It has been a while since I’ve been on here and to be honest…I’ve missed it!

I love being able to write about anything and everything over here and although other projects bring me joy, there is something special about this pocket of the Internet that I tend. Thank you for being here and I will be sharing some reflections and explorations soon, as well as some curated recommendations of what has brought me delight.

Today, I wanted to invite you to FERAL, my upcoming 21 day challenge to unleash your voice. It’s only $44 currently - and will double in price 8/1 so if you feel called to join, DIVE IN HERE.

You know the feeling. Throat constricted, constantly worrying about what people wwill think if you share how you really feel.

Scared of being misunderstood or canceled, you sit on your hands and say a diluted version of the things you are here to share with the world.

And guess what? WE CAN TELL. Your message feels like lukewarm, watery coffee. Your dream clients can’t feel your and your work can’t scale to the size it is meant to in this lifetime.

I have created a dream life from being FERAL. From unleashing my voice, I’ve been a beacon for my dream clients and students, made more money than anyone in my family ever has, and get to live in my zone of genius every single day.

This took alchemy, transmutation and a whole lot of fucking courage.

I’m going to show you all the magic behind the scenes in FERAL. 21 days of practice to bring your medicine ALL THE WAY OUT.

This one piece will change your relationships, your business, your money and your life. But this is for big players only - this is not a spectator sport.

I’m not doing this for the money, so it is at a ridiculous price - doubling 8/1 when we start our pre-game and we begin for real 8/8.

If you want to be fully expressed and see what miracles and abundance come into your life from being feral with your power… JOIN THE PACK.

UNLEASH YOUR VOICE

A blessing: may you live all the way out

Xoxo Binyamina Aisha

My beloved friends,

I’ve been wanting to write this for awhile, and I keep coming back to this place of

LIFE / DEATH / LIFE

that orients so much of what I do in the world.


As someone who works womb to tomb (midwifery to deathwork and many things in between), being attuned to the cycles of life and death is essential in my life. This extends beyond my vocational world and in fact, is rooted deeply in my personal experience.

When I can sense the timing for transition, for dying, for birthing - I listen.

I don’t turn away or pretend things are different than they are. I choose to meet life fully and to surrender to the path that Spirit carves for me. I say yes to the call - wherever it leads me - and deeply trust the journey of this life.

For this next year of Beltane to Beltane, my attention will be away from The Wild Mystery Letter. I am going to keep it open and might share occaassioinally on here if I feel moved, as I love this space and what has been created here. But it won’t be where I am oriented. My north star is guiding me toward…

WILD ECOLOGIES: FIELD NOTES FROM THE NATURAL WORLD


Those who know me have seen this coming for quite some time. I was born and raised deep in nature, barefoot in the jungle and sea, the natural world surrounding me as a living, breathing prayer. My life is heavily oriented around the more than human - living in the Amazon rainforest, being devoted to a slow and ancestral way of being, and my work returning to where I started: the holy wilderness.

Wild Ecologies is “a field journal for the more than human world. Essays on ecology, animism, grief, ritual, myth, and the holy experience of being alive on a living Earth.”

This is why I’m here. To gather people around the fire and help remind them they are animal. To create a field journal of my unusually feral life and bring that medicine to those who long to howl at the moon, naked and unafraid. To share my love for flora and fauna through ecological writing that beckons us into deeper relationship with land-based spirit work. To be a pause in the intellectual noise and instead ring the bells for a return to communion with the ecosystem around us.

I really hope you join me over there. The flavor will be quite different, but I am almost certain that most people reading this newsletter do not have enough ecological musings in their life! Each month will have one free essay and the inaugural essay can be found here, called When the Field Opens.

There is also a paid subscriber option, which will unlock a second monthly essay on a deeper thread of the month’s topic, as well as a monthly curation of things to watch, listen, and read that are ecologically attuned. Your support is so deeply appreciated, and to already see a few paid subscribers over there from just one Instagram story brings me so much joy! Thank you.

Paid subscribers of this newsletter are getting an entire year of Wild Ecologies for free! (Although if you feel like supporting financially, I would love it and won’t say no!) Please sign up for the free version below and I will upgrade you automatically to the paid level.


Like I said, this isn’t goodbye to The Wild Mystery Letter. I can envision sprinkling in some personal essays here over the next year, and possibly bringing this back as a more dedicated project after the year ends. But for now, I am spread too thin to tend to both beings and Wild Ecologies is a long time coming. It feels so deeply right and I am delighted to see what unfolds.


Thank you for everything here, this isn’t goodbye and I truly love each and every one of you. I hope to see you over in my new space and I am sending wild blessings to you all 🌱

🌺 JOIN THE WILD ECOLOGIES HIVE 🌺

Xoxo Binyamina Aisha

I know so many people who are BRILLIANT. Truly magical, creative, thoughtful folks who have so much to give to the world.

Projects that will inspire thousands. Mutual aid endeavors that haven’t yet gotten off the ground. Books that will make that midwest kid move to the West Coast. Movies and body care products and trainings and retreats and and and…

These gifts never see the light of day.

When we aren’t well fed, our creations get set aside. We hustle and compromise and settle and do everything we need to in order to survive.

But that isn’t thriving. That isn’t being so overflowing with resources that you give to others. That isn’t being of service to the deeper thing inside you - the reason you are here on Earth.

