Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dionne Blackwell. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Dionne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
The idea behind my starting a coaching business came after many years of working for government, in addition to being divinely inspired. My company Nirvana Retreats & Nirvana Lifestyle Network came out of my professional work within the areas of community economic development, urban planning and human capital development. I was given insight to help see their lives from a much different perspective than what we were given from society and our parents. I began to frame structural frameworks designed to help individuals see their life based upon what they created or designed for themselves.
Nirvana courses are designed to teach people how to heal their lives from within. Each module will provide deep insight into each aspect of one’s current life. You will review how you make choices, manage your time, identify where emotional barriers and entanglement are hidden, and what areas of your life need improvement or more value.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As a Chicago native, I began my journey into the personal & spiritual development journey over 30 years ago. I have always been interested in spirituality because it gave me freedom within my soul, verses rigidness through traditional religion. So I began to explore new perspectives about Yahweh and who He is. Parallel to my own spiritual growth & development came my professional career in government, working in the areas of community economic development, urban planning, and human capital development. I was given insight on how to blend these various skills together to design my program on teaching people how to heal themselves. By blending spiritual principles, organizational concepts and human capital strategies together helped me to birthed new for the development of our lives. Yahweh revealed to me a unique way in which we all can learn to revitalize our understanding towards the development of our spiritual, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
After nearly 20 years of working for government, I received a divine message from Yahweh God to quit my job and step into a spiritual journey of the unknown if I wanted to heal my life. Not knowing what I was about to face, I had to trust this invitation into the unknown, as well as trust my own life, faith and beliefs.
After stepping out, I realized I had taken on too much of the world’s consciousness and conditionings, I had become a puppeteer. I realized I needed to get back to me and clear my space I let the world consciousness occupy, I did not govern my own inner space or as I like to call it… my kingdom. The unfoldment of my spiritual journey began to reveal to me I needed to eliminate some things within my life, those old outdated emotional entanglements, that are now obsolete, mental barriers I was hanging onto. This process took me 10 to go through, to change and turn my life to a healthier place. However, it was not simple nor was it easy, this is just a brief synopsis of what I have experienced in my life.
My spiritual journey began with a series of earthly tests I had to complete for a course of 10 years. In the beginning I faced several life-threatening experiences causing me to give up hope and even the desire to commit suicide. I will never forget the experience of hearing the voice of Yahweh God one morning telling me to quit my job and follow Him. It took me a minute to grasp what was being said to me. I had to go further into my faith to discern if this was Yahweh God or my ego talking to me. I began a prayer campaign every morning at 3:00 a.m. until 5:00 a.m. to clear my mind, thoughts, to receive more downloads from God to know it was He who was talking and not my own ego. This lasted about three to four months and then I finally took the leap. My faith was so strong I did whatever Yahweh wanted from me. I was determined to show him how committed I was to His Splendor. I no longer wanted to live a superficial life, I wanted to know how to live the mission for my life. The deeper the unfoldment of my committed faith to Yahweh, the closer my journey experienced afflictions. They came in the form of eviction, uterine cancer, lupus, homelessness, divorce, and double pneumonia twice. I had to send my son to his father for his loving care. There were other life challenges I also experienced preparing me for my sacred journey, doorways, and gateways I had to enter.
These traumas were extremely devastating but necessary for my spiritual growth, and to prove my love, commitment, and obedience to Yahweh for what He was preparing me to do. It is important to know that we all are going to have experiences within our lives, these experiences are our tests, challenges, and initiations we must face. But the only thing Yahweh God wants to know is “Did You Pass the Test,” or did you give up and refused to try. Passing the test is key to liberty within the heart.
Along the way however, I was receiving downloads from the cloud, (God) on how to replenish areas of loss. My urban planning and economic development skills gave me insight on how to design my new life and how to operate within a kingdom through the methodologies of organizational structure, caring for space we build upon, knowing the dwellers we invite into our kingdom and to have better control over my life.
My story may not be your story, fore this is what I had to do. Our common thread however is one day you wake up unhappy, no longer enjoying what you do, tired of emotional and mental fragmentations, hinderances and barriers in your life. You soul is seeking something new and different but you are not sure what it is. Whatever the level of growth may be for you, your soul will sequester a clarion call upon your life. That moment of change is standing before you and there are no other options but to answer the call if you seek smooth transitions.
