Suicide-adjacent, the inner lesbian, theatre as salvation
It comforted me deeply when I listened to a podcast yesterday that said Jung kept a loaded revolver in his nightstand just in case all the visions got to be too overwhelming.
I also listened to a Jungian perspective that said isolation is part of this process of receiving, but it does kind of make you crazy. You need to touch in with the world of forms and materiality. Volunteering with ecstatic dance has become that grounding for me; they are my family, and it’s a place where we have altered-state experiences, yet my responsibilities are very grounded in 3D: sweep the floor, plug the lights in, fill the water jug. And now, hand out my cacao informational leaflets, N’oj coming back around.
It’s a tricky one, that isolation. You need some of it to do the work, but it’s also one of the shadows I fear most, the unstoppable death force: the one that wants to get me alone and kill me. The one that has been working subtly on me ever since high school. But the way I transmuted it then was the same as now, I guess, turning it into research and performance.
It was coming out when I was in Austin, because there are no such thing as accidents, just parts of yourself trying to get your attention. On the wall of this housesit are three posters with “2010” emblazoned boldly across the top. The year that I had five “accidents” and turned the first car I had so proudly purchased into a mangled wreck of metal, as witin so without. The only one I had sober was going to see Stephen, where I spun out on the Texas highway and everything turned so slow-motion that I was able to see perfectly clearly that I was about to die, and I had nothing to show for my miserable life, but the good part was that I realized for the first time in that state that I wasn’t ready to exit stage right. I spun across five lanes of traffic and somehow came to a stop on the opposite side of the road facing backwards, and had managed not to hit a single person or even blow out a tire. I got a huge fine, but I survived.
The suicide feeling came back for the first time since I actually tried to do it, three years after that accident, on the train in London last Friday night. But the beauty was that I was able to see the effects of my medicine and healing work n action, because I actually was standing on the edge of it, peering over, from the observer position, watching it all unfold. Knowing I wasn’t really going to act on it. But man, did it come a lot closer than I was comfortable with.
It was prompted by going into an old pattern, one I thought I had cleared: thinking I had feelings for a cis man, because I felt like I needed someone to save me from myself. And it came along with a harsh lesson: that you need to be careful who you share things with.
They keep this shit esoteric for a reason. Tell the wrong people, and they’ll call you crazy.
He told me, gently, that not only were the feelings not reciprocated, but he was worried about me. For a few days, this only deepened my victim mentality. Just like when I was a kid, I doubted myself; I forgot I was a shamxn, because I didn’t know how to share what I was finding in a way people would understand; because the wrong people saw it, as happened when they read my journals and took my books away as a teenager.
There’s nowhere to hide when they get inside your mind and make you gaslight yourself.
But this time, I remembered.
And I realized the whole thing had been triggered by realizing that I actually was attracted to Jade, that mystical bearer of cacao, the queer owner of the ethical metaphysical store with whom I had been divinely connected, whose aunt has offered to sponsor my UK visa. The only other person I’ve ever heard of who is having high-dose cacao experiences; a healer who has learned from Indigenous teachers.
And very much a binary lesbian, like those who told me I wasn’t one of them. Like the ones I was told I would burn for being attracted to, my first memory of self-gaslighting.
Dave assigned me te creation of a 10-minute play in December, because I had to get it out of here, he told me over sad, tired, too-yellow eggs in the cafe of the quirky building across from the theatre, where downstairs it was perpetually Christmas, and once a year the rest of the world caught up with it.
There’s something poetic about that. And it makes me think of Lala’s, the bar of forever Christmas in Austin, Texas, where you could still smoke indoors, and I sucked on American Spirits and thought that Jeff was the answer to my anomie, and decided to leave Stephen before he came back from the holidays.
The play, we decided, would be about self-gaslighting. He told me he also wants to hear more about channeling. I told him that I had an idea for a one-person show where I would basically just do my morning practice in front of people with a more coherent through-line. I thought nobody would care about this. But he loved it.
I do think one of the people I’m channeling is McKenna.
Ha! The song that just came on shuffle has a chorus saying: “Help me to name it.” That’s the thing, innit?