For the last three years, I have DOUBLED my income every single year. I have made more impact, worked less hours, and accomplished more of my dreams than I ever thought could come true.

And a huge piece of this blessing is because of the money work I’ve done.

Money work isn’t about creating a budget or doing a “buy nothing” experiment (although those things can be included). It’s about deepening in intimacy with money, with reception, with guilt and shame and desire and all of the things that money touches.

Because guess what… money touches EVERYTHING.

And the way that you can be a generous, overflowing, expansive steward of money in this world?

Is rolling up your sleeves and doing the deep work.

CASH is a 21-day adventure to your richest year yet.

Daily transmissions on Telegram all about parts work, somatic explorations, ecological communion, creativity, eros, shadow work, and so much more.

7 practices and assignments for in the real world experiential learning and big player game playing.

And a kick off call this Wednesday and closing celebration call at the end.

I don’t do CASH for money (it’s currently only $44 - the lowest priced thing I will ever offer). I do it because the momentum that happens from an easy YES changes lives.

Last year, a CASH participant was able to pay their father’s medical bills. Another was able to gift three scholarships to her training. Someone was able to take her mom on the trip of her dreams. All because of the work and transformation they experienced in CASH.

That is why I do this. For the ripples into the world that healing our money wounds create. For the ways in which we become so well resourced, that to give from overflow isn’t a second thought. To feel safe and supported by the energetic being that is money and to see how that changes the decisions we make in our lives for the better.

Dive in with us tomorrow and be open to your entire life changing. Join below.

💰 SAY YES TO YOUR RICHEST YEAR YET 💰

Hello dear ones,

Times are hard and we need to build whatever we can in order for us to make it through. Whether that be strengthening community, tending to our bodies, or taking trips into fantastical worlds. We can only do it if we are doing this together. Thank you for being with me on this wild ride. January was on…

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2025 was one for the books. A complete nightmare and also a dream. More heartbreak in the world and more possibility than ever before. How we have gotten through - for those of us who are deeply invested in liberation and safety and happiness for all beings - is an absolute miracle.

The horrors persist and yet so do the joys.

My personal year was no different. This year has been the most expansive year I’ve possibly ever had, and with that comes the growing pains of a new chapter. Entering my 40s wasn’t just a metaphorical threshold; it was a complete restructuring of my life.

Instead of making a best of list, I decided to share 5 things I learned in 2025 and how they inform a new way of being in 2026…

5 Things I Learned in 2025 and How I’m Choosing Differently in 2026 Part One

1. Not all of your friends are truly happy for you. These aren’t real friends. You need to let them go.

2025 was a year that brought me more blessing than I could have ever dreamed. Some of those things I’ve shared publicly (a weird and wild business that was deeply abundant while being beholden to nothing and no one, more time for amazing in-person creations like multiple artist residencies in beautiful places and burial shroud immersions, and living in the Amazon jungle in communion with nature at a level so deep that I am stunned every single day) and some are more private. Receiving the blessings I have been given this year has been a practice in opening and softening and deepening like none other.

Sadly, it has also been a lesson in learning who my real friends are. There have been a few people I considered dear friends who I painfully realized aren’t actually happy for me. Who are so self-centered, they haven’t even thought about supporting me or celebrating me - even though I’ve supported and celebrated them throughout the years.

Some of you know how important compersion is to me. And although this term comes from the non-manogamy world regarding a partnership - I apply it EVERYWHERE. If someone isn’t secure, humble, and thoughtful enough in their own life to be genuinely happy about mine…they gotta go. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been friends, how much I care about them, or how helpful I’ve been to them and their life. The shadow of a Cancer sun and Taurus moon is the same energetic as its blessing: we are loyal to end. But sometimes, that Scorpio rising has to come in and shine the light on where I haven’t wanted to see.

And let me be clear: compersion goes both ways! Close friends know how genuinely, absolutely, and loudly happy I am for them when something great happens in their life. I literally CRY tears of joy when someone I love is showered with blessings and I only want relationships and people that feel the same.

I grew up with multiple cultural frameworks around what is often called the “evil eye”. Mal ojo is very real, and is very much alive in “friendships” today. I had wanted to write about this for the newsletter, because I have been experiencing the evil eye with more than one person this year and we need to talk about how prevalent it is. How normalized it has become to have “friends” who don’t shout to the rooftops about how excited they are for you. How common it is to have people in your life who are secretly jealous, bitter, or praying for your downfall. How people think it’s “cute” to be snarky, catty, or passive aggressive.

How I’m choosing differently in 2026: These people are being completely removed from my life. I have a tendency to stick around for potential and to take on the burden of an unequal and vampiric friendship. No more in 2026. When I imagine my life without these people, I can breathe a little easier, feel a bit more spacious in my body - and that is really good information. We can’t make other people care about other people. That’s isn’t our job and isn’t our business. I know that if jealousy, bitterness, and self-centeredness is showing up in our relationship - it is showing up elsewhere in their life too. And I don’t want that kind of person close to my heart, family, or life. Remember that access is a privilege, not a right. If there is even an inkling of a feeling that your “friend” isn’t truly happy for your happiness…it’s time to go.

2. You will outgrow identities. Rigid frameworks can’t hold a wild being forever.

Throughout the years, certain communities have been strongholds in my life. And while I believe wholeheartedly that community is what will save us and the planet - I am wary of frameworks that force us to be living inside an echo chamber.