This is where my programs begin to take shape and form. Because I personally transformed, transcended and ascended from my old life of the mundane. I transferred my life into new spaces offering me new perspectives towards living the life I deserve to live. I was the hair-club president of these new methodologies to teach me not only how to heal my life, but to also have a structured process in which to create change.
Later I began to create programs to help others learn how to heal their lives. We all have the power to heal our lives, we were given that from our divine source, but we all do not have the courage to change.
Now my programs and courses have become the educational component providing an exchange of ideas, philosophies, research, and methodologies leading towards a wealth of information, in practical resources, and tools designed to help individuals recover from hidden pains of the past found deep within.
When Yahweh sequestered me to change the style of my life, He revealed to me proficiencies I learned throughout my career journey that would serve as useful assets for co-creating new frameworks designed to teach individuals how to restructure, reset, and build new and stronger foundations within their kingdom. These proficiencies included my work in the areas of human capital and economic development, urban planning, and project management.
I am a Social Architect, Metaphysician, Truth Seeker, Author, and a true practitioner of my own teachings, philosophies, and spiritual concepts, I had to first experience the front end of my spiritual walk before I could see benefits and share it with others.
Program Tools
Your Classic Recordings…
It is not possible to transform or ascend without first “Self-Reflecting” oneself. You will take a closer look at the life you currently created, reviewing previous decisions made; why you have the life you live (created), where your gaps, frailties and fragmentations exist, what you need to do to improve and reshape the style of life you truly want.
Integrating Spiritual Principles, Laws & Holistic Techniques…
The secret to reaching and maintaining a ‘wholeness’ state of mind is to learn how to live life from ‘within’. As you move forward and position self to improve your way of life, you must review where they are within your belief system. You must move away from emotional triggers and towards your overall well-being.
The Transformation Process…
To transform one’s character, behaviors, or patterns, you must recognize those areas of your life in need of transformation. Do you think you need to change or transform some part or all your life? Come and take an even closer look. Uncover hidden barriers, gaps, entanglements, or strongholds deep within your being? Change can only occur when are able to identify where slow growth and lack of progress is showing up in your life.
A Spiritual Renaissance…
Growth requires birthing pains. It is the process needed to create a resurgence and reawakening during the rebirthing of one’s new selves. A new age of uncertainty and the unknown will be upon you, causing birthing pains as you enter the ebb and flow for both change, growth, and expansion. Your spiritual renaissance will help you surge towards ascension and oneness and the spiritual liberation you seek for your new life.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
NLN “Making Progress in the New Millennium” program activities are designed to help individuals look at the current lifestyle they created or designed for themselves. Through our structural frameworks and filters, individuals will learn how to see new perspectives about themselves, identify where fragmentation, repetitive patterns of behavior exist, and how obstacles, and old habits and belief systems causes disruption, disturbance, and separation within one’s growth process.
Nirvana’s “Lifestyles by Design” program is an advanced course to construct the Formation for a Kingdom Portfolio. Making Progress in the New Millennium is a prerequisite for this course. Upon reviewing your previous lifestyle profile and what was learned within your human binary, you begin the process of reviewing those tools, resources, philosophies, and new perspectives necessary for restructuring the foundation of your Kingdom.
Our tools give new insight for creating change and the opportunities associated with constructing the life you truly wish to live. We simply guide you through our frameworks.
Take Possession of Your Kingdom!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
One of the most devastating experiences in my life was the year 911 and the terriost attacks to our country. I was also the year and month in which I planned to be a featured speaker at the “Wholelife Expo” convention in Chicago, IL., during the last week of September. While I was home watching the devastation within New York City, crying and praying for everyone there, a week later the entire country was shut down, no travel, no airplanes, no Wholelife Expo.
I had invested $30,000 for this event as well as waiting for the anticipation of a tremendous breakthrough in my business, career and life. I received an email informing me not only was the convention cancelled, but my financial investment was not going to be returned.
I thought I was going to die, here’s another devastation. How do you recover from witnessing an experience like 911, and how do you recover from a financial and business opportunity that has caused you a catastrophe of financial, emotional, mental, and spiritual hardships and setbacks. There was nothing I could do but to accept this reality and how my loss was meaningless compare to the people in New York. But the hurt, the trauma was still real.
