Lightning in a Bottle: Entering the Infinite Game of Joy

0:00Are you ready to reclaim joy in your life? Why joy why now? Welcome to Joy Rules with me, Laura Lai, your Joy Guru. While the world looks like it's at a breaking point, burnout, stress, isolation, and overwhelm dominate the headlines. Within all this, there's a longing for something deeper, something that heals beyond the mind. Joy fuels health, sparks expansive thought, aligns us spiritually and connects us to one another. Join me as I weave astrology, intuition, and modern psychology to ignite your soul's highest alignness. Each week I sit down with luminous guests who embody joy as a spiritual path, a creative force, and a way of life. So take a deep breath, open your heart, and let's dive into the joy. Because when joy rules, transformation becomes inevitable. Hello, my playmates for the soul.

1:01This is, I can't believe every time feels like I feel like a kid in the candy store, but there are times that I feel it more than others. And I really feel it today with my luminous guests who you will meet in a minute. So, and here comes my cat, she obviously wants to be part of this. So this is the cosmic weather piece. And we are in a new moon. And the new moon is the time to plant seeds. We're in a new moon in Virgo. That's why my luminous guest happens to embody Virgo energy in addition to other energies. But Virgo is the energy of the nuts and bolts of everything. I think Virgo probably, of all the signs in the zodiac, really gets a bad rap because it is about refinement. It is about improving the quality of things. It is about detail. It is about, and sometimes can be anal, you know? Someone doesn't get off their point of view. But Virgo energy is ultimately about dedication and devotion. It's the priest's prestis energy. So that's what I mean when I say Virgo gets a bad rap.

2:03You know, it's the cleanup energy. It comes after Leo, which, you know, so Virgo says, okay, we've created all these things in Leo. Now, how are we going to apply them? How are we going to use them in service to others? Basically. So, new moon in Virgo, I was thinking, and this just came in in the last 10 minutes before we got on, my intention for all of you with Michael as my guest, is that you leave here with new, with a new concept or two, with a new way to articulate something, with a new way to understand something, new verbiage. Virgo energy is fabulous for that because it's precise. And when Michael speaks, it can sometimes cut like an edge, you know, it's like here is the actual thing that's really going on here. So, I'm sorry, I say two more things. Venus, the planet of love, the planet of joy, the planet of what we value and what we appreciate, is now in Scorpio. And we'll be there for a while because she's going to appear

3:05to retrograde in October. That's the day before my birthday. That's another story. But the point is, so Venus is how we reach out to others, how we connect with others. Venus left Libro, which is let's connect. Let's be a team, let's make nice, nice, let's not confront anything too dirty, too messy. And Scorpio says, let's dive into the underworld. So, expect that your relationships will have the opportunity to become more intimate on whatever level you should choose to and a lot of old shadow stuff can come up to be healed. I mean, beautiful opportunity for one of Michael's concepts, sanctification, which we'll talk about. And the other thing I wanted to say, which is so cool, Michael being my guest, Mercury, the planet of communication, which is the Virgo and the Gemini planet, just entered Libra yesterday. And Libra is the sign of reaching out to the other guy. It's the sign of being interviewed. So I thought, how perfect is that that the universe? And the other perfect thing is, Sagittarius is rising now.

4:05And this is a perfect segue for me to introduce my guest. I have an additional story, Michael, that I just remembered today. When I first met Michael, it was 92, I believe. He had graduated from chiropractic school and was opening his practice. And we both had little, these cute little houses in Roswell, George and he came and I thought, do you remember Michael? I thought you were a cop, your salesman. And then I went, because his, and you'll see this, he is the ultimate, empowering teacher, shareer, enthusiastic about what he believes, can knock you over with the passion of his energy. It's beautiful. And then the other thing is the expressing story. I have to tell this, long story short, one day when to see Michael in his practice and he had a big fever blister on his mouth. And I went, Michael, what is that?

