic transfers of trauma
Why "good vibes only" is a lie

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Listen To Episode 457 As Josh Trent Uncovers: [00:00] Exploring The Wellness Pentagon

This is Josh Trent. This is the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast. And today on a very special solocast, I'm gonna share with you the best of the best downloads, uploads, and knowledge that I've turned into wisdom through compassion and emotional intelligence during a Vision Quest.

Now, if you don't know what a Vision Quest is, it's 10 days out in nature. Four of those days are fasting, which if you haven't done it fast before, don't worry. This is something you can do. If you are here on this video with me, or if you're listening on the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, then you know that since day one, my mission has been, "How do I live my life?"

Well, how do we live our lives? By understanding this Wellness Pentagon: the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial responsibilities that all of us signed up for here on planet earth...

[01:00] This Vision Quest's Gift

And at times, tell me if you resonate with this - at times, it feels like there's only so much energy to go around. Do you feel me on that?

Write a comment or write to me if right now in your life, you have been dealing with a lack of energy or an understanding of Qi where you're trying to fill up all these aspects of the Pentagon, but then as soon as you get your relationships great, or your health great, or your spirituality great, one of those sides of the Pentagon tends to be neglected, tends to fall away.

And I think this is really the balancing act that all of us signed up for here on planet earth. And if you get one thing from what I share with you from my heart today, I want you to get the gift that I received, or at least if you can't get the full gift of this vision quest, you can, at the very least start your pathway to get the gift that I received.

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[01:50] The Power of Forgiveness

And that gift to start out is forgiveness.

And I'm gonna talk about two types of forgiveness right now. So if you're listening, pull over, if you're in nature, take a deep breath with me because forgiveness is something that I think is intellectualized. And I think there's a lot of content out there about forgiveness, but to truly forgive yourself and to truly forgive someone else, there's a pathway, there's a pathway to get there.

And I'm gonna talk about what that pathway is and, and what came through for me, essentially in this Vision Quest. Now, this is my second year in the quest with Tim Corcoran of purposemountain.com. It's an incredible experience that he's created. And this year, last year we were in the mountains in Idaho. This year, we were in the desert, just east of Santa Barbara. And I went out there and it was so wild.

[02:45] Chaos Seeking Order

So wild.

I got sick, I got this crazy sinus infection right before I went out there and I got really angry and I got pissed off. And I was like, why is this happening?

You know, trying to like, just go through the lesson without trying to attach, to learning the lesson without actually going through it, tell me if you can relate to that.

And by the time I got out there, and by the time I got finished with the quest, which I'm gonna share with you right now, I realized that all things are chaos seeking order. And I truly believe this, all things are chaos seeking order.

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, to flashback the two things, two aspects of forgiveness is one: forgiving myself and two: forgiving others, right? I believe it's in the Lord's prayer. You know, forgive the things about others and forgive the things about myself that are actually applicable...

[03:40] Embodied Forgiveness

And grant me the wisdom to know the difference between the things I can change and the things I cannot. And that's a really big one because I'm not necessarily a religious man, but these two aspects that we're gonna go into right now, forgiving myself and forgiving others.

These are the ultimate. And I truly believe that if there is an embodied forgiveness inside of myself and an embodied forgiveness that I have for others that have trespassed against me, or that have harmed me, or that have been malicious towards me, forgiveness does not mean forgetting.

So just because I forgive someone, it doesn't mean that I forget the harms that they have projected or perpetrated onto me. All forgiveness is, is a gift that I unwrap with the courage of my heart. And that is it. Forgiveness is the gift that I unwrap using the courage of my heart.

[04:40] Forgiving My Father

Now, what do I mean by that?

In my own example, I got a sinus infection. I went out for year two to the Santa Barbara mountains and for the first three or four days, going through these ego disintegration processes, really sharing the things in my life that are holding me back. There was this common theme, a common theme that came up for me, and that was forgiveness around my father.

Now in the previous year, I had done a lot of work forgiving my father and in the year that followed, in the year of integration that followed after the first year, there was a lot of experiences and a lot of different connection points with my father, both email and text, where I did everything I could to establish a healthy boundary and to let him know from my heart to his that if you want to be in my life, if you want to be in my son's life, if you want to have any love or connection that it's so important, we have a foundation of kindness.