So, before I realized that I was gaslighting myself again into thinking that I was attracted to a cis man who would save me from my own madness and self-destruction and forgot I was a shamxn who had a crush on an astral-traveling lesbian—and a Kame nahual, of course, because I am in love with the death and resurrection—I got into that dark place again, that part of me was trying, as it has been my whole life, to isolate me from my art and the queer spiritual friends who understand, and I stood at the precipice of suicidal ideation and peered over the edge. But I realized it was happening, and that’s why I was sitting on that train having this realization.
I knew I needed to go to the theatre. And I’ll be damned, I was redeemed by a play about a couple of gay Peruvians called “Jeezus: The Musical,” which contained everything from astute observations of South American politics to resurrecting the lord and savior by fellating a crucifix, and the music was catchy and the actors engaging and I was totally captivated, and all those dark thoughts fell away, and I knew I needed to put my pain and joy and stories onstage.
I waited around until they came out of the dressing room and gushed and asked if I could send them some scenes, and they said yes.
Then I read them and felt like they were a disastrous half-conceived mess, so I still haven’t done it.
But it’s a start. The first step is awareness.
——
Transmission transcript: Suicidality
More suicidality. It's all connected. I love when things just start to make sense, listening to this yangian life, yeah. Young was also haunted, slashed comforted by thoughts of suicide, images, the things he was receiving from the other realm were so overwhelming, he didn't know how to ground them, interpret them, make sense of them, land them, and he kept a loaded revolver in his bedside table, just to remind himself that if it got to be too much, he could end it all. That's exactly what I've been going through. But I've been alive things feel overwhelming that seem easy to other people, and I don't see another way out, except to be saved by a man or put myself in the ground. And how sad is that, and how much power Am I giving away to that. But that's what's happening when I was being brought back to Austin's wanting for a reason, because they also say in this podcast that when people start having quote, unquote accidents, that's the suicidal self trying to get out, that's the unstoppable death or trying To finish the job, it's the beginning. You start paying less attention. You start being less careful. You start by just kind of not fearing if it happens. And then it works. All the
times I crashed my car. I mean, I knew I was possibly trying to die, but to see here, it spelled out very sobering. There are a lot of ways to kill yourself. Some are less confronting.
LISTEN:
Insatiable
Holly Regan reflects on theit struggles with insatiability, exploring themes of trauma, addiction, and the search for love and identity. They discuss their experiences with alcohol, sexual encounters, and artistic suppression, linking these to past abuse and the need for validation. Holly describes their transformations into different personas—artist, mystic, and alcoholic—and the trance-like states they enter. They acknowledges the severe abuse they endured, the gaslighting, and the societal shaming that contributed to their behavior. Holly also touches on their journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the realization that they are a shaman, emphasizing the expansive nature of the universe and the time available for personal growth.
Transcript here
Summary:
Insatiable Hunger and Emptiness
- They describe a feeling of insatiability, always needing more to fill an empty void within themself. - They mention the fear of the bottom being empty and scary, reflecting their inner emptiness. - They discuss how they make themself into whatever they need to get love, even if it means taking rather than giving. - They talk about the monstrous impulse that awakens every morning, comparing it to a beast that never feels satisfied.
[...] Action Items:
Forgive myself for not going to art school and quitting theater. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Reconnect with and apologize to the younger versions of myself (Assignee: Fiona)
Transmute the trauma and shame I've experienced, especially around my sexuality and identity. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Embrace the creative, spiritual, and authentic parts of myself that I've suppressed. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Speaker 1 reflects on their creative process, discussing the symbolic use of letters and the deeper meaning behind their art, which includes themes of breaking free from cycles and ending a relationship. They recount a transformative experience involving a conversation with their mother, which led to a realization about their purpose in creating art. This realization was further solidified by witnessing a performance that resonated deeply with their identity and struggles. Speaker 1 also shares a profound revelation about their ability to perceive the dead, which they had previously suppressed, and expresses a newfound desire to document and explore these visions, recognizing them as a unique form of communication and a significant part of their identity.
Action Items
Draw the faces the speaker sees when they close their eyes and record the stories of the dead.
Transcript:
The word y, u, W, A, U, wait, W, A, y, u, written clearly. It's like the title of a magazine written in block letters at the top of an exhibit or I've created with art pieces of letters that were never sent to mark sending messages and some secret code about how we get out of the cycle of samsara, things that are casual, but they're also they're me telling me him, I'm not getting back together with him.
