The deeper you go into the medicine the more you understand the great conundrum of our strange and wonderful existence: we can become masters of self and masters of life, but we can never master, never understand, never in this lifetime get more than a glimpse of The Big It. The deeper you go into the mystery the more mysterious it becomes. The more you understand, the less you know.

This is one of the twistiest questions that comes up in this practice of ours.

The medicine, Consciousness, calls us into our growth, understanding and mastery of our lives and these physics.
And it seduces and teases the hell out of us when it comes to the Divine, the Other, the Mystery, the Unknowable.

You’ll drive yourself mad if you miss it in either direction.

Try to control or claim knowledge about anything beyond this existence and these physics and you’ll be in the danger zone of belief and delusion.
Avoid doing the work around self, healing, getting good at life and you’ll miss the whole point… Play. Creation. Health, Happiness. Getting what you want.

Knowing and Unknowing.
It’s not either or, it's both.
And there aren’t many communities/paths/studies/humans willing to hold that tension of supposed opposites.

Thank you for being that.
Thank you for being that with us and with each other.
Diving into the mystery comes with such a beautiful ache and it’s so much more fun to share it, compare notes, get perspectives.
Don’t ever forget, you’re not alone.

We’ve been having such incredible sessions in Europe and our lil hearts are bursting thinking about seeing our US communities soon.

That’s a big statement and the more you step into your own healing the more you realize it’s true.

I remember when I first began ceremonies I was so excited to tell everyone in my world about them. I wanted that experience and growth for everyone I cared about. But more often than not when I honestly (and comprehensively!) shared my ceremony stories, instead of being inspired to join they ran away as fast as they could.

I had to learn the hard way that I needed to take responsibility for how I advocated for the medicine. I had to learn that there’s a finesse required when attempting to communicate around the ineffable.

Hot tips:

1. Be it. The best advocates are the ones whose lives start shifting and shining. When friends and family notice something is changing… you’re happier, healthier, inspired, clear…. they’re going to want what you have. And they’re going to ask how you’re doing it. You healing, evolving and doing the work is the greatest tool you have in bringing people into their own healing.

2. Choose your angle of approach. The medicine treats each person uniquely and no two ceremonies are the same. Your ceremonies will be vastly different to your partners or your friends. Remember that when you’re talking about it.

It’s so hard from the outside to understand the variety of possible experiences and it is very likely they’re going to anchor their ideas off of yours.

One of my biggest mistakes when I started medicine was telling everyone about my “Everest Ceremonies.” The hard stuff. The birth trauma. The “massive.” And I scared the daylights out of them.

When you communicate, tell your story, but choose your angle carefully. Tell the healing story. The transcendent story. Not just the pain/struggle/Everest story.

You can go into wild detail about it being the hardest thing you’ve ever done and alienate them for good, or you can say, “Yeah it was challenging, but let me tell you what I learned / how I grew / how it feels now that I’ve transcended.”

3. All spiritual teaching is seduction. Your job as advocate is to create a vacuum of authentic desire. To create enticements for people to explore into their own natures. It’s way less about your story and way more about their possibility.

(This is a huge jump in evolution for communication in general, but very much holds true when talking about ceremonies to your people.)

4. No one likes a missionary. Ride that line between offering / reminding / inviting and pushing / bugging / annoying. Where that line is will vary person to person. Be aware and sensitive. Respect that if someone doesn’t feel ready, they’re not ready. The medicine really only works with someone who wants to be there and is ready to take responsibility for their own healing. No amount of pushing can get someone to that place.

5. What to do with the ‘fence sitters’… Very often we have people in our worlds who want to come but aren’t fully ready to pull the trigger.

A couple things you can do:

-Invite them to an introduction. Anyone is invited on ceremony night to join for the intro. Sometimes all someone needs is to see that the room is full of wonderful, *mostly* sane people and that they will be warmly welcomed. We are super happy to shake hands and answer any questions they have.

-We are available for calls if someone has questions or just needs a little hand-holding.

-If they want something more casual than that we also have wonderful advocates all around the world who would love to get on a friendly phone call and chat. Sometimes all someone needs is to hear it from another angle or perspective.

So many people in our worlds desperately need medicine! How you choose to advocate matters immensely.

Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves.

I’ve been having moments in ceremonies lately where I experience cellular celebration. I can feel my body as not just neutral/ignorable/pain-free, but buzzing, alive, electric with well-being. This doesn’t mean some state of physical perfection has been attained. Far from. I’ve got conditions and limitations. There are a few things in me that have been labeled ‘incurable’ that I will be managing for life. I’ve got miles to go. But in waking life I’ve stepped into a new consciousness. One that means I’ve got those cells in mind as I make hundreds of daily decisions about how I eat, sleep, drink, move, mange my emotional state, choose my environment and relationships and generally take care of myself.

I’ve stepped out of the consciousness of “how much can I take” and into “how sweet can I make this day for my body?”
I’ve stepped out of ignoring her until she’s screaming at me, and into deep mindful listening.
I’ve started testing and getting informed about the unique and complex workings of me and I’m making changes in my lifestyle based on those findings.
I’ve started thinking differently of the “I” (as in “I want a donut”). Is it just habitual or social brain cravings? Dopamine addiction? A gut bacteria imbalance? What if I invited my intestines, pancreas and liver into the conversation. Are they not equally “I”? And do they agree with the decision I’m about to make?

I’ve got no interest in religion of any kind. Certainly not food or exercise religion. Perfection is a boring idea. I’m a fan of balance. Everything in moderation including moderation. You know the medicine––more than anything it goes after rigidities.
Rigidity is not what I’m talking about here.
It’s more a state of consciousness than a set of strictures.

Think about this:
There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy (at least).
There are something like 500 times that many cells in your body (at least).
That’s 50 trillion cells.
On average each cell contains approximately as many atoms as there are cells in the body.
You manage to run an assembly of cells that outnumber the human population of the entire planet by a factor of close to 10,000.
And your every move matters deeply to each one of them as they work their little asses off to keep you alive.
Every decision you make determines their reality.
You are Queen. You are King.
What sweet power. What awe-inspiring responsibility.

They’re in my care. I’m making studied, careful, graceful, incremental movements towards their well-being and they’re rewarding me for it.

Does your liver feel lucky to be yours?

Your body is your greatest genius. The information available to you through it is extraordinary. I’ve got a suspicion that the most interesting of our capacities remain untapped in the vast majority of us.

I’m curious. What could I perceive if the channels were clear? How could my brain operate if my body was in flourish mode instead of survival? What could I create? What information could my senses receive?

You might be in your physical prime, facing your end or anywhere in between. You might be wildly healthy or a total mess. Whatever the condition, the consciousness of cellular celebration is available to you.

(Info is everywhere but if you’d like recommendations or support let me know in the comments and I can point you in the direction of some wonderful resources.)

What does it mean to be truly responsible for all that I hold in my consciousness?

Responsibility is a wonderful word; one of my favorites. Even more wonderful is the state of consciousness that real responsibility requires. It’s the single most self-empowering and self-liberating human capacity we can access and it’s the key to realizing and actualizing our deepest healing and our most expansive physical and psycho-spiritual evolution.

Every human being is born into conditions that were created in advance of our existence. We are all then required to adapt and conform to the beliefs and behaviors necessary to survive these pre-established conditions. For whatever variances exist from family to family, culture to culture, country to country, century to century, everyone’s lives are shaped by these pre-existing conditions. Because we are all born into pre-existing complexities and because we are all born essentially powerless, responsibility has to be learned. Accordingly, most everything we do in the process of striving toward our adulthood is an exercise in assuming greater and greater levels of personal responsibility and with it the requisite self-determination and subsequent power. In many ways, responsibility is co-equivalent to personal power.

Because it has to be learned it also has to be modeled. Most often responsibility is modeled rather poorly: as a kind of benchmark for generalized obligatory adult suffering. “One day you’ll have horrible kids of your own and then you’ll see what responsibility looks like!” The predictable result of that sort of teaching is that most people equate responsibility more with onerous liability and drudgery rather than personal power and liberty. The truth is that anyone who is modeling responsibility as obligatory suffering has never actually understood (or taken) true responsibility.

