I have journals full of notes about how the universe was testing me. Not like an entry here or there, but entire journals of how I thought I was being tested by the universe, questioning whether or not I was blocked. For over three years, I followed a very popular manifestation program, hoping that it would make me more magnetic. And a core pillar of that program was that the universe tests your self-worth, tests your readiness. So every time I made a bold move or I did something aligned with my authentic self, and then something would go sideways or something would happen that I didn’t want to happen afterwards, or somebody hit an old wound, or a plan fell through, or something shitty happened. I didn’t get upset. I got excited. I was like, yes, I got the attention of the universe. I’m being tested. I’m getting closer. And I wrote every test down in my journals as evidence of how magnetic I was becoming. And now I reach back to that version of myself and I give her so much love because I understand now what she was actually celebrating, which is the idea that something outside of her was watching her and deciding if she was ready and worthy to have what she wanted. That Linda was essentially getting excited about being small and powerless in her own reality. If you’ve ever been conditioned to respond with a hell yes when life got a little janky right after you made a quote unquote aligned move or a bold choice because you thought it meant the universe was finally noticing that you were being more magnetic, been there. If you’ve ever gotten frustrated that you made that high self-worth decision and then something didn’t work out that you wanted, been there too. Because a lot of that excitement that I felt during that program was pretense, covering up frustration because I was told that the universe testing me was a good thing. But what I have realized and experienced on the other side of that disempowering distortion is that nothing was testing me. And nothing is testing you. There is no external superior force waiting for you to show up in your highest self-worth in order to bless you with what you want because you are finally ready, because you are the universe. This thing that you keep giving your power over to, you are that force. And you already have everything that you want, even if it’s not in your immediate lens of reality. And what many spiritual people teach through a testing framework isn’t a trial of your worth or your readiness, but it’s something very real. Things do get unstable right after you shift into higher coherence. And every system in existence goes through this water, your brain, your reality. The moment when something moves from one stable state to another, that uncomfortable and sometimes wacky in between has a name in physics and in neuroscience. And because so much of spirituality has become distorted by hierarchical and proving frameworks, this natural, empowering, and super cool process has been sieved through a I am beneath the universe narrative that makes people believe that a superior force is putting them through the ringer in order to prove their worth so that they can have what they want. In this episode, we’re gonna walk through what’s actually happening in that stretch, why fear spikes right at the edge of what you want, and why none of it means that you have to keep leveling up or keep raising your self-worth or keep digging through your wounds. And you’re also going to learn who’s really holding you steady through all of it. I’m Linda Villines. Welcome to the Simple Source, where we liberate your source self so you can stop striving and start arriving. Now let’s get into why the universe isn’t testing you and why you are not blocked.

The Universe Doesn’t Judge You

Linda Villines 3:52

So tell me if this makes sense to you. If the universe is testing you, that means that you’re being judged. Am I right? That’s the mechanism of a test. You pass or fail, essentially. You are being judged. So even though some spiritual folks try to circumvent that failing bit and say that there is no failing, they’ll still tell you that you’re being tested, which is you being judged by the universe. And they paint that as if that’s a spiritual thing. Now, in what spiritual world is that spiritual? I’m not supposed to judge others because I’m all light and love, and yet the universe can judge me? No, friend. I am the universe. So then it’s okay to judge myself when I’m supposed to love myself. Do you see the holes and the distortion? It makes zero sense. Living inside a testing framework means you’re essentially okay being graded all day, every day, by the universe, or whatever higher power you subscribe to. That means every choice you make, every thought you have is being judged. And then you know what that creates? Anxiety, tension, fear. Of course it does. Is the universe gonna think that this is my highest self-worth? You’re constantly asking that. You’re measuring every choice against that. And then instead of actually showing up in genuine, easy, full presence, you show up in a way anyone that’s being watched and judged shows up on your best behavior, on eggshells, hiding your true thoughts, hiding your true feelings, not wanting to be judged as not spiritual or not high vibe or not high self-worth. And then they tell you that’s a spiritual practice when really it’s a self-diminishing practice because you’re afraid to be real, you’re afraid to have fears, to doubt, to not know, to fuck up, to be frustrated, because you think the universe is testing you and you want to pass that test. You want to level up so you can be more magnetic and attract what you want. But really, the most quote unquote magnetic thing is actually knowing that you don’t attract anything because you are already everything. That’s the true spiritual practice. I do not attract. I am. And what also doesn’t make sense about that whole testing framework that no one questions because we’re all conditioned to think struggle is normal, is that it’s not even how reality actually operates. Reality is a responsive field. Your field, in fact. Your reality belongs to you because it comes from you and thus is you. So your field is not withholding because you are your field. And your field, your reality reflects, because that is what any field does. It reflects its environment, its signals, its data, its state, its source, its coherence without judgment. The same way a mirror reflects you without deciding whether you deserve to see yourself, and the same way that your body reflects your emotional and mental state without you telling it to do that. That’s the nature of any