[05:30] The Process of Death & Rebirth

And unfortunately in the way that sometimes things go in life, that foundation of kindness was not respected. It was not honored.

And so what came up for me during the quest was this process of death and rebirth. This process of truly, truly letting go. And for all of us, men or women that have had father wounding, this is for you. I went out to my site and after three days of really having so much come up for me on the quest, I sat at the site for about an hour and I looked down and I saw this rock and I wish I had it here in the studio (We're still building out the studio behind me).

And I looked down and I saw this rock. And it, it was a rock that looked exactly like a Pentagon. I mean, it could not have been placed there by chance.

[06:26] Lessons from God & Mother Nature

This rock was the perfect shape of a Pentagon. And I was going through all these different mental cycles of how do I live my best life?

How do I be there for my son and my woman and my business. And the answer was a lack of ego integration makes the body physically tired, which leads to me getting sick and having a sinus infection.

So I'm sitting there, I'm holding the rock. That's shaped just like a Pentagon. And I break down in tears. I mean, I literally am sobbing because I'm realizing that not only does God and nature, give me every single answer that I ever need to live my life well, but I am actually the one that resists these lessons.

And I resist these lessons because I think there was still a part of my child, my inner child, my young boy inside. And he just wanted the father that he never had.

[07:24] Healing My Inner Child

He wanted his father to be someone that maybe was never really possible. And so the father inside of me being a father to Novah and the man inside of me, leading a movement, leading a business, being here with you, there's an honoring of this that comes through in a Vision Quest because there's no food. There's just water.

I'm out there in the middle of nowhere with nothing, just my thoughts and my breath. And it's really magical. What happens when we go out there and what was really magical for me, because I climbed up on this mountaintop. It was maybe two, 300 yards up this mountain. And I sat, cause I just wanted a higher perspective. I wanted a higher perspective on what nature, what God was actually trying to share with me. And I knew it was time. I knew it was time for my own individual ceremony.

[08:20] Honoring The Individual Ceremony

And this is what gets thrown around a lot. People say the word 'ceremony.'

Ceremony, true ceremony is the most sacred thing that we have. Life is a sacred ceremony. Being in communion with nature is a sacred ceremony.

Conscious, sacred sex is a ceremony, friendships. I mean everything in life is sacred yet all of us tend to, and I fell into this trap many, many times and still I'll be honest, continue to, right?

We're human. But the difference is I have this awareness that was shown to me on that mountaintop when I wanted the higher perspective because the higher perspective is this to the degree that I forgive others. And to the degree that I forgive myself, that is the quality of my life. And I've heard people say this before Tony Robbins and Oprah and all these different speakers, but truly the ultimate gift that I got from the quest this year was letting go of these expectations that my father has to be a certain way.

[9:25] Surrendering Control

And this is really big because I can have healthy boundaries that I express and that I enforce, but I can't control the outcome. I can't control the outcome. I can't control how other people show up to me or show up to a relationship with me just like I can't control the wind.

You know, I can't control the clouds or the sun. So to bring it back in those two ways that I told you, we were gonna go deep on today, the two aspects of forgiveness, I walked down that mountain and I did the hardest part, which was forgiving myself, forgiving myself for all the ways that I had treated women and used pornography and, and lied to others. And really just not been in integrity with myself, I guess you could call it like a spiritual role call that I was being placed in.

And in this spiritual role call, I was able to see all the ways that my own father in his own life and, and all of our fathers really, but specifically my own father, wasn't able to show up in the ways that he wanted to, because of his lack of forgiveness or his relationship with his father, his very own father.

[10:40] Epigentic Transfers of Trauma

And I closed my eyes and I saw how Alan Watts talks about familial patterns or epigenetic transfer of trauma, or just ways of being. It's like all wretch and no vomit.

He says where you raise your children by your behaviors and your subconscious ways of being that children absorb. And then they grow up and raised their children in the exact same way. It's all wretch and no vomit.