True responsibility is a far greater awareness. It rests in the deep realization that you and you alone are the one who determines your own experience of existence. Your own perspective. Your own attitude. Your own actions. Your interpretation of every single factor of your awareness and perception is singularly your own. Your consciousness is your kingdom and throughout the entire realm of your awareness there is only one sovereign authority!

This is big league cognitive understanding. It is always the factual truth but it is a truth rarely recognized and very rarely fully realized by the vast majority of people. Most are generally unaware of the actual foundations of personal power and of those who are aware, most choose to avoid the work and “apparent drudgery” of culpability at all costs and/or prefer to rest in the comfortable entitlements of victimhood.

Yes, responsibility does require work it does mean that I fully accept, embrace and honor my personal accountability for paying the mortgage and showing up to work and feeding the kids and mowing the lawn, etc., etc., etc., ad inf. but that is just the most microscopic aspect. Real responsibility certainly accounts for meeting our obligations and agreements to the very best of our abilities but Big Picture responsibility is far more than that. Big Picture responsibility acknowledges that the individual is the sole authority over the kingdom of self awareness and self expression. By example, in my relationship with existence I am not in control of the events of the world or of the awarenesses, thoughts or actions of other people. I don’t control the weather. I don’t know what someone is thinking. I can’t flawlessly predict the attitudes, perspectives, behaviors or actions of others… but I, and I alone, am entirely responsible for how I perceive these things, what I think about them, how I feel about them and how I respond to them. Who else could be?

If I decide to drive somewhere the decision is mine. There may be reasons for my decision that are shaped or influenced by someone or something other than myself but ultimately it is only me who makes the decision. That decision is (and can only ever be) my responsibility. If it rains during my drive it is not my responsibility. I have no control over the rain. If I have bald tires on my car that is entirely my responsibility and it’s my responsibility to decide whether I take the risk to drive in the rain or not. Beyond the actions I take in response to this condition, my thoughts about the rain, my feelings about the bald tires and my assessments about the risks of driving are entirely my responsibility. Am I angry about the rain? Am I embarrassed about the bald tires? Am I anxious about the risk? These perspectives and responses are all entirely my responsibility. And because I am in full realization of this clear fact I am also in full authority over my experience of it. I decide. Do I wish to be angry at something as factually pure and innocent as rain? Do I allow myself to feel embarrassed by the factual condition of my worn tires? Do I submit my nervous system to the emotional stress of risk? In full awareness of my responsibility I have a full awareness of my choices. I have power over my relationship with existence!

We live in a world where entire industries exist to facilitate the outsourcing of personal power and responsibility. To fully realize our singular responsibility for everything in our consciousness is to awaken to a world of possibilities. I decide what I eat. I take responsibility for my diet’s effect on me. I decide what I think. I take responsibility for the emotions my thoughts provoke. I decide what I say. I take responsibility for the effect my words have upon others. I decide what actions I take. I take responsibility for the results of those actions. I don’t decide what tomorrow’s weather will be but whatever it is, I will decide to appreciate it exactly as it is and I will choose to dress appropriately for it so I can enjoy my experience of it completely. And then I will decide whether or not it is safe enough to drive to the Michelin shop for a new set of tires.

(PS: If you have Q’s drop them into comments.)

Let’s define.
Fate: The set of conditions you were born into. Events you encounter that you truly can’t control. The weave of the un-chosen reality of your existence. (Examples: the country you were born in, the parents you had, the genetics you inherited, the truth of the deepest who of you.)
Love (in this context): Deep and wide understanding and appreciation, massive gratitude that holds all.

How often have you (like the lovely Billie Eilish sang) looked in the mirror and said, “I don’t wanna be you anymore.”?

I can’t pretend to understand the big-picture set up of the mechanics of existence.
What I can say is that nothing about it feels meaningless or random.
I can also say that in what I’ve observed, The Big It is inherently evolutionary. It wants to grow and evolve and it does everything it can to help us grow and evolve.

The first time I ever stepped into the death space (not a sweet ego-death thing, but the big, real thing) was on my first retreat in Mexico. In our community we lovingly refer to that night as the ‘banana vomit’ ceremony and it was as not-graceful as it sounds. In that space of the all and the nothing I experienced everything in existence algorithmically, backwards in fours. I saw the language of mathematics. The cosmic “if that, then this.” I saw the end and how the end informed everything that came before. My entire existence unraveled in inverted mathematical cause and effect.