Reality is a Responsive Field

Linda Villines 6:52

field. So let’s talk about real science because spiritual distortion is it’s not giving you the truth. And science and spirituality are actually friends when you put them side by side without all that distortion. So before any outcome settles into physical form, a field holds more than one possible version of it at the same time. So in physics, that’s called superposition. It’s real, it’s measured, it happens in every system in existence. That’s also why you have everything all the time. You don’t have to attract shit. So your reality exists in many possible states at once until an interaction, an observation settles it or collapses it into the one that coheres with you in the moment, meaning the one that you are coherent with. So when you do something that disrupts your baseline, like you go bold or you take a step back and you get smaller or you show up differently, there’s friction, there’s wobbling because there is a change. Your field has to process that change. And so every version between your new state and the old one goes through some turbulence before it settles, before it’s stabilized. And that’s called a phase transition in science. And that is how reality actually works. Nothing is testing you. The universe is not waiting on you to raise your self-worth and become more magnetic through making shit more difficult for you or more activating for you. It’s really absurd when you think about it. Your reality is just phase shifting because you are changing. Your level of coherence is changing.

Superposition and Phase Transitions

Linda Villines 8:26

So last year I shifted timelines over 25 times in three months. So that’s a lot of timeline shifting. And these timeline shifts were not like I wake up and I’m feeling different. They resulted in my reality changing in measurable, verifiable, inexplicable ways. And those changes happened immediately. Like, for instance, my natal chart changed multiple times after I made like massive identity changing decisions and like stuff from my past would alter itself in the present moment. Like really science fiction, truly wild, supernatural, magical stuff for three months every single day. And then that’s when I realized no, no, no, no, no. The universe is not out there doing shit for me, blessing me, providing for me. I am my reality, and my reality is me. There’s no separation. Everything I feel, everything I do, I choose is reflected in my reality because that is how reality works. And that meant that nothing was testing me. And that meant that I wasn’t on trial. I wasn’t being judged. And when I let that belief go, that’s when shit got really, I mean, even more magical and wild. Because I unsubscribe from the distortion that I am being held in judgment by an external force with power over my reality. When you continue to believe that your reality is held hostage by the universe’s judgment, by whether or not you pass a test or whether or not you are being tested at all, your reality will never be yours. Your life will never be yours. Your magic will never be yours. It will always belong to something you earn through showing the universe that you’re ready, you’re worthy, which is one of the biggest lies in so many common spiritual frameworks. And the