They're like these stylized letters, or like letters written on an old 1950s postcard from Hawaii, I'm saying Like you're never gonna see me again. Kay, by
mm, what if it's the part of me that thought they needed to be saved from men and saved from myself writing this letter to say you'll never see me again. I love that, that that feels like that could be true, and that could definitely be an art project too. Pat's is 12. He drowned. He's a redhead with freckles, and I see his head bobbing above the surface before it goes under. I feel like he contacted me when I was a little child, but I didn't know how to interpret it. All of a sudden, things are pouring in from the astral. I actually really unlocked something, and it crystallized, because I was talking to mom. Isn't that interesting. So I need to only talk to her when I've only had when I've already figured things out, I think for a while, because somehow in that, yeah, like I it's a good time to talk to her when I'm crystallizing things. I am supposed to share what I'm learning, but I'm not supposed to ask her input, and she can help me kind of connect the dots once they're basically already there, not even that. It's just like, in the act of sharing with her and some additional maybe filters she puts on or support she lends, makes it unlock, like I just got to the next level, and getting all the bells and whistles, because I realized that it was I realized that I lost the point of why to create anything at all until I was talking to her, and I realized that that's part of what made seeing that play so important, was realizing that on the train, on The way there, I didn't want to live anymore. And then I saw a couple Peruvian queers get up on stage, and I didn't tell her this part, but mime getting anally raped and sucking off not, yeah, no, not getting annoy raped and mimed getting defiled by a crucifix and sucking off Jesus and reclaiming their queer shame. And I saw my story, and suddenly I didn't feel alone anymore. I walked into that theater and I instantly felt happy, and that's why to create, and that's what I had lost, the threat of I was trying to make the thing for the sake of making the thing because I wanted my puppy to look at me and tell me I was worthy.
I don't need these men to tell me that I'm worthy. I
him seeing me, giving me the label add is actually a spell he put on me. Brewery, a sorcery. I now has become an excuse for everything.
Something like that is only helpful if it can be liberating.
He saw my pain, but then trapped me in a trance with the spell he put on me, black magic, sorcery, men always trying to tell you something's wrong with you. I
He thinks I'm crazy, but I'm a motherfucking shaman baby. Holy fucking shit. I've always seen faces when I closed my eyes ever since I was a kid, but I would kind of shut them down because they freaked me out. They're the dead. That's the dead speaking to me, Holy fucking shit. And it comes in the hypnagogic state. Oh, my fucking god, this is so incredible to realize. I gotta draw them. I gotta listen to them. I gotta record their stories. I feel like there's one called Alan. He's Asian. He was trying to speak to me. He was trying to raise his hand, or it looked like he was trying to pinch something. His dad wasn't listening. The dead have been speaking to me this whole time this way, ever since I was a little kid. And this came through some thought train as I was laying here, half awake about the play and about how the chosen children always have some kind of ability to communicate with the other realms. And I was like thinking I didn't have one. And then all of a sudden I realized it's the faces that appear to me. This is what I got to draw. This is so fucking cool.