This awareness hasn’t stopped unfolding all these years later.

We are used to thinking of time in a linear fashion. I do this now therefore something happens in the future.
When it comes to our daily responsibilities, that is exactly true.
But what if on a cosmic scale it’s the other way around?
What if all of existence arranges itself in service to our Fati? Our authentic desires? Our truest who of who’s? What if the “end” informs the present? If that then this…

On the deepest soul core level of self, what I want out of my brief moments in existence is my highest potential. I’m geared for that stretch, I’m made for the edges, I was born for that kind of knowing. I want to see what I can do, what I can be. I want to know what a human being is capable of. That Fati deep inside of me has made my life challenging. It would be most people’s hell. I’ve had so many opportunities to coast, to settle, and something in me refuses. And The Big It has agreed. It has delivered (and is delivering) every ingredient I need to draw me into my transcendence. I was born to the exact right parents who gave me all the exact right things to push against. I experienced the exact right traumas to inform the medicine I’m able to deliver today and the art I will make in the years to come. I was given the exact right body with the exact right capacities and limitations to navigate my specific existence. I’ve met the people who delivered the right tests and pain, I’ve experienced loss and longing in all the exact right ways. Those books and messages and opportunities, the slammed doors, all there exactly when I was ready for them.

You too.

The lens you choose to see it through is the key here. Am I a victim or do I have a deep and abiding Amor Fati even in the most brutal cosmic squeeze? Do I flail and fight or do I trust myself to navigate and grow? Do I hang on for dear life and survive my circumstances or do I make the most out of every crisis and see it as the opportunity it is?

Selina’s hot tips:

1. What is it you’re after? Get clear. Is it ease? Happiness? Suffering? Money? Power? Safety? Service to others? No wrong answers here.

2. Get curious with you. The real you. Not judgmental, not harsh or critical. Curious. Study yourself like the unique art-craft you are. What makes up this thing you call self? And more importantly, what doesn’t? Do some unlearning. Get excruciatingly honest. Fall in love with you.

3. Pay attention to what life is delivering. What are you trying to learn? You get to step on that rake as many times as you need. Or not!

4. Your greatest wound is the greatest source of your power. This is Chiron in Greek mythology. Your wound is your medicine. This is worth paying attention to.

5. Clarity around Amor Fati increases as you heal old wounds. Back when I was vocal coaching I’d have people come in all the time who wanted to be singers/artists/famous when it was clear to me that they had little to no talent, aptitude or Fati for any such thing. The first conversation we would have was diving deep into what their true motivations and drives were. Often they would get to the point where they understood that what they actually wanted wasn’t fame or to make art, they wanted love, attention, meaning, acceptance from their Dad etc. What they really needed was to dive into the roots of their drive/desire/wound and to work towards healing that in productive ways, not to bandaid it chasing after something that would never fulfill and was a waste of both of our time.

6. Gratitude is big enough to hold it all. IT ALL. It requires real understanding. It’s big. It’s real. It’s true.

There is no side, but if there was a side, It is on yours.

When I first began my work with Father medicine I quickly realized that the primary emotional relationship I had to the masculine was disappointment. I also realized what I wanted that relationship to be.

Surprise and delight. (Can you imagine?)

Of course it’s not one big leap from disappointment to delight, it was (and is) thousands of healing micro-movements in that direction.

Right now we are all looking at the big sick. World-stage sick. It’s natural to feel both desperate to do something and at the same time helpless and disempowered. Over time some of us will (hopefully!) step up into politics or business and tackle it at world-stage levels, but for all of us the responsibility and the power we have to make change starts inside ourselves.

If I want to heal it I start with me first.
What is my relationship to my own internal masculine?
Once I heal that up and get clear, then I can begin to heal it up outside of myself.

This has little to do with gender.
It has nothing to do with victims and victimizers.

It has everything to do with your body, your emotions, with protection of and provision for what is sacred.
It has everything to do with elegant symbiosis and natural vs normal.
It has everything to do with purpose and fulfillment and real power.

If you join us for Father in the next couple months (and I suggest you do) we will dive deep into this. We are individually and collectively desperate for relief and light in this strange moment in time.
I would say come get it, but what I will say is come make it.