The last 5 years or so created an awakening within me that has led me to be somewhat of a paradox to witness. Places where I always agreed with most shared identity folks around me all of a sudden shifted. I started sharing perspectives that didn’t fit into the tiny molds we have for people.

An ex-vegan who now sees veganism as deep harm to the body? (and a lifestyle that still kills tons of animals - just unconsciously?)

A radical, highly educated leftist who chose not to get the vax and supports bodily autonomy unconditionally?

An anarchist who has an abundant business and teaches others to have the same?


Cue the heads popping off of many rigid, dogmatic, and reductionist people…


Here’s the thing: you will outgrow identities. You will deepen in nuance and complexity (let us pray to everything holy that you do) and those places of black and white identity politics will seem outdated. You will realize that you aren’t allowed to be your full self at that table and hopefully - if you have enough backbone and enough self-respect - you won’t want to be in rooms where you aren’t able to be authentically yourself.

2025 was a year of me giving less fucks. Partly because turning 40 feels like a potent portal of entering more of the midlife era of simply showing up as my fullest self and not caring what other people think. But also because my medicine has gotten a lot more clear in this last year (a reminder that I have been doing my work for literally decades and there is always growth and movement!) and I don’t want to coddle people anymore. Do you know how gross it feels to read or receive something and feel that the person is trying to rescue me from my own experience? In a world of trigger warnings and walking on eggshells and virtue signaling … it is threatening when someone actually shows up and shares their truth.

How dare you! You triggered me! You are a bad, bad person! Why aren’t you saving me from the boogyman known as the human experience!

How I’m choosing differently in 2026: Continuing to share the fullness of who I am - even (and especially) when it is paradoxical or is uncomfortable for others to be with. Remembering that I am walking permission for others to be their full and complex selves. Noticing places that I want to withhold out of codependency and people pleasing, and choosing to bare my heart and soul there anyway. Getting even more clear on my channel and trusting that the right people will find me. Keeping near and dear to my heart the regrets of the dying I serve - which always has a flavor of “I wish I didn’t care so much about what other people thought of me” - and living honestly and freely as a tribute to them.

3. Psychological flexibility is what will get you through. This is very different than preferential living.

In a world of people desperately wanting to control every aspect of their life, we have forgotten the importance of psychological flexibility. I would also call this emotional and spiritual flexibility - the notion that we are going to be ok regardless of what is going on around us.

This doesn’t minimize the very real situational stress and trauma we face (some of which I am experiencing right now). This is about our obsession with preferential living. Our Veruca Salt-ing of our lives; only if we get our way, will we be happy. We throw tantrums when things don’t happen the way we expected, we hold such high expectations for ourselves and others (which will always lead to resentment, btw), and we believe that our neuroses will save us from the inevitable: life will knock the wind out of you.

No amount of botox and filler, packing your calendar, curating your persona, or keeping yourself busy with the endless scroll will keep you from aging. From dying. From losing those you love. From horrors happening to you. From your life becoming inconvenient, scary, or unknown.

This past year has been a triple black diamond for me in terms of this kind of flexibility I’m talking about. I don’t know anyone who would be able to do what I’ve done this past year in the conditions and situations I’ve been in. This is a testament to the decades of work I’ve done to unwind control, to open and deepen into surrender, to be devoted to the mystery. When I say that I am in service to the Mystery, that isn’t just something that is on my bio. It is a daily practice of attunement to the bigger thing that animates us. It is a constant prayer of “may I stay open even here”, rather than prayers about specific outcomes. It is a love affair with the awe and wonder that comes from living a wild life - even if it can break your heart open again and again.


How I’m choosing differently in 2026: Continuing to unwind patterns of expectation, control, and conditionality in my life. Remembering that God/Spirit/Creator knows so much more than my tiny being even could grasp, and that the point isn’t to “figure it all out”. To return over and over again to “how can I be of service here” and to delight in the mystery of life throwing us curveballs. To honor the inherent resilience of my being and trusting that no matter what, I will be ok.

Part two coming next week, where I talk about changes happening around here! Feel inspired, triggered, seen? Stick around!

Guess what? I created a Substack just for fun! Not that this one isn’t for fun, but Songs & Strangers is a project I’ve been doing on the side for years and now it is finally coming out to play.

My vision to is make this a book next year (any agents or publishers who enjoy weird, creative non-fiction list type work - get at me!), so my practice is to post EVERY SINGLE DAY for the entire year. I started posting automatically before coming back online in January, but ever since then, I’ve been posting as a daily devotional practice.

Songs you might love, songs you might not know, songs that might make you remember things. And I always post with a comment from YouTube - a comment from a stranger that makes me cry, makes me laugh, makes me feel more alive. In a world where the Internet takes so much from us - let’s enjoy the ways it helps us feel more connected and more grateful for this life.

PREPARE: AN ECOLOGICAL BUG OUT BAG CLASS -

READINESS IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Once a year, I teach about disaster preparedness from an ecological, grounded, and embodied lens. No fear-mongering or impossible expectations. Instead, we gently explore the realm of readiness for uncertain times through ancestral remembrance, wilderness skills, medical and herbal first aid, and other ways of being prepared.

