My Mission Statement: The Wish for My “Spiritual Work”
In a world where concrete science is valued as the most important truth, many scoff at myth as a vehicle for deeper knowledge. Science itself has not become a limitation, but when we restrict ourselves only to what can be empirically evidenced, we can forget the importance of the emblematic and the ethereal. (This is not an anti-science blog. I am very pro-science, since science is a systematic approach to inquiry that results in peer-reviewed evidence. What I am saying is meant to apply more to inner searching and lucid dreaming— It is not meant to encourage people to ignore medical advice or to dismiss scientific findings or research.) This has estranged self-understanding from its nonphysical iterations and abridged it to controlled experiments only “other people” can recreate in a lab. This is a valid experience, and many of the people who subscribe to a concrete approach alone have a firm grasp on what they believe and why, which is very healthy.
However, self-knowledge is not contained in the ego structures of the concrete alone. Yes, of course these are important, and we need to pay attention to the advances and discoveries in medicine, astronomy, psychology, and so on, but our estrangement from our inner mythos has led to an untethered and inhibited collective consciousness. We polish our hardware but forget to consult our deep inner programming. We do not live in our own imaginations; we wait for other people to tell us what truth is. We neglect the inner selves far too often, though we are very creative about how we hide from them (we find the pastors, gurus, and politicians to tell us what to do when we take a break from the science and math). For this reason, the Soul begins to starve. It is immortal and continues on (from my perspective) after we leave our fleshly forms, but it is not Met with understanding or acknowledgment. It withers away from our experience until we live as just bodies. Jobs. Functions. Computations in a socially engineered algorithm. We are miserable and want more, so we buy stuff. We post online for likes or scroll for the next dopamine hit… But this isn’t really nourishment.
Great scholars of myth and folklore, such as Joseph Campbell and Claude Levi Strauss, understood the Soul-deep medicine available in our myths and inner landscapes that are so easily dismissed or swept under the rug as “children’s fantasies.” (Also, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities knew these things long before these two men did.) They knew that Self-knowledge was retrieved through the identification and healing of one’s inner architecture… often in ways that drift into parapsychology and transcend the more tempered pace of modern thinking. Of course, there are always other manifestations… Campbell inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars, and we know how much that means to our collective! I spend much of my time reconnecting others to the power of our collective and individual stories too, but as far as my spiritual “life’s work” is concerned, I take it a step further.
When someone asks what I do, or what my niche contribution is to spirituality, I think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work where he said, “Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak…” Many healthy traditions emphasize that nature is important and that each part of it has a life to live and gifts to bestow on us. Magicians and spiritual practitioners contact representatives of nature (elementals) to gain mastery over their spiritual selves… The Druids and ancient people even tried to “make friends” with some of these beings through their folklore and stories of gods and goddesses, alongside their worship of nature. But even though I benefited greatly from many of these teachings, I still wanted more in the end. Someone else’s story was felt, loved, and cherished, but I craved closer contact. Everyone recognized that a leaf was supposed to mean something, but almost no one was connecting directly to it themselves. Or at least it was hard for me to access while doing ritual magic and following how-to’s. My work gives nature and mythology personality and vitality, sure. But instead of only discovering a correspondence (a symbol or archetype) that connects one thing to another and calling it quits, I go directly to the source asking, “If this leaf could speak, what would it say?” At first, I was worried that I would only be projecting, but when the universe responds to your call, it is pretty compelling.
The surprising thing about the conversations I started, is that I received responses back very, very quickly because nature started responding and sharing its many facets with depth and honesty. To me, it didn’t feel like folklore anymore or an exercise with internal dialogue. Instead of me spending time inventing a mythology, the elementals responded like friends. Nature revealed its inner life and wanted to join me on my pathway to full unity with myself and the collective. As a human with a brain that wants to make sense of everything (that’s how we keep from going insane), I assigned meaning and importance to those responses but did not have to manufacture a “pretend” encounter. It unfolded organically and with startling potency. I signed up to be a Yeats or a Grimm but ended up a friend of the Otherworlds instead.