The Lie of Being Blocked

Linda Villines 10:09

other lie that’s super common is you have this hidden block or this wound block that you’ve failed to clear, and that’s why you’re being tested, or why you haven’t gotten what you want. I know that block framework so well, very well too. I used to use that word all the time. And I still have to catch myself from saying it. I refuse to use that word now because, again, I’ve unsubscribed from everything that has tried to steal my sovereignty, tried to tell me that I’m small and powerless to something else when I am source. But block has just become this catch-all in the self-improvement personal development space. If you don’t have what you want, you’re blocked, right? That’s what everyone says. Everything that isn’t flowing is a block. And we all just agree to it and we’re like, yes, yeah, my wound, my flaw, my trauma, my shame, my shadow, my beliefs, my habits, my this, my that is a barrier that’s blocking me from the life that I want. And when I was still subscribed to that distortion, I would feel blocked all the time because I believed I was blocked. And so then, of course, I had to get unblocked, right? And then that’s what healing was for a while, trying to break down this barrier standing in the way of me and what I wanted. I was led to believe that my trauma, my body, my beliefs, my whatever wound at the moment I was moving through was preventing me from having what I wanted. I was led to believe that that was quote unquote doing the work. But what that mentality does is it distorts your relationship with yourself, your trauma, your wounds, your own mind and your own body. It turns your trauma and your pain and your shame and parts of yourself that are hurt into adversaries. And when you relate to yourself in that way, right? My wounds are blocking me, you can’t ever really truly love yourself unconditionally with any genuine ease or integrity because you’re relating to parts of yourself with resentment and anger, with fear, with disappointment, with disempowerment, as if your trauma is in the way of your highest self and your highest timeline, which it is not. That’s why so many people think that they are broken or that something in them needs to be fixed. We’re all fed this idea that the darker, wounded, flawed parts of us block us from the good things that we want in life, from our dreams, from love, from abundance, from success. But nothing is in your way. They are not an impediment. What they are is their liberators. They liberate you when you relate to those parts of yourself and your life as allies instead of adversaries, because that’s what they are. Your trauma and your wounds and your pains and your mistakes and your shame and your hurts do not stand in the way of anything that you want because they are actually where your real strength lies, your courage and your genius and your wisdom, your capacity to love deeply, to feel deeply, to affect others deeply when you see them for what they truly are, which are the instructions for you in this life to remember how powerful and unconditional and sovereign and free you already are. That’s the distortion of the all my wounds and fears are a block framework. It turns an intelligent design into something that you have to fight against, that you feel burdened by, threatened by, defeated by. And then they tell you that’s doing the work. And then you get frustrated that you’re still blocked because you’re still struggling, and then you get scared that nothing is ever going to change. The truth is there is no work. I really hate that phrase, doing the work, because working to be free is the distortion. Your liberation is not something that you earn, it is something you remember and you reclaim because being free is your natural state. So

