Down from the Mountain - On Being Human after Spiritual and Alchemical Initiation

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Accepting Defeat

The purpose of life is to be defeated
by greater and greater things.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

Nothing has ever mattered more to me than hearing the whispers of my own heart and heeding them. That’s hard to do in a noisy world, but I’m committed. Living life according to someone else’s constructs and expectations has always felt unbearable to me. But if there’s anything I’ve gathered from this whole “follow your heart” business, it’s that doing so hardly ever leads where you think it should, nor does life always seem to care about rewarding you properly for all your hard work and courage.

This was never more obvious to me than when I was at the end of my second half of the mountain journey—all of that dark-night and distillation alchemy after awakening that was supposedly going to lead me to my core and clue me in on my most meaningful life purpose, maybe even result in some of that “best life” stuff the spiritual internet is always going on about. Instead, I was exhausted, raw, and confused about what the point of it all was. 

If I had distilled myself down to essence and acquired the Philosopher’s Stone within, why couldn’t I make magic already? Why couldn’t I finally do the things I felt I was born to do? Why didn’t things feel better? Why did the lower vertical descents into darkness continue with a death grip vengeance? I felt more dissatisfied about the outcome of all this inner work than ever. If sacrificing everything for the sake of following my heart meant not being able to feel fulfilled and have the things I wanted in life, then what was the point? How was any of this worth it?

Seriously, what is the point already?! 

Any niggling notions I had about what it would mean to reach the end of my mountain journey and acquire the Philosopher’s Stone were being pried from my psyche. I had no clue what it meant anymore. 

Out of sheer necessity, I was opening to a state of raw beingness unlike any I’d experienced before. My resistance was worn away. The will for anything other than just being and breathing had been beaten out of me. All I could do was exist. And some days, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to do that.

I was sick of the words alchemy and journey and healing and purpose and soul. I didn’t want to hear myself say or think about them ever again. I just wanted to sleep, maybe for a million years. And after that, just breathe. Be. Exist. Not reach or try for anything I thought should be happening. Not hustle for my worth. Not explain a damn thing to anyone including myself. And then maybe, maybe see what actually wanted to be born through me, if anything at all.

I had given every bit of energy, time, and money to create the life I thought would bring me the most meaning, to heal, and to follow my dreams. But those dreams weren’t following me back. I’d only ever endeavored to be true to my soul, but doing so always ended up being about something other than what I first thought, like I was being tricked into some deeper, harder, more mystical healing work under the guise of following my heart. Following my heart started becoming synonymous with falling, failing, and becoming weirder, rarer, and more placeless in this world. Being who I was and also being a part of some successful work or partnership in this world felt less and less possible. The more I uncovered my authentic self, the less I fit anywhere.

But I kept trying. I was convinced many times I’d figured out the right combination that would allow me to live the life that felt most aligned to me while also using my gifts to serve the greater good.

Maybe I need a better website? The wording is all wrong. People won’t resonate with me if the wording is wrong. Do I need to brand myself better? But I’m not a brand. I’m a person! Maybe I need to tweet more. No, I can’t fake anything, even a fucking tweet. I need more followers. Of course that’s why this isn’t working. I don’t have a big enough audience. I need a wider reach. Should I advertise? Sell my soul? No, no, no. I’m supposed to be saving my soul, not selling it. I need to focus and hone in. I need to identify the smallest audience possible. I need to connect with people in a real way. I need to be bolder in speaking my truth. No one will be able to resist me if I’m speaking my truth, right? Maybe I need to quit my waitressing job. How will the Powers That Be know I’m serious about my dream life if I don’t show them how much of my not-dream-life I’m willing to sacrifice for it? But also, I need my waitressing job so I can pay the bills and keep getting on the internet to share my awesome writing with the world because that’s the ticket to my dream life, right? This conundrum fucks with me. Why does my body hurt? Am I eating too much meat? Not enough? I keep surrendering all my expectations. I’ve adjusted my mindset to hell and back. I’ve cut cords and cleared karma. What even is karma anyway? I’ve consumed sooo many green smoothies, and honestly, most of them weren’t that good. I’ve faced my shadow and owned my own bullshit again and again. I’ve transmuted myself to a million and one deaths! Now I’m ready. I’m ready for real this time, Universe! Do you hear me?! I’m ready!

On and on it went. Every time I made changes to myself and to the way I was bringing that self to the world, it never yielded what I thought it would or should. 

Even though I’d left Spiritual Margaritaville long ago for the wilderness of my own soul, I still had threads of beliefs that if I did the inner work to clear the way, I would eventually be rewarded. I’d eventually have what I wanted. I’d be granted a life of meaning and purpose. A life that redeemed my suffering and validated my worth and existence. Wasn’t it true that if you set an intention and worked toward it with your whole heart, everything in the universe conspired with you to make it happen? Whoever said that must have been living in a different universe than I was. The Universe was not meeting me even a tenth of the way on anything I tried to implement. 

The whole Create Your Best Life culture was starting to feel like a pyramid scheme—one that kept some people rolling in wellness and abundance at the top but spit me out the ass end of it. What was I missing? I did everything right, checked all the boxes, checked different boxes, created boxes that didn’t exist and checked them too, but it never added up. 

I know now that it’s not supposed to. Living soulfully doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make immediate sense. Soul is the wild card, the unpredictable factor we can’t control. It takes us into the mystery and the mystery makes us whole. Although leading from the soul generates phenomenal wonders, trying to make logical sense of the process while it’s happening generates insanity.

And I’ve generated my fair share of insanity. 

Trying to make it work and add up in all the preconceived ways, including spiritually enlightened ways, only set me up for more failure and disappointment—those blessed and brutal repeated washings of alchemical distillation. Everything I tried only led me more and more into myself. 

But how long can you turn into yourself before you fall out the other side of yourself? How long can you keep giving to something that isn’t giving back to you before you can feel and tune into a different flow? How long can you delude yourself into thinking you’re getting somewhere before you can stop trying to get anywhere other than where you are? How long? How long?

The maddening thing is that sometimes you know you’re reaching for something that isn’t reaching back for you, but you still can’t let it go. You can’t stop reaching. (Until you can.) You’re subjected to the process. A part of you knows you are falling with every step you take, and yet, you still have to take the steps. You still have to fall because the only way to get there is to fall. That’s its own brand of surrender. 

But when does that end? When have you fallen so far that you can’t fall anymore? When have you done enough yoga that you become yoga? Meditated enough that every breath is meditation? When have you reached the root of your roots where nothing stands between you and yourself and there’s nowhere else to go but right in the center where it hums: Only here. Only now. Only this. When have you cleared the way and united permanently with your unbreakable core, the Philosopher’s Stone—the inseparable union of the soul and spirit within you—which was the bigger goal all along? How do you recognize when you’ve crossed that invisible threshold? What does it feel like? And what happens then?

One thing is clear: probably not what you thought would happen.

So… what then?

What Is This All For?

I’m remembering an interaction I had with a friend who was going through the brutal distillation process. We were standing in his kitchen where many of our soulversations happened. He was putting groceries away and growing more upset by the moment. A recent lift in the process had given him hope he might be getting somewhere with all this alchemy business. But we know what comes from those lifts in distillation, right? The inevitable drop and crash. Ugh. 

Amid our exchange, he realized that what he desired, what he thought he was working toward and was truly meant for...