PREPARE is a class to learn how to make a bug out bag (and stay in stash) for any level of experience or budget. City folks, country folks, people who are scared and want to feel more at peace, people who are excited to learn more about being safe and resourced when shit hits the fan - all are welcome.

You will leave PREPARE with a solid foundation in building a bug out bag, understanding more deeply ecological attunement, and feeling more confident in readiness for disaster, crisis, or collapse. EVERYONE should take a class like this…you don’t think it will happen to you until it does.

I keep this training affordable and you will not only receive lifetime access to the recording, but this year I have created a booklet with my suggestions for gear, brands, and other resources. In addition, once you register for PREPARE, you can attend every future version of this training FOR FREE! And if you have attended in the past, please let me know and I will add you to this training.

PREPARE is part of my larger ecological body of work and a hint at the direction that my time and energy are going this year. It isn’t about accumulating more information - it is about cultivating orientation in the wild. This is a foundation of the holy wilderness - Find out more and join us below 🌱

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PREPARE

DEATHWORKER: THE FINAL TRAINING

For 15 years, I have trained hundreds of people in becoming end of life practitioners.

I have provided the education, skill and practice for beings to become attuned, holistic, brilliant guides for the end of life and beyond. Year after year, I have students come to me from all walks of life - therapists, artists, bodyworkers, and healers. Parents who have lost children, children who have lost parents. People who have felt the call to be of service to this sacred realm. Folks who are terrified of it, but know they want to live their life free of that burden. We gather the bones and sing over them - reclaiming ancestral practices of grief, ecological communion with decay, somatic and erotîc explorations of the threshold, and the practical service of showing up for the process of transition.

You learn how to be a full-spectrum deathworker in the real world. From officiating funerals, to grief work with the living, to singing at the bed of the dying, to medical advocacy, and everything in between. To be able to know how to navigate these realms is such a gift that doesn’t come from a 6 week course. In a landscape where everyone is pushing a quick way to become an “expert”, we need to orient toward integrity and reverence.

There is NOTHING like this training out there. That is because I hold 25 years of doing this work professionally and 15 years of facilitating this training. The roles I occupy of psychologist, deathworker, midwife, mythologist, ritualist, and holistic medical doctor - among many others - mean that you are being immersed in this work from a variety of deep and potent frameworks.

In addition, this last cohort is different than all of the others: I have extended the training to 9 months and there is an IN-PERSON immersion component!

This training always fills up quickly and this time around, I am being extra discerning with who steps through the portal. This is my final foundational training in this work, and all future trainings of mine will be advanced and for people who have already gone through this training with me. It is the way I can ensure the people I continue to mentor and train are engaging in this work with integrity, education, and practice.

The waitlist is now OPEN. Applications will open soon and the waitlist will get early access to apply. Previous students of this training are highly encouraged to apply since this will be much different than before and we are forever students to this blessing.

We begin on Spring Equinox. This has been my joy and honor for the past 15 years and I can’t wait to say goodbye in a wild and wonderful way. Step through the portal below.

JOIN THE WAITLIST

That’s it for now - stay tuned for more musings and I am sending you all a lot of love ❤️

Binyamina Aisha

WOW.

I am currently decompressing and integrating from my most recent artist residency SIERRA and I truly have few words for the magic we created. The land of Oaxaca is so incredibly generous in so many different ways that it feels like an embarrassment of riches - a place where you keep asking yourself “how did I get so lucky to soak i…

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Hello friends!

As I reflect on what I want to share more about on here - and what I want 2026 to look like over at the paid subscriber hive of The Wild Mystery Letter - I realized I want to bring more of my actual voice into this space.

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. And, when inspiration strikes and I have something to share, sometimes it feels really good to press record and share the transmission.

So welcome to our new feature… THE MONTHLY MEDICINE!

Each month will be a sharing of some thread that has been working me (and/or my students and clients) and is totally unscripted, recording whenever it feels hot, and letting the freak flag fly.


This monthly medicine is all about what we lose when we grasp for the shortcut. It was inspired by a conversation I had with David Lynch about 20 years ago. I was deep in the Hollywood world and met him at a party. I remember asking him what advice he had for young artists (I was a 20 year-old in art school at the time and wanted to soak up everything I could) and he told me that it all came down to one sentence:


DON’T TAKE THE SHORTCUT.


In a society where we are all insta-experts and we think the overnight success is supposed to happen to us (and are whiny and collapsed when it doesn’t happen), this advice is more important now than ever. As someone who has taken DECADES of me literally doing the work that I do (not things adjacent or things leading to it - the actual thing I serve and teach others to hold), the low and slow process of cutting your teeth and showing up on the map is essential to my integrity.

And frankly, I’m really sick of seeing people try to scheme their way out of paying their dues.

Transmission is spicy - it’s Scoprio season, is it not?!?

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This has been a really full time folks. My business is in rocketship mode (running a mystery school is no joke!), my life is expanding in more ways than one, and there is a sense that 2026 will be one of the biggest and wildest years ever.

It all feels really good. That doesn’t mean things aren’t hard or sad - but I do feel t…

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Last week, I saw a man fly off his motorcycle.

Let me rephrase that: I saw a man fly off his motorcycle and fall into a deep hole in the ground.

The place where I live has a lot of hazards. Poisonous insects? Absolutely. Predatory animals? For sure. Illnesses which require purging? I can personally and recently vouch for this one.