5:06He said, I'm expressing. Well, I took that and have fostered it for years and my daughter who's now 40 will now say when she thinks she's quote sick, she'll say, I know mom, I'm expressing. So with that said, my luminous guest in the nest, Michael Semeca, Dr. Michael Semeca, welcome to Joy Rules. Thank you, Laura. It's beautiful to be here yet again. I look forward to interacting with you and seeing where lightning strikes. Yeah, you know, what's so fascinating is I had an opportunity. So we're going to see greaterness coaching right here, right now, in something happened where I had a thought that was very negative and withholding and I thought, I wonder what, Dr. Michael, I wonder what greaterness coaching would say about this thought. And I'll tell you exactly what it is. So hummingbirds, you know, represent joy. And I have written about that in my life script.

6:07I've never had hummingbird feeders until now. I have three of them and they are all over the place and they are dancing all over. Here was the thought. The thought was, wow, I can't believe that I've withheld this joy for myself all these years. And then I heard your voice in my head, but I didn't, but I thought I have to, like what would greaterness coaching say there where I'm saying I can't believe that I've withheld this from my life for all these years. Greaterness coach would not like you to take the word withheld. I don't believe that is true. I don't think that sanctifies it. I think that you were probably germinating, percolating, processing. You were definitely like, don't bust my table. I'm still eating. So I wouldn't want you to do, to voluntarily say you were withholding now you throwing yourself under the bus and you're not telling the greatest story possible. You're actually telling a really awful story and that's a, probably not true, even though the narrative might fit.

7:10It's not the narrative that I would recommend you to go to because it doesn't bring out your best if you say that. Yes, and I knew that. I knew that. I just didn't know what do I want to replace it with. That you were percolating that it wasn't your time and that there's an integrity to your processes and integrity to all of our processes. And sometimes we just have to let it sit for a while and wait for the egg to hatch and just be good nesting and just honor the timing of the way things that there's integrity, integrity and timing are synonymous. So just recognize that there was an integrity to your process. You were participating in it. Your interpretation could always be improved. Obviously that's what I'm saying here. And then, but just make peace with the fact that there is an integrity to your process. And then when it starts to reveal itself, tell the greatest story regarding what you were doing while you were, because you're probably in a research phase, right? You were probably getting ready for this program and all these different phases in your life. I've seen you in so many different phases in your life.

8:12And I enjoy watching your arc, your living life arc. It's been a thrill to watch. And I like how well you compartmentalize everything into a few sound bites. I really do love how you promote yourself. And I love the latest and greatest green lights and lucky stars. And I just appreciate the robins nest. And I enjoy what you put out there. I just would love to see, like in this case, that you have your back even much higher by trusting the integrity in your energy, in your field, in your makeup. Yes. And I knew that it was being presented to me because I caught myself and I went, and I went right to you. I went right to you. Now, and then I thought, what a perfect opportunity to use this on the show because number one, it's spontaneous. And number two, that whole self-talk. Remember that book, what do you say when you talk to yourself, Shad Helmstead, or years and years ago?

9:13I mean, years. What do you say when you talk to yourself? And the various wordologist, or the part of you that's so is the conceptualizer and creator of ways to say things. I just, like, you know, I wrote down like six or seven different things and I thought, well, just have to do another show. We won't get to all this today. And I'm going to relax around that. But for instance, sanctification. I can't tell you, Michael, since we talked, I have used that word. I mean, I always say make sacred, but I love sanctify. I love, it feels like I can feel that. So speak to what that means to sanctify something. Because a lot of people don't get that. It means to see it in its highest form. To tell the greatest story, to exalt it, you want to be able to recognize that with something is showing up, it's showing up for a reason. It's not showing up because something's broken. Even if it's uncomfortable, you don't like it. Or you're not getting something you do want, you're getting something you don't want.

