The Mystery of Happily Ever After

“Every decision we take in life either connects us to something greater than ourselves or cuts us off from our true and vital inheritance, leaving us feeling isolated and alone.”

Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys

I trust you’re having a peaceful holiday time following the birth of the sun on Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere. The ‘new year’ has actually already begun as far as Nature’s calendar is concerned; but as is the way with artificial institutions, Nature was overridden, and the Gregorian calendar was implemented in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, marking January 1st as the ‘official’ start to the new year.

All of which to say: happy new year!

Without going into the ins and outs of the Nature-aligned, cosmogonic-mythic-celestial cycles of mapping time, and the archetypal-elemental qualities of different ages, 2025 is going to be the ‘landing point’ of sorts to a new aeon. 2020 marked our collective departure from the previous one. These interim years have been a bridge if you like, taking us over what felt like some kind of abyss much of the time. For so many of us, this time has been a voluntary and involuntary shedding. We’ve been called to release into this abyss those false and flimsy things - those beliefs, and ways of being, doing, thinking, relating - that we can't bring with us. For so many of us, the discomfort, and oftentimes the grief, of breathing into the contractions of birthing each next step into the mystery of this journey have been overwhelming. We could viscerally feel that the maps we had, the ones injected into us at birth from the dominant culture, from its systems and institutions, were hurting us, hurting each other and hurting this living-breathing-feeling Earth to whom we belong, to whom our bodies belong.

Image courtesy of Be Here Now Network

These maps are the ones that proclaim that Self-alienation, scarcity, greed and exploitation are “just the way things are”, blind to the truth that Nature is alive, sentient and always evolving - expressing through each of us as our soul-body, no matter how much we’re taught to suppress and deny this as “irrational".

Drawn by minds mired in the dreary, soul-suffocating dogma of “nothing is anymore than what it is,” these decomposing maps lack the imagination to cognize the truth that “nothing is only itself,” to quote master storyteller + weaver of worlds, Philip Pullman. As we cross the bridge towards this new unknown, it’s worth taking to heart that imagination is not simply childish make-believe (a perspective which in itself is devoid of imagination), but a fundamental quality of creation + innovation. Without imagination, the soul absconds. And without soul, we degrade into systems of harm.

These externally mandated maps and their corresponding consciousness states have brought us this far, it’s true. And this journey across the bridge demanded their unequivocal release, as we make the alchemical-elemental shift from the age of water into air. For so many of us, this release has meant becoming firm friends with a trusting surrender as we surveyed our lives and realized how much space those false + flimsy things had taken up. It has meant becoming radically okay with, perhaps even weirdly delighted with, the space, the emptiness, without needing to rush out and fill it with more false + flimsy things that give us that addictive dopamine hit of external validation.

In the space and emptiness, in the tuning out of the incessant machine gun fire of identity-laden opinions, many of us have been able to tune (back) into the forgotten and neglected connection with the Self and the body: our soul and its vehicle. On the other side of this tuning-out-to-tune-in process, which necessitates feeling all the things that arise, and extricating ourselves from the tyrannical, unimaginative mandates of “should,” many of us have tasted the joy of true liberation as our lives start to feel more aligned, even when we’re tending to discomfort or grief.

2025 (and 2026, also) as a landing point will require this of us. No matter if we haven’t begun this process of Self-remembering yet, the energies of the next two years will usher us that way.

And what of this landing point? It’s that space we arrive at after a long journey before we properly enter the place we’re headed for. Alchemically-elementally, we’re still in the liminality of steam, as we move from the aeon of water to air.

Our time at this landing point will be relatively brief in the larger scheme of things but it’s going to be potent - and potentially weird, in the most magical ways, provided we’re willing to fully let go of the closed-system consciousness state of “this is just the way things are/will always be.”

One of the essential things on the curriculum during this landing point phase is going to be the integration of the ego. Contrary to certain systems of spirituality and metaphysics, the ego is not the enemy. It is not something to be destroyed or annihilated, but rather a necessary operational instrument for incarnating in and living here in the realm of relativity, duality and differentiation.

The simplest and most effective analogy I’ve come across to describe the role of the ego is via its functional similarity to the cell membrane. The well-being of the cell relies heavily on the cell membrane successfully fulfilling its purpose as a discerning boundary between the inside of the cell and its external environment. A healthy cell membrane allows in necessary nutrients and keeps pathogens out. If there was no cell membrane, the components of the cell would be floating about as an undifferentiated mass of cytoplasm, proteins, and so on; and the cell would not fulfill its individual purpose within the whole ecosystem of the body.

However, if the cell membrane is not performing its role in service to the well-being of the cell, it puts the health of the cell, and subsequently the surrounding environment in jeopardy. In this unhealthy state, perhaps the cell membrane has lost its powers of discernment and allows in pathogens while keeping nourishment out. Perhaps it is too rigid or too porous, or can’t release waste efficiently. Whatever the “issue” with the cell membrane may be, if we erroneously try to destroy the cell membrane, much like we try to “kill the ego,” we’re missing the point and causing harm to ourselves as well as our surrounding environment.

In the same way, with the ego. If it isn’t acting in service to the soul, if it isn’t internally defined and integrated into the Self, the ego causes problems not only to our individual well-being but also in the world around us. We see this now, everywhere. Egos untethered to soul, the larger Self. Egos operating from the level of the debilitating wound of Self-alienation, which creates that gaping, unfillable void of Self-deficiency from which we harm ourselves, each other and our larger Earth-Cosmic body in all manner of ways. And unfortunately, we live in a (dying) culture that, in the name of ‘reason and rationalism,’ and a nihilistic scientific materialism, proliferates, promotes and normalizes the unnatural wound of Self-deficiency and separation from Self (our inner spark of Divinity).

In this (non)culture, Matter (a word with roots in the Latin mater or mother, and alchemically corresponding to the element of earth) is non-sentient, soulless. Spirit (corresponding to ether, the fifth element) is nothing but an irrational, delusional fantasy. Our so-called ‘Age of Reason’ has split matter + spirit asunder, corresponding to the scientific apex of splitting the atom, the atomic bomb and its detonation in the name of peace. The terror of knowledge untethered to wisdom; the wound of ego untethered to soul.

So back to our landing point curriculum: the integration of the ego is going to be a fundamental point of evolution for us collectively at this juncture, at this stage of elemental alchemy that’s taking place. We’re going to be asked to turn inwards, to become internally defined from the level of our incarnating souls - which has no sense of Self-deficiency, and which knows it Self as Nature, as the Divine. We’re going to be called to root ourselves there, to become integrated there, to irrationally and unreasonably access our identity from there - and to embody this truth of who + what we are.

This unifying integration is Yoga - meaning to yoke. In the western esoteric tradition it’s known as unio mystica: the hidden meaning of “happily ever after.”

And it’s going to look and feel different for each of us, as each soul sets down its own path of purpose and individuation.

In Root + Rise this season, we’re stepping onto the landing point of this new aeon and being guided by the story of The Sleeping Beauty. Far from being a meaningless story intended to keep children occupied, it’s a wayshower to unio mystica, filled with soul-resonant alchemy and meaning.

​
Our practice + play in collaboration with this story is going to include layers of Jungian depth psychology - a word which originally meant “the care of the soul,” alongside the rich alchemical-elemental map of transformation that it encompasses.

Registration to Root + Rise is now open and closes at midnight PST on December 31st.