And The Spells Shall Break

Dedicated to Samantha Sweetwater, Charles Eisenstein, and Jordan Siegel, without whom I would not have been the version of myself who could write these words.

Spells are ontological code. A spell doesn’t just get you to believe something, it gets you to believe in an entire reality. This is what makes spells so powerful. If you can install a virus into the operating system of a human psycho-spiritual and behavioral body-mind, you don’t just have control over the way they work or communicate, you have control over the reality that they participate in creating through their thoughts, words, and deeds.

We live in the time of apocalypse, the time of the great revealing. The veils are thin now and are being lifted more and more each day. The old stories we’ve told about reality, about who we are, our place in the cosmos, our old worn out wounded child narratives of victimhood and not-enoughness, are all coming undone. They’re like clothes that no longer fit, or a childhood toy that we’ve collectively outgrown. Many existing institutions, built atop the reality that believers in these stories have created through their endless consumption and reproduction, are fighting to the death to keep us locked in the spell of us-vs-them and recursive cycles of vengeance between victims and perpetrators.

But the center cannot hold. The thousands of years of collective trauma, condensed into a diamond inside of every human heart, is turning in on itself, causing the pressure to implode into a Phoenix of light that roars forth from the chest of every True Human¹ who accepts their role in this collective healing journey. The collective psyche is screaming into the cosmos, “no more!”

But these patterns don’t die instantly. For some time more they will haunt us around every corner, embedded in every interaction, reflected in the corner of our eyes as our nervous systems, wired to protect and defend our innocent inner children from harm, remain vigilant and constricted, struggling to let go of these old stories. Breaking these spells is harrowing but ultimately more rewarding than the alternative. Finally letting go is far less painful than decades-long clinging to the wounds of the past that keep us in half-lived lives and filled with regret on our death beds.

As the spells of scarcity, control, and separation fade from our eyes, an entirely new world shines back at us. It was a miracle this whole time? Love was omni-present this whole time?! God is here and among and within each of us?!

It’s almost too shocking to let in at first, like the exit from Plato’s cave. The brilliance of the beauty of existence shines into our eyes as if for the first time. Neo and Trinity soar over the clouds of the Machine City, breaching the darkness that had covered them their entire lives in the “real world,” hanging for just a moment in the sun’s light before descending back into the fray of the War of Attention and Meaning.

We are in a war. And we must descend. Having glimpsed, even briefly, a world of choice, liberation, communion, and kinship with All Life and our Creator, we are called to return as Shambhala Warriors of the Light within. We are called to remind all of our relatives that they too may shed the spells of a culture of death and return again to the family of the Living. We are called to awaken the Light, the sacred soul spark of each being, and invite them to weave it with ours. We are called to invoke safety and belonging in all of our interactions. We are called to see all of our relatives as fundamentally innocent and worthy of compassion and forgiveness. We are called to be the Ancient Future Ancestors who are crucified at the intersection of timelessness and time, courageously letting down the sword of the spells of separation and opening up the biospiritual and morphogenetic field of a reality in which humanity comes home.

1. I first encountered the phrase “True Human” in relationship with the work of Samantha Sweetwater. You can read more about the concept as used in this particular context in her forthcoming book by the same name.