10:14Either way, whether you're getting it or not getting it, sanctify that, sanctify the integrity in the process. And what that means is tell a greater story and recognize that it's happening for you, not to you. And if you do that, you will actually talk yourself off the ledge before you even go on it. And then now you're functioning more optimally because you're not doing anything to create so it sets up an adversarial situation where you don't have to battle it and beat it and overpower it rather than the cooperation like going with it, where you can actually learn how to use whatever's presenting itself as a jumping off point, which it is, a baseline, it's where you're starting. And it also gives you the map on where to go, dry mouth, drink the water, you know, being critical of yourself, start being gentle with yourself. For every time something shows up, realize it's showing up because there's some form of deficiency and everything wears off, love diminishing effects, everything wears off over time. Nothing you or I can do. We sleep, all of a sudden, we have full of energy

11:16in the morning and then by at night, go to the bathroom, also you got a pee again. You eat, no, you got a, you got to eat again. So everything has a love diminishing effects and that's why I use the analogy about dry mouth all the time because when you get dry mouth, that's not a problem. It's basically a signal that you're getting, an intelligence signal, see that's sanctification, you recognize that it's an intelligent presentation. It's showing up right on time, it's timely, it's integrus and it's telling you that you're deficient in water. Well, if you have stink and think in or if you're really being hard on yourself that in those moments life is telling you, you're being deficient in being gentle with yourself or even sanctifying, which sanctifying just means, recognizing that everything has a purpose. And if you forget that and if you're deficient in that, you're gonna enter into an adversarial relationship or even worse, you're gonna have a bad reaction to it or a bad relationship to it, oh, this is bad, oh, poor me. And the minute you do that, you're compromising your functionality, you're compromising your ability to handle life better because it's actually a toxic way of addressing something because it's not,

12:17it's not the honest or highest truth. And there are multiple truths, people don't like that idea, but there are multiple truths meaning there are multiple ways to interpret things. And you always want to interpret things in the highest that you possibly can because A, it feels good and then B, it's not gonna compromise your functionality. You will feel yourself being on top of it, even if you don't like it, once you start sanctifying it and you realize it has a place, now you're respecting it so much that you're trying to get to know it like, okay, so why are you showing up? I know you're showing up for me. That conversation, that consideration that you're having all internal within yourself is a game changer because you're not walking yourself on a ledge of compromised function. Yeah, what I love about this from a timing perspective, these things that you're saying is in this Virgo Numoon, this is the opportunity, we always have the opportunity, but I'm just saying that Heaven is just, it's even more so the soil is ripe for this is to tell a greater story. Literally, I mean, to tell.

13:18And the beauty, one of the beauties of Virgo Energy and I was just observing it in you, Virgo is about the micro movements. It's about, look at, I shifted that one detail. Look at that, I went, I'm going to bed an hour earlier than, you know, in other words, like celebrating those micro movements that contribute or detract from the quality of life. And that, yeah. Let me talk, because this is so important, never underestimate the power of a subtle shift. That is so huge, because the most integrative changes are incremental, just like you know. So if you're making improvements, the most incremental improvements are the ones that stick. The ones that are a little too drastic, they usually have a way of just like recoiling or springing back and they don't stick long term. And so if you could celebrate those little, little subtle shifts because, you know, again, all subtle shifts are still shifts and they're moving in the right direction. And if you say I'm having a shift, but it's not big enough or it's not far enough or it's not having fast enough,

14:18you're absolutely like broken in... You're desanctifying it. You're not only desanctifying it, but you're not giving positive reinforcement. You can't train an animal with that strategy. You know, you have to reward success and you have to reward moving toward greaterness. You have to. And if you turn around and you minimize it and you say, well, that's not good enough, why would you still continue to improve if you're already not grateful for the subtle improvements? It's still a shift. It's still moving in the right direction. And so we always talk about being grateful for so many... What are the things people will wake up every morning and they'll write their gratitude list? And after a while, it gets to be routine. They get to write the same 10 things and the same people and the same order. And at some point, you want to recognize it. You want to start being grateful for the things that you haven't been grateful for. And the things that you're not grateful, I promise you. If you're not grateful for everything, then those are the things you're not sanctifying. You're not turning around and exalting it. It's showing up for a reason.