But one of the lesser thought of dangers is that of being in a town with more motorcycles than cars and very few traffic lights (or stop signs, for that matter).

People simply honk before reaching an intersection, hoping that the oncoming traffic will heed their warning. It’s an incredible system and I am constantly shocked that for the most part, it works. Folks hold tires, hold babies, hold plastic bags of freshly squeezed juice while racing through the jungle streets. Pedestrians valiantly step out into an oncoming blizzard of motors without a care in the world. I look different than most people here, but even if I didn’t… I’d stick out once you see how long I wait to cross the street.

I’m getting more comfortable with the ebbs and flows of the traffic here. Where I actually live - outside of town - there is no traffic. Only the symphony of birds and insects and other creatures. I step out of my front door into the jungle - it’s that simple. The road outside my house is a dirt road that hardly has any motos, let alone cars. Every once in a while, I will pass a neighbor or stranger and in both cases, a hello and a smile and a sweetness will be exchanged.

Once I leave my village and go into town, the streets come alive. Still in the jungle, with the mountains surrounding us - I enter the current of the motorcycle ocean. These aren’t loud Harleys, they are more like scooters and the humming becomes almost a relaxing comfort. Everyone is walking and riding and walking and riding and no cars means we are all closer to the hum and pulsing of the earth and when it is sunny you feel it fully and when it rains you feel it fully and you always feel the breeze in your hair and for that I am always grateful.

But the other day, I saw this man fly off his motorcycle into a hole in the ground. I was carrying back fruit from the market and in some strange act of solidarity, my fruit jumped out of my bag and spilled out into the street. The accident was between a moto and a car - cars aren’t meant for the jungle and the infrastructure here is for feet and tiny wheels, not monstrosities that take up the road and bully everyone else on it. The car ignored the unspoken rules of the traffic ocean and hit this man as he was turning the corner. I saw him get hit and I saw him fly. I saw him fly and I saw him get tossed into a deep hole in the ground.


Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing. The driver of the car jumped out and ran to the hole. This man, who was responsible for what happened, didn’t drive off. He didn’t get angry or get defensive. He immediately intervened - yelling for more men to come over to help him. Other moto drivers ran off their bikes to help, leaving a dirt road strewn with dozens of Yamahas and Hondas.


These men made a chain, holding eachother’s feet while the driver was hoisted down to rescue the man. The hole was really deep and these men couldn’t have been sure that they wouldn’t be pulled into the hole as well. But they did not falter and they did not delay. A teenager through down his Daffy Duck backback to join the chain. A middle-aged man tied his jacket around his waist to support him pulling the line. A man who couldn’t have been younger than 80 shuffled over to lay down by the hole and yell encouragements to both the chain of helpers and the sunken man.


The entire neighborhood gathered - people bringing over flashlights and water and food and blankets and anything else they could think of that might be helpful. This is not an area of financial abundance - yet everyone thought of what they might be able to offer. The elder women began chanting, singing, and praying - and invited me to join.


We sang songs of healing. Some I was familiar with and some I shadowed. The children danced all around us - not understanding the singing was for something somber. And although it was a serious situation (and one many people were worried about), there was also a lightness to it. A trust in the village. A faith in something human.

So many of us have lost the village. I feel deeply grateful to have been raised in the village and to have found myself back there again and again. And every time I am re-immersed in the embrace of community - real, daily, devoted community - I am reminded of what so many of us have lost. Most of you have never experienced village in the way I’m referring to in the first place, which is a heartbreak in and of itself.


In the upcoming year, I want to spend time talking more about this, writing more about this. I have decades of experience creating various communities of a wide spectrum of kinds and sizes. From the first Latino camp at Burning Man, to multiple full-time ecological intentional communities, to artist residencies and live-in thought experiment collectives - community building is in my blood. We aren’t meant to do it alone, and I look forward to exploring the expansive possibilities of village together.

I’m currently immersed in the creative realms (I always am of course, but with hosting another artist residency next month, I am especially so!) and I love finding stories about midlife artistry. People who find (or finally answer to the call of) their muse later in life are deeply moving to me. It is NEVER too late to make art in the world (and if you want to open that door more widely for yourself, find more info about SIERRA below).

Every once in a while, I feel the need to re-share this music video. I love the song, but even more so is my deep passion for the performance. Set over an entire tour, it shows Robyn in her fullest expression. The rollercoaster of touring, the blood sweat and tears of giving it her all, and the ecstasy that happens when we create something special.

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of Patti Smith’s new memoir, Bread of Angels and WOW. Just Kids will always be my favorite work of hers (my heart literally hurts whenever I think of that book), but this new piece of writing is beautiful. It covers chapters of her life that her other books haven’t, and if you love the muse… you will really enjoy this one.

A DAY AT SIERRA: The Artist Residency

Waking up rested in a historic villa and having tea on the terrace to greet the sun. Together, we have a light breakfast in silence - the veil is thin in the morning and we stay connected to the liminal realms. Cards are pulled, journals are written in, prayers are made.

After breakfast is time with the hive. We share desires, move our bodies in ceremonial invitation, and make intentions for our day. Morning studio practice is time for your art to bloom - with many places to work inside and outside of the villa, you will be inspired and plugged in.