The medicines go after what’s most in the way of our health/happiness/power/clarity/integrity. For most people, fear is right at the top of that list. It was for me.

We could spend all night and day talking about the fear monster, but for now lets just take a few relevant angles on it.

1. Fear of success
Early on I had a long series of ceremonies where I was immersed in a beautiful prismatic palace with eternally unfolding patterns and spaces, unimaginable colors and crystalline sculptural edges. It was an ever-growing temple of strange, fascinating, unique beauty, and for some reason I could not understand, it scared the living bejeeeez out of me. No matter how many times I went there I couldn’t seem to relax into the wonder and let go of the fear. It took me an embarrassing number of sessions to understand that I was looking at me. I had always been quite fearless when it came to looking at my pain, my trauma, my limitation, my lack. Seeing the potential, the power, the beauty—that triggered my fear. I know myself small, but ever-evolving expansion? Standing out in all of my strange and unique beauty? Shining in prismatic color for all the world to see? Yikes.

Facing this kind of fear requires you to ask the questions: What do I want? What am I willing to take responsibility for?

2. Fear of the secret self
Humans are so good at lying to themselves when the pain gets to be too much. Our brains are ridiculously skilled at ignoring what doesn’t fit, deleting what can’t be reconciled, dissociating, burying bits of memory, even splintering consciousness itself in extreme situations. Ceremony can bring all that material right up to the surface. All the things we are desperate to ignore are right there in the light. If it’s in the way of your flourishing it’s coming up. Not in a cruel way, not as punishment, but as a kindness, as healing. In the exact doses you’re ready to handle at exactly the right time.

If this is where your fear lies, remember, you live with you all the time. Even if you’re choosing to repress or ignore the pain and trauma, it’s affecting you every moment of every day. We show up to ceremony to see and to heal and yes, my god, it can be so hard. And yes, diving into all that pain can be hell. And yes yes yes, it can get messier before it gets cleaned up.

Facing this brand of fear also requires asking the questions: What do I want? What am I willing to take responsibility for?

3. Fear of “Her”
In ceremony there is no shortage of intimidating spaces. Every night we step into The Big Unknown. Sometimes it’s a deep exploration of self, other times it’s a deep exploration of not-self. Angles of consciousness that seem entirely other. The visuals themselves have a way of stretching the limits of conscious perception. Growth means edges and most humans experience edges as deeply scary.

I remember one night in ceremony the room got quiet so I had a moment to dive deep. I was sitting on the sofa and suddenly everything lit up in iridescent color. I could see the architecture of energy, of sound waves. I could see the cellular architecture of me and of every person in the room. My access to awareness, to consciousness, kept turning up higher and higher and I heard this giggly, almost taunting, little voice in my head, “Let me know when you’ve had enough.” At first it was fascinating and I wanted more, but after a while my fear kicked in. The Big It went bigger than I’d ever witnessed. It was an electric firestorm of allness and everything, far beyond what I felt my consciousness had the capacity to hold. That same voice thundered, “YOU’RE AFRAID OF ME” and I answered, “OF-F*CKING-COURSE I’M AFRAID, LOOK AT YOU!” And then proceeded to purge my guts up which is a very common reaction in ceremony to needing to let something go so you can clear a little space for something new.

The next night required quite some courage but I drank medicine, laid down and got as soft as I could. It came in so gentle and sweet. I dropped deep into an awareness of oneness. Fear (and courage) became completely irrelevant as I cellularly understood, “She” is the space between my teeth, the pillow under my head, the air I’m breathing. Fear is the result of the illusion of separation. Afraid of who? Resist what?

My edges will look different than your edges but the expansion, evolution and growth is the thing. I navigate the world completely differently after this experience. It has changed how I look at business growth, relationship growth, my body and nervous system.

What do I want? What am I willing to take responsibility for?

4. Fear of losing our place in the tribe
Not too long ago I was in a deep ceremony where I was working around my strategy of navigating the world as a chameleon. Being overly agreeable. Softening truth and compromising myself for the sake of others comfort. I was sitting over my purge bowl, ready to rock-and-roll so to speak, and I saw an image of a sushi chef’s knife. Glistening, precise, elegant, crafted by a master and wielded by a master, gracefully cutting through bone like butter. I understood exactly what I was stepping into, what I would be practicing at, what I was requiring of me in the next phase of my life.

