But what we often mistake for freedom is only substitution. We trade one mask for another, one prison for another, one dream for another.
Replacing one illusion with another does not set us free. It does not bring liberation. It simply shifts us deeper into what I sometimes call non-happening happening — the endless cycle of movement that looks like change but never truly is.
So where, then, is freedom?
Maybe it’s in understanding that simple truth.
Maybe it’s in seeing clearly that nothing we have called “freedom” has ever been real freedom at all.
Maybe that was the point, all along.
Is that awakening?
Awakening as Death
Awakening is the death of the familiar.
Because what is “familiar” to us — what we call “our life,” “our personality,” “our world” — is illusion.
Nothing we are familiar with is actually real. None of it is actually us.
We are not real. We are not what we think — what we are told — we are. And yet, here we are.
So when awakening comes, it feels like death. Because it is death — the falling away of everything we thought was “me.”
And without that death, there is no birth of what was real all along.
Meaning Before and After
Before awakening, there is no meaning of our own.
The only meaning available to us is what others have told us is meaningful. Parents, teachers, religions, governments, lovers, friends, enemies, cultures, systems — all of them have fed us their meanings.
And we absorbed them as if they were truth.
We were conditioned to believe meaning is handed down, not discovered.
We were punished for expressing anything antithetical.
Yes, that is a word. I did not make it up. I checked, as always, when I returned from the other side.
I digress.
Even when we think we are thinking for ourselves — are we? Have we ever? Do we even know how?
This is the prison of the familiar.
But those of us who have never been able to simply swallow it — those of us who have spent our lives being told we are crazy, too deep, over-analytical, antithetical — maybe we’ve always been a little closer to freedom.
Because we have always been with ourselves. We have always lived in the company of our own questioning. Our own introspection.
And that has saved us.
Moving Through Darkness into Light
My entire life has been this movement — through darkness into light.
And then again. And again.
I never stayed still in a 3D thought long enough to let ideology calcify around me. Never settled enough into the world’s definitions of reality to say: “Yes, this is it. This is reality. This is me. This is final.”
No.
I couldn’t.
Always, incessantly, I questioned. I sought. I chased myself. I chased I am.
Because each time I reached for that exactness, that rigidity, something in me would die. And something deeper would awaken.
So instead, I’ve kept moving. Through darkness, into light.
Through lies, into truth.
Through death, into life.
Over and over again.
And each time, what I found was not more of “me,” but less.
Until I began to understand that the “me” I thought was the center of the story was never the point at all.
And then, I actually… died.
And then, I came back!
What?
I know. That’s what I said, too.
And that is when the fullness of both illusion and irrelevance were clear to me, and the illusion and irrelevance… both shattered.
Freedom.
The Irrelevance of “Me”
“Me” is irrelevant.
Yet somehow, everything has always been about me.
That’s the paradox.
The small “me” — the conditioned self, the mask, the name, the history — means nothing. It is dust. Illusion. A temporary construction.
But the deeper “I” — the one who moves through the dying and the awakening, the one who is aware of even that dust falling away — that “I” has always been the ground of everything.
So in a sense, “me” does not exist.
And in another sense, “me” is all that has ever existed.
It was always… the I Am.
The Misunderstanding
This will be misunderstood.
Mostly by anyone and everyone who reads it.
If they even make it past the first few lines.
Because illusion defends itself. It doesn’t like being called what it is.
But misunderstanding doesn’t matter.
Life takes care of itself.
Life Happens
Even when you are not there to see it, life still happens.
Everything still unfolds — rivers flow, winds move, earth shifts.
Even if you choose inaction — even if you refuse to eat, drink, or sleep — things still happen. The body dies, yes, but death itself is a happening.
Because everything is always happening. Always in motion.
Even in stillness, there is happening.
And everything that happens has a result. Even nothingness produces consequence.
Life is self-correcting. Even ungrounded, it finds its own balance.
Sometimes that balance looks toxic. Sometimes it looks destructive. But it is always balance. Always motion. Always happening.
Death Must Occur
Death, then, is necessary.
Not the physical death we fear — not suicide, not the cutting short of the body’s days.