15:19And so by just keeping that, withholding that, right? Not sharing that everything has a reason. You can only, all you can really be grateful for are the things that are happening according to your will. Things that you want to have happen or things that are stopping that you don't want to have happen. And if those things don't happen or do happen, depending on which side of the coin you're on, then it's going to be cue the distress, compromise my functionality, put me behind the eight ball. How do you, you're functioning already from the negative when you're doing that? So if you're focusing on the positive and you really are committed to this and you understand that we all have this power and the key is to wield this power. And that is so important. That's all I want to do is just keep ushering and keep telling and offering to people. You have more power than you know. And the fact is if you don't know it or if you don't even use it, there's going to be a consequence to not using, I call it your pristine power, not the power for you, a maniacal self, but the kind of power that will have you tell the greatest story,

16:22even if it's not about you, you know, about somebody maybe you're struggling with. Why are they that way? You know, and if you say, well, here she is just an idiot. It's like, that's not the greatest story. I'm sorry, that you're throwing it under the bus, you're going to end up having an adversarial relationship. If you can start recognizing and creating a story, it doesn't even have to be true. It just has to be the highest story ever. If you can create stories of purpose, of meaning, you now make meaning. And it's important to go, well, I don't know if anything has a meaning, what should choose to let things have a meaning? If you just choose to play as if things have a meaning, then you get all the benefit of that as if it really has the meaning. So why would you say, are you going to be arrogant and say it definitely has a meaning, or are you going to be just as arrogant and say it definitely doesn't have a meaning? Well, that's both of those are silly. They're just absolutely silly and they're both the same level of arrogance. You don't know for sure that it has a meaning or that it doesn't have a meaning. But here, as a phenomenologist, if you say it has a meaning,

17:23that all of a sudden gives in meaning in the moment. Do you ever see how important that is to have like purpose in the moment while something is just showing up organically or something is just presenting itself to you? If you just go, oh my God, this is this. You can't just go to the joy or it's this. Oh, cue the upsetness. It's like, no, no, it has to be unconditional. Now, you've got to be able to handle whatever life presents because if it's showing up, it's showing up for a reason. That's a choice to see it that way. And it's an empowering choice. And if you don't do that, you get the consequence of not making that choice. So I have to get this out there to let people know whether you know about this or not, you're still getting the consequence of not making the empowering choice and choosing to attribute a meaning and give the highest meaning possible. And then do what I do. Sit back, be a phenomenologist. Run an independent case study and see if your function is significantly better, slightly better, the same significantly worse or slightly worse, it's always better.

18:26Now, the question is, is it slightly better or significantly better? Never underestimate the better. Very verga questions of you. Is it slightly better? Is it significantly better? Exactly. So something else you and I talked about that I wanted to extrapolate or expand. When I talked about, I invited it. I invited the experience and you said, it invited you. There it is. So I've been pondering that and what I've come up with, it's not either or it's both. But you've said. Of course. No, of course, but again, it's, okay, so you could say, this is a horrible situation or you could say this is happening for me. It's not either or it's both. I want you to get your essay and the same thing. This is a, this is a God awful situation. You know, oh my God, you know what happened? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this is awful. And then you could say, oh, this is happening for me. And it's true, this shows you multiple truths, multiple stories, multiple interpretations, multiple ways of seeing things. Now, look at using the one way and then looking at the other way.

19:27Which way is gonna support optimal functioning? It would be wise to play around, play around with the one that's gonna create optimal functioning. The fact that it's both isn't really wise because now you're minimizing the, it's happening for me because you're going, this is also horrible. And it's like, now we've got a conflict because it's both. And so what I was saying was, and this is important for you. When you say, I created, I did this, I did that. I was like, well, life was calling it. This way, you're not having to keep doing it in order to make progress because you have to pat yourself on the fact that you did it. People ask me, well, time, Dr. Michael, will you get the time to do everything? And I say, time finds me. I know. Time finds me. It's the same thing. That's what I did with you. I flipped it and go, life was calling you. Life, you have to understand that that is an important thing. And how empowering is, well, I don't know if life is really calling me. That's true, you don't. But it might be calling you and it may not be calling you. So which one are you gonna play around with?