Transmission transcript: Rebekah the temptress
Rebekah. Rebekah, now I'm in love with a girl named Rebekah. What is it about these Latin ladies? She danced with all the men at the dance today. At ecstatic she captivated all of them. I watched them. I watched her put each one under her spell was a charm her body, the dance that put them in a trance. She enchanted Lubo and Richard and Simon the DJ. She even got up behind him while he was playing, and started like fluffing him and I almost wanted to say, stop. And if it was anyone else, Richard would have told them to get the fuck out of there. But she put him in a spell too. And she put a spell on me too, but I already was, I already was in. She put a spell on me the second she looked at me. What is it with me and these Latin ladies, I can't resist. Does this make me some kind of colonist, like it just happens to be my type. But Is that racist? I feel very complicated about this. She's just oozes pure sexuality. This has nothing to do with her nationality. I'm talking just separately about her at this point, she like is sex personified. She's a goddess. She's Aphrodite. Her hips just the right amount of sculpted, the kind that makes you think that she gets them naturally from dancing, and not from doing a bunch of crunches, but she's got those little lines on either side of her stomach that were visible through the space between her Crop Top and her spandex that hugged her perfect ass, round, voluptuous, but not big, just well, but kind of big, but not really just perfect. I mean, she looked like a fucking sculpture of a goddess, gyrating those hips, her hair soft, her face suggestive without being excessive, like she's so soft as well, just tempting. And I smelled alcohol on her breath, and it reminded me of all those dangerous men that lured me in with their I don't know, some way that they were free in which I was not. And I grasped that today, and I wanted to absorb her power and be able to feel that for myself. You could like it came from a confidence, like a pure confidence. She's fucking gorgeous, and a past version of me would have been jealous and kind of hated her for it, and how does she charm these men? I wanted to learn how to get that confidence for myself, that's what I wanted. But also she's really fucking hot. I mean, I also wanted her to fluff my hair and grind on me the way she was grinding with them and we danced. But also she's perceptive, and I think she could read that I have boundaries, and also maybe she's not into trans people. I don't know we're women or whatever, but wanted her to rub all up on me like she was rubbing all up on them. But then I actually didn't, because the last thing I need right now is to be put on under another spell. I just got out of that trance. But it was interesting to watch. I mean, it was like she was just deliberately going around, charming everyone. Kali Ma, the snake charmer, getting those men under her paw. It's like, yeah, we need you on our team. So you can do that, so you can hypnotize them, so we can sneak in through the side doors of the borders and the spaces that would try to keep us out and take them, yeah. Kali Ma, be our snake charmer. We need you on our team. That's one way we can win. They'll never even see it coming. I watched each of them fall right under some magic.
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on + Marking the 13 Kan / Libra Solar Eclipse Upleveling
It started on the morning of the eclipse with a vision of the electric chair, with a word emblazoned across it:
“FUNCOMFORTABLE”
The song “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave started playing, and I received the message as being about reframing. The electric chair can be a torturous death, or it can just be something interesting that happens in the endless game of hide-and-seek that is the universe seeking to know itself through every possible configuration.
It’s all about the reframe, the remix, pain is only suffering if you perceive that it’s challenging; in a different context, it can be interesting, information.
As my friend Gorgeous George says: “That’s fun, innit?”
The portal twisted and turned, deepening and meandering as I wove my way through my relationship with my own pain and energy that day. I had an appointment for a very important marking scheduled for the day after the eclipse, and was already dropping into it: a cosmic serpent, marking the completion of this period of my initiation by pain, the crossing of the threshold from child to adult and the rapidly approaching horizon line of eldership, as this year I turn 40: when my Maya astrology reflects with eerie accuracy what is already happening, that this is when I start to really mature and move into a position of service, leadership, gentle yet certain authority, claiming a community where, after all this wandering in the dark, flailing around lost, afraid and alone and ping-ponging all over the Earth, I finally start to know my worth, believe I deserve to be alive and choose to stay here, on this body and in this timeline, and build something lasting.
It’s happening.
I can hardly believe it. I’ve longed for it for so long. But the lesson of this eclipse portal, on the day that joins the number of ultimate stability with my nahual—6 Kan—within the trecena of the Hero Twins, reclaiming and realinging with my herox’s journey, is that the point of everything, my work and art and research and life, is that it’s a remembering, a conjuring into physical presence, into something we can perceive with the senses, that which has always been present.
You can’t make this stuff up. In childhood, my Maya astrology says, I came into the world with a strong ability to manifest my creative talents on the physical plane. This phase was closely linked to the influence of women in my life. My mom was at home with me and very involved with my life in a more positive way than what came later up until age 11 or so, just like this reflects. The comes in the storm, the disruptive influence of the men in my orbit, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s when the divorce happened and there opened up a portal of this world of dad’s house, unchecked by mom, where he could treat us as horribly as he wanted. And she made us go there, because he threatened legal action if she didn’t. But still. She should have insisted. It was the beginning of an abusive pattern that I would later fractally refract in my own romantic relationships.
The astrology reflects what happened, that I exploded all over the place, lost in my own mind, lost in misdirection, blown by the hurricanes of relationships and disappearing into drunkenness, but that by age 40, things would start to settle, and I would move toward eldership, rooted in community: Aj, the nahual of leadership and the spine, being a stand-up guy, influenced by Kej, the nahual of the stag, the healed masculine forest-father power, that advocates for what is right and needed, assuming eldership by age 42, of course, the meaning of the whole silly game.