And so for about three or four hours, I don't know, cause I didn't have a watch, but three or four hours, I sat there at my campsite during the quest and I cried and I made mental notes. And then when the time was right, I buried a hole in the ground. I found a bone of a deer and I buried that bone in the ground and I put some rocks and I put some loving intentions into it.

[11:26] The "Burial" of My Father

And I spoke to the burial of my father. Now, granted he's still alive, but because of challenges that we've had, I've had to set some very bright, hard boundaries about his way of being with me and the way that he's allowed or really anyone right now, I'm talking about him, but anyone is allowed to interact with me.

And that is with a baseline of kindness. And so I said to my father as I buried the bone and I buried this relationship with him, I said, "I have to let you go. I have to let you go because of this lack of forgiveness for you. And this lack of forgiveness for myself is killing me. It's hurting." And so I buried the bone and I wept because the freedom that I felt after burying the expectations of how this person should show up all simultaneously, knowing that I am going to have the bright-line boundaries, that if he wants to engage with me with kindness, if he wants to be a part of my son's life, if he wants to be a part of my woman's life that he can.

[12:40] Healing My Father Wound

And, and I said to him, "The door is always open. I'm not here burying you forever. I'm just burying any kind of resentment or the things that are blocking my forgiveness towards you in this very ground."

And that was freedom. I buried him in the ground. Wiped my hands. Tasted the dirt and I said, "I'm burying you, father, with kindness and I'm here. The door is here. If you want to return that kindness back."

And then came the work over the next three, four days of me integrating this, keeping this promise to myself, to establish and, and really have these hard, bright-line boundaries with him and with all people so that the father inside of me can shine.

[13:20] Processing & Integrating The Lessons

And this was a really big deal. This was a huge deal for me because I think I had to go through that first year of anger and processing to really get to the second year so that the lessons could integrate in the earth that I was standing on.

And that was a big one. The last thing I'm gonna read to you is when I got back to the circle and I was integrating with the group, I wanna read this to you because this was something that I actually journaled, but I lost my journal and when I lost my journal, I just had to go off of this recording.

Luckily someone in the group put their phone down as we were integrating. And I wanna share this with you. I know this is gonna be really powerful if you yourself have dealt with any kind of a father wound. And so on the very last night, on the fourth night, I seriously felt like that fourth night was an entire day. And I was like, is this ever gonna end?

[14:27] I Will Not Live in Fear

And I just stripped off everything. I stripped off everything and put my sleeping bag to the side. As the moon was bright, I just stood up and I said, "I will not live my life in fear. I will not live my life in fear, fear of not forgiving someone, fear of not forgiving myself, fear of what might happen, fear of poverty, fear of anything, fear of disease."

And then I laid there and my heart was pounding after four days of fasting. And I, I asked Spirit this powerful question, which I'm gonna read to you now on the final hour of the last night, the darkest hour, I laid in my sleeping bag under the stars to feel the cool wind on my face and hear the owls hooting in the distance.

[15:25] Asking for God's Guidance

My stomach was rumbling so hard in the most intense way as if the grumbling was the shroud of twisted energy that bends the branches of the trees and coils their trunks with my heart racing, I lay on the earth asking for guidance to God from humility.

I said, "God, Great Spirit, Mother Earth. Why do I feel so nervous and experience deep anxiety before I record big podcasts and speak in front of large groups? I feel as if there's a weight on my chest and my mind races to be seen as perfect. I ask you humbly, what is the truth? I've experienced this feeling for so long, this restlessness I'm seeking your wisdom. I'm seeking your relief.

And after what seemed like 10 minutes, she finally answered.

[16:13] Choosing Freedom

She said, "Child, you must love yourself."

"Deeply know this every single time, big or small that you've experienced trauma from parents, society, school, bullies, friends, or even more subtle and sinister and subversive like mental trauma from media propaganda teaching and forcing you to distrust yourself every single time you closed your heart in fear or shame, a record was created."

"Your ego subconscious has been creating a live-in library for you, your entire existence, and everything big or small that made you close your heart. A record was stored over time."