Why Fear Shows Up After Making Aligned Choices

Linda Villines 14:06

let’s get into the science now of why your wounds and your fears aren’t actually blocking you. So if you’ve ever felt like a wave of fear or doubt after you’ve made a big shift or a decision, and then you were like, No, I shouldn’t be scared, I shouldn’t be doubtful, I should be confident, and my highest self-worth or what I want is going to be blocked. And then you start digging for the wound to clear, so you can, you know, pass that test. Here’s the neuroscience, so you can actually breathe easier when that happens, because that whole thing is designed to happen. The fear is supposed to come up. When you establish a new belief and a new way of being, your brain doesn’t just like automatically dump that old belief into the trash bin and then press like delete permanently. For a time, both are in competition for dominance. That’s called cognitive dissonance. When your mind holds two things that cannot both be true at the same time, you feel uncomfortable, right? If you don’t understand what’s happening, because there’s confidence and then there’s self-doubt, there’s ease and then there’s fear. And so if you don’t understand that this is a natural part of transitioning into a new way of being, you think that you’re blocked. But what’s really happening is just called cognitive dissonance. And that’s the new and the old reconciling. So you feel that discomfort, you feel the contradiction, and then you think you’re being tested, you still have to get unblocked, and then you go journal, you go do another meditation, you have to heal more of the wound, and all of that discomfort doesn’t actually help your brain reconcile into the new state of being. What you have to understand is that flip-flopping is your brain literally trying to reconcile in its own phase transition. And so if you’re not at peace with your own mind because you believe that you are being tested, that you are blocked, then that contradiction, that phase transition is going to be even more uncomfortable for you because you think something is wrong. But your brain is working fine, exactly as it is designed. It’s just deciding between possibilities. And it doesn’t decide by choosing the loudest thought that you keep affirming to yourself to manage the fear or the anxiety or the shame. Every possible version of what’s happening gets weighed based on numerous factors, right? Your subconscious programming, your emotional states, your emotional baseline, your identity, your nervous system capacity. And then the version with the most weight is the one that your brain settles on as reality right now. So scientists call that Bayesian inference. And it’s part of how your nervous system decides what’s true every single second of your life without you consciously doing any of the deciding. And there’s also research where people were shown like a single image that can be interpreted two different ways. And what they observed is that the brain, their brains didn’t choose one and then like put down stakes. Their brains would flip-flop, go back and forth, back and forth until it landed. So even your brain operates through superposition, right? Different possibilities are always existing. And the possibility that is most coherent becomes the one that is field reflected, observed, lived. So your mind and your field go through the same phase transition that everything in existence does. Now you may think that that doubt that shows up and that fear in the second guessing and the why am I doing the thing again that I said that I would never do is a block that is still blocking you, but nothing is in your way. You are not barricaded by anything. Your brain, your nervous system, your reality are just in a phase transition. They’re just trying to stabilize into a new way of being. It’s really that simple. So when old shit comes up, old wounds that you thought you healed, right? Activations you thought you got over, or when old fears surface, when you’re at that threshold of big changes, nothing is wrong. Let me repeat that. Nothing is wrong. You are simply in the transition phase between two different possibilities, two realities that have yet to collapse and stabilize into one. So when that old shit comes up, the fear, the doubt, the activation, the thing you thought you were over, you have to understand it for what it is instead of mystifying it and giving your power away. It’s just the old state resolving as the new one stabilizes. And you also have to recognize that the greater the changes, the more volatile or more severe the phase transition can be. So, you know, my reality went through really wild and unbelievable shit last year in a very short amount of time. And then it just went silent, like nothing for a while. And I was like, where the fuck? Where did all my magic go? And then I was like, oh, this is a phase transition. My reality is phase shifting. And instead of making meaning out of the quiet, I just let it go. Like literally made nothing of it because I knew that the more that I resisted it, the more that I made it this like thing, the longer that it would actually take for my new reality to stabilize. So now when any friction surfaces after I make a big shift or I have a big moment, I literally just say to my reality, which is essentially me talking to myself, you’d be shifting like a mofo. And then I laugh about it. And then I go on with my day. And then everything stabilizes without me forcing, coercing, being frustrated or having to go in some sort of why, why, why, right? Because there’s nothing to search for. It’s all me. And when I just focus on my coherence, that’s what I experience reflected in my reality. But the chaos can be disorienting, it can be frustrating, it can feed into feeling like you’re powerless if you don’t understand the mechanics of how reality actually works.