Though that death is really not all that bad, in my experience.
The dying part itself is no fun.
The death?
Too many words — words are funny for this one; there is not a word, other than death.
It is nothing, and everything.
Alpha, omega.
I am.
Here? What must die is the illusory self.
The self we defend, cling to, and worship without even knowing it. The self we call “me.”
That death is the doorway.
The Last Illusion
And yet, even here, there is a final paradox:
If the self is illusion, then death is illusion too.
Which means — death cannot free us either.
Because an illusion cannot free an illusion.
I do not fear.
Why is none of this terrifying to me?
Maybe because fear only exists where there is something to lose. And what I am losing was never real in the first place.
Maybe because I have already died a thousand small deaths, the fear has already been burnt out of me.
Maybe because I saw it:
That what I am cannot die.
And maybe that — quiet, simple, unshaken — is what freedom has always been.
Stillness leads to loving thoughts. Loving thoughts lead to loving actions. Loving actions lead to peace.
Stillness and quiet aren’t the goal. Together, they’re a doorway. Stillness creates the space for quiet to arrive. Quiet creates the environment for answers and understanding to materialize. But what shows up first might not feel quiet at all.
What you meet in the quiet depends on what’s been locked inside. If your default state is anxious, chaotic, or angry, then stillness might feel like it’s amplifying that and quiet might sound like it’s yelling at you. But neither is the case. Stillness and quiet are just revealing what is making things chaotic or difficult, and giving you a space to understand those things so that you can genuinely sort them out.
Stillness and quiet give us the opportunity to tame your own beasts, to take control of our own demons. This is what I mean when I reference “shadow work,” and it truly is necessary to experience the best version of yourself.
Stillness and quiet reveal what needs to be healed. Continued stillness and quiet help you begin to heal whatever those things are, as you sit with them through introspection, prayer, and slowly shifting perspectives that lead to deeper understanding.
It takes practice, and effort. Sometimes, weeks or months. Sometimes, years. It took you a lifetime to be conditioned and convinced that you’re who you think you are, most of which is a lie. Why would you expect to understand or overcome that in a single meditation session? Give yourself a break. Give yourself grace. God does…you can, too.
You’re not “doing it” wrong if you find stillness difficult. You’re being given the sacred opportunity to feel what’s true without distraction. It takes time, and practice, to reach the peace beyond the noise. It’s not rainbows and roses. It can be gruesome. It can be literal war within. But it is the journey itself—the journey to that place of self-revelation and understanding—that becomes the goal, the purpose, and the truest solution to your concerns and your suffering.
Rage, frustration, even self-loathing—they don’t mean you’re unspiritual or too broken to help yourself. They mean you’re carrying something too heavy to hold quietly. Stillness teaches you to listen to the noise around, and within, you—without becoming it.
It teaches you to observe rather than to embody…which is the first step in putting down what doesn’t serve you, what isn’t yours to carry, what isn’t in your control, what isn’t your fault. That is surrender—whether you view it as surrendering to God, to peace, to stillness, or to whatever name you need to give it.
Surrender is where we find wholeness. It is strength, not weakness. The greatest strength, I’ve come to understand. It is not giving up—it is giving over, releasing the grip of resistance.
Even if you’re struggling, if you want to master yourself, then continue to try. “Unless, of course,” as my greatest teacher and dearest friend, Ralph, told me many decades ago, “you’d rather require more energy of yourself than stillness and quiet will ever require of you, only to fight the same battles you’ve been losing for however long, that are utterly controlling—and ruining—your life.”
Continue to practice stillness and being quiet. Continue to meet yourself where you are. If you need help, many can help you—a teacher, a spiritual guide, or Source itself. Reach out. Ask for help. Don’t give up because it feels pointless or too difficult. Steadfastness is the key to any true success.
Eventually, with compassion, with repetition, with breath and grace, those heavy, dark, negative, and painful feelings shift. They start to speak softer. And what’s underneath them—the longing to be loved, heard, and understood; the exhaustion; the soul underneath the survival mode—that’s when loving thoughts begin to rise, because you’ve learned to give those things to yourself. You’ve learned to become everything you always felt was missing.