I didn’t see, at the time I got this reading, how that was ever going to happen. I had just gotten to California and thought that maybe I was going to build it there. I was right in that the foundation was laid, but what I never could have seen coming was that it was laid by breaking everything, shattering my root and foundation; stripping me bare and ripping me open like a carcass for the interdimensional buzzards to devour, and I chose the death, because as Christine said, it’s what we’re going for, and when it comes and we know it’s meant for us all we can do is surrender, so I let it take me, I let the scavengers eat me so that my body could be a feast of abundance for the system, composting the lives that were and could have been and thus enabling the resurrection on the cactus, that thing that looks a lot like a cross, making me a world tree: the axis-mundi.
Returning victoriously as the hero(x) of my own story. Finally, not the victim or the maiden, but also yes them, and also I am the villain, but for once, I am steering the ship.
I feel it. This tattoo was a marking of the end of my shama(x)ic initiation, I completed this round of trials and upleveled, I fucking did it, we did it together, I got there, I didn’t know if I would ever get there, but we made it, it was so dark and hopeless so many times but we followed the feeling.
That was a big part of the portal, learning to know the difference between when an urge, an inclination, was ego and when it was the right kind of pushing myself, when it was following the feeling that said to go somewhere or do something that would leave to my unfolding and awakening, rather than just grinding through and propping myself up with coping mechanisms. This was going where I was needed, helping where I was asked to be of service, being the higher octave and raising the vibration of the place through my presence: the balancing element. And I found the middle ground, that I can show up and also listen to myself, that I can be in the world and with my community and also listen to my body, it can be both things, it doesn’t have to be this extreme. I choose to come out of isolation, leave the waystation, move toward the destination of life’s meaning, 42, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
The theme of the eclipse portal was conjuring into physical presence, the realm of the senses, that which has always been there, but has been forgotten. One of the things I remembered is that I always knew I was trans, I just didn’t know what to call it. I even realized that the beginning of my hard-femme-performance was when I put on that suit during our X-Files spoof, and nothing had ever felt so right, and it scared me. And I made jokes about how we should experiment with queerness, and they weren’t received, and now I see that I shut down ALL of these impulses after that experience, I abandoned my natural gift for theatre and performance of the authentic sort for the performative kind, the falseness, the deception that is the dark side of 13 Kan. When you get so good at the illusion that even you fall into your own con. I felt it again when I wore the strap-on, and I felt another kind of power and authenticity that had no place in my current cultural story, so that scared me too, and it also humiliated him, even though he asked for it, so we put the thing away and never spoke of it again, and I tried to contain that testosterone that needed expression, so as the shadow does, my repressed masculine came out in other, undesired ways.
The con of 13 Kan, when the illusionist confuses even themselves, and forgets what spells they cast, which charms they’re tied to, and who’s entranced, performing what act.
Spell, charm, trance.
Kit’s applauding this.
When you’re born a 13 Kan, you come into this dimension with the natural ability to perceive the other ones, but without the proper training and guidance, you don’t know what’s you and what’s other forces and energies and entities; if you don’t learn to discern your inner voice from your dead grandma from a squirrel or a tree, you’re always going to be confused about what you’re hearing and feeling, about what you actually want and need, you have to learn these boundaries or else you end up lost, like I did.
This is the point of it all, my work/art/life/research/praxis/all the same shit, is actually putting the healing and mentorship into practice; helping others learn to directly communicate with the subtle realms again, which includes parts of self, learning from the traditions that have always done it, but building our own syncretic Hermetic practices, always with reciprocity and respect. Showing people how to do that. This is my offering and service and personal journey, and the PhD is documenting this process of unfolding and making art that represents it.
Okay, now I know what I’m doing. Can I make some shit already?? I hope so.
The marking is marking the transition, the crossing of the threshold.
Like when Cal materialized at the end of my alchemical descent at Burning Nest, that other circus, I think what he said is prescient:
“Your journey is about to get a lot easier.”
LISTEN:
Funny - the AI doesn’t recognize me as anyone here, recorded on the day after the eclipse, but still in its shadow, at 4am London time. I will rename myself Riordan and see what happens.