Chaos, Silence, And Criticality

Linda Villines 19:55

So we talked about the inner instability. Let’s talk about that outer instability, right? When the external world just starts breaking, shit goes downhill real fast, or when you get a giant bill out of nowhere, or your vacation plans you may just fall through in the last minute in the most annoying way, or you know, your partner has this major crisis all of a sudden that affects your entire relationship, and you’re just like, what the fuck? I was living in alignment with my authentic and highest self. What is this nonsense? It’s a phase transition, friend, at a larger scale. So let me explain this through the way that I like to explain this, which is water freezing and dyes. Water at zero degrees is neither liquid nor ice. At that state, physicists observe fluctuations that are massive, enormous, right? Tiny pockets freeze and then they melt and then they freeze again. And a disturbance that would have resolved in a single area actually then travels through the entire system because at that threshold where water becomes ice, every part of the system becomes connected to every other part. That’s called criticality. That seeming chaos right before a system settles is a known event in physics. And then some spiritual folks call that the storm before the calm, right? And they say it’s another trial to build your strength and essentially prove yourself again. That’s not what’s happening. You’re never being tested. You’re simply in a natural phase transition that’s literally documented over and over and over again in so many fields of science through all sorts of systems. Instability peaks right at the moment before change is about to complete. That is fact. And your reality is a connected system. So right at the threshold of big changes, every shift is going to expose the whole of your reality system. That means one shift ripples through everything your relationships, your bank account, your body, your career, right? Simultaneously, because at that critical point, everything has to change. So the whole system can settle as one coherent new state or field. So you might have thought that you fucked up or that you’re still blocked or you didn’t pass the test. But none of that is true. Your reality is getting wonky because big shifts are happening in dimensions that you are not perceiving. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that it is not real. So you may think that you have fallen out of alignment, but what’s really happening is your reality is about to finish a major phase shift. So for me, that threshold is not usually chaos because I don’t experience chaos like ever. So for me, the phase transition is often silence or just like one major, like what the fuck? But often it’s silence. Like I said last year, after three months of these really wild science fiction-y timeline shifts, it just all stopped. For a season, there was just nothing. And some spiritual practitioners will call that the void or the magic dark, and they tell you it’s another test. But man, is that just more distortion? There is no void. Like a vacuum doesn’t even exist. And the Linda that used to buy into that would have felt like I was being watched by the universe to see if I passed, if I remained chill, if I could stay in my high self-worth. But instead, I made nothing of it. Because there’s nothing to make of it. Because I knew the silence wasn’t really silence at all. That in dimensions beyond my immediate awareness, there was a ton of shit happening in the background, that my reality was phase shifting like a mofo. And physics has a name for that silence too, actually. Right before a system tips into a new state, its response can go dormant, right? Things that used to go fast move quickly, they stop moving on the surface. And scientists call that critical slowing down. And they use that silence actually as an early warning to recognize when a major transition is about to happen. So silence is not a void. There’s no such thing as a void. And chaos is not you still being blocked. Your reality might get loud at the threshold, it could go quiet, but you have to trust that on the other side of that turbulence or that disruption is something big, something different, a whole entirely new reality in state. Like for me, after that silence, after that nonstop wild and supernatural timeline shift season, and then it just went quiet. I met my twin flame’s highest self in super causal form. He moved in to my house, and we had a multidimensional relationship for a summer. So the earlier magic became like a whole other wild, unbelievable level of magic after those few months of silence. That’s what happens when you trust that your reality is doing what everything does naturally in existence, which is transition exactly how everything transitions. So when you’ve made a big change, when you’ve adopted a new identity, a new way of being, and things go to shit or things go really quiet, you have to remember now that nothing is wrong. There’s no test, there’s no block. Your reality is just going through a transitional phase that is necessary, that is natural, that is temporary. And your coherence, your ability to be coherent, mind, body, soul, is what stabilizes that transition. Not you spiraling about what you did wrong, what tests you didn’t pass, what block you didn’t clear. That’s not going to help stabilize your reality into the new phase. So the disruption is part of reality’s natural design, but people don’t like disruptions. They don’t like uncertainty. They don’t like instability. They fear the unknown. They fear what’s not predictable. And that’s normal. We’re all conditioned that way. But your reality has to change if you want your life to change. And that change involves a literal and scientifically proven phase transition that is uncomfortable for so many people because so many people aren’t yet comfortable with being uncomfortable, with that in