Lunch in community with gratitude and laughter. All food nourishing and prepared with love by our incredible retreat chef.

Every afternoon, we have an adventure. Visiting textile artisans in the hills, walking through the ethnobotanical gardens, or soaking in the muse at a museum. All optional and all ways to honor the culture and land of SIERRA.

We return to our residence to have afternoon studio practice - feeling enlivened by our experiences in one of the most magical places on Earth. Devoted to the craft, time flies.

Dinner in community with deep conversations and time to relax. We end our night with artist-led salons and workshops - inspiration from the different frequencies of the artists in residence.

We end our days with deep slumber where the dreamworld will awaken your muse and plant seedlings for your next day of creation.

This is what I believe an artist residency should be. Communal, in ritual, infused with awe and wonder. Gone are the days where being in residence means cooking your own food and being by yourself in a cabin for the week. Don’t get me wrong - that can be good sometimes, but we are meant to thrive in the hive and be in conversation with the land and culture around us. To walk through the streets turned on and ready to create. To join in ceremony and be in ecstatic communion with the Divine.

SIERRA is happening next month and there are 2 spots left. I am keeping this one smaller than usual - a sensing into the depth of the work we are meant to co-create. Artists of all disciplines and experience are welcome - the willingness to be open to the muse and connected to the hive are essential to the journey.

This is a labor of love for me and I don’t do my artist residencies for the money - SIERRA will entirely fund a Zapotec artist collective so that they can have their own artist residency. Joining this hive is a way of giving back and being a part of something bigger than us. Find out more below and hope to see you soon.

JOIN THE ARTIST HIVE HERE

UNDERWORLD - A Deep Descent into

the Dark Feminine

She waits. Bubbling underneath your niceties and people pleasing. Seething beneath your martyrdom and resentment.

The Dark Goddess. Fierce and foaming at the mouth. Feral and free. Blood dripping down her thighs, howling at the moon with feet planted deep in the earth.

She screams as you play small, live a life sanitized. She drums in the darkness, calling you back to what is pulsing at your root. The wildness of your being - always waiting in the shadow.

If you look in the mirror long enough, She begins to emerge. Through the baring of teeth, the furrowing of brow. The “good girl” drops away and the Wild Woman takes her place.

Without deep connection to the underworld, you are living a life half lived. Saying yes when you mean no, continuing to do the things that bring you validation, praise, illusions of safety. Creating a life that pays the bills, feeds you just enough… but the deepest desires are rotting down below.

The dark feminine is waiting to burn it down.

UNDERWORLD is a three month immersion into the potency of the Dark Feminine. A liminal space where we open to the mysteries of the shadow, the gifts of the taboo, the alchemy that happens when we dive deep into the cobwebs. This is a pilgrimage to the darkness to reclaim the wild and raw truth of our expression. The life-force hidden beneath the burdens.

I have been guiding people through the realms of the underworld for decades and this is the last time I will be offering this live. I heard the fierce call of the wild one and responded quickly - we begin on the new moon in Scorpio (11/19) and we will traverse many realms together. Mythic landscapes, ancestral communion, rewilding our animal bodies, excavating our dreamworld, and tapping into the medicine that is waiting to be unleashed in our lives and in the world.

Big players only. Keeping this hive small and intimate for the work we will do is raw and tender. If you feel the call, find out more below. Special offer for those who say yes before 11/1 🖤

THE UNDERWORLD IS WAITING

A blessing: May you create what is meant to be birthed from the deepest part of you and may you know truth in your bones.

Xoxo Binyamina Aisha

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Hello friends,

This one is only for the paid subscribers today - The Wild Mystery’s monthly podcast episode for October is all about RECEPTION. Specifically, the responsibility required in order to receive the thing we’ve always wanted.

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Hello everyone! This essay is the first of a series about the creative process and living in our fullest expression. This is part of my own artistic explorations leading up to the artist residency I am holding in Oaxaca in late November. Enjoy and if you are interested in joining us, please find more information below 🌀

Yesterday I posted on Threads that everyone is an artist.

It triggered more people than I expected - some with mild disagreement and others with responses so rude and arrogant that I deleted them.


Why is this notion so confronting to people, especially artists? Every single person who disagreed was a “professional” artist, who felt like I was cheapening the identity.

This is why devotion to the muse is what matters, not what manifests from that devotion.

I wrote a follow-up post saying that I am actually a formally trained artist who attended art school and yet this notion doesn’t threaten me. That I don’t gatekeep who gets to call themselves an artist and that creativity isn’t a finite resource.

Cue more professionals swooping in and losing their minds.

This experience reminded me of how brainwashed we are around productivity, value, and worth. How we have forgotten the importance of the process and have become so fixated on the outcome that we lose ourselves over and over again.

The Outcome Obsession

Our society is fixated on the outcome. The finished product, the magic bullet, the quick fix. Ever chasing the high of shiny packaging, we toss aside the medicine at the root for something to placate our neurosis around appearance, aesthetics, and approval.

We applaud “overnight sensations” without realizing how much it actually took for them to get there. We want what we want and we want it NOW. The ability to be with the low and slow journey of learning, practicing, and transforming is almost unbearable to be with in the shortest attention economy we’ve ever experienced.