20:28Are you gonna say, well, because I don't know, I'm gonna be absolutely questioning. It's like, well, you could do that and then observe, again, phenomenologists, run an independent case study and see if you're functioning better by questioning or do you function better just by going, I'm gonna play around as ZIF. And that's what you did when you said, you called on me. I call that an archetype. You called on, what would Dr. Michael say? Do you have any idea how wise that is? Not just using me. You can use anybody. But now, talk about celebrating the little things because to me that was a celebration because I caught myself. That's beautiful. You see that thought, wherein the past I would have fed it and I went, you know what, I'm gonna ask him about this in real time. But even when you considered asking me, you started getting answers whether you liked it or not. You were already channeling my archetype and you were channeling my voice. And now that means you're out of your own little box, you're own little bubble. You're not a diversion of you. Right, you're story of me. Right. And let me tell you, if your story of me sucks, then the answers are gonna suck. But if your story of me is like,

21:28wow, this guy is really cool. He's really giving me a lot of really good, helpful advice or suggestions or offerings or things to consider. And now you're channeling Dr. Michael? Oh my God, I'm gonna, I'm getting this really good information now and he doesn't even have to be here. What would he say? And all you gotta do is realize I'm sanctifying everything. Everything has a purpose and a reason for being and the timeliness and the integrity. And next thing you know, you're supporting your optimal functioning just because you're considering what I would say. And it's not an accident that what I'm saying is supporting optimal functioning. You know, getting you to function more level headed and getting on top of whatever is showing up, not inviting that which makes you crumble because that's what happens. When we function really, what you resist persists, when we function really well under certain conditions, then what life will do will bring us to conditions that bring us to our knees so that we can get over it. So all we have to do is know clearly what sets us off. Like if we can throw, you know, give me A and Q the distress

22:30or give me C and Q the angst. And well, that's an invitation for the distress or the angst to show up so that you can do your work to get over it to find out that it doesn't own you that you can get on top of it. And you're not at the mercy of, oh my God, I can't believe this showed up, Qed my depression, you know, Q my, Q my, whatever you want to call it, lack of trust, Q, Q my uncomfortableness. And so if you can have a relationship where it really, you're open to letting anything happen, life on life's terms and you're gonna handle it like a boss and that's your commitment, you'd be surprised how amazingly functional you become. You become a superhuman functioning being and it's wonderful to watch. Yeah. And functioning is another great verbal word by the way. So there are two other, and you have many, but there were two others that struck me that I'd loved you to speak to for the time that we have together. One is the guardian within and the other is the lover of the door. Ah, toad, beautiful ones.

23:31Yeah, I know, they are. Okay, so the guardian is an archetype itself. So the guardian within is a book that I wrote and I have something called guardianology. And the idea of guardianology means the study of. So it's the study of the guardian archetype and that this guardian archetype is inside of you. But it's not the same as you. It has to be a voice higher than your own. Otherwise, again, where the dog chasing its tail. If you say the guardian is me and it's inside of me and it's like, you know, it's me and then I'm gonna ask the guardian, you're really asking your own voice. So you wanna ask something that's higher than you because there's no ceiling to quality of life improvements. There's no ceiling to your increased awareness. And so you wanna always make something outside yourself that's greater than you that you could step into. Whether it's more peace, more wisdom, it doesn't matter. More unconditional living where, what I think less and less things gonna bring you to, your knees, meaning that you're gonna be able to function optimally with everything. The guardian is like a parent. And when you parent yourself, then you're not the kid

24:32loosened the candy store, giving yourself permission to just throw yourself out there. If you hear your own voice and you're feeling sorry for yourself, say you're in that place, there's nothing you can do to tend to this child because you're so busy being the child. You're feeling sorry for yourself. But if you were the guardian within and you're like, oh my God, I gotta take care of this child, it's not me anymore, enter the guardian, something outside of me, super me, it's above me. And I'm gonna come in and go, Lorelai, it's not that bad, it's okay. Life is allowed to present this thing because life does all these things. And this is not a higher parent in a way. It is, it's definitely, and it's something that it's like you asking about what Dr. Michael say. What would the guardian say? What would my spotter say? If you have angels and guides, okay? Hey, team, tell me something, and I love that. Share this with, tell me something I don't know that I'm ready. Oh, I'm so glad I wrote that down that you're saying, say share that please. Please, I'm thinking. I'm serious, team, you know me better than I know myself.