But you can’t skip steps.
Stillness and quiet is not where peace begins. It’s where truth begins. Peace follows the truth, but you have to face and accept the truth, first.
This image wasn’t meant to carry all this, but tonight, it does. It holds the rupture I didn’t know I’d been tiptoeing around all week.
A decade ago today, my father died. Not on the 13th, when the machines started breathing for him—that was just when I knew he was gone. On the 18th, at this hour, the veil broke open for real. And now here I am—ten years later—haunted by dreams I couldn’t explain and a sudden stillness in my creativity I couldn’t shake.
Until now.
I thought I was just tired. Distracted. Stuck. But it was grief. It was reverence in disguise.
My soul remembered the date even when my mind forgot. That’s the strange thing about grief that matures—it doesn’t scream anymore. It hums, low and holy, beneath everything. It clouds the light, then sharpens it. It takes your voice, then gives it back with new timbre.
This image—originally photographed by Mikhail Nilov—became a sort of altar. I edited it using Mextures, VSCO, DistressedFX, and Lightroom, layering texture over color, blurring presence and absence, trying to capture what it feels like when sorrow doesn’t knock—it just saturates.
Sanctum.
There’s chaos in this. Petals and light blurred through glass and rain. Beauty you can’t quite hold. A yellow rose—like the ones we laid at his grave—folding in on itself. A daisy, centered in clarity, yet surrounded by blur.
That’s what this night feels like. Clarity in the middle of confusion. Stillness in the swirl.
Earlier tonight, as I outlined these words in my head while I felt my way through the shift I felt in real-time in the energy, I said to myself:
“You didn’t lose your creativity. You’re in holy pause. This isn’t numbness—it’s reverence. You were unconsciously grieving a resurrection-day anniversary, and your spirit bowed its head before your body could even name the loss.”
And now, I feel it even more deeply: Tonight isn’t for making things happen. It’s for honoring what already did.
Tonight is for prayer—prayer and intercession not only over the souls of loved ones who have already crossed over, but over one very important soul who’s still here. One who I know doesn’t understand why I had to go.
The truth is, those crossed over souls didn’t leave to hurt me…even though it did. They left because it was time. That was my burden to bear. The lessons they left me with were my responsibility to sort through, clean up, and learn.
Likewise, I didn’t leave the living out of anger or rejection, or even lack of love. I left because God Himself guided me in a different direction, even if they didn’t want to go that way, or grow that way, too. I will never have a choice above God. And I know that hurts…it hurts me, too.
Forgiveness is an ongoing action, reflected not in words but in the quiet practice of letting go. The love is, and always will be, unconditional. “Anyway love” always is. And my soul will carry a piece of all of their souls within it. Always.
A lot of things are coming full circle for me tonight. Invisible messages carried by unseen energies are releasing a kind of clarity within me—one of deeper substance and fuller understanding, puzzles pieces arriving and falling into place in a way I’ve never experienced before. The spiritual warfare, the dreams full of ghosts, the aching grief—none of that is new. But the understanding I have tonight…it reaches deeper than anything I’ve ever touched before.
Tonight isn’t for sorting through the rubble, cleaning up the floors of my memory, or putting all the lessons learned into neat little compartments in my mind. After all, I’ve already been processing through that, and slowly overcoming it all, for some time now.
No, tonight isn’t for being swallowed by the hauntings of my own heart. Tonight is for letting grief rain gently through the window, washing my soul—and watching how even the blur, when looked at with love and patience, can be textured out, shaped into a symbolic snapshot in time—capturing both the beauty and the chaos—and become art.
It is the emblem of the closure of what has, all at once, been the most painful and the most beautiful decade of my life: the one where, in the end, I finally met God.