I think that all the things we have (spiritual practice, mythology, ancient traditions and beliefs, deities, and stories) are representatives of parts of ourselves we need to re-integrate. The path of correspondence is powerful, and it can be transformational spiritually, but honestly, it was never enough for me by itself. Using elementals or spirits of nature as a means to an end or to gain authority just isn’t what I am after. In fact, it feels downright rude to reduce another entity, physical or not, to a mere object driving my success. I want melding, oneness, and unity. (It is said that unity can only be birthed by a binary, which is not true in my experience, but we have to start somewhere.)
I went to the spiritual cupboards looking for some mythology to crunch and absorb in the meantime and found a viscerally and mentally “real” universe inside. I built friendships with the fae, mermaids, sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders… These spirits of the other realms, with lives and experiences as real as my own. They all had something to share… to help me remember. When we contact our stories, mythologies, and spiritual friends, we have the power to accept their elixirs and make them a part of ourselves. The shamans and Druids know this, and they are cool enough to bring it back with them to share. So, how do you make something part of yourself? You learn what it is, inside and out, and do the same to yourself… Then, you find the connection points and start joining them together. Really, these things are all inside us, but the fabric of remembrance feels like stitching and weaving sometimes as we bring the fragmented parts closer together again.
It can take many lifetimes, yes, and a lot of great time building those friendships with each other. This is what I teach, what I love, and what inspires me every day. I always wanted to live in a fantasy, and the universe said, “You can.” To these beings I have befriended, fantasy is not a delusion or a daydream, but an interweaving of desire and fulfillment. We meet at the rendezvous points of the magical and the mundane, the mythological and the physical. We think of them as separate things, but they actually exist on a spectrum. They converge and blend when we meet them in our emotions, minds, and hearts… These contact points where myth blossoms into legend and a self-history worth investigating. Like ideas meeting a page, our consciousness is the catalyst for fantasy to find an armchair in our every day and pen its narratives into our earthly adventures.
To put it simply, I speak directly to nature and let it become a part of my soul where it Resonates. Some might call it mythology, others a child’s fantasy. I’m fine with that. But to me, nature is something with Soul and Voice, that calls my inner being back to a state of cohesive consciousness and dances with this resurrected Self.
My mission is to revive the “ineffable” architecture in our inner selves and teach it to speak again. This is easy given my journeys to the spiritual realm and recognizing that these aspects of us are always willing to talk back. Sometimes it really is just as easy as re-learning how not to feel childish or silly for listening. Of course, I do my own channelings, and I love to share those with other people, but the most meaningful part of what I do is helping people mobilize their spiritual lives to meet these realms for themselves. The mermaid realm is beautiful, we can all agree, but what does it say to you? Through my work (Books, podcasts, and blogs I am building over time, etc.) I teach others how to merge myth, Nature, and themselves into a unified Being. Are we the dreams a myth made, written by a bard or sage long ago, or do we speak into these mysteries and see how they change and interface with us?
The Hero’s/Heroine’s Journey has ups and downs, but the only way out is through. I use my own stories and experiences to localize and anchor possibilities into the third dimension, to cement each person’s potential in their consciousness once more. But only Arthur can pull Excalibur from the stone… Only you can define and quest limitlessly in your Inner Lands. In our inner realms, we are all the main characters. No one can undertake our growth or journeys for us, but sometimes, we can check the map or listen to a guide. Athena mentored Odysseus… We know this story.
Rather than implanting myself into the central nervous system of someone else’s inner framework, what I do is stand to the side. I do sculpt out elemental realms, fairie kingdoms, selkie customs, and interplanetary histories. I excavate the Otherworlds and forgotten tomes, a little dusty from being deep-buried… But I do not hold all the answers to your story. Instead of pretending I know all the juicy secrets, my goal is to place the tools of consciousness and connection into your hands. I give you cosmic phone numbers, but you are the one who dials in… has the experiences.
Part of every hero’s journey is “refusing the call” for a time… It’s part of the fun… Teasing ourselves with the mundane all by itself before we descend into the cave to receive its medicine. It’s basically hot and cold play to add some sensation to our spiritual development (we love our opposites). My question is, how will your inner Lotus flower today? What journeys will it claim? When given the guidebooks and the reminders of the undead natures waiting to be named, is today the day we get tired of the flirting and dance with our innermost beings, unique and varied as they are? I hope my stories and spiritual research remind you that you can. This is my mission… How does the saying go?