Social media only feeds this delusion. Instagram is a vast expanse of polished results, perforative living, and people only sharing once they’ve crossed “to the other side” of whatever they are navigating. “Don’t write the wound” - outdated and devastating advice that unfortunately most people still follow. We compare our insides with everyone’s outsides and it leaves us feeling sad, uninspired, and empty.

One of the most upsetting consequences of this outcome obsession is that it has stunted the creative practice of so many people. The question of “is it worth sharing?” has underlying insinuations of “how many people are going to like it?” “will it lead to xyz?” or “how does it make me look to share this?”

Creativity requires COURAGE. Anyone can post something when it is neat and contained. It’s easy to focus on the outcome and toss aside the messy process of creation. What we need more of is people who are vulnerable enough to be in real-time process with life. Who aren’t afraid of being seen in their grappling with creation.

Or at least, people who are afraid but do it anyway.

What If the Process Is the Point?

What if art was a verb?

What if we created to create? Opening as the inherent artist we all are - what if we simply got out of our own way and allowed what is meant to be channeled to flow forth?

Do you remember when you were little and creation was a natural part of your day? Where play and imagination were allowed seats at the table?

At some point, many of us are told/taught that we aren’t “good enough” at art. Perhaps a teacher told you that you don’t know how to draw, or your parents told you that you didn’t have enough talent and that you should get a “real job”.

Little by little, we fall back to the things we are good at and become terrified of showing anyone our process. Only sharing what we know will get superficial validation, we lose the aliveness that comes from being immersed in the process.

In my alchemical business immersion THE CALL, I am currently teaching about the zones of genius. And one of the biggest temptations we will face is spending our lives in our zones of excellence. We receive so much validation, comfort, praise to be in the places that look pretty from the outside and don’t require us to do the deep and sometimes scary work of being a bumbling, fumbling beginner. In this choice, however, we lose something precious: connection to our deepest medicine.

Art is about the hours no one else sees. Not just what the final product looks like, but what it took to get you there. I always tell my students that the process and experience of researching, creating, and learning for a final project or presentation is MORE important than the actual thing they create. Outcome is not the most potent part of the journey - who need need to become in order to step into holding our creations is where the gold is…if we are willing to dive deep into those waters.

The Practice of Showing Up

People often ask me how to return to their creative nature, how they can explore the art that wants to be expressed through them. And one of the first things I will say is:

BE WILLING TO MAKE BAD ART

Of course, “bad” is arbitrary and subjective and not even what’s important, but the point is to make things unattached from the aesthetic outcome. That if you allow your perfectionistic, critical, and rigid parts to step aside, you can simply commune with the muse. You can open to the FEELING of making art, the flow we can find when we are lost happily in a project, the expansiveness we experience when in awe and wonder of life.

I truly believe there are no “failed experiments” when it comes to creating. You spent years on a book, only to toss it out? You painstakingly painted a detailed portrait, only to hate it at the end? You wrote your heart out on your Substack, only for no one to engage?

Great!

I truly mean this. All of the experiences that don’t go our way (in art and in life) give us so much important information. I have poured my heart into projects that weren’t “successful” and I learned so much about myself, my desires, my needs, and my boundaries. The process of making - of being a maker - is how it molds and shapes us as people. If one person or 1,000 reads this essay, it doesn’t change the fact that I explored more of my own inner landscape to write this and was reminded of why I do what I do.

Step away from what your art looks like and you will find freedom. Divorce yourself from puritanical programming that tells you only when things are clean and perfect will you be loved. Remember your feral, messy animal body and howl for the howl of it.

An invitation:

This month, I invite you to practice creating a piece of ephemeral art. Whether inspired by artists like Andy Goldsworthy or Tibetan Monks, create something that won’t last.

Ideas for inspiration: mandalas with natural objects, writing you then rip up after completing, recording something and deleting it after briefly sharing, create a piece of art and give it away - ephemerality looks different to everyone, but the intention of this practice is to expand your edges around final outcome and finished product.

Notice how you feel in the PROCESS of creation. Knowing it won’t always be here (or perhaps won’t even be here in a few minutes), notice where you can feel more expansion and freedom without your body. Notice also where you might feel anxiety, fear or sadness. Welcome it all and let it all go.

If you want to explore these themes of expression, process, and deep excavation further…

SIERRA: THE ARTIST RESIDENCY - 4 SPACES LEFT

Join us next month as we gather in a hive of artists to be in creative community, connect with the land, and immerse ourselves in the magic of Oaxaca.

Those seedlings you’ve been waiting to water? Come to one of the most beautiful places on Earth to tend to them. The muse is alive in the pulse of Oaxaca and you will end this year a changed person.

Stay in a UNESCO-protected gorgeous villa, enjoy the delicious gastronomy of the region, visit artisans and ethnobotanical gardens and start the new year clear from the medicine of the temezcal.

The potency of Oaxaca is like none other - a place of artistry for thousands of years. Where you dance in the streets and learn how to weave, cook, and paint. Daily excursions keep our inspiration flowing and artists learn from each other through salons and workshops.

Our adventure will be November 20 - 25 for this ecological experiment. This collective ritual will give you time and space to be in rhythm with your creative practice. All kinds of artists are welcome and everyone is an artist.

We aren’t meant to create alone. Artists thrive in the hive and I am so excited to be with brilliant beings in this land of enchantment. In addition, process from this artist residency will go to funding the entirety of an artist residency for a Zapotec artist collective in Oaxaca for 2026. Reciprocity and regenerative creation are something we get to choose in our artistic practice and I can’t wait to see the ripples of our gathering.