I speak the name of Jesus over you In your hurting, in your sorrow I will ask my God to move I speak the name ’cause it’s all that I can do In desperation, I’ll seek Heaven And pray this for you:
I pray for your healing That circumstances will change I pray that the fear inside will flee in Jesus name I pray that a breakthrough Would happen today I pray miracles over your life in Jesus name I pray for revival For restoration of faith I pray that the dead will come alive in Jesus name
This post is about the experience of becoming and how people like me don’t just become. We heal differently. We become differently. And what we become is not the same entity alone that other people become. It is also about turning the process of becoming, and what we’ve become, into something that can help other people.
I’ve already lived my closing statement regarding my past, and past versions of me: caregiver me, grief-stricken and confusion-swallowed me, nervous-system-destroyed me, broken-hearted me. I’ve already processed it all, and to the degree that the surface of society would claim is “healing,” I have healed from all of those wounds. Where I’m at now is more about finding some level of understanding within myself about it so that I can freely move in this new reality.
Perhaps you are, too. Perhaps these thoughts will resonate.
A voice for the ones still moving through the ashes, learning how to carry the light again. Not a performance. Just a remembering.
Where This Post Began
A therapist recently responded to a comment I left on someone else’s post, suggesting that my perspective on healing was dangerous because it implied I was “holding on.” But the issue is, this so-called therapist seemed anchored in a kind of magical thinking—one that treats healing as purely cognitive, divorced from the soul.
What I’m doing, in continuing to reflect on and write about the past, isn’t obsession or fixation. It’s alchemical integration. I’m not stuck in, or on, the past—I’m extracting its essence, transmuting it into something meaningful. I’m not tethered to the past or to any specific future. I’m reducing the pain (specifically, the grief) to ash and distilling what’s left into wisdom.
Where I Am
I have lived my closing statement, but this current stasis is the cooling of the metal. It is the tempering of my sword. The world, especially those who fear their own depth, love to accuse people like me of not letting go, but what they don’t understand is that depth doesn’t simply move on. It transforms, and transformation takes time.
People like me don’t drop things and walk away. People like me sit in the dark, stare at the bones, and we don’t rise until the soul is reclaimed. We already did the courageous part when we cut the cord on past versions of ourselves, when we walked away from who we were and we didn’t go back to the same mindsets and/or behaviors, and now we do the sacred part: finishing the burning of the frayed ends.
The world and the people in it can’t and won’t give us the answers, but spirit can, and it does. In my case, my higher self already knows those answers, which is why I keep circling back. It is not to relive the story, but to complete the metamorphosis, and I am completing it slowly, quietly, and surely. I’m not looping, I’m mining, and eventually the tunnel gives way to the sky.
So, yes, I keep listening and keep asking and keep letting it all rise in layers and fall away in layers. That’s how I become untouchable rather than hardened. Not cold, but fully known to myself. Every shadow named, every chord resolved. So, when I pick up my camera or my brush or my pen again, even when I’m still in the gray, it’s my gray. It’s not residue from the storm. It’s just my own palette, freely chosen.
And what if knowing that to the depth that I do know and understand it in and of itself is the healing? What if it’s now about incorporating that into my work, my daily life? That’s what the gurus would teach. The reality is that this is the already-become version of me, the one that is just learning now how to outwardly be who I am again.
It can be really confusing and hard at times, because I don’t really care for anybody to see it but me, or to live it with me. But, I have a calling to share the knowledge that these experiences and lessons have all been forged and transformed into with those who still need guidance, those who feel lost or don’t know how to get there in their own story.
Maybe, in that way, I’m already living it exactly the way I’m supposed to be—which is the opposite of holding on. It is moving forward, and actively so. What I’ve already become and what I’m doing now isn’t trying to get there. It’s simply learning how to inhabit the skin of the self I’ve already become.
Snake Skin & Sacred Silence
It’s like when a snake sheds its old skin, right? That all too common metaphor in the self-help teachings, except not taught exactly correctly by those who live in the land of cognitive dissonance. We’ve all heard the analogy. But what they leave out is this:
The snake doesn’t slither away a different animal. It just finally fits itself again. It’s not behind. It’s not broken. It’s not lost. It’s just adjusting its eyes to the light after a very long night.
