You were in the dark before.
You went through an initiatory experience.
Rock-bottomed. Shitty relationships. Abuse. Violence. Survival mode. Failure. Flunked. Fired. Broke. Drowning in debt. Betrayed. Divorced. Legal battles. Jail. Health issues. Injury. Chronic conditions. Wrong meds. Right meds creating new problems. Bed-ridden. Canceled. Abandoned. Kicked out. Depressed. Self-loathing. Self-harm. Disassociated. Perpetually numb. Constantly triggered. Seething. Hatred. Preoccupied with revenge. Burnt out. Doom-scrolling. Pandemic. Scamdemic. Exhausted to your bone, to the depth of the marrow. Misunderstood. Invisible. Isolation. Drowning. Meaninglessness. Boredom. Fog. Lost. Leveled. Empty. Crazy. Addiction. Psychosis. Rape. Suicidal. Death. Grief. Devastation. Broken soul.
And then, bit by bit, things got better somehow. You clawed your way forward. Ya ate a salad. You ate meat. Balanced your brain chemistry. Went to therapy. Did EMDR. Went to a healer. Meditated. Communed with nature. Spoke to your ancestors. Did some shrooms. Stopped smoking weed, started smoking weed. Put back the pieces of your soul and psyche together. Kicked your addiction. Cried with friends. Cut people out of your life. Brought people into your life. Journaled. Changed cities. Changed jobs. Went to the doctor. Stopped going to doctors and listened to your own innate wisdom.
Did vipassana. Did The Work by Byron Katie. Came back to your body. Felt your feelings. Found God. Found Goddess. Chilled out your nervous system. Unthawed. Diversified your gut bacteria. Read lots of self-help books. Watched lots of self-help videos. Made some art. Started singing. Manifested magic. Got ripped. Let yourself get soft in the belly. Traveled and found yourself. Stopped chasing the next adventure and settled down. Had life-changing sex. Stopped having so much sex and went within. You tightened your shit up. You poured your heart out. You let go. You forgave. You felt your holy rage, lost for so long. Cleaned your fucking room.
And now, after all these years, here you find yourself in the dark, again.
Another rock-bottom, another devastation.
And what used to work so well doesn’t anymore. Or not completely.
It can be an incredibly frustrating and lonely experience when your trusted toolbox isn’t equipped enough to handle the energy of the current moment.
There’s a missing link, a missing context, a missing framework. Sometimes the missing link is something that no teacher, friend, therapist, healer, book, or internet could ever give you. sometimes the missing link is something you could have no conscious understanding of in this lifetime.
it’s only something you can dissolve yourself to make room for. out of that dissolution, only something you can grow into, brick by brick, layer by layer. intertwining thread and thread together.
I’ve been relatively/comparatively offline for the past 2 years or so, compared to when I’d post quite regularly.
A couple of kind folks over the years have asked me what happened, why am I not posting as much?
The truth is, the most beautiful and epic times of my life, seriously, so much beauty – simultaneous with the worst and most devastating times. online, artificial light life didn’t hold much appeal when the intensity of the offline was calling forth.
A lot of folks who I’ve spoken to have had similar experiences of extreme beauty with extreme trauma in recent years. This is a moment of polarization, artificial anti-human timelines duking it out with organic Source paradise timelines.
That’s a tangent though. Practically, what does one do with the new devil of the new level? When what worked before doesn’t work anymore?
I’m not writing this because I have an “answer” to that question. It’s more to simply name that phenomenon.
I know some of you are reading this thinking, what are you talking about NEXT level, I feel like I haven’t overcome the struggles that I’ve always had. And, I feel you there too. Being a human isn’t easy. I’m with you.
The truth is, our culture doesn’t know how to properly hold someone going through an initiatory rock-bottom experience. It only recognizes the winning and the forward momentum, the sweets and the highs. Sometimes, no one understands what’s going on with you.
“I’m not my season,” Robin Peckinold sings.
Some of us have a blueprint to have a more intense life than others. to transmute the collective shadow through our own pores and our own life experience. to carry what our ancestors could not. to be a human mushroom, digest the indigestible.
“It’s okay, I’ll have a more messy life so that you don’t have to. It’s okay. I’m a strong and powerful soul. I can handle it,” we said, before coming here.
The mushrooms told me I was one of them, a human mushroom. They had compassion for me. “Thank you for doing what you are doing. You help other humans – we help the human mushrooms.”
I heard “into the fire” by sarah mclachlin at a greek café in Kitsilano one day. that marked a moment of when things started to shift.
I realized, duh, of course, the archetype of initiation by fire – that’s what was going on.
Understanding the concept of spiritual warfare, that hijack our timelines and prey upon our wounds, making a normal shitty experience into one that is heart-wrenching and debilitating, was also a massive lightbulb moment (my deep gratitude to @sophianicmuse for that one).
These are some things that helped and is helping with me personally, out of so many.
But what your new level requires and is asking of you will be unique to you. What your new devil is demanding of you to slay it is a weapon only you can forge in your heart.