25:34And this could, you could say this to God. If you love the term God and you have a great relationship, hey God, you know me better than I know myself. Tell me something that you know that I'm actually ready to learn that I've never known before. And so now you're opening yourself up to outside of your own little world, and you're actually going to a source that you know is greater than you, wiser than you because you're saying that up front, hey team, regards, guards are angels, you know, everybody who's been supporting me, you know the friends who've passed, you know lovers. And so you're going, you know, where you are, you know me better than that. Now this could all be folly, I don't care. This is what I mean by wielding your pristine power. We don't have to know if they really use a team or they really is a God or they really is a license intelligence story. But it's exactly and it's a swirled one. So anyway, the guardian within is the one where you're actually getting outside yourself as being the ultimate authority and you're going to a higher authority, the higher brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, where the animal brain is the one that runs on automatic pilot and that's who we are

26:35as a reaction, as a reflex, as a zombie. How about we got two minutes. How about the lover at the door? Well, that's because that's the same thing. When you open up the door and you let the lover in the door in, then you're inviting the lover in and that's a greater lover, that's somebody of what would love do now. And it's like, well, I don't know. I know what I would do. I know what I think is endearing or what I would, but what about the lover at the door? What about the embodiment of pure love? What if you open that up and ask the lover at the door and open up the door and let it in? And that's important because now you can actually become one with this greater lover because the more you study the lover at the door, meaning you're opening the door and letting it in, which means what you're embodying it. So now it's, when I'm inviting the lover at the door on our sort of sanctifying all of me. Well, of course, I mean, but yes, but unconsciously, but sanctification really does require consciously doing that. You want to turn around and say, look, because the person in the mirror knows if you're doing it or not, I'm going to sanctify me.

27:36Okay, give me an example, Laurel. I'm not asking you to do that now, but I'm just saying if you said that to yourself and say like, again, that's why I throw out these terms. Well, there's an integrity and in timing in my process and it's wiser and much wiser than me. And I'm programmed from wisdom to be wisdom and I am just a mystery revealing herself moment by moment. I can't wait to see what's coming next in my emergence and my next me. And so that's the lover at the door is when you, what would love do now? And so you want to be able to ask the lover, hey, what would the lover do now? The lover would be like, okay, just breathe, just breathe. Just recognize that everything is here right now and just enjoy it and don't let that be philosophy. Really can see that everything is here right now. We're all good and you're good and ever just breathe and enjoy life and welcome everything and you can handle everything like a boss. It doesn't have to go quote unquote your way. It can go life's way and you can always rise above it no matter what it is, let it be whatever it's gonna be

28:39and prepare up front to welcome it. And thank you for that prayer. That was a beautiful prayer that you just shared with us. Amen. I'm happy. I'm happy. I'm glad you're Michael. We're gonna have to do this again because I had so many more things I wanted to ask you. But for all of you now, hopefully you took away more than one nugget of something you can shift in your own consciousness. We can always make shifts in our consciousness. But again, a new moon is right for planting seeds and ultimately you can ask yourself a Virgo question. Am I devoted and dedicated to my own spirit? And that then is mirrored in everyone that I meet. So thank you, Dr. Michael. Thank you to everyone that is gonna watch this and share this and until we connect, I wish you blue skies, green lights and lucky stars. Thank you for listening to Joy Rules With Me, Laura Lai Robbins, your Joy Guru. If this episode sparked something in you, don't keep Joy to yourself, share and spread the light.

29:42Tune in the second and fourth Friday of the month at noon Pacific 3 PM Eastern, right here on Transformation Talk where together we reclaim Joy as the foundation for transformation. To dive deeper, visit me at joyrules.com. And remember, Joy isn't optional. It's essential and visit joyrules.com for lots more joy. Until next time, keep choosing Joy and join the Joy Revolution. And until we connect, I wish you blue skies, green lights and lucky stars. Yeah.