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on
The speaker reflects on their sexual awakening and identity, tracing back to their childhood crush on David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson from "The X-Files." They discuss the significance of the Sacral Chakra and the color orange, symbolizing creativity and intimacy. The speaker recalls dressing as Gillian Anderson to connect with David, but later realized they wanted to embody both identities. They emphasize the transformative power of performance, particularly in wearing a suit and a strap-on, which made them feel more authentic. The speaker plans to explore drag and performance further, acknowledging the duality of their identity and the need for both masculine and feminine expression.
Transcript
Outline:
Awakening of Sacral Chakra and Realization of Identity
Speaker 1 expresses a desire to have sex again, awakening their Sacral Chakra, associated with the color orange.
They reflect on the significance of orange, realizing it represents a blend of red (root) and yellow (solar plexus) chakras.
Speaker 1 recalls being shamed for their sexuality and body by past lovers, which they now understand better.
Childhood and Adolescence: Struggling with Identity
Speaker 1 describes their childhood, playing softball and liking micro machines, and their adolescent crush on both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, struggling to express their true feelings due to societal and family pressures.
They obsessed over The X-Files, taping episodes and cataloging them, feeling a strong connection to the show's themes. Speaker 1 believed in the conspiracy theories of the show, seeing some truth in them. They dressed as Gillian Anderson in middle school, trying to embody her identity to get closer to David Duchovny.
Transformation and Self-Discovery
Speaker 1 recalls a formative moment when they performed in an X-Files parody video, dressing as David Duchovny and feeling more like themselves.
They realized they wanted to be both David and Gillian, and that a triad relationship would fulfill their desires.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the importance of fluidity and embracing their true identity as a non-binary person.
They reflect on their history of writing musical theater and parody songs, expressing their feelings through performance.
Planning for the Future
Speaker 1 plans to meet with Heather to discuss drag and performance, setting up a non-romantic date to talk about their shared interests.
They reflect on the importance of presenting more masculine to feel safe in their body and to express both masculine and feminine identities.
They plan to attend the next queer poly meet and connect with people in Glasgow who share their interests.
LISTEN:
Fascinating - the AI identifies me as Cain, in this recording from the morning of the eclipse, before it happened that evening. I also notice that my transmissions end in the transcript every time with “I.” This is not something I think I utter aloud, but it makes me think of how Paul Selig when channeling always ends with “period… period… period… they’re saying period.” Ending with the I-am?
Funcomfortable
Cain reflects on the concept of reframing pain and suffering, drawing parallels to the "electric chair" as a symbol of liberation rather than punishment. They discuss the fear of being abandoned if perceived as well, and the realization that self-reliance and community support are crucial. Cain recounts personal experiences, including the impact of the 2017 American Eclipse, their struggle with alcohol, and the journey from content marketing to embracing a nomadic lifestyle. They also explore internalized biphobia and the desire for community and support, particularly as they approach turning 40.
Action Items
[ ] Listen to what Cain's pelvis is trying to tell him today and consider the reframing of his pain as strength.
[ ] Reflect on the fear of getting better and not being loved or needed, and work to overcome this.
[ ] Determine whether the urge to return to the jungle is a call or a fear of stepping into his power in this world.
Outline:
Reframing Pain and Suffering
Cain discusses the concept of reframing pain as interesting and the fear of getting better, questioning if the fear is rooted in the belief that no one will be there if they are well again.
Cain shares a personal story about prolonging the use of crutches to ensure visibility of suffering, fearing that without it, no one would love or help them.
The pelvis story is redefined as one of strength and self-healing, emphasizing that one does not need as much help as they think they do and can rely on their body, community, and natural world.
Cain argues that society's "eye for an eye" mentality is flawed, suggesting that suffering is often seen as self-inflicted and that a toxic culture prevents true well-being.
The Mercy Seat and Liberation
Cain introduces the concept of the electric chair as the mercy seat, where suffering is reframed as a form of liberation and strength.
The idea of choosing to laugh all the way to the electric chair is presented as a way to see the captors as those with blood on their conscience.
Cain explains that if one is innocent, they will rise above the suffering, while those who have harmed others will suffer in the chair.
The vision of the electric chair in the word "funcomfortable" is introduced as a radical reframe of pain and suffering.
The Eclipse and Personal Transformation
Cain recounts a personal experience during the Great American Eclipse in 2017, describing the moment of no shadow as a lesson in balance and the value of darkness.
The concept of pain as pleasure and the importance of special glasses to see the Invisible Sun is introduced.