But in a moment of pure and quite relatable honesty, before I said yes, before I purged the old to make space for the new, I turned to A who was on the sofa next to me and I said, “Are you sure you want this new version of me?”

Something in me understood that if I stepped into this new way of being it would deeply affect the people around me and I wanted to know, if I change, if I grow, will you still love me? If I break the agreement of ‘how it’s been’ by transcending, is there still a place for me here with you?

He laughed. Hard. And then I purged. Hard.

But what a moment, what a question. How many times in my life has the answer been, “No, actually, you growing is incredibly inconvenient for me and I would very much prefer it if you stay in this little box you’ve been living in.” Too many to count.

Transcendence comes with a price and for that reason growing can trigger fear.
But transcendence is also the greatest litmus test for real love vs egoic love in relationship.

So, what do you want? And what are you willing to take responsibility for?

There will always be a justifiable reason for fear if you want it. Or not.

Some hot tips:
1. Half the battle is understanding that fear is a state of consciousness. A choice. It’s not you. It might be your normal, but it’s not your natural. If fear comes up in ceremony study the shape of it. Look at its texture, its movement. Ask what it wants from you. See it as not-you. When you can see “I am not my fear” you realize you have choices. I always know I’m beginning to master a state of consciousness when I begin to see its shape outside of myself and am able to choose whether or not I identify with it.

2. Get honest with yourself about what you’re gaining from living with fear. What is it an excuse to not do? What is it an excuse to do? How are you using it to get what you want? Is the strategy working? Is it still what you really want? There’s no right or wrong or morality in it. Just get real with you and make choices from there.

3. Sometimes states of consciousness are so deeply ingrained in our bodies and nervous systems that it’s not as simple as choosing. I spent this last year processing old grief. It came up from deep in my bones and my history and my ancestry and if I’d tried to “choose” to not feel it I would have not only been lying to myself but also doing myself a great disservice in my healing process. After months and months of working through it I finally got to the place in ceremony where I could see grief’s shape, texture and movements in crystal clarity and was honestly able to say I was bored with it, didn’t identify like I used to and was far more interested in exploring other states of consciousness. This is a bigger topic we’ll dive more into later, but for now, understand it may take some deep somatic work or other therapies to really re-pattern the body and nervous system around fear.

4. Use courage as you build trust. Trust is earned. It takes time. In the meantime you have courage. In this work and in life you don’t graduate from edges and growth (if you’re doing it well!), but trust means that even at the edgiest edges and deep in the growiest growth you know you will be able to navigate what comes.

At the same time, anyone who has been in any proximity to patriarchal religion understands the underlying fear and panic that God is going to ask you to do or “make you” do something you don’t want to do. It’s a problematic personification of the Divine who has a singular plan for your life, who has outcomes in mind and will smite you hard if you don’t obey.

I remember one man with a family and a stable job blowing up his whole life, taking his four kids out of school and into deep poverty and real physical danger because “The Lord told him” to go minister in the slums of Pittsburg.

I remember an athlete with real Olympic potential choosing to compete in his second strongest discipline instead of his winning event because “The Lord told him” to. It didn’t go so well for him or his wife who worked her booty off to put him through years of training.

Abdication of responsibility means that projection, un-healed wounds and self-sabotage get to run wild.

The medicine version of this: The Mother told me.

When we step into ceremony we access bigger, wider consciousness. This means new information. New ways of seeing. The #1 question we are asked after ceremony is, “How do I know what is me projecting vs “Her” giving me real information?”

First of all, let’s look at this (also problematic) personification of the Divine.

In my very first ceremony “She” showed up in goddess form. I drank the medicine, laid down and there She was. A towering, swirling firestorm of love and power and brazen appetite. She spent the night introducing herself to me and for the next hundred ceremonies or so She showed up over and over in She form. Over time I graduated in my understanding and the form dissolved. I didn’t need it anymore.

The Divine, the Big It, is beyond form, beyond description, beyond name. It is the mystery of mysteries. Faced with the unknowable, we humans are desperate to control, to parse, to hold, to make it manageable, so we project form. We codify. We create religions and write holy books. Such sweet efforts.