Special offer for those who say yes before October 21. Learn more below 🌀

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SIERRA HERE

A blessing: May you be enraptured by the muse and remember the medicine of the process.

Xoxo Binyamina Aisha

Hello friends,

Some of you know that I have been DEATHLY ill. As in, a serious bacterial infection from contaminated water that knocked me out for weeks and that I am still recovering from. I had things I wanted to share here for September but Shigella got the best of me.

I do have the monthly review, which is one of my favorite gems to share because I am a collector and curator at heart (picture me - a Cancer sun and Taurus moon gathering all my baubles for show and tell with you!) and I hope you are as inspired and moved by them as I have been.

I am finally recovering and getting back on track - if you are waiting to hear from me, please be patient! And more will be happening here soon - including an essay about “friends” that are jealous of you, the importance of community, and other fun goodies.

Sending you so much love….on with the show!

What I’ve been reading…

I did a re-read of Martyr! this past month - partially because I recently met Kaveh and he was so wonderful that it made me want to dive in again. If you are queer, if you are an immigrant, if you are someone with an early loss of a parent, if you are sober/clean/trying to be, or just someone who wants to feel deeply - I highly recommend reading this. Sad, honest, funny, prickly - the whole experience of being human.

September is Latino Heritage Month (how to celebrate that as thousands of Latinos are kidnapped in broad daylight by ICE agents all over the country is another question - but I still enjoy shape and form to consuming media sometimes and still/always believe that representation is important). I chose Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays from Edgar Gomez (the author of High-Risk Homosexual) and it really took me for a ride. There are a lot of things to say about this collection, but here is what has been said from Bookshop:

Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach

I enjoyed Ling Ma’s apocalyptic novel Severance, so I knew that eventually I would give Bliss Montage a shot. Eight stories about love and loss, loneliness and belonging, and what it means to be human. You have to be open minded, because these are SURREAL (in one story, a woman lives with her 100 ex-boyfriends), but if you can play in the space you just might enjoy your time here. And if you are someone who can’t/doesn’t read surrealist fiction - work that muscle of creativity and get in there!

What I’ve been watching…

On a serious note: I cannot explain the depth of emotion when it comes to Bad Bunny’s residency on Puerto Rico. So much so, that I will eventually (and hopefully soon) write an essay about what it means to be a Caribeño, from a paradise that is getting gentrified and exploited, with a government that doesn’t care about its people, where communities are broken up because of colonization and empire. When you see rich white people sipping their frozen drinks on stolen land that used to be an elder’s home filled with memories but is now an all-inclusive shitty hotel for people to go for Spring break and get wasted. How important it was for Benito to not have a SINGLE show in the US because a) he didn’t want people to get kidnapped by ICE at his shows and b) he wanted to pour as much money into his country and his people as he could. How everyone from managers, to the media, to the label told him it was a horrible idea and wouldn’t work. How so much of his own money he dedicated to making his residency a once in a lifetime experience, from the all-women Boriqua production team, to making sure residents of the island were able to get tickets for free, to bringing generations together to celebrate a people and country that has been treated like trash again and again. Benito brought in over $700 MILLION DOLLARS to PR from this residency and he will always have such a special place in my heart.

I don’t have any video to share here, but I highly recommend watching clips on social media or the entire final show (where he honored the OG “EL FLACO” MARC ANTHONY!!! and Marc Anthony cups his face so gently and to see the legacy they have created….ahhhhhhhhhh my heart burst!)

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Hello friends,

I am coming out of a deep time of illness but I was able to touch upon some of its medicine in this month’s podcast episode. It is all about following aliveness, turning down the noise, and finding magic in the mundane.

Enjoy and I love you all ❤️

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I know so many people who have brilliant gifts. Big medicine that could change the world - if only they didn’t have to worry about how to pay their bills.

Students and clients who have offerings ready to be shared - but never get around to crafting them.

People who know deep down that making money can be more easeful and fun - but just aren’t sure how to …

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Hello friends,

As paid subscribers to The Wild Myster…

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Hello beloveds,

The time has come from a June and July review - and boy, what a June and July it was! In fact, it was such a time that I missed the June review…my apologies! So much is happening in my life and work and community and it is such a blessing to experience it all. This past month was one of the most active I…

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Hello friends!

Things are REALLY rocking and rolling around here, and I mean that in the good, bad, and ugly ways. I am being quite cryptic for now but I am ok, we are ok, and more will be revealed. Thank you for your patience as I ride an incredibly wild rollercoaster moment of life ❤️

This month’s full moon podcast is all about our upper limit, what hap…

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Hello friends!

For this month, the full moon podcast is instead a recording of a meditation journey. As an IFS psychotherapist, parts work is such an integral and powerful aspect of my life and I will forever shout to the rooftops about the healing potency of communing with our parts.

This is a foundation exercise we in the IFS world do often - called Th…

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There is a BIG problem all around us.

The folks who are brilliant, thoughtful, and creative…so many of them are totally broke.

I have a vision of weirdos, queerdos, and artists making lots and lots of money. Overflowing with resources and dripping wet with abundance.

You know why? Because these are the people who instantly want to give back. Who desire t…

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