Dr. John Demartini is one of my favorite teachers and leading Human Behavioral experts. I have had the pleasure of experiencing his live teachings and learning from him. An extraordinarily knowledgeable, experienced, empathic, and genuine man, I also find his dry humor entertaining at times.
I have completed his core workshop—the Breakthrough Experience—as well as several of his masterclasses.
Demartini states, “Knowing your unique hierarchy of values, or highest priorities, is the most important place to start if you intend to expand to the next level of your empowerment.” And I agree 100%. Essentially, any area of your life you desire to cultivate starts with understanding and defining your highest values. I highly recommend his online values determination process as a starting point. It is one of his best defining tools.
Demartini suggests it is important to revisit your values quite often because life circumstances constantly change and what you valued 6 months ago may not be so important at the present time. I can attest to this because, at one time, my business was thriving, and my income was good, therefore money and business were not a focus or priority. They weren’t part of my top values. Within a 6 to 9-month span, my business and cash flow became nonexistent. My focus totally changed to my income and career.
Your core-driving values will determine what is most important to you at any given moment of time (what you love/passions), your priorities, inspirations, and what you should focus on to lead you onto the right path.
Demartini’s core program, the Breakthrough Experience, which I had the privilege of attending twice, was an emotional and remarkable experience. At times, it was extremely challenging, but liberating as well.
What propelled me to attend the event was a culmination of emotional events—figuring out my business passions, the recent loss of my brother to cancer, and all the uncertainty and disturbing nudges I was getting at the time. Additionally, I had a very strong desire to achieve a level of success and financial security that kept slipping away from me, which had me focusing my breakthrough experience on business and financial matters. I wanted to figure out if this low was due to having blocks, bad decision-making, fate, luck, or if I was just an idiot. Ultimately, going through this process and learning the Breakthrough Experience gave me the tools to apply to other areas of my life.
The Breakthrough Experience is a 2-day process.
A vigorous sequence of questions and answers that you will go through until you “Collapse” or neutralize whatever traumas or experiences are holding you back or that you need to deal with. “Collapse” is the terminology Demartini uses. It refers to having extreme emotions. They can be at the high end of the spectrum of emotions or the low. Those emotions can only be felt for short periods of time.
When they last longer than they should, they become unsustainable. The process that you experience leads you to come to peace or accept whatever intense emotion or trauma is debilitating you. Since I believed I was standing in my own way, I chose to focus my “Collapse” on myself.
At the end of the process, you will choose someone in the room that you feel best represents whatever you are trying to face inside yourself and talk to them. I choose Demartini because I felt he was the person that best represented me and what I was drawn to. Other people at the event were dealing with the death of a loved one, physical abusive relationships, failed relationships, business challenges, and as you can imagine, all kinds of traumas and challenges. Interestingly, I ended up chosen by a Japanese Businessman who didn’t even speak English.
The most interesting part for me was that I was fortunate to experience 2 “Collapses” back-to-back. After I collapsed (neutralized) myself with Demartini and addressed myself, I experienced an extraordinary experience with the Japanese man who chose me – he was also collapsing himself. Meaning, he felt that I represented him, I was his mirror. At this phase of the process, you sit very close, knees apart, face to face, and address your doppelganger.
He was speaking Japanese and his wife was translating. He was getting emotional and putting his hand on my knee as he kept talking and swaying back and forth. As his wife translated everything he was saying, I felt she was describing me as we had the same challenges. He kept saying that he was tired of people looking up to him as a person of strength, courage, problem solver, and as a leader. He started crying and saying that he was exhausted, depleted, and deflated. Ironically, I could absolutely empathize with him because that’s exactly how I felt – I was mentally drained. I started getting nervous because my role there was to serve as a mirror, communicate, and channel back, speaking from my heart, whatever it was that came through.
When time came, I just started talking and that was when I had my “Breakthrough Experience.” I started saying that it is okay to be vulnerable and emotional. That you can’t continue at that pace. That you need to be kind and mindful to yourself.
The experience was riveting because I talked, and honestly, I had no idea where it was coming from. He got more emotional, held my hand, and finally, embraced me. It was remarkable and totally unexpected as that’s where the beauty of life is – the unknown.
The one-on-one intervention Demartini facilitated with a young woman with 2 precious children who had just lost her husband to a recent helicopter crash was truly emotional and liberating as well. He took her through the whole process, which lasted over 4 hours. There were moments I had to leave the room because it was just too emotional, heavy, and disheartening. I give her credit, though. She was resilient and confronted all of Demartini’s gut-wrenching questions that led to her collapse. At times, you could feel the heavy energy and tension in the room, but in the end, it was so beautiful and emotionally liberating.
As I mentioned, when you get to the final step, you choose a person from the room to symbolize the person or situation you are addressing. She chose a woman to symbolize her husband, which was very interesting.
As we debriefed after the process, we asked her why she chose that woman. She mentioned she had never met any of us before but she was just drawn to this woman. So, Demartini asked the woman what she did for a living. Turns out she was also a pilot.
The beauty and irony here is that you never know who or what you will be drawn to. And the amazing part of this woman choosing another woman to symbolize her husband is that she didn’t judge or focus on a man. She trusted her intuition and energy, which ultimately freed her from her trauma.
This experience benefited me by exposing me to the blind spots in my life. Such as, wanting things to always be perfect, my patience, my ego, and the conflicts around my values/beliefs around business and money. After the Breakthrough Experience, I did feel lighter and clearer. I knew I had shifted in my perceptions and learned how I need to be more flexible in business. But the biggest breakthrough was getting to a point where I was able to differentiate the things I deeply, truly desired. This differentiation helped me decipher between creating and living a fantasy or creating a life that was aligned with the integrity of my values and beliefs.