Why Instability Makes You Uncomfortable

Linda Villines 25:49

between. People need immediate answers. And these are people who don’t fully remember that nothing is happening to them, but everything is happening through them. Who meet every point of uncertainty with did I miss a step? Am I being tested? Where am I still blocked? Why isn’t this changing faster? Or with less friction. I spent years asking, quote unquote, the universe out there those same questions. And every single time I did that, I put something outside of me in charge of my life, in charge of my coherence, my sovereignty, my freedom. And all those years in that manifestation program were years that I celebrated being small, where I got excited about the universe giving me something. But that is nothing to celebrate. That is a distortion of the deepest kind. What excites me now is when I look around and I see the world and I know in every single particle, layer, wave of my being, I created this. And this means I can create anything. I am the universe. And all those frameworks that I bought into about being tested or blocked, they were not speaking to my highest self. And they were not speaking as their highest self. Because the last time I asked those questions, I didn’t ask some force out there. I asked my highest self. And the answers were no, you did not miss a step. No, you are not being tested. No, you are not blocked. And no, time is irrelevant. And no, the friction is part of the transition of all things in existence. That friction, that discomfort is often attributed to some external force when really it’s all you. You are the force. And a phase transition is fragile. It’s unstable by nature. And so that new state needs stabilizing before it can lock in and hold. And the one helping you stabilize through that transition, right, surfacing those moments of doubt and fear and chaos is actually your highest self. They are literally helping your reality shape itself so that it reflects more of them, which is your true self. And that is always happening. And sometimes that looks like the unfamiliar or the uncomfortable or the unknown or that old wound or that old fear or that old shame or frustration or silence or chaos after you’ve moved closer and alignment with your true self. And we’ve been conditioned to believe that that’s some form of punishment or some barricade to break down or some trial where we have to prove ourselves. But really, it’s your highest self showing you your whole self through your reality, all the cracks and all the fragility, all the unseen chasms, and all your magic. So you understand that you are that powerful. When you start to step into your power, your power is going to start to reveal itself in your reality. And the more power you reclaim, the more coherent you become as your true highest self, embodied. And that means the more your reality is going to shift. But that’s how reality works. That turbulence, that disruption during that transition is the most natural thing. Everything in existence goes through phase transitions. And so turning that into some mystical external thing that happens outside of you, and then giving that external agency over you disempowers you. Phase transitions are innate to everything in existence. They happen all the time. Water does it, a magnet does it, a star does it, the climate does it, all systems, biological, non-biological, experience turbulence or disruption before a new order is achieved. Your brain does it, your reality does it. It was never a test. You are not blocked. There’s no storm and there is no void. Never some initiation you had to prove your way through. It’s simply what being is. But then the spiritual community took the most ordinary process and existence, then moved it outside of you, called it the universe, called it some other higher power, and then told you it had authority over your reality and your life. That is the distortion, not the friction or the wobbling, not the silence. The distortion is handing something so natural that happens in you, in your field, in your reality to an external force that you have to ask permission from, and that you then believe is some special event that you have to celebrate or then fear. The truth is, your magic is yours. Celebrate that because you are that powerful. And let’s make that ordinary. Thank you so much for being here today. I hope this episode awakened you, inspired you, and reminded you of what’s possible when you love, heal, and free yourself, and reclaim your highest truth and power. If this show has transformed or enlightened your self-love, growth, and healing journey, please like, save, and share this episode and leave a positive review on Apple or Spotify. And subscribe to be reminded of new episodes. Your support is deeply appreciated and truly helps this show so much. And if today’s episode resonated with you, don’t stop here. Go deeper. My book, Unconditional, You Are Perfect As You Are, expands on these teachings and gives you the missing framework about self-love that no one is talking about. So get your copy today to start reading and loving yourself more. And if you’re ready for the ultimate healing journey with daily instruction and guidance from me, I’d love to see you inside the Source membership. The only holistic and comprehensive step by step self healing program that is proven to work. Remember, you were never meant to struggle or wait for what is already yours. It’s time to claim everything you want and more. All the links are in the show notes. I’ll see you next time.