I’ve gone to many transformational seminars in my life and I must say that ULTIMATUM is hands-down my favorite seminar in the world.

ULTIMATUM is hosted by a man I greatly respect, appreciate and admire: Donny Epstein.

Donny is also the developer of Network Spinal Analysis and Somato Respiratory Integration, both technologies that have tremendously improved my life and have helped hundreds of thousands of people create extraordinary possibilities in their lives and legacies.

I first found out about Donny back in 2013 when Tony Robbins shared his transformational story to us during “Date With Destiny.”

We were learning about the developmental stages of consciousness through the concept of spiral dynamics when Tony introduced Donny as one of the only human beings he’s met who fully owns and lives at the level of turquoise: the second tier of consciousness.

This past January was the second time I attended this seminar and wow…it was an extraordinary experience for both me and my dad.

I went with my dad and we both gained profound wisdom, powerful energetic experiences, and strategies that really help make it a whole lot easier to live an awesome life with tons of energy that’s coherent with our energetic nature.

What Tony said about Donny and consciousness definitely rang true because throughout the week at ULTIMATUM, I felt like riding on the front seat of the roller coaster for evolutionary consciousness.

The seminar consisted of an integration of powerful, experiential lectures in the morning with Donny and SRI (Somato Respiratory Integration) integration exercises.

We then split into our pod groups where some groups waited their turn to receive energetic sessions with Donny and the others focused on going through in-depth exercises together.

To describe some of my experiences during the energetic sessions, it basically felt like a power plate machine was on max speed and went through my head, reverberating and waking up every cell in my body with an energy I honestly could not have imagined possible before.

In short, I felt like Neo entering the Matrix of infinite possibilities.

I’ve read many books and articles that speak about the infinite potential within us, but its a totally different thing when you viscerally feel it—not as a concept but as a true experience.

That is what ULTIMATUM is really about, experiencing the reality of your core energetic nature and the fabric of all creation.

We discover at a core who we are, what we’re made of and what we’re made for, and since my nervous system was entrained to living at a higher order, living congruently has become ever so effortless.

And yes, I had some rude awakenings too, but the awakening wasn’t rude. It was the limiting stories I’d been telling myself, keeping me from living a more amazing life that was rude. It was realizing the ways I had suppressed giving my gifts to others, rejected the gifts of others, and rejected giving and receiving love that was rude.

Fortunately, everything is exchangeable—including the version we show up as in the world. In fact, Donny even calls his evolving energetic discipline E3: Epstein Exchange Energetics.

Throughout the seminar I took a bunch of notes with the intention of sharing the wisdom I gained at ULTIMATUM with as many people as possible.

Here are the most extraordinary lessons I learned:

1. Energy is the context to all content.

This was one of the biggest lessons I learned and one I continue to focus on everyday.

Every single thing we do, thought we think, every conversation, every emotion, every posture, every idea, everything ultimately exists at a certain threshold of energy.

Here’s the funny thing: I realized that most of the time when I wanted to create change, I was changing my actions but I was still operating from the same or similar energetic threshold. I felt like I was working hard, but what I was doing was hardly working.

When I focus on creating more energy, being more energized, and contributing more energy to the field, everything naturally changed.

Two really simple and effective strategies to generating more energy have been simply changing the orientation of my focus and using SRI exercises.

2. Unless you value something, you’ll never be able to influence it/them/you.

If you can’t see someone from the lens of their world, you’ll never be able to develop rapport…which is the first step in influence. If you don’t value your finances, you’ll never be able to influence it constructively. If you don’t value yourself, your freedom of expression, you’ll never be able to voice up and speak your truth.

We’re all influencers and our lives impact the world so much more than we can imagine. When we realize that everything we say, do, think and feel makes a difference, it calls for a higher level of responsibility, consciousness, awareness and accountability.

3. AAA = Awareness, Acknowledgement, Acceptance.

This is the simplest and most powerful strategy I’ve discovered in creating change in any moment. The truth is nothing is as solid as we make it seem. Awareness is bliss and what we accept without a charge can move freely and bring us joy. It must become something else, as everything when fully experienced becomes exchangeable, fluid or transient in this energetic informational field of existence.

This is so key because often times, we can feel stuck in creating change. I notice that this generally happens because we’re not able to simply be with something without the need to change it or create a story for why things aren’t working.

The most powerful strategy that I’ve come across for embodying AAA is SRI. Using these exercises, which are also referred to as the 12 stages of healing, I’ve been able to connect with my experience with pure awareness, acknowledgement and embodied acceptance…which naturally results in change. In fact, depending on the stage, I often feel like I wake up as a new person after connecting with SRI.