Cain reflects on their journey from being a content marketing director to embracing the nomadic life and the emergence of their shadow.
The realization that those who do less work often make more money led Cain to question their place in the corporate world and to seek a more authentic path.
Navigating Relationships and Self-Worth
Cain discusses the fear of being alone and the need to make oneself invaluable to others to feel loved and needed.
The idea of seeing oneself as an offering rather than a being is explored, with Cain acknowledging the shift towards self-advocacy and valuing their contributions.
Cain reflects on the importance of being seen and valued for who they are, rather than just for their contributions.
The concept of the dance, both metaphorical and literal, is introduced as a way to navigate relationships and personal growth.
Healing and Community Support
Cain expresses gratitude for their current community and the support they receive, emphasizing the importance of having people who need them.
The physical presence and grounding nature of the community are highlighted, with Cain acknowledging the need to listen to their body and its messages.
The fear of not being loved if not perceived as needing help is revisited, with Cain questioning the basis of their relationships and the balance between codependency and equal energy exchange.
Cain reflects on the importance of trusting their community to provide what they need and the desire for a big dance on their birthday as a symbol of connection and support.
LISTEN:
Interesting - the AI identifies me as Cain in this reflection from the day after the day after the eclipse, in the aftercare refractory period of my marking.
Marking the 13 Kan and return of gnosis
Cain describes the profound experience of getting a tattoo of a 13 con cosmic serpent, which he felt was meant for him. The process involved careful placement and adjustments, symbolizing the alignment of his spiritual and physical selves. Cain emphasizes the importance of queer alchemy and synchronicity, drawing parallels between his tattoo and the broader concept of manifestation. He discusses his commitment to natural healing, his role as a community organizer, and his plans for future events. Cain feels a sense of purpose and unity with his past, present, and future, marking a significant return to his true identity and path.
Transcript
Action Items:
[ ] Talk to Richard about bringing more awareness around cacao at the Sunday Embodayfest event.
[ ] Host a cacao gathering on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Potentially do an event with Rebecca and Ash on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Submit an abstract for "Breaking Convention" and get a queer ecstatic dance event going for Cain's 40th birthday.
Marking the Return of Gnosis
Cain describes the process of marking himself with a design that called to him, which he felt was meant to be on his body.
The design, a 13 Kn cosmic serpent, was chosen synchronistically from a metaphysical shop.
The tattoo process was a collaborative effort with Ezrael, involving multiple stencil adjustments to align with Cain's vision.
The ceremony involved alchemizing the time in Austin, embodying and transmuting the design, and letting the serpent guide the placement.
The Journey of the Tattoo
Cain and Ezrael had to cut up the stencil into pieces and print new versions multiple times to achieve the desired placement.
The final placement of the serpent's head and tail felt magical and aligned with Cain's initial vision.
Ezrael confirmed that the final placement meant Cain was conjuring something that was always present in his light body.
The tattoo ceremony was part of a larger tradition of queer alchemy, bringing subtle realms into the material world.
Queer Alchemy and Synchronicity
Cain discusses the importance of creating respect and apprenticeship in a world without long lineages of certain traditions.
He expresses the need for a new mystery school to teach the wise use of practices with respect and reciprocity.
Cain reflects on his transformational experiences at ecstatic dance and the synchronicity around cacao.
Synchronicity and Community
Ali and Ezrael had a powerful ceremony involving a mastectomy tattoo, and Ali opened her home to host Ezrael for Cain’s tattooing.
Cain feels positive about the synchronicity and trusts in the signs guiding him.
The conversation with Ali and Ezrael led to discussions about cacao and its integration in their work.
Cain emphasizes the importance of compromises that bring everyone together and trusting in the synchronicity.
Manifestation and Purpose
Cain explains the concept of manifestation as calling into being things that already exist on the ethereal plane. He believes in vibrating at a high frequency to conjure the higher path into being.
Cain is focused on organizing events and advocating for voices that aren't very loud. He feels certain about his purpose in reclaiming his identity as trans and bringing natural healing practices to the forefront.
He plans to document his journey through art, performance, and educational events as part of his PhD process.
Cain feels a sense of welcome home to his body and community in London. The tattoo marks the return of his gnosis, and he feels more grateful and certain about his purpose.