We say “She” as a shorthand because when we step into ceremony we perceive The All as creator, as source, but The Big It isn’t an entity. Couldn’t be. There is no form that would ever hold.

So, what is the most healing and beneficial way to approach what we see in our ceremonies?

Awhile back we had a man in a session who was struggling majorly in his marriage. He and his wife had been talking about divorce and he had come to ceremony to get some clarity. In his session he witnessed the death of his marriage. He saw them in a graveyard being lowered into the ground. He came to me in tears the next morning. “The Mother told me to get divorced,” he said.

Of course, the medicine is not telling him to do anything. He is sovereign.

But what a genius teaching device. He came in with a question. The medicine brought him directly into the experience of watching his marriage die and burying it in the ground without having to go through all the fuss of acting it out in waking life. He was able to directly experience how he would feel letting that partnership go. He saw and felt in crystal clarity what it was he actually wanted.

After a little clarifying conversation, he walked away from that ceremony with a bone-deep readiness to take responsibility for his authentic desires.

Like all great teachers, the medicine speaks in parable, in metaphor, in poetics, in story.
The medicine shows you you.
Are you projecting into it? Yes.
Is it giving you information? Absolutely.

The people who are best at this learn to speak its language.
The ones who have the easiest time with it understand that it is relentlessly asking, “What do you want?” And “What are you willing to take responsibility for?”

The medicine will show you you and then you get to decide.

Let go of that phrase, “The Mother told me.”
Every single part of this work comes down to desire and responsibility.

(PS: If you want to jump start your fluency in its language do a deep dive in Roman, Greek and Biblical mythology and parable. Study Carl Jung’s work about the collective unconscious and archetypes. Read “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. Make a study of your night dreams.)

An idea I’ve been meditating into is Līlā, a Sanskrit word that means Play or The Divine at Play. Līlā is the idea that creation, existence and the universe aren’t the result of necessity or duty, but of spontaneous joy, freedom and expression by the divine. Līlā suggests that we, just like the divine, create and perfect a world of forms so we can know ourselves and see ourselves a little more clearly. Līlā in many ways is Grace. Deep understanding and gratitude for every part of the messy miracle.

But Play can feel irresponsible and even inappropriate in this time of cultural and political psychosis. The need is so endlessly needy, the sick is so insanely sick, the stupid is so mind-bendingly stupid.

I’d like to suggest, especially now in the biggest sick we've witnessed in our lifetime, that Play is our sacred imperative.

One of the greatest gifts the medicine has given me is that I feel younger now than I did at 7. I play, consciously, deeply and wholeheartedly. I understand that if I want to explore the edges of consciousness in ceremony, if I’m going to dive neck deep into other peoples trauma and stories, if I’m going to run a business and an Environmental Trust, if I’m going to evolve at the pace I’m evolving, if I’m going to make any kind of a difference on this planet—I must be expert at play. It’s not optional.

Here are some practical examples for you...

If you’re in bed with your partner and you’ve got the choice to swirl on the politics and the problems for that last hour before you go to sleep OR press pause until the morning and spend that hour f*cking them senseless, Līlā.

If you’ve got the choice to spend that extra few minutes at your desk after a long day obsessing over email OR go sit in the center of the living room floor and stretch your body a little, Līlā.

If you’re hanging with your kids and you can either check your phone 89 times OR give them a few minutes of your full creative attention, Līlā.

And watch what happens.

Subscribe now

It’s a particularly wild time out here in the world. For many people it’s feeling especially challenging to hold steadiness and perspective. And it is more critically important than ever that we do what we can on an individual level to help the collective evolve into something sustainable and sane. That means, first, healing it up in ourselves. Doing our own work. Getting healthy. Taking responsibility and cleaning up our part of the miracle so we eventually gain the bandwidth and the clarity to take a look at what we can do to heal up the bigger picture.

We’ve got such major respect for those of you who are doing just that. From the depths of our beings, thank you. Working with these medicines isn’t for the faint of heart. But damn, the rewards are big.

We’ve got a whole lot of topics we’re ready to dive into here.

If you have anything you’d like to see us explore, email selina@jaguarkyle.com or drop it in the comments.

Lots of love,

SJK