By November, a friend gifted me with a trip to Sedona, Arizona. She knew I needed a place to grieve, heal and restore my mental and emotional wellbeing. I needed to reconnect with my divine and higher self, because I dropped pretty low within my spirit. All types of mixed emotions shooting through me like the stars in the sky. She thought the Geminid meteor shower in Arizona would be useful to my healing. And it was. I had never seen so many stars in my life, shooting across the sky. Each star was a light of possibility, an idea, light from heaven. It was such a spiritual connection for me. The Red Rock Mountains were healing for me. I was able to climb a few of them, feel the earth and its energy, its intuitiveness that seem to refocus my attention from my pain to my possibilities.
In other words, we are not to get stuck in a situation, the universe has too much within it to offer and share with us. It is to vast to be experienced by limitations. I had to learn how to trust again in what I believed and know for sure. I had evidence in my life that what I was doing is part of the journey and the plan that will lead me towards my reason for being here on earth.
When I returned home, I had to be still, not jump back into things. I had to wait for divine instruction on when to begin again. What to do next, how to get it done. But many years had past. I became frustrated again, giving up hope because things or my business dreams were not operating from the plans I had made for myself.
Then Covid-19 came, another devastation in human life. It was my full recovery room. I was not operating at full scale prior until the need for what I do presented an invitation for me to fully come back. What I discovered about myself is what I call the “Gap.” It was like the entire world received a clarion call to change their lives and we all were sequester by Covid-19. What I released was people were going through the same process I experienced, feeling loss, devasted, questions their future and what is to be next for their lives. Again, Yahweh God instructed me to pick up my cross and walk. I had to look at the gap from 911 and covid, what were my lessons learned, how did I enrich my life so I could help others through what was familiar to me.
I began to modify my programs, started a podcast, and began to teach on topics of the importance of stillness, resilence, valley experiences, patience and all the tools necessary to send thought-provoking, inspirational and introspective messages to help others gain strength.
We must gain resilence, trust, and knowingness when we are walking through the valley of death (separation & lonliness), trying our best not to feel no evil thoughts, words, or deeds. I realize my valley experience had prepared me not for a setback but a comeback when I was most needed to serve.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
There were several lessons I had to unlearn in my life. One being that God was going to punish me if I was bad. The second lesson was being afraid of being successful and taking the leap towards my opportunities in life.
During my earlier years in life, traditional christianity taught me that God was a punishing God and not a loving God. He was forever watching you and your errors in life. Your were here to suffer as a means of serving him if you wanted to go to heaven. I actually told God one day that if his job was to punish me for things that I do I do not have a chance in life and that I did not need him. I could get punished here on earth by the people I encountered on the street.
So, this is where the earlier part of my spiritual journey actually began, because shortly after that statement, I began to meet people who were ancestral teachers, philosophers and sages who introduced me to a different understanding of Yahweh, the earth, our ancester, ascended masters, and the universe. Instead of being angry with God, I became enthralled in the knowledge and not the restrictions of life. I had new information to fill the blank spaces within my undeveloped mind. I was able to learn Yahweh God is love, and he wants to give unto me every good thing He has to offer from His kingdom.
The second lesson I had to unlearn was how to overcome my inhibitions concerning being successful. If success was to know on my door would I step through that door. My inhibition was shyness in my earlier years of life. I never like being in front of people speaking. I wanted to live in the background. I did not feel I was mentally or emotionally ready to be successful in name, business or having extreme sums of money, I could not see that for my life. I wanted it but there was something inside of me afraid of it. I had to search the innerness of my soul to find this root weighing me down, It was called low-self-esteem, low-worth, and low-value which resulted into a scarity consciousness, a lack of resources because the government said,
There is no lack or scarity in God’s Economy, that is the lesson I had to learn. The universe and all therein has more than enough for every soul on this planet. “As Above… So Below” is simply whatever is above can supply all of the needs below. So the next time you are feeling a little low, look up at the sky to feel the love and opulence of Yahweh’s universe and just embrace it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nirvanalifestyle.network
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d.q.blackwell/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Nirvana-Lifestyle-Network/100077374654158/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/91156168/admin/
- Youtube: @nirvanalifestylenetwork1290
Image Credits
unsplash.com Dionne Blackwell logo renderforest.com