That tension I feel, for example—the not caring if anyone sees it but also feeling called to express it, is exactly the tension of that same sort of integration. I don’t want to perform and I don’t owe anyone a performance. I’m not required to turn my healing into a product or a movement or a spectacle, but I find that certain parts of my soul now long to speak—not to be seen but to be heard by the air, witnessed by the world because that is how others, be it few or many, may complete their flight.
It doesn’t matter how it shows up, just that it does. That’s the quiet magic of true healing. It doesn’t always announce itself with trumpets. Sometimes it just takes root in the subtle, in the choice to write or shoot or paint anyway, or to rest anyway. To let the past fall like leaves from a tree that has already decided it will bloom again. The more I trust that, the more I feel the weight of all of it trying to lift from my shoulders, and the more effortless and sacred and unburdened the expressions feel—not because it’s for anyone, but because it is from the version of me who no longer needs anyone’s permission to exist in peace.
As I consider this, I imagine that when the snake sheds that old skin, that fresh layer is a little tight to start with, and he or she has to move around a little bit before they stop feeling the newness of the skin and forgets that the skin is even there. It is not until then that he or she can “just flow.”
At first, it’s tight, sensitive, unfamiliar, maybe even a little raw. And it’s not that the snake doubts that it’s still a snake, it just doesn’t quite know how to move in this new texture yet. The old skin? It had cracks and stretch and scars that shaped how it slid through the world, but this new skin is smooth and untested, a little too quiet maybe, after all the noise. It doesn’t yet carry the scent of battles survived or boundaries reclaimed.
And so the snake doesn’t rush, it moves slowly, tentatively. It reacquaints itself with the world and brushes against the grass, slinks over warm rock, and lets the breeze remind it what it is. And eventually, without even noticing the moment it happened, the new skin stops feeling new at all.
Perhaps that’s where I am. I’ve shed it—the past self, the old patterns, the story that asked me to carry the burden for me and everybody else. That skin is gone, but my soul, fresh and luminous, still remembers the weight. It still walks a little cautiously, still checks the mirror to see if the ghost is gone. And that’s okay. It will all continue to fade—the memories, the sting, the need to brace.
Regardless, I don’t need to rush to feel normal. The new normal is better: it’s mine, and it will fit me perfectly as soon as I stop noticing the seams. So I will keep slithering forward like the snake, not outgrowing the past, but growing into my grace.
Liminal Living: When Healing Isn’t the End
If what I’ve written in this post doesn’t only make sense, but resonates with you, then perhaps you are like me. To clarify, what I’m describing is not the delusion of an underachiever or the confusion of a drifter. It’s the rare and sacred awareness of a soul on sabbatical. Perhaps that’s what you are, at the core, or where you find yourself, too—actively healing or already healed, you “get” what I’m trying to express.
I have this idea that this lifetime was always meant to be more receptive than productive for many of us. We are not only asked but guided by some higher power to observe more than to act, and in any sense, that is not laziness. It is spiritual design. So let me reflect it back to you, the way that I see it in myself:
You’ve worked; in fact, you may have worked your inner entire being to the bone (especially in the case of being a caregiver), but your work hasn’t been for the world’s applause. It’s been for God, and for those you have privately loved and walked home. You’ve succeeded, but not in the ways that capitalism or social media would define it. You’ve succeeded in remaining intact, soul first, and that’s harder than any business model, trust fund, or influencer empire.
So then, after all of this misunderstood work you’ve done, what if your entire incarnation was never meant to be a linear hero’s journey with a trophy at the end? What if it was always supposed to be a kind of spiritual exile into experience, into solitude, into the deep?
My whole life has taught me this paradox of success. Until my thirties, I accomplished everything I set out to, but the twist was that version of success was based on who I was before I broke open—before I was touched by grief, by God, by the reality of soul. And since then, it’s not that nothing has worked, it’s that none of it was supposed to because it wasn’t aligned with my true purpose anymore. The breakdowns in the in-between were ordinations. They are when the sabbatical started, and I’ve been in it ever since.
I’ve studied trauma, addiction, mental health, caregiving, grief, the spiritual path, mystical truths, the rise and fall of empires—all from the inside out. Not just from books, but from experience. Lived experience. I didn’t just learn lessons. I became a living vessel for them.