4. The energy states: energy poor, neutral, rich and super rich.

Energy poor needs more energy coming into the system. Common language for energy poor is: “I can’t” or, “It won’t work” or, “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” and basically anything directly aligned with learned helplessness and choosing victimhood. At energy poor, one takes energy from the field and others.

Energy neutral is always associated with effort. At energy neutral, one keeps working at something, keeps trying to figure something out, or keeps attempting to correct something. One creates a story for why things did not or will not work out better. There is no real progress, no moving beyond, its really just staying within the comfort zone.

Energy rich has more than enough energy to sustain itself in rapidly changing situations. When energy rich, one has enough energy to make progress, create and build teams, take on new ventures and grow them to scale. This is life in high definition. Love, passion, joy, gratitude, triumph, focus, courage, empowerment and inspiration are naturally experienced by the energy rich person.

Super energy rich is an abundance of energy beyond energy rich. It’s a whole different dimension. Think what the difference is from experiencing the victory of your favorite sports team by yourself at home compared to being at the stadium and feeling the roars of victory vibrate viscerally through your cells. This is a life of mega crystal clear moment-to-moment HD and this is the playground for awakening.

5. How do you let go of an emotion if you’re not holding onto it?

I used to think that the tension and pain in my body was because I was holding onto repressed emotions, especially anger, from events I had no idea about. I chuckled at the realization of how its impossible to hold onto anger. In fact, it’s impossible to hold onto emotion. Emotion only lasts for seconds or minutes. What, “I need to leg go of anger,” really means is that, “I need to bless anger.”

The purpose of anger is to go from energy poor to neutral, direct our thoughts and step up to move forward in life. It’s a necessary state change to temporarily wake us up from our sleep.

We’re not holding onto anger…it’s just the metaphor we have, the story.

One of the coolest things I experienced at ULTIMATUM was how all the emotional receptor sites are along the spinal cord. By consciously choosing empowering emotions, we are able to expand in our lives. Emotion is what shapes our posture. Someone can’t be angry if they’re standing tall with their chest out and a big smile on their face. By consciously choosing our emotions throughout the day and having our pod groups to hold us accountable, we were able to experience the power of emotional fitness.

Since ULTIMATUM, it’s been much more effortless to connect with a wider range of energizing emotions.

6. The four levels of pain.

There are four levels of pain. With each level, the pain becomes more intense.

The first level of pain is the pain of avoiding pain. This can be seen when we don’t want to be with an experience, want to avoid confrontation, and basically live life in the shadows.

The second level of pain is the pain of not being able to manage your pain. This can be seen when we have been going for therapy for months or years and still feel unable to cope with or get rid of our pain. A metaphor for this is like trying to plug the holes of a sinking ship, realizing that what we’re doing isn’t working and our fear is becoming more real.

The third level of pain is feeling that you are not making progress fast enough. I was experiencing this level of pain most prior to ULTIMATUM. I felt like things weren’t happening fast enough. I was growing impatient with the speed of other people in getting things accomplished. I was taking massive action everyday and felt like it was taking too long to create and manifest the results. Frustration was the main disempowering emotion I felt on a regular basis.

The fourth level of pain is feeling like you don’t know your gifts or you’re not giving your gifts…or even more painful, not receiving the gifts of others. This is the pain of the soul. This was the level of pain I felt before I began receiving NSA (Network Spinal Analysis) care. This is the level of pain most people feel on their death beds when they reflect on all the times they wished they loved more. This is the deepest regret of the soul.

7. Some nuggets on the soul:

On the second to last day of ULTIMATUM, the whole day was dedicated to soul. In my life, I’ve heard the word soul many times. I’ve heard it in reference to many things, and the way I heard it described at ULTIMATUM sounded the most congruent to the energetic nature of the Soul Intelligence. Below are some of the notes and nuggets I jotted down about soul.

The mind likes to think something is missing; it likes to keep itself busy with effort. The soul knows there’s nothing missing. When we have soul connection with others, we know that there’s something to be done together because we know that collectively our lives will take a greater course because we came together and contributed our gifts.

Any decision, accomplishment, or relationship made without consulting the soul is irrelevant. Try it out for 30 days; make all your decisions from soul. Ask yourself: What would love do? What would love feel? What does love look like? And just go with your life following with that energy.

The soul is the ultimate disruptive technology; it interrupts your life with a calling. It brings a call to adventure, The Hero’s Journey, whatever we want to call it. Ultimately, it interrupts the life you’ve been living so you claim the life that’s calling you.

I recorded a full episode on my podcast with 17 of the extraordinary lessons I gained from ULTIMATUM. If you liked what you read and want to hear more, tune in below!

~

~

Which lesson benefitted you most…and why?

~

Author: Adam Siddiq

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flickr/New Illuminati