"Little by little, every single record was written and recorded deep in the mental recesses by the ego to keep you safe from pain. But this safety came with an ultimate price, a price that can only be paid by the integration of all the fear and shame with the courage and wisdom of your heart. If you want to be free, you must choose."

[17:17] Reopening Our Hearts

"You must choose to enter healing, spiral a path to remove the shackles of safety because life is not always safe. My child life is wild and this is the price that must be. And this is the price that must bravely be paid."

"So, the light of your soul can be free to shine bright as it did when you were a child, because you see my child, it was not your fault that you closed your heart. It is all just a part of life. And now the noble responsibility to free your soul lies at your feet."

"Now, look down and see the uncountable pebbles lay before you and know each pebble is a time that you closed your heart. When someone caused you hurt when the pain was too much to hold with the level of your maturity and strength now is the time. So bend down child and pick up as many pebbles as your two hands can hold."

[18:14] Your Body is Your Subconscious

"Knowing that your body is your subconscious mind - as above so below - and know that it is your body that has built a wall around your heart and extra weight around your physical body, for that pain and know that it is your body that has built a wall around your heart and extra weight around your physical body."

"For the pain, no one trusts. You're not alone. My child, I am with you. We are all with you. All your ancestors are holding and loving you for all the pebbles in your blood that they themselves could not heal in their lifetimes. For those they gave to you, forgive them."

"They did not know you are the chosen one. Not because you're more special than those who came before you, but because you and I are special just like them. And you have the courage and the chance they may not have had."

[19:09] Healing Our Trauma

"And you have the courage and the chance they may not have had. So bend down and pick up all the pebbles you can hold with your two hands. Do not fret. If summer spilled, there is time. My sweet child, there is time now. Breathe."

"One by one, hold each pebble in your hand and place it on your heart. Feel what needs to be felt. Scream, belt, scream, cry, shake. If you must. So as you feel it fully, the pebble will melt and move through you. These rocks are too. These rocks are too heavy to carry any longer, and there will be more to carry on the path ahead."

"It is your strength and grace that will guide you to the truth. Open your heart to this truth, my child, that you are loved. You are supported and with pebbles in your hands and at your feet, you are on the right path."

It's good to feel that truth. It is so refreshing to know that all of us, every single human being, I don't care if you're four years old or 42 or 84, we all have trauma. We all have wounding. And it's actually the societal narrative that blocks us from exploring it, from unpacking it, from getting to the root of it.

Is that,"I'm okay. Everything's okay. Good vibes only..."

[20:40] "Good Vibes Only" is a Lie

But it's all a lie. I know that from this quest and from the act of the two phases of forgiveness that I've shared with you, both forgiveness for myself and forgiveness for others, it is the gift that I unwrap with the courage of my heart.

It is the gift that I know I can give to others repeatedly because life is a series of events where we'll have to forgive ourselves and others for the ways that we treat ourselves for the narratives that we speak to us and for the narratives and the ways that we speak to others.

And if you've gotten anything from this solocast, make sure you keep listening. I'm gonna share exactly what happened in the group.

So keep listening to this now, but if you received any wisdom from this that you were positively impacted by, that really meant a lot to you write it in the comments below, or you can message me on Instagram or just write me a personal message.

Also for more resources, you can go to joshtrent.com/437. That's joshtrent.com/437

That's where I list a ton of resources to support you for free and the five sides of your Wellness Pentagon. Look, I don't have it all figured out, but I'm at a wonderful place compared to where I used to be. That is for sure. The place I'm at now, after going through two years of the quest, knowing that there are more years ahead of me, that's the most honest...

[22:14] Sharing My Forgiveness of Self and of Others

And the most real experience I can give to you is that I, myself am still a student on this path of wellness in life. The greatest gift that I ever have in this world is sharing my forgiveness of self and my forgiveness of others right here with you.

And I want to end by just this quote that I've mentioned on the podcast a few times, but I've also really been swallowing this and feeling this in my heart of my solar plexus. It's from Rumi. And as we say goodbye, let Rumi guide you here.

Take a deep breath.

Beyond right and wrong beyond right and wrong. There is a field I will meet you there.

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