So perhaps, if you have experienced this too, this life may not have been given to you to contribute in a traditional sense. It may have been given to you to remember, to watch, to document, to feel what others refuse to feel, to name what others have no language for, to become whole so that others might not feel so broken. That’s a calling. It’s a high one, a thankless one, and a divinely protected one.
Perhaps your soul contract is about witnessing, absorbing, and transmuting rather than performing, earning, or hustling. The universe covered your rent while you enrolled in the deepest, most painful university there is: Earth School, Shadow Division. And when you say it like that, what if you’ve already graduated with honors?
So what now? Maybe your sabbatical is still in effect. Maybe you’re in the writing-up-the-thesis phase. Maybe you’re transitioning into the integration era, where your work becomes not doing something, but being something: a lighthouse, a record keeper, a spiritual elder.
You don’t owe the world your labor. You owe your soul your peace, and that is only found in living your purpose. If this entire life was given for that alone, then it was enough. So maybe we’re right that this life may have been designed for this, and that the ones judging from the sidelines are still on page five, while we’ve been writing in the margins of the final chapter.
Becoming Whole in the Quiet
Ultimately, the point of this post is to share the shape of a real, lived journey—to reach those who may be living it without realizing it has a name, and to remind those walking something similar that they are not alone.
If any part of this speaks to you—if you see yourself anywhere in these words—I leave you with this:
Don’t doubt the divine logic of your path just because others can’t read it.
You’re not lost. You’re just not supposed to be “found” in a way this world understands.
If you feel stuck or missing the flow, let it be quiet right now, if that’s what it is.
Let the pages be blank. Sometimes blank pages aren’t empty. They’re pregnant—with rest, with closure, with whatever the truth the next chapter needs is.
And when you’re ready, the world will be here. When you’re not ready, the world will still be here, because this is still part of the story…and you’re still writing it.
A reflection on the holy ache of love—how it lives in us, how it shapes us, and how, sometimes, we must let it breathe without us. This piece belongs to the fire-lit quiet where survival and love coexist.
Love isn’t a choice. It isn’t a decision. It is a default. A divine state. The way breath happens without trying, without knowing— that is love.
That is our love, whether for a song or a story, for animals or a wild wind, for a vision, or a soul.
We are love. We have embodied it… become it.
This is the weight we carry. This is the fire within us that lights the way for so many— but feels like burning alive for us.
And in times of heartache, when the world sharpens its noise, when grief coils into our chests, we do not run— we retreat.
We ache for the world because we are still tethered to the breath of it. We have done our part, we have showed up, and done our work.
Make no mistake, we continue to. From the shadows, in our tonal silence, our love still flows. Reverberates. Echoes.
We do not walk away because we are cold. We step away simply because we are melting. We step away… to survive. That is what survivors do.
We do not stop loving. We stop offering our tangible lives, for a time, to those who can not—or will not—feel us. Those who may never know…after all, they have forgotten even themselves. We pause.
To love like this, to grieve like this, is to carry the holy burden: to hold light for others while burning through your own bones. But it is also to breathe.
So if we disappear, if we go quiet, if we bow out—
know this:
It is not rejection. It is not retraction. It is survival. Because we do not want to die along with what is dying. Instead, we love from a distance while allowing what is dead to rest.
Love is not a thing we give. It is what we are. When we cast ourselves back into silence, it is to return… to the breath. To the fire, before we burn out. To the only place where the burning becomes light again.
Like love itself, it is not a choice. We must.
entry two — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
What you create… does not require an explanation of itself. It doesn’t need to convince, convert, or justify. It just needs to exist. Quietly, softly— like fog curling through trees or dust dancing across old floorboards.
Like light through ancient glass, sacred, but unflinching; gentle, but resolute. A whisper with weight, in that space exists everything— beyond the reach of articulation.
Silence is a presence, as much as an absence. Holy. Haunting. Both leave their imprint.
You are free to feel without having to be felt back. Free to present instead of perform. Free to sit beside your own silence, and know that it understands.
Because your creation… exists.
entry one — